Framing the Narrative
The former Drostdy, now home to Stellenbosch University’s Faculty of Theology, is often described in celebratory terms, emphasising its Cape Dutch façade and its role as an institutional landmark. Yet such framings risk reproducing colonial memory while erasing the violence, dispossession, and exclusion that the building embodies. Far from being a neutral architectural monument, the site must be recognised as a product of colonial power, constructed through the labour of enslaved people and maintained as a symbol of settler permanence. To approach the building critically is to confront these silences and insist on a re-narration that foregrounds the lives, struggles, and erasures of those systematically denied a place in the official record. This reframing allows the building to be read not merely as a heritage site but as a contested space of law, violence, and colonial domination whose legacies persist into the present.
Conventional History
Official texts from Stellenbosch University, along with its websites and academic literature, often present the former Drostdy, the current Faculty of Theology building, in celebratory terms, emphasising its architectural style and institutional importance. The following paragraphs illustrate how this framing shapes the portrayal of the building.
The building at 171 Dorp Street, now home to Stellenbosch University’s Faculty of Theology, has a layered history as the Drostdy, the seat of local governance from 1687 to 1827. During this period, it housed the landdrost and heemraden, the magistrate and local council responsible for judicial, administrative, and civic matters in Stellenbosch. Stellenbosch was proclaimed a district on 31 August 1682 following Governor Simon van der Stel’s recommendation to establish local governance structures to manage land disputes and the needs of a growing settlement. A Court of Heemraad was created, and in 1685 a landdrost was appointed, holding wide-ranging authority over land allocation, taxation, agriculture, education, religion, policing, prisons, and oversight of marginalised groups, including enslaved people and the Khoikhoi.
The first Drostdy, completed in 1687, was a U-shaped thatched structure on an island in the Eerste River and was Stellenbosch’s first public building besides the church, symbolising civic and judicial authority. The building fell into disrepair, prompting reconstructions: a second Drostdy in 1709, destroyed by fire in 1710; a third in 1718 with a symmetrical Cape Dutch façade, destroyed by fire in 1762; and a fourth in 1767, designed in an H-shape with Rococo gables and balustrades, reflecting the Cape Dutch farmhouse style still present today. The Drostdy served as the judicial and administrative hub of the district, though its authority was challenged under British colonial rule, especially over disputes concerning slave legislation and the introduction of English in official proceedings. The landdrost and heemraden system was abolished on 31 December 1827, replaced by magistrates and civil commissioners aligned with British governance.
After this, the building became a private residence before its transformation into the Dutch Reformed Church’s Theological Seminary in the mid-nineteenth century. The Drostdy phase remains foundational in the building’s history, marking it as the centre of early Stellenbosch governance for one and a half centuries.
Critical Reappraisal of the Conventional History
The so-called “Cape Dutch facade”
Describing the building as having a “Cape Dutch facade” may suggest aesthetic admiration, but the style carried social and political weight. Its gables, whitewashed walls, and symmetry symbolised settler wealth, permanence, and dominance over colonised land, erasing Indigenous spatial practices. Construction and maintenance relied heavily on enslaved artisans and labourers. The facade should therefore be understood not simply as an architectural style but as a material expression of racial hierarchy and colonial power.
Language that normalises violence
Terms like “juridical authority,” “civil administration,” or “seat of governance” create an impression of neutral bureaucracy. These institutions were instruments of dispossession and control. The landdrost’s oversight of enslaved people and indigenous communities involved flogging, executions, and raids.
Architectural “progress” and reconstruction
Accounts of successive Drostdy reconstructions as “evolving architectural style” risk normalising settler permanence. Each rebuilding was a deliberate assertion of colonial authority, not merely an aesthetic development. Fires, decay, and conflict were opportunities to reassert settler dominance in the landscape.
Such language must be critically interrogated, recognising whose voices and bodies were systematically denied or violated. It requires uncovering the silences embedded in the celebratory narratives and making visible the violence that underpinned the building’s very construction and function. By doing so, I am challenging the authority of official heritage discourse and creating space for counter-narratives that centre the experiences of the enslaved, the dispossessed, and the excluded.
The Real History: Law, Violence, and Exclusion
Although the landdrost and heemraden presented themselves as upholders of “law and order,” the legal and administrative system they administered was neither impartial nor universally applicable. Instead, it was designed primarily to protect the interests of a small settler elite and to reinforce colonial domination over indigenous peoples and the enslaved. The laws were explicitly racialised and hierarchical, reflecting the priorities of those who held power rather than the needs or rights of the broader population. Indigenous communities, including the Khoikhoi and San, as well as the enslaved brought from elsewhere in the colonies, were systematically excluded from meaningful participation in legal and civic processes. They were often barred from providing testimony against settlers, a denial that rendered them vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, and dispossession. Any claims to land, water, grazing rights, or protection under the law were routinely ignored, dismissed, or reinterpreted in ways that reinforced settler claims and erased indigenous authority.
The authority of the landdrost and heemraden extended far beyond ordinary judicial duties. They exercised power over virtually every aspect of daily life, including land allocation, water and grazing rights, taxation, labour obligations, religious adherence, and social conduct. Through these mechanisms, they actively shaped a social and economic order that privileged European settlers, facilitated land accumulation, and extracted labour and resources from those denied power. The system treated resistance not as a legitimate form of survival or protest but as a threat to settler dominance. Enslaved people who attempted to flee farms and challenge administrative authority faced swift and brutal reprisals, including execution, flogging, imprisonment, and branding.
Injustice toward Enslaved and Indigenous People
The heemraden courts were inherently partial and structured to maintain settler supremacy. The enslaved, Khoikhoi and San were treated as legally invisible or subordinate, denied access to the most basic mechanisms of justice. When settlers committed acts of violence, exploitation, or even murder against these groups, the courts frequently dismissed cases or imposed negligible punishment. This legal exclusion reinforced a perception of non-Europeans as property or objects to be controlled rather than as people with rights and agency, embedding systemic injustice into the very architecture of governance. The courts’ supposed impartiality masked the harsh realities of oppression, creating the illusion of civility while perpetuating coercion and exploitation.
Racialised Administration of Law
The law was a tool for enforcing racial hierarchies. Indigenous people were criminalised for practices that had been customary for generations, such as grazing cattle on ancestral lands, while settlers received formal title deeds and protection under the same legal framework. Enslaved people faced draconian punishments for acts deemed rebellious or criminal, including theft, desertion, or defiance, with penalties ranging from severe whipping to branding and execution. Far from safeguarding justice, the legal system reinforced European authority, delegitimised indigenous autonomy, and normalised the structural subjugation of non-Europeans.
Violence and Coercion
Landdrosts were not only judicial officials but also military authorities capable of mobilising commandos to enforce colonial rule or suppress resistance. These expeditions often targeted indigenous communities accused of cattle raiding or resisting colonial encroachment. The consequences were devastating massacres, forced displacement, seizure of property, and the capture of women and children, who were enslaved or assimilated into settler households. Such acts of violence were not peripheral incidents but central instruments of colonial governance, instilling fear and coercion to maintain settler control and ensure compliance with colonial law.
Protection of Settler Interests
Membership in the heemraden was limited to wealthier settlers who had direct economic and social stakes in maintaining colonial hierarchies. The Landros consistently made decisions that favoured European settlers over enslaved and indigenous populations, reinforcing racial and class stratification. These institutions were not neutral arbiters of law but active instruments of settler authority, shaping a social and legal landscape designed to consolidate wealth, maintain landownership, and entrench power while denying justice, rights, and autonomy to the colonised majority. The Drostdy system thus illustrates how law, governance, and architecture were intertwined with colonial violence, exclusion, and exploitation.
The Way Forward
The former Drostdy, now housing Stellenbosch University’s Faculty of Theology, cannot be understood only as an architectural monument or an institutional landmark. It must be recognised as a site of colonial memory and ongoing forgetting. Its walls, facade, and very spatial organisation encode a history of violence, domination, and exclusion that is too often smoothed over in celebratory accounts.
Writing a real history of the former Drostdy building, now Stellenbosch University’s Faculty of Theology, is of paramount importance because it challenges the dominant narratives that celebrate architecture and institutional prestige while erasing the experiences of those subjected to colonial violence and exclusion. A truthful account illuminates how the building was not merely a site of governance or aesthetic achievement, but a tangible instrument of dispossession, coercion, and racialised authority. By foregrounding the experiences of the enslaved, the Khoikhoi, and San, we confront the human cost embedded in the material and symbolic structures of settler colonialism. This approach disrupts the neutral or celebratory portrayals that normalise injustice and instead fosters a critical understanding of how law, architecture, and institutional power operated to entrench inequality. Writing a real history ensures that the building is remembered not only as a historical landmark but also as a site through which we can reckon with the legacies of colonialism, acknowledge the voices and suffering of those historically marginalised, and cultivate a more honest, reflective, and socially responsible historical consciousness. In essence, confronting the full history of the building is indispensable for producing knowledge that does not perpetuate the very hierarchies and exclusions the structure once enforced.
References
Hall, S. and Tayob, H. (eds.) (2020) Race, Space & Architecture: Towards an Open-access Curriculum. London: London School of Economics. Available at: https://www.racespacearchitecture.org (Accessed: 26 August 2025).
Ross, R. (2008). Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tayob, H. (2021) ‘Unconfessed Architectures: Survivance’, e-Flux Architecture: Survivance. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/survivance/386349/unconfessed-architectures (Accessed: 26 August 2025).
Tayob, H. (ed.) (2023) Archive of Forgetfulness. Johannesburg: Archive of Forgetfulness Collective. Available at: https://reviewsindh.pubpub.org/pub/archive-of-forgetfulness (Accessed: 26 August 2025).
Stellenbosch University Website. https://www.sun.ac.za/english/faculty/theology/Pages/About
Van Rooi, V. and Solomons, A., 2024. Unveiling the Silent Narratives: A Multidimensional Analysis of the Stellenbosch University Faculty of Theology Building and its Impact on Teaching Church History. Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 50(2), pp.1-16. https://doi.org/10.25159/2142-4265/16089.
Viljoen, R. (2018) ‘Indentured Labour and Khoikhoi “Equality” before the Law in Cape Colonial Society: The Case of Jan Paerl, c.1796–1’, Itinerario, 42(2), pp. 155–178. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/itinerario/article/indentured-labour-and-khoikhoi-equality-before-the-law-in-cape-colonial-society-south-africa-the-case-of-jan-paerl-c-17961/694C1E7AE67E37D70B0CB1B3C10C02D8. (Accessed: 26 August 2025).