| Notes |
- The history of Italians in South Africa has already been written. Indeed, there are texts by various authors that explore the Italian presence in this part of the world from a historical perspective. The most comprehensive research is probably that published by Gabriele Sani in the late 1980s. Our goal, therefore, is not to rewrite history or to pose as historians. The purpose of these pages is to tell the stories of Italians who have lived in this country or currently live there. These stories are especially interesting from a human perspective, aiming to highlight the good things, more or less significant, that individuals have accomplished in pursuing the natural human goals, which ultimately boil down to procuring a more or less substantial slice of happiness and well-being. From this perspective, the bricklayer who managed to become a successful entrepreneur and the employee who didn't become rich but somehow contributed to improving the society in which he worked are equally important. Some stories have already been written and published, others are written but not yet published, and others still haven't even been written. While we present the stories on this site to you, we reserve the right to add others we manage to write from time to time, just as we offer to publish stories written by others, provided they meet the criteria this publication follows.
From the texts published by historians, we know that even in very distant times, there were Italians who frequented this land and played a role, sometimes significant, sometimes modest, in its cultural and economic growth. There are many of them today, too. Just as there are Italians who are not and have not been the heads of large companies, yet have written beautiful pages in South African history. And our thoughts immediately turn to the figure of Domitilla Rota Hyams and her "Little Eden," which no one could have created without the help of God, a profound devotion to the Madonna, and a great deal of sanctity. We can truly say that Domitilla was to Johannesburg what Mother Teresa was to Calcutta. His story will appear on these pages sooner or later. And alongside it, other stories of Italians. Enjoy the reading.
Two exemplary stories of Italians from times gone by:
Rocco Catoggio (Catorzia)
An Italian letter on display at the Huguenot Museum in Franschhoek tells the story of Rocco Catoggio, known to South Africans by the surname Catorzia, who passed the name Rocco to numerous descendants of some of the country's most illustrious families, most notably the De Villiers. But who was this Rocco Catoggio really? A careful examination of the letter reveals more about himself and his family history in Italy than what he himself revealed. We learn first of all that he was from Armento, in Basilicata, a town that King Ferdinand IV of Bourbon had declared a Royal City in 1786. Rocco was born there four years later, in 1790. His letter, written in good Italian, tells us, without actually saying so, that his family was of high society. At that time, in fact, only the rich and noble could afford an education, and only they were capable of using Italian rather than dialect. It should also be remembered that in those years, a hurricane called Napoleon was raging across Europe.
Rocco Catoggio (pictured with his nephew Rocco Catorzia de Villiers), writing to his parents, reminds them that on September 25 of an unspecified year, though we can place it around 1810, he left for Naples. Considering that Napoleon had given the Kingdom of Naples to his loyalist Joachim Murat in 1808, simultaneously naming Joseph Bonaparte King of Spain, it is not surprising that Rocco ended up in Spain and was captured by the English, who made him a common offer at the time: the gallows or voluntary conscription into the English army. They enlisted him for six and a half years and sent him to the Cape Colony, which England had wrested from Louis Bonaparte's Netherlands in 1805, again during the Napoleonic Wars.
Rocco wrote to his parents that after his discharge, he had settled forty miles from Cape Town (Paarl) and had taken up shoemaking, having learned the trade while a soldier. He also reported that thousands of Englishmen had settled east of the Cape, brought in to colonize the border region with the lands of the indigenous tribes. And we know that in this case he is referring to the so-called 1820 Settlers who founded Port Elizabeth and all the cities and towns of today's Eastern Cape. We can therefore conclude that by that date, the young Catoggio had become wealthy, owning a shoemaker's shop, a mill, a butcher's shop, and a tannery, as well as two farms producing wine and wheat. Meanwhile, he had married Catarina Carlotta Theron and in 1818 had become the father of Gertruda Catarina Catoggio, who in turn became the mother of Rocco Catorzia de Villiers, the first of fourteen children and the heir to the De Villiers lineage.
Rocco Catoggio also tells his parents that the Cape of Good Hope is a beautiful city with 18,000 inhabitants, both free men and slaves. The winter temperature rarely drops below 10 degrees Celsius, and in summer it almost never exceeds 30 degrees. "Here we have everything," his letter reads, "wine in abundance, grains of all kinds, and fruit in abundance. Life is very pleasant, with meat and fish in abundance and cheap, so that anyone who works hard can live honestly, always having more than enough for his immediate needs." Just one note of concern: the English government is about to decree the end of slavery. His letter is dated July 3, 1833, and Rocco Catoggio is 43 years old. Slavery was abolished by law in December of that year. [2]
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