The abolition of slave trade was passed by the British Parliament on 24 August 1833. This affected South Africa , which was a British colony at the time, as many colonists at the Cape had lots of capital invested in their slaves. Colonists were particularly annoyed because payment of the slaves was to be collected personally in England, and in many cases the cost of the trip would be more than the money received. (www.sahistory.org.za) In order to answer this key question, information relating the following questions has been researched: What were the implications of the Abolition? Was the affect positive or negative from the traders and slave point of view? What impact did the end of the external slave trade have on the cape slaves and was it positive or negative?
The abolition of slavery and the freedom of slaves caused a lot of hatred from the Cape settlers towards the anti-slave traders. Even before the freedom of slaves there were cases of missionary intervention on behalf of black workers who were being mistreated, they sometimes won convictions against farmers and therefore made them enemies of the Afrikaner farming community in the Cape. This shows that there were people who were against the slave trade and the use of free people as slaves and they did what they could to help prevent the abuse of slaves. This ultimately led to the abolition of slavery. (www.sashistory.org.za)
The abolition of slavery by the British Government was one of the reasons for the Great Trek, which would lead to the migration of many white, Dutch-speaking farmers away from the Cape after 1833. This lead to many problems- the farmers complained that they could not replace the labour their slaves did without losing a large amount of money. Unfortunately the abolition of slavery did not change the colonial “slave-master” view between black and white individuals. Rather, these