Jan van Riebeeck

Johan Anthoniszoon van Riebeeck, usually known in English as Jan van Riebeeck, was a Dutch surgeon, merchant, and colonial administrator of the Dutch East India Company who in 1652 established a victualling station at the Cape of Good Hope that became the city of Cape Town and the nucleus of the later Cape Colony. He is the figure conventionally identified with the founding of European South Africa.

Born in 1619 in the small Dutch port of Culemborg, the son of a surgeon, Van Riebeeck trained in surgery and joined the Dutch East India Company, sailing for Batavia in 1639. He served as an assistant trader in Tonkin and was later posted to Japan, but in 1648 he was recalled and dismissed for trading on his own account in violation of company rules.

Seeking to rehabilitate his reputation, Van Riebeeck volunteered to lead an expedition to establish a permanent supply station midway between the Netherlands and Asia, and on 6 April 1652 he landed in Table Bay with three ships and roughly ninety men. As the first commander of the Cape from 1652 to 1662 he built a star-shaped earthen fort, planted vegetable gardens, traded for cattle with the Khoekhoe peoples, fought the First Khoekhoe-Dutch War of 1659-1660, and imported the first enslaved labourers from West Africa and Asia.

He was promoted to Secunde of Batavia in 1665 and died there in 1677. His portrait long appeared on South African banknotes and on the rand coin until the post-apartheid currency redesign.

The name Jan is the Dutch, German, and Slavic form of John, from a Hebrew name meaning God is gracious; he wore it as a male given name.