Books For Sale: Just Hermanus and Tesselaarsdal

Tesselaarsdal - by Annalize Mouton

Tesselaarsdal. Is this the place that apartheid forgot? Officially classified as a "human settlement", it is not a town or a village, just a few dozen buildings scattered amongst trees against a mountain slope. It does not lie next to a main road, so strangers do not see the name in passing. In fact, one has to navigate sometimes tricky gravel roads amongst wheat and canola fields to get there. Even people in the surrounding Overberg know little or nothing about it. But Tesselaarsdal has a history going back almost two hundred years and is unlike any other community in South Africa. The bequest of the farm Hartebeestrivier by Jan and Aaltje Tesselaar to have some of their servants and slaves made them landowners and should have put them in a position to create better lives for themselves and their offspring. However, it would take almost 160 years for most of them to get title deeds to their land. Under apartheid, some of the descendants were considered coloured and others white. Although seemingly "forgotten" and allowed to retain their land and live together as a mixed community, most we subsistence farmers who had to work as labourers on adjoining farms to secure an income. Deep-seated, crippling wounds from the past remain. Many have sold their land. Young people have moved to the cities in search of work and outsiders are moving in. New challenges face this apparently tranquil village. What will it take for healing to happen and the spirit of the community to return?