Why is it necessary to make available the Dutch texts of eleven of the ninety-eight
documents published in These Oppressions Won’t Cease, all those which I know to
exist? This has to do with the linguistic situation in the Eastern Cape during the first
two-thirds of the nineteenth century. During this time, Eastern Cape Khoekhoe was
dying out. In These Oppressions Won’t Cease, there is only one speech reported which
was held in Khoekhoe,2
and one, the first, in which it is not clear in which language—a
San language, Khoekhoe, or Dutch—Koerikei addressed Karel van der Merwe.3
Khoekhoe was swiftly replaced by Dutch, or Proto-Afrikaans among people who still
considered themselves to be Khoekhoe. Dutch was what they learnt to read and to
write, in so far as they acquired education. The rare examples of correspondence
between two Khoekhoe were both in Dutch.4 However, communication with British officialdom, with the directors of the London Missionary Society, and in general in
the public sphere was done in English. In only one of the many petitions to the Cape
government has the original Dutch text found its way into the archives.5
Likewise, the many speeches held in Dutch were translated (and summarised) into English before publication. It is only a few letters to the editors of the colonial newspapers which got published both in the original as in translation.