The Dutch East India Company’s Slave Lodge at the Cape of Good Hope

The Slave Lodge was built in 1679, making it the second oldest existing colonial structure of the Cape Colony, today part of South Africa. This building was changed many times and it is unclear how much of the existing building dates from the slave period.

The building was used as a slave lodge until 1811 when it was changed into government offices by the new British colonial authorities. Britain occupied the Cape Colony in 1806 and their claim to the Cape was recognised in 1814 by the rest of Europe.

The Slave Lodge housed the slaves who belonged to the Dutch East India Company (VOC). These slaves worked for the VOC and were never sold. Very little is known of the people who lived in the Lodge, We know what type of work they did and we know something of conditions in which the lived. We have managed to find at least half of their names, but know little more than where they came from and the date of their death.

The British colonial government decided to turn the Slave Lodge into government offices in 1807. At that stage there were 283 slaves in the Lodge: 187 men, 73 women and 23 children. Many of these slaves were old and could not work anymore. The governor, the Earl of Caledon, sold some of slaves at a public auction and the remaining slaves were moved into the western wing of the Lodge. In 1811, the remaining slaves were moved to a rented building and in 1820 to a new slave lodge in the Gardens. These 135 slaves were manumitted in 1828, six years before universal emancipation of slaves in the British Empire.

Today the Slave Lodge is a museum, managed by Iziko Museums of Cape Town. It became a cultural history museum in 1966, exhibiting mainly the material culture of the descendents of the Dutch and British colonists.

The role that slaves played in developing the Cape Colony was only fully recognised by the museum during the 1990s. The building was renamed the Slave Lodge on Heritage Day, 1998. Work is in progress to develop a museum of slavery in the building.  

Introduction
 The building
 The Slave Lodge Hospital
 Inhabitants of the Slave Lodge
  Administration, control resistance in the Slave Lodge
 Life in the Slave Lodge
 At work
 Freedom
 The Slave Lodge: excavations in 2000

Development by Logos Flow \ Design by Matt Hindley \ Copyright © 2002 Iziko Museums of Cape Town