Know our heritage: Meet Mr October

Paul October said while he was many generations removed from slavery, he had still lived through its legacy in the form of apartheid.

Paul October said while he was many generations removed from slavery, he had still lived through its legacy in the form of apartheid.

Published Sep 20, 2016

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Cape Town - When slaves were brought to the Cape, they were given new names by their owners, often after the months of the year. That’s why many Capetonians have surnames such as April or Augustus.

Brand activation company Geometry Global sought out elders in each of these families and interviewed them about their family heritage. Geometry produced a “Slave Calendar”, which features 12 Capetonians whose surnames – one for each of the calendar months – hark back to this practice. It was recently awarded a gold Loerie and will be exhibited at the Iziko Slave Lodge Museum.

In the lead-up to Heritage Day, the Cape Argus will be featuring each of the 12 interviewees. Here’s the tenth instalment in the series:

Meet Mr October

Paul October may be proud of his surname, but that wasn’t true for all of the Octobers.

During apartheid, his light-skinned aunt managed to get her surname changed by paying to be reclassified as a white person.

“My father told us that he had a sister, and she was an October and she was light of complexion,” he said. “In those years if you were light of complexion you could pay a certain amount of money to buy yourself out as a white person.”

She took advantage of her fair skin, and the advantages that came with being white.

“She was October, but her surname then changed to Ockus because she didn’t want to be classified as (coloured) because she was light of complexion.”

Paul October still bears his original surname, but his family never spoke about how he came to have it.

“In the era that I grew up in, older people were very secretive about their past,” he said. “They never used to share with you about their legacy; like you’re the child and I’m the parent, you don’t ask any questions.” But outside the family home, October gathered an understanding of slavery in the Cape. “What I’ve learnt is that the slaves were brought to Cape Town. In what’s now called the Waterfront, they used to get off at the docks,” October said.

“The slave was also responsible for second new year, where they used to come off the ship and entertain the people. That’s where the coons originated from. I also learnt that the reason why we have these different names, October, November and those, is that our forefathers were brought to Cape Town in that month.”

October said although he was many generations removed from the practice of slavery, he had still had to live through its legacy, in the form of apartheid. “We didn’t live in that era, in slavery, the way they were treated,” he said. “But if you look at apartheid and what it did to us, we still bear the scars of it.”

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He said he still encountered racism in his work on farms around South Africa, but understanding what his ancestors went through as slaves makes him grateful he doesn’t have to suffer to that degree.

“With my work I’ve been travelling all over South Africa, a lot on farms,” he said. “If you get a bit of a knock or you’re not allowed to speak next to someone because you are coloured, it doesn’t affect you so much because you know what they went through as slaves. So in that way it’s an advantage, you won’t be so affected by what’s happening to you, (because it’s) on a small scale to what they suffered as slaves.”

October said his surname features in a traditional Afrikaans poem, which came about because October is a time of sunshine and pleasant weather after the winter. “There’s actually a poem, what they call a gedig in Afrikaans, where they say: October, October die mooiste mooiste maand van die jaar - the nicest month of the year.”

Cape Argus

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