PAMELA.

THE UPRISING

LOGLINE:

Now being able to read, Pamela believes she now has means to turn her anger into a journey towards freedom, but when she learns more about her mother and her ancestral land, her fight for freedom turns out to be more complicated and difficult than she could have known.

GENRE

Drama

DURATION

90 minutes

LANGUAGES

Afrikaans, Khoekhoegowab & English

DATE OF WHEN THE PROJECT STARTED

The project is currently in script development and is funded by the Thuthuka Fund. A fund for the Netherlands & South Africa co-production treaty. The project started in 2023 and aims to be done with development in 2024 - 202

PRODUCTION STORY

The project will be filmed in South Africa. Using South African cast & crew, our aim is to go into production in 2026 or 2027. Film to be produced by NA AAAP Productions.

Pamela project - 1825 Slave Uprising Houdenbek

The second uprising took place in 1825 on a remote farm (Houdenbek) in the Koude Bokkeveld. A number of slaves and Khoekhoe labourers, led by Galant van de Kaap (1801-1825), killed the farmer and two other men who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They threatened to take over the other farms in the region. They believed that emancipation had been promised by the government and that their owners were holding it back from them. However, the local Veldcornet, Willem Francois du Toit, called together a Commando of local farmers with some of their slaves and Khoi servants,

Film Production

Producing an independent film from scriptwriting, producing, filming & final mastering by NA AAAP Productions

In South Africa

Historical sources on slavery

Uprising at the Cape

The first uprising took place in 1808. Two slaves, Louis van Mauritius and Abraham van de Kaap, met a couple of Irish sailors in a Cape Town tavern. They also told Louis and Abraham about countries such as Britain where slavery did not exist. Louis van Mauritius and Abraham van de Kaap decided that it was time to fight for the freedom of all slaves. They persuaded 300 slaves living on farms in the Koeberg region to march to Cape Town and demand their freedom. The slaves attached some of the farms on their way. They were defeated when they reached Salt River.

1825 Slave Revolt at Houdenbek

The second uprising took place in 1825 on a remote farm in the Bokkeveld. A number of slaves and Khoekhoe labourers, led by Galant van der Caab, killed the farmer and some of his family. They threatened to take over the other farms in the region. They believed that emancipation had been promised by the government and that their owners were holding it back from them. The slaves were captured and Galant was executed. This uprising is often referred to as the Galant uprising, named after the leader.

"Droster" groups of runaway slaves

Starting from when slaves arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, many slaves ran away. This may have been a check on very bad treatment of slaves, as some have said. Indeed, the Cape of Good Hope had very few of the large slave-operated plantations known from elsewhere. Some runaway slaves were caught and returned to their owners, some joined Khoi/San groups, who learnt western technology from them, and some collected into groups made up of runaway slaves. The term "Droster" was used to describe such groups. It was the word originally used for soldiers or sailors who had abandoned ship to fend for themselves

African Centre for Heritage Activities

Slavery was introduced to the Cape Colony by the VOC in its desire to boost the agriculture and food supply while retaining control in the new settlement. As the settlement expanded, slavery also spread. Historian Nigel Worden points out that slavery “”¦became the mainstay of arable farming in the western districts, played a significant role in the functioning of Cape Town as a centre of exchange and was used for pastoral and domestic labour in the remoter northern and eastern districts...

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Synopsis

1800. A young Alma was taken from Mozambique and put into slavery on a big, western cape estate, owned by Willem van de Merwe. She tries to flee, but she keeps getting caught. She is forced to take on a new life and a new name: Alma February. 1825. Pamela, a slave working in the kitchen of the Van de Merwe house- hold, wants freedom, but has never known it and doesn’t know how to be free. She only feels anger and sees shadows of her mother. Now she has secretly learned how to read from Betje, a free Khoi woman working alongside her. Pamela knows Betje’s husband Galant has contact with all the slaves on the estate who want to rebel, and now, with Pamela being able to read and working close to the Van de Merwe familly, she can be of good value. However, when she want to join this underground network of slaves, she learns that Isabella, the Afrikaner wife of Barend van de Merwe, is in love with Galant. Even though Galant assures Pamela Isabel- la is on their side, Pamela doesn’t trust her.

A slave rebellion is an armed uprising by slaves, as a way of fighting for their freedom. Rebellions of slaves have occurred in nearly all societies that practice slavery or have practiced slavery in the past.

The heads of Galant and Adam were displayed on stakes along the old wagonroad from Ceres to the North into the Ceder mountains. Important information of the geography of the area in this time can be extracted from the early survey diagrams of the farms in the region, as they can be downloaded at the Surveyor General of South Africa

t is often surprising how bad many of the published maps were, even later in the 1700's, while obviously the administration and the farmers living in these areas had a to have a reasonable practical knowledge of the geography. The same was true for the original KhoiSan inhabitants.

Interestingly, the story of the Revolt and the proceedings of the trial can be combined with the known family relationships between the slave owners (on wikitree), and the Tulbagh Slave Registers to reconstruct sufficient information about some of the slaves that play a role to create actual genealogical profiles for wikitree, including children, and marriages which otherwise would have remained hidden for prosperity.

"I am always working; I need to rest sometimes," Slammat of Bougies, ‘n slaaf-gemaakte plaaswerker,1795. The manual labour needed to establish the economy was largely performed by the enslaved men and women.

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