So, for Krotoa to have been mentioned in historical documents such as Van Riebeeck’s diary shows that she must have been remarkable. Women didn’t count much in the 1600s, and even less so if you weren’t white. Or maybe she didn’t, and was bartered by her uncle Autshumao (named Harry/Herry die Strandloper, first by the English and then by the Dutch). Maybe she wanted to go – enchanted by these new settlers in their feathered hats, enchanted by the wares they unloaded from their ships. She’d come there to work as a servant, nanny and playmate to Van Riebeeck, his wife Maria and their children. The Dutch call her Eva, but although she has adopted their religion, their culture and their language, she is not Eva. She’s taken off her long, bodiced European dress and is back in the skins and beads of her people. 'I am Krotoa!” she tells herself, screaming, crying, in the fort of Jan van Riebeeck and the Dutch settlers of the 1600s. Grethe Kemp speaks with director Roberta Durrant about who Krotoa, the woman some consider the mother of coloured people in South Africa, really was. A deeply moving and yet highly informative book.A new local biopic on Khoi historical figure Krotoa opens on circuit this week after raking in eight international festival awards so far. Set in the politically charged atmosphere of the Cape in the mid-seventeenth century, Krotoa-Eva: The Woman from Robben Island is an exploration of identity, power and how individuals react to the clash of cultures.This biographical novel focuses on the vivid and memorable character of Krotoa-Eva it also takes us into the hearts and minds of the women and men at the Cape at the time of the Dutch East India Company: the politicians and farmers, the military men and adventurers, and the chiefs, healers and cattle-traders.

Krotoa-Eva by Trudie Bloem