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Home Upfront Now Up Books Towns Structures People Firms Lexicon | Suurbraak, Western CapeThe mission buildings are arranged around a braak (Dutch) or village green at the centre, the suur (Dutch) referring to the sour bracken, being unpalatable ferns, or, perhaps, the acidic soil found there. |
Click to view large map | Previously ZUURBRAAK, Also known as !Xairu, which means 'paradise' in the Attaqua language. The British 'Hottentot Proclamation' of 1809 limited the movement of the Khoekhoen unless they had a fixed residence. As an alternative to seeing his people scattered as farmworkers, the local Attaqua captain Hans Moos in 1811 requested the London Missionary Society to set up a mission station, and Suurbraak was thus established in the Buffeljags River Valley at the foot of the Tradouw Pass. Suurbraak is one of the oldest mission stations in the country. The Attaqua population swelled with the addition of many freed slaves after emancipation in 1838. In 1858 Governor Sir George Grey granted land to the inhabitants. The remaining old houses are arranged along the long, winding main street and a few side streets, with narrow agricultural erven running down to the river. In the 1960s Suurbraak was threatened with major road works, but local protests managed to prevent the road being driven through the middle of the braak. [See 'Treasures of Swellendam' (2018:81)]. List of references:List of structures:
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