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VOC officials returning to the Netherlands as slavery was not permitted there. ### Where the slaves came from: The first slaves came from Angola and West Africa. However, after that most slaves came from countries around the Indian Ocean. They came from places where the Dutch traded or had coloni...

VOC officials returning to the Netherlands as slavery was not permitted there. ### Where the slaves came from: The first slaves came from Angola and West Africa. However, after that most slaves came from countries around the Indian Ocean. They came from places where the Dutch traded or had colonies. Therefore, they all spoke different languages and had different customs and religions. Afrikaans first developed as a slave language that emerged from the mixture of Dutch, English and other European and Malay languages. ### What it was like to be a slave at the Cape: Slaves were sold at auction to the highest bidder when they arrived in the Cape. As in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade members of the same family were often sold to different owners. Slaves could also be sold many times in their lives and did many different kinds of work which included working in gardens, watering plants, weeding, looking after livestock, ploughing and harvesting by hand using sickles, sieving the grain and gathering the wheat into piles. Many large farms which produced wheat and grapes rarely had more than 50 slaves. On these larger farms there were special slave lodges,