Anna de Coningh

Not much is known about Anna prior to her arrival at the Cape, however it is presumed she was born in Batavia. While Anna's mother was a slave, her father being a Freeburgher, made Anna a so-called "halvslag" ("half-slave").[2] Anna's mother bore two further children, Johannes van As and Jacobus van As whilst enslaved.[3]

Anna was baptised at the Cape in 1661, as was common for both Christian children as well as slaves or others seeking manumission or acceptance into free Cape society. Prior to his departure from the Cape in 1662, Van Riebeeck sold Angela, Anna and her two brothers to a local burgher, Abraham Gabbema, who prior to his own departure from the Cape for Batavia, set Angela and her children free in 1666.[3] Following her emancipation, Anna's mother Angela, had a further 7 children following her post manumission marriage to Arnoldus Willemsz from Wesel (later known as Arnoldus Willemsz Basson).[3][4]

On 10 September 1678, Anna married a Swedish explorer and VOC official Olof Bergh at the Cape starting an unprecedented rize in her social status for a former slave. Anna had 11 children with Bergh. As was the case for many women at that time, not much was written about Anna specifically, apart from that which was noted about her husband, although her fortunes being closely bound to those of her husband, and she became an increasingly prominent figure in Cape society as his own status increased.

Despite her very poor upbringing, following her husband's death in 1724, as a result of her inheriting her husband's large estate, Anna became one of the wealthiest women in the Colony (if not one of the wealthiest members of society in totality) until her own death in 1733. She owned several homes in and around Cape Town, a number of farms both in close to the town as well as near present day Kuils Rivier, Saxenburg and Durbanville. She became the third owner of Governor Simon Van Der Stel's wine estate, Groot Constantia, South Africa's oldest wine estate, where several of her belongings as well as her portrait are still on display today.[5][6]

As a result of her life from that of a poor former half-slave to the wealthiest woman (and by many accounts, one of the wealthiest members of Cape society) has been noted as one of the unlikeliest strokes of good fortune. Her life from poverty to wealth has been novelised, along with that of her husband, in the novel "Kites of Good Fortune - The story of Anna de Coningh".[7]

During the difficult Governorship of Willem Adriaan Van Der Stel, it was reported in the diary of Adam Tas, that Anna had famously prevented the Governor's wife Maria from committing suicide by trying to drown herself on Christmas Eve, December 1705.[8][9]

Anna is also remember through the epononymous wine "Anna de Koning" produced at one of her husband's former estates.[11][12]

At the time of her death Anna owned around 27 slaves herself. As is the case for her own mother, Anna is considered one of the stammoeders ("founding mothers") of South African society, from whom many South Africans of both European and non-European descent, as well as all members of the Bergh family, can trace their heritage directly[13]