Armed with Swords and Ostrich Feathers: Militarism and Cultural Revolution in the Cape Slave Uprising of 1808

Abstract

On the evening of 27 October 1808 Lord Caledon, governor of the newly acquired Cape Colony, received an alarming report.1 Some 340 slaves were advancing on Cape Town from the Zwartland and Koeberg hinterland. During the preceding 24 hours, their leaders had attacked over thirty of the prosperous grain farms of the region, taken the farmers prisoner and persuaded the labourers to join them. They planned to ‘first take a battery and then … write a letter to the Governor, to grant our freedom, and if that was refused we should fight ourselves free’.2