Perhaps one should begin by saying that the relative freedoms we enjoy today, albeit not yet reflective of what we envisaged in the Freedom Charter, did not come cheap. It all began when Dom Francisco de Almeida (also known as the Great Dom Francisco), a Portuguese nobleman, soldier and explorer, attempted to colonise the Cape, lost his life in a conflict with the native Goringhaiqua Khoikhoi people at the Cape of Good Hope on 1 March 1510, in what came to be called the Battle of Salt River.
If the native Goringhaiqua Khoi people did not defeat the Almeida’s force of 150 men who attempted to take their cattle by force, South Africa could have been a Portuguese colony like Angola and Mozambique. However, this effort by the valiant Goringhaiqua Khoi, which resulted in the massacre of 64 Portuguese sailors, including de Almeida, became a notable military embarrassment for the Portuguese and led to stricter enforcement of an earlier policy of theirs not to land ships in the region. It also earned the Khoikhoi clans of the region a reputation for “ferocity” amongst European nations.
The valiant Goringhaiqua Khoi reflected the spirit of resistance that was prevalent throughout the 16th to the 20th centuries, which culminated in the Bambatha Uprising of 1906. Our people fought courageously in the Western and Eastern Cape against the Dutch and the British imperialists, as well as against the Voortrekkers in the Free State, the Transvaal and Natal during those trying centu
