The Malay Influence On South African Cuisine

Last week I wrote about the first settlers, on the south point of Africa. On orders of the directors of the Dutch East India Company, Jan van Riebeeck, a wealthy Dutch merchant, landed with his party on the Cape of Good Hope in April 1652. He was to establish a depot, a settlement, to supply the Dutch East India traders on their way to and from the East Indies with the necessary fresh produce and water. For some obscure reason, permanent colonisation was not considered, and even discouraged, by the Lords Seventeen, the directors.
When, after ten years on the Cape, Jan van Riebeeck left for Batavia, Java, he proved to have had considerable success with his mission and I quote Renata Coetsee, a well known South African food writer and historian: “His estate boasted 1,162 citrus trees, ten banana trees, two olive trees, nineteen plum and seventy fruit trees from Holland. Although it is not mentioned in the inventory, it is recorded that peaches, apricots, guavas, medlars (a small European tree of the rose family with a kind of fruit like a crab apple) and mulberries had been planted elsewhere.”
In spite of the strict orders of the V.O.C., colonisation was difficult to control as there were too many opportunities in this blessed land. The so-called “Free Burghers” started to farm and do business on their own account, not only supplying the East India traders with victuals. As the colony grew, more settlers were attracted from Holland and they spread further north, beyond the so-called Hottentot Range, into the interior. When the edict of Nantes was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685, and the prosecution of the Protestants in France and beyond its official borders, became again a “free for all”, many French Huguenots fled the terror for Holland and via that country to Indonesia and the Cape Colony as well.
The French settlers were most welcome in the Cape province and their help to perfect the viticulture was invaluable. South African wines, especially from Stellenbosch and Paarl, were in the 18th and 19th century considered the best in the world and at present their reputation is growing again. Why they lost their popularity in the late 19th century, I cannot find out, but the demand, or probably the quality, dropped until quite recent times. It could also have been caused by the set-back of the great disaster
of the phylloxera insect who almost destroyed all the European vineyards in the late nineteenth century. I wonder if one of our South African readers has the answer to this question.
For the most profound influence on South African language which was originally 17th century Dutch, we have to go east to the Malay archipelago where the early Dutch settlers obtained their slaves. Afrikaans is still referred to by some as a “Kombuis Taal” or a kitchen language. The name “Kombuis”, is still in use for a ship’s kitchen in maritime Dutch. It was the Malay slaves who worked in the households and on the fields of the Dutch settlers. I grew up in Indonesia under similar circumstances although we had no slaves. The kitchen was always one of the most important rooms in our household and the usually plump, buxom and motherly Indonesian “Kokkie”, smelling deliciously of her batik sarong (wax) and the coconut oil in her hair, was – after my mother – the lady of utmost importance in our lives. Consequently we used many Indonesian words we learned from her and the other servants, as well as from our school friends. Our language was the so called “Indisch Nederlands” a mixture of Dutch and Indonesian grammar and vocabulary which would drive my father, the school teacher, distraught with frustration and despair. Unfortunately, with my generation of Indonesian Dutch, this colourful and expressive language is dying out, as the younger generation Indonesians do not speak Dutch anymore and many of the young Dutch Eurasians in Holland speak better Dutch than I ever did. Those, that is, who do not speak a colloquial slang, which I am not able to pronounce nor understand properly.
The off-springs of the Dutch settlers in South Africa must have had a similar upbringing and their originally Dutch speech evolved in the same fashion. One of the most frequently used words in Afrikaans, derived from Malay, is the word for “a lot” or “much” which is “Baje” (pronounced “Baye”) and a bastardisation of the Malay word for the same, “Banyak.” Another result of the Malay influence is the dropping of the gender which still exists in the Dutch language albeit in a lesser degree than formerly. The double negative however must have come from the French, as we, nor the Indonesians, employ it.
But it is not only in the language that the Malay slaves had a strong influence on the Afrikaners’ life and culture. As I imagine it, the settler’s children and later their children and again their children’s children must have been running in and out of the kitchen very much like we did in Indonesia. Here the “Kokki” and her helpers held court, preparing the food for the family, as well as for themselves and soon some of their dishes must have been introduced to the master’s table. They were well liked, be-came stan-dard fare and even food for special and festive occa-sions. So it happened that many of the best known dishes of South Africa are of Malay origin.
One of the first ones that come to mind is that well known Malaysian and Indonesian delicacy “Sateh” or “Sesateh”, cubes of meat, small meatballs or shrimps on bamboo sticks grilled over charcoal. This dish is called “Sosaties” in South Africa and not to be absent at a “Braai”, a barbecue in the country side. Another well known Afrikaner dish is “Bobotie”.
When I first heard about “Bobotie”, I thought it had a familiar ring and after having given it more thought, I realised that it came from the Indonesian “Botok” or “Bebotok”, a dish made with either fish, meat, cabbage, beancurd, chicken or what-have-you, spices are added, it is wrapped up in banana leaves and steamed. Often eggs are added as well and most “Botoks” (the ‘be’ is a kind of grammatical prefix to verbalise a noun) incorporate coconut cream. Of course when the slaves arrived in South Africa they did not have banana leaves, nor coconut cream and so they substituted a casserole and milk for these ingredients and the “Bebotie” was created.
Other South African dishes introduced by the Malays are ‘Sambals” (spicy condiments with the rice), “Denning Vleis” from the Malay “Dendeng”, “Ingelegde Vis” (Acar Ikan) pickled fried fish, various “Atjars” (pickles) and “Blat-jangs” from the Malaysian word for shrimp paste or “Trassi” (Ind.). Another dish of Malay origin is the so-called “Pienang Curry.”