Long Street, one of Cape Town’s entertainment hubs, was the street where the enslaved people spent their free time. They took part in gambling and cockfights and used dagga (cannabis), alcohol and opium. Gambling was illegal in the colony, and when Catrijn of Bengal – an enslaved woman – lost eighty reichsdaalders during a card game with two young officials, the court ordered them to pay the money back to her. Catrijn was not charged. Angela of Bengal, from the Bengal delta (India and Bangladesh), and her children were set free, by Abraham Gabbema, for “very good and faithful services.” She married the free citizen Arnoldus Basson and in 1690 was allotted a piece of land at the corner of Long Street and Castle Street. She was the first former enslaved woman to acquire land and build a large estate. The Slave Church at 40 Long Street, the oldest mission church in the country, was built in 1802 by enslaved people, free black citizens, and missionaries.

Sources

• Robertson, Delia. (2024). “Angela van Bengale”. First Fifty Years – a project collating Cape of Good Hope records. [online] https://www.e-family.co.za/ffy/g6/p6260.htm.
• Upham, Mansell. (2020). “1st land grant (25 February 1667) to a non-European woman at the Cape of Good Hope – Maaij Ansiela van Bengale”. Muatze. [online] https://mansellupham.wordpress.com/2020/02/25/1st-land-grant-to-a-non-european-woman-at-the-cape-of-good-hope-maaij-ansiela-van-bengale/.
• Upham, Mansell. (1997). “In Hevigen Woede … Part I: Groote Catrijn: Earliest Recorded Female Bandiet at the Cape of Good Hope – A Study in Upward Mobility”. Capensis, Quarterly Journal of the Western Cape branch of the Genealogical Society of South Africa 3. 8-33.