The Huguenot Monument, Franschhoek

AMONG THE MANY peoples who, through the various vicissitudes of history, have found their home in South Africa are the Huguenots, or French Protestants. These people have always had a certain fascination for me, having being born so close to New Rochelle, the city in the New World founded by Huguenot refugees. The city’s public high school is a rather stately French neo-gothic chateau in the middle of Huguenot Park. My own alma mater — a smaller private school in New Rochelle — counted Huguenot descendants among its first students and there was at least one remaining in my own school days. Street names such as Flandreau, Faneuil, and Coligni betray the French heritage of the city’s founders, and Trinity Church still has the old communion table brought over from La Rochelle.

Individual Huguenots had settled at the Cape of Good Hope as early as 1671, but it was on the last day of 1687 that the first group of Huguenots to immigrate en masse left their homeland of France for the beautiful colony at the end of Africa. It was the beginning of twenty years of migration that has left a permanent mark on South Africa’s population. They brought with them the vines and the wine-making skills which have made the Cape winelands renowned throughout the world. What a compliment the old country paid to her descendants when Napoleon I proclaimed vin de constance — Constantia wine — his favourite tipple. Mrs. Jennings in Sense and Sensibility also recommended Constantia wine, “for its healing powers on a disappointed heart”, while poets from Klopstock to Baudelaire have also sung its praises.

Though originally French-speakers, the Huguenots merged into the Dutch-speaking population, especially after the East India Company mandated Dutch as the medium of instruction in schools. Eventually, to be of Huguenot descent was to automatically be an Afrikaner, and what a range of Afrikaners claim this descent proudly: generals, statesmen, cricketers, writers, and more members of Springboks squad than you could shake a stick at.

Being grateful unto God for the freedom and prosperity they enjoyed in South Africa, the Huguenot descendants decided to build a memorial to express their thanksgiving. The Huguenot Monument in Franschoek (the town who’s name means literally “French Corner”) was designed by the Dutch-born J. C. Jongens, and was inaugurated in 1948 by Dr. A. J. van der Merwe, the Moderator of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa. Three tall arches represent the Holy Trinity, above which rises the “sun of righteousness”, topped by the Holy Cross. The central female figure at the base — the replacement for the Virgin Mary that seems to eventually pop up in every Protestant sect who rejects Marian devotion — was sculpted by Coert Steynberg, who designed the Krugerrand, perhaps the most prominent gold currency in the world. The woman is supposed to represent religious liberty, and holds a bible in one hand and a broken chain in the other. She stands atop a globe which shows the sailing ships of old making their journey from France to the Cape.

Standing beside the Monument is the Huguenot Memorial Museum which, besides its historical displays for the edification of the public, contains genealogical archives and historic documents & artifacts for the benefit of the researcher. The building is actually a reconstruction of Saasveld, the old Cape Town home of Baron Willem Ferdinand van Reede van Oudtshoorn.

Saasveld was designed by Louis Michel Thibault, the most important architect in the history of the Cape of Good Hope. Thibault was French-born & -trained, but came to South Africa while an officer in the Regiment de Meuron, Swiss mercenaries in the service of the Dutch East India Company. Thibault joined with sculptor Anton Anreith and architect Hermann Schutte to form the sacred triumvirate of the Cape Dutch style — no less a figure than Ruskin himself hailed it as the first truly new and beautiful style of architecture in centuries.

The house stood by what is now Kloof Street in Cape Town, and came into the possession of the Dutch Reformed Church, who decided to demolish it in 1954. Happily, they were eventually persuaded to allow the building to be dismantled instead of demolished, and it was reconstructed next to the Huguenot Monument in 1957.