Bessie, otherwise known as Gquma, was a South African traditional aristocrat. As the
Great Wife
Great Wife, otherwise appearing in West Africa as Senior Wife, is an honorific applied to contemporary royal and aristocratic consorts in states throughout modern Africa (e.g., Mantfombi Dlamini of eSwatini, who once served as the chief consort of ...
of
Paramount Chief
A paramount chief is the English-language designation for the highest-level political leader in a regional or local polity or country administered politically with a chief-based system. This term is used occasionally in anthropological and arch ...
Sango of the Tshomane, she served as a queen of the
Mpondo people.
Life
A famous figure in South African history, Bessie was a white girl that was adopted by a local clan following a shipwreck that cast her upon their shores in the 1700s. Her adoptive family - the AbeLungu - had themselves previously acculturated into the local tribes of the Wild Coast region of South Africa after similar misfortunes had befallen them.
Upon coming of age, she married Tshomane, paramount chief of the Mpondo clan whose name he shared. When he died a short time later, she married his successor Sango.
She was ruling as his consort when the merchant vessel ''The Grosvenor'' ran aground on the shore of their territory about 40 years after her own ship did the same. At least one of its passengers is thought to have joined the Tshomanes, possibly through the influence of Bessie.
Bessie was a popular ruler of her husband's people, weighty in counsel and deep in feeling. Upon her death, she was one of the few women of the tribe to receive an
ancestral praise name.
Descendants
Bessie left behind a large family of descendants. These descendants went on to create a far-flung dynasty that now includes everything from Mpondo,
Xhosa
Xhosa may refer to:
* Xhosa people, a nation, and ethnic group, who live in south-central and southeasterly region of South Africa
* Xhosa language, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, principally spoken by the Xhosa people
See als ...
and
Thembu
The Thembu Kingdom (''abaThembu ababhuzu-bhuzu, abanisi bemvula ilanga libalele'') was a Xhosa-state in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.
According to Xhosa oral tradition, the AbaThembu migrated along the east coast of Southern Africa ...
royalty to old
Afrikaner
Afrikaners () are a South African ethnic group descended from Free Burghers, predominantly Dutch settlers first arriving at the Cape of Good Hope in the 17th and 18th centuries.Entry: Cape Colony. ''Encyclopædia Britannica Volume 4 Part 2: ...
and
Coloured
Coloureds ( af, Kleurlinge or , ) refers to members of multiracial ethnic communities in Southern Africa who may have ancestry from more than one of the various populations inhabiting the region, including African, European, and Asian. South ...
families.
[Taylor, Stephen (2012), ]
The Caliban Shore
', chap. 19.
See also
*
History of South Africa
The first modern humans are believed to have inhabited South Africa more than 100,000 years ago. South Africa's prehistory has been divided into two phases based on broad patterns of technology namely the Stone Age and Iron Age. After the d ...
*
Krotoa
The "!Oroǀõas" ("Ward (law), Ward-girl"), spelled in Dutch language, Dutch as Krotoa, otherwise known by her Christian name Eva (c. 1643 – 29 July 1674), was a Strandloper peoples, !Uriǁ'aeǀona translator working for the officials of the D ...
References
{{Reflist
Shipwreck survivors
Monarchs of South Africa