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 sixth instalment in the series:
Meet Mr Junies
Let’s focus on the future, says Arthur Junies - and make sure our children live better lives than we did.
Junies’s surname is a sign that he is descended from slaves who were brought to the Cape, and probably made landfall in the month of June. But apartheid affected his life more directly than slavery and he has worked to offer his children the education that he never had.
“When I was young I didn’t know we had some kind of history in slavery,” he said. “I don’t know where slavery comes from.”
Junies’s family hails from Pacaltsdorp in George.
“I knew that my great-great-grandfather was removed from one area to another area and from then on the family grew,” he said. “My grandfather came from Pacaltsdorp to Cape Town and he and his wife started a family here in Cape Town.”
Junies said there weren’t many others with his surname in Cape Town, and that the bulk of the Junies family was still in George. He grew up in Philippi, in the Crossroads area.
“There were no facilities, no water or sewerage,” he said. “I wasn’t educated in high school. I went to work, because we were seven children and I was the oldest and my mother and father were separated.”
Junies had to drop out of school and start earning money so that his younger siblings would have the chance to be educated.
“I started working at the age of 13, so it looks like the slavery was part of my youth,” he said, only half joking.
Later, he met a woman in a local chain store and fell in love. They were married soon after, and Junies was proud to be able to provide for the upbringing of his children.
“We started our family in Crossroads and I educated my son and my daughter at college level. We could lay a good foundation for them so that they can prosper in the future. My baby daughter is now in college. I’m a very proud father.”
Slavery may not have affected his immediate family, but apartheid did, and Junies has had to triumph over oppression to win opportunities for his children which he was denied.
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“We’re living now in a democratic country which is very good, but there were hard times, we were staying under apartheid, but I was a child at that time,” he said. “Things got better and now my children can do things that they want to do, they can get the education they want.”
Slavery contributed to our country and we should focus on the positives, Junies said.
“It was part of developing South Africa. It was the hard way of building Cape Town. It’s part of a rich history where we came from. It wasn’t right the way it started, but the new generations are now reclaiming their right in society.”
Junies said he wasn't interested in dwelling on a painful past and was rather looking forward to the future of his family.
“I’m not shy, I’m proud to be a Junies.”
Cape Argus