ty: abundant land. The only thing they didn’t have was cheap labor power to work the land they had unfairly received. During those early years, the settlers couldn’t get enough people from the San or Khoikhoi people to be employees to work their new land. As long as the San could live off of their hunting ground, and as long as the Khoikhoi could live off of their cattle, they would not willingly go to work for the Dutch settlers.
             To supply the settlers’ immediate labor demands, The Dutch East India Company agreed, after repeated requests by Van Riebeeck, to allow the importation of slaves. Some twenty-five thousand slaves were imported into the Cape by the turn of that century. As the number increased in slaves, the laws and social restrictions against them were stiffened greatly.
             In 1760, one of the first versions of South Africa’s infamous pass laws was adopted to restrict their freedom of movement. According to this law, every slave traveling “from the town to the country or form the country to the town” was required to carry a pass signed by the slave owner authorizing the journey to wherever the slave was going.
             Severe beatings by slave owners were given to the slaves routinely and the use of torture against slaves was legally sanctioned. Even minor offenses were punished with whippings, binding in chains, brandings, or cutting off of ears. If a slave escaped, and they were recaptured, they were usually mutilated. For a serious crime, such as raising a hand to the slave owner, it was automatically a death sentence. The way there were killed was disgusting and inhumane in my opinion. They were carried out by strangulation, breaking on a wheel, decapitation, chopping of limbs, and burning.
             Throughout the eighteenth century, slavery was the predominant form of labor. Slaves from India, Ceylon, and other Asian countries performed almost all of the jobs in mechanical t...