Abstract:
In 1683 Maria Kickers and Jan Cornelitz got married in Cape Town. Today, 330 years later, the living
patrilineal descendants of Maria’s four sons, number in excess of 76,000 people. Curiously, none of them
carry the surname Cornelitz – in fact, they are all called Botha and include former President P.W. Botha,
general Louis Botha and Minister Pik Botha. The reason for this anomaly is also the reason why Jan got
divorced from Maria in 1700. According to Maria’s testimonies she did indeed have a long term
relationship with Frederik Botha, but in her defence she claimed that her husband was impotent and that
he actually encouraged her. Other witnesses, presumably prompted by Jan, gave testimonies that
implied that Maria was in fact licentious. We combined haplotyping with the AmpF‘STR1 YfilerTM kit
with deep-rooting genealogies to show that Maria’s first son was actually fathered by Ferdinandus Appel
and that roughly half the living Bothas (38,000 people) actually descend from Ferdinandus Appel while
the remaining three sons all stem from the same father, presumably Frederik Botha, and this implies that
Maria’s husband did not father any of her sons.
