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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
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| Title: | Sodomy, race and respectability in Stellenbosch and Drakenstein, 1689-1762: the story of a family, loosely defined |
| Author: | Newton-King, Susan |
| Year: | 2007 |
| Periodical: | Kronos: Journal of Cape History |
| Issue: | 33 |
| Pages: | 6-44 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | trials race relations social networks sexual offences history 1700-1799 |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/41056580 |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the interacting dynamics of race, class, status and respectability in the emerging colonial society at the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. It is a case study which examines the background to the trial and execution of Gerrit Coetzee, a person of mixed descent and the first freeburgher at the Cape to be accused of sodomy, allegedly having 'used a mare against nature'. By implication, the study raises a number of questions about the rural community in which Gerrit was raised, and it reopens old debates about the role of race and the determinants of status in early colonial South Africa. As one probes Gerrit's background and investigates the social networks within which he and his family lived, one comes to wonder about the meaning of his arrest and conviction and the motives behind his allegedly transgressive behaviour. Was he a victim of social or racial prejudice? Was he excluded, cold-shouldered or otherwise subtly marginalized by his young male peers in Daljosafat, where he lived? Was he driven by prejudice to seek the company of other marginalized individuals and ultimately to engage in suicidally transgressive behaviour? Or was he simply a young man who wrecked his chances by going too far? Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
