Dawn

These two statements are attributed to a Scottish visitor and an Afrikaner farmer who had sat up beyond the small hours anxiously awaiting the return of their daughter and son from a date. That two men of different background and language should come out with near identical utterances when in the same predicament shows the power of the human spirit to transcend cultural differences. It must give heart to those who seek social harmony in the new South Africa.

* Loose translation: "The young people may be making love." This is euphemistic, since it avoids the vulgar language of the original. In the interest of keeping this site respectable it is better to avoid a too literal translation. Non-Afrikaans speakers will just have to use their imaginations.

The dawn of our family was fairly recent. Not much is known about our grandparents, even less about anyone before that. By contrast my wife's brother's wife, born in Indonesia of Dutch parents can trace her ancestry directly back to Jan van Riebeeck. Compared to our family hers goes back a long, long way, at least on her mother's side.

Who the hell was Jan van Ready-Brek... whatever you said?
Jan van Riebeeck landing at the Cape of Good Hope

Jan van Riebeeck was the first Governor of the Cape of Good Hope sent out by the Dutch East India Company in 1652 to run the place as a provisioning point for their ships plying the spice route between the East Indies and Europe. He later went on to a more important post in Batavia (Java). Though he did not stay long he is revered as a founding father and innumerable things are named after him; streets, schools, hospitals, statues - even a brandy.

The real point is that our family can't be traced back very far. The 'family dawn' means our parents' immediate familes of origin and not much more.

The situation is compounded by the fact that both of our grandfathers' ancestral names were changed - see Olaf and Joseph - so that anyone bearing our current surname seeking to claim kinship is barking up the wrong tree - they cannot be of Olaf's lineage. People with the same name can only make this claim if they are descendants of the brothers. Another reason for not bothering with surnames here.