Slavery is abolished in law across the Cape Colony, followed by four years of forced apprenticeship
Under Britain's Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, slavery ended in law across the Cape Colony on 1 December 1834. Formerly enslaved people still had to work unpaid for their former owners as 'apprentices' until 1 December 1838.
Photo: George Duff · Public domain
The British Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. It took effect in most British colonies on 1 August 1834, but at the Cape it came into force four months later, on 1 December 1834. It applied across the whole colony, to more than 36,000 people listed in the compensation records.
Freedom was not immediate. The law made formerly enslaved people serve their former owners as apprentices for four more years without pay, and their contracts could still be bought and sold. Full emancipation came on 1 December 1838, when people could at last leave and choose their employers, although few could buy land.
Slave owners received compensation, which they had to claim in London. In Cape Town many newly freed people walked through the streets in celebration, and 1 December was marked by annual processions for decades afterwards.
Why it matters
The law ended legal slavery at the Cape after more than 180 years, but its apprenticeship system delayed real freedom until 1838. Since the 1990s, 1 December has again been marked in Cape Town as Emancipation Day.
- Source: Slavery abolished in the Cape, South African History Online · Ekama, Fourie, Heese and Martin, When Cape Slavery Ended: Evidence from a New Slave Emancipation Dataset (Stellenbosch University, AEHN Working Paper 53, 2020) · End of enslavement, Slavery in South Africa, Iziko Museums · Robert Ross, Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750-1870 (Cambridge University Press, 1999), via SAHO
Where it happened
Cape Colony, shown at Cape Town
The Act took effect by law across the whole Cape Colony on the same day, on farms and in towns alike, not at any one building. The map centres on Cape Town, the colonial capital, where the largest celebrations took place.
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Where it happened Region
Cape Colony, shown at Cape Town
The Act took effect by law across the whole Cape Colony on the same day, on farms and in towns alike, not at any one building. The map centres on Cape Town, the colonial capital, where the largest celebrations took place.
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Museum Exact site
Iziko Slave Lodge
The former Company slave lodge, now a museum on the history of slavery at the Cape. It is shown for context; emancipation did not happen here.
