Drika’s heritage lives on in Noordhoek

A descendent of one of the original owners of the farm that would one day become the community of Noordhoek has died.

Hendrika Anderson, born De Villiers, died on Sunday February 18. She was 83.

She was born in Noordhoek on May 16, 1940, to Abraham de Villiers and Hillida Smit, the youngest of three children. Her siblings, Abraham (Awie) and Hillie de Villiers, have both since died.

According to her daughter, Lydia Anderson, the De Villiers and Smit families were two of the most prominent families in the Noordhoek valley over the last two centuries.

Affectionately called Drika by her family, she was the great-great-granddaughter of Isaac Cornelis de Villiers, a French Huguenot descendant who was one of the initial owners of Noordhoek. He bought Goedehoop farm on May 9, 1837, for £1 250 to supply meat, fruit, and animal skins to ships calling at Simon’s Town.

He was the younger brother of David Jacobus de Villiers, whose grandson was Jacob Izaak de Villiers, a widower, who married Hester de Kock, the owner of the then Fish Hoek farm.

Lydia says all the subsequent De Villiers descendants continued with farming practices and still do so to this day.

Drika first attended Noordhoek Public School, a farm school that was situated on a property across from the entrance to what is now the Noordhoek Farm Village.

Most children walked to school and those who lived far away were brought to school by donkey cart.

“Right up to her death, my mother still remembered the school song and could sing it word for word,” says Lydia.

She recalls many stories of her mother’s rich childhood in rural Noordhoek, despite them not being an affluent family.

In the afternoons, Drika would invite her friends home, and they would play in the fruit orchards and vegetable plantations and eat fresh fruits and vegetables to their hearts’ content.

In 1952, when Drika was 12, electricity came to Noordhoek, and it was no longer necessary to study by candlelight.

She started high school in 1953 at Retreat High School, but due to the decline in the bus service between Noordhoek and Fish Hoek, her parents sent her to Villiersdorp, where she completed her schooling at De Villiers Graaff High School and boarded privately.

Drika had a love for numbers and excelled at maths and accounting and after she matriculated, she started working as an accountant at Volkskas Bank, in Wynberg.

On September 14, 1968, Drika married Claude Anderson, and they had two children, Arno in 1970 and Lydia in 1972.

She later transferred to Absa Bank in Adderley Street, where she retired as chief accountant in their foreign exchange department.

After her retirement, she researched her family history as she had a keen interest in genealogy.

Lydia says her mother had a “great singing voice” and although she never pursued her musical talent, she sang in the church choir for many years.

Drika’s fondest childhood memories included baking whole sweet potatoes in a coal stove until their natural syrup dripped from their skin and annual childhood holidays when the family would go camping at Klein Slangkop on Imhoff’s Gift and later at Soetwater.

They travelled the road to Klein Slangkop with a horse and carriage and to Soetwater with an old lorry, which repeatedly got stuck in the thick sand, but all of that was part of the adventure.

They would pitch their tents among the rooikrans bushes and lay reeds for flooring.

Drika and her siblings would roll down the high dunes, and there was no shortage of fish, crayfish and abalone at Soetwater, for which no permits were needed, and Drika’s uncle, David Smit, would go along on these holidays and catch crayfish in a trap of his own design.

As a result of her keen interest in genealogy, Drika was a key contributor to the De Villiers Family Genealogy in South Africa (Vol I and II), which was based on research started by the pioneer South African genealogist, Christoffel de Villiers, and continued by Professor Con de Villiers, who left his research to the Huguenot Memorial Museum in Franschhoek and completed and published the two volumes in 1997.

“My mother compiled handwritten memories of her family heritage and the involvement of the De Villiers family in the history of Noordhoek, in particular. It was always her wish to publish these memoirs for her family and those particularly interested in the history of Noordhoek,” says Lydia.

She hopes to finalise the publication of these notes this year in both Afrikaans and English.

“My mom was indeed the matriarch of her family and will be dearly missed and fondly remembered.”

Drika leaves behind her husband, Claude, 86, her son, Arno, 54, and her daughter, Lydia, 51, and grandchildren Nicholas, Thomas and Claudia.