Krotoa

Krotoa (whom the Dutch called Eva) was apparently Autshumato's niece, the daughter of his sister, but it is hard to be sure of the nature of the blood relationship between them as Khoikhoi family terms did not always match those of the Dutch commentators.

Her first contact with the Dutch was, however, as a domestic servant. She was about ten when she was brought into the Van Riebeeck household, soon after their arrival, and here she began to learn Dutch. Her skill in this language soon impressed the family; by 1657 she was being used as an interpreter. By 1660, Krotoa had edged out her uncle as the principal interpreter for the Dutch settlement at the Cape. She was baptised in the Dutch Reformed Church two years later and by 1664 she had married a prominent member of the Dutch colony, the junior surgeon Pieter van Meerhoff. In 1660 she was described as fluent in Dutch and reasonably competent in Portuguese. Apart from various periods of absence to stay with her family members, she remained at the Castle until her husband became superintendent of the Robben Island prison in 1665.

Van Meerhoff's job at Robben Island was, as the historian Candy Malherbe says, not a plum post. He had a number of time-consuming and difficult tasks, including the monitoring of ships entering the bay, the supervision of convicts who collected shells for lime and stone for the building of the Castle, the control of a small garrison and the tending of a flock of sheep. For Krotoa, isolated from her family, the sojourn on the Island could not have been a particularly happy one. A doctor was called to her aid in 1667 for a condition that seems to have been related to over-consumption of alcohol.

After her husband was killed on a slaving and trading expedition to Mauritius and Madagascar, Krotoa was allowed to return to the mainland in September 1668. Soon afterwards, reports were made by the Dutch of her allegedly drunken and adulterous behaviour, and she left the Castle and her two children for the more friendly Khoikhoi kraals. In February 1669, however, she was imprisoned at the Castle and banished to Robben Island, this time as a prisoner. She died in 1674. The Dutch described her on her death as 'this brutal aboriginal, [who] was always still hovering between' the Dutch and Khoikhoi cultures, yet she was given a Christian burial in the Castle.

Text adapted from The Island: A History of Robben Island 1488 - 1990. Edited by Harriet Deacon