COLONIAL ALIENATION, RESISTANCE AND ASSIMILATION: A HOPEFIELD HISTORY

This study is a historical narrative of Hopefield. It was a typical South African community that developed from relations between indigenous inhabitants, slaves, and European settlers. Emphasis in this research is placed on a historical analysis of a family, surnamed Cleophas. It was a family labelled 'bastaard', 'mixed' and 'coloured' by successive South African regimes. This family was part of a history where indigenous people underwent a shift in their economic and material culture largely due to colonial encounters in which land and cultural alienation and assimilation took place. Their story was created largely through public archival retrieval and recalling folklore. Secondary accounts of indigenous people, who entered colonial systems as subaltern servants, are scattered throughout the Hopefield canon.