Jan van Riebeeck was a genuine historical figure and existed as surely ... ‘Ja, ve want to make a garden, and build for ourselves a fort; a place to live for me and my men and my vife, Maria.’ ‘Djulle ...

It is the beginning of dispossession,” he said. “In that year, Jan van Riebeeck arrived at the Cape, sent by the Dutch East India Company. He did not come as a tourist. He did not come as a ...

and last week pored over the diaries of Jan van Riebeeck. There are volumes of them, all ridiculously detailed: so many rows of beans planted; a ship arrived with “drunk, babbling fools ...

It seems that the portrait of Van Riebeeck, a symbol of national pride during the apartheid era, is not of Jan van Riebeeck, but most likely of a Dutch local who never even set foot in the country.