Keep the entertaining for the kitchen and where the homemaker speaks a language that eventually affects the entire household for the scullery

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Gabeba Baderoon (2014) explains in ‘Regarding Muslims: from Slavery to post-apartheid’, that Muslims first arrived in the Cape Colony in 1658 as slaves and free servants of the Dutch. The Dutch East India Company established a refuelling station at the Cape to serve its trade in spices from Asia. It was also a point on the Slave Route from East Africa to the Americas.

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Two-thirds of enslaved people at the Cape performed household work. And when a slave showed skills in cooking this noticeably increased the price of a slave (Mason 2003: 108).

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The scullery formed an arena in which an uneven contest between slave-owner and enslaved was fought. Ultimately enslaved people came to shape South African cuisine in unexpectedly influential ways. Where familiar Dutch foods and ingredients were subverted and do not appear as a resistance to the dominant society (Baderoon 2014). 

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The following scene is an excerpt from Rayda Jacobs (1998) “The Slave Book” Cited by Baderoon,(2014) with some additions

 

The recently enslaved Somiela silently speaks back to the masters through food.

 

Enter: Somiela and Rachel

 

Both peeling potatoes

 

Enter: Andries, the slave-owner coming in from the farm through the back door

 

You, make the dish you made the other night for dinner

 

Exit: Andries

 

Later that afternoon

 

Rachel and Someila preparing tea

 

Enter: Andries and Marieta

 

Andries consults with Marieta about dinner arrangements

 

A: I told whatsername to make some of that food for tonight that she made the other day.

 

M: Someila can’t cook.

 

A: She can. She’s the one who made the – what’s it called again?

 

He asks Somiela directly.

 

R: “Cabbage bredie, Seur,”

 

Rachel spoke up for Somiela, sensing Marieta’s hostility

 

M: Well, whatever it is, we won’t have it,” “... we’ll serve what we usually serve – roast meat and potatoes and

carrots”. (Jacobs 1998: 65)

 

After the scene related above, Marieta whips Somiela in unprovoked fury, and in her pain, Somiela contemplates her response in the language of the kitchen: Tasting the saltiness of her own blood, she promised herself that she would make this monstrous woman pay. The first opportunity she had, she would pee in her coffee, poison her food (Jacobs 1998: 68–69).

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