Chiselled features, flowing locks and a manicured moustache: it’s a face that has been immortalised on the paper currency introduced after the country became a republic in 1961. But, as it turns out, the face of whom most South Africans believe to be that of Jan Van Riebeeck, a symbol of national pride during the apartheid era, is likely not his, but is more likely that of a Dutch local who never set foot in the South Africa.

This is not a new discovery, just not a well known one. Jonkheer van Kretschmar, a genealogist, concluded as long ago as 1984 that the painting from which the image was borrowed was not of Van Riebeeck, the man who arrived with three ships in Table Bay in 1652. He stated that the portrait, which is now in the possession of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, was probably of another Dutch-man named Bartholomeus Vermuyden.

In what is believed to be an actual portrait of Van Riebeeck, also on display at the Rijksmuseum, his appearance is markedly different from the face on South Africa’s old currency .

Jan Van Riebeeck