Introduction

Based on published travel accounts and archival material, this chapter recounts the existence, transmission and influence of indigenous and colonial medical knowledge and healing practices at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa since colonial conquest in 1652 to the end of the eighteenth century. It examines what impact colonial conquest and colonial medicine had on existing and emerging colonial identities at the Cape – namely the Khoikhoi, slaves and colonists – and with it, marks the 300th anniversary of smallpox first introduced to South Africa in 1713. By reflecting on colonial disease and medicine in twenty-first-century South Africa, this chapter reasserts that medical knowledge per se was not brought to the Cape by Europeans, but maintains that certain indigenous medical practices and indigenous knowledge systems were rooted in the everyday life of the indigenous Khoikhoi people, centuries before Jan van Riebeeck and others set foot on South African soil.

The Cape of Good Hope was officially occupied by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in April 1652, in an effort to reach the Far East, notably the spice-producing countries, including mainly India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon). However, the presence of Dutch settlers posed no immediate threat to the existence of the original inhabitants of the Cape, the San and Khoikhoi.