The following lists events that happened during the 1710s in South Africa.
Events
1711 28 December - Willem Helot is appointed acting Governor of the Cape Colony
1713 Governor of the Cape Colony - Louis van Assenberg 16 March - A smallpox epidemic broke out at the Cape Colony. A smallpox outbreak kills 25% of the White Cape population and devastates the Cape Khoikhoi. The Khoikhoi, due to a lack of immunity, have their population nearly wiped.Potgieter, D.J. et al. (eds) (1970). Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa, Cape Town: NASOU, 4, p. 378. 90% of the Khoikhoi population ends up being killed in the smallpox epidemic.See G. McC. Theal (ed.), Records of the Cape Colony (36 vols-, London, 1897-1905), XXIV, 440.Viljoen, Russel S. (1995). "Disease and Society: VOC Cape Town, Its People, and the Smallpox Epidemics of 1713, 1755, and 1767," Kleio 27 Cape slaves flee but are captured and punished. Thomas van Bengalen is hanged, and the leader Tromp van Madagascar is sentenced to impalement but commits suicide. Other Cape captives have their Achilles tendons severed or feet broken on the wheel. A Cape labour shortage follows, land becomes "ownerless" and is taken by colonial cattle farmers.Theals History of the Cape, Standard Encyclopaedia of South AfricaIllustrated History of South Africa: The Real Story. Reader's Digest.
1714 28 March - Maurits Pasques de Chavonnes is appointed Governor of the Cape
1715 The Trek Boers raid Khoikhoi cattle near Saldanha Bay.Ahjum, S., ‘The Law of the (White) Father: Psychoanalysis, “Paternalism”, and the Historiography of Cape Slave Women’, in G. Campbell, S. Miers and J. C. Miller (eds.), Women and Slavery, Volume 1: Africa, the Indian Ocean World, and the Medieval North Atlantic (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007), 83–108. A list of all the free men at the Dutch Cape Colony is compiled for 1715. It is divided into three districts; the Cape of Good Hope, Stellenbosch and the Drakenstein. A new lease renewal condition is introduced. Leases had to be renewed one month after expiration, with penalties for each emission. Khoisan in Land van Waveren attack the European farmers, stealing 200 cattle and several thousand sheep. The Constantia estate is sold after the Dutch government orders the confiscation of the Van der Stel lands. Abraham de Villiers acquires the Boschendal farm estate."A Valley Emergent: Groot-Drakenstein", by Eric Lloyd Williams, published by Anglo American Corporation. The Lady of Good Hope is introduced to the coat of arms of the Cape Colony.A proclamation issued in 1715 made Hope the hallmark for silverware assayed at the Cape. The Isle de France in the Indian Ocean becomes a French colony.
1717 The system of freehold title to land in the Cape ends
Deaths
27 December 1711 - Louis van Assenburgh, Governor of the Cape, dies 24 June 1712 - Simon van der Stel, Governor of the Cape, died at his estate in Constantia, Cape Colony
References
See Years in South Africa for list of references.