How Riebeek Kasteel was named.

The Gouda Book Club Commission for Colonial History in the Riebeek Valley has released the final word on the early history of the Valley. It has been the result of extensive research and thousands of hours spent at the Cape Archives and The Hermon Hotel.

In the years before satellite imaging and when the world was still considered to be flat, a rumour existed that somewhere in Africa there was a city with golden streets on the banks of a lush river of gold. The river was Vigiti Magna and city was fabled to be called Monomotapa. To make travel more attractive, travel agents of the time included this river and city on their travel pamphlets as the star attraction of the journey. These cruises were especially popular with the Portuguese and Dutch. It is a well documented fact that after settling in at the Cape, Jan van Riebeeck sent Pieter Cruythoff on a trip to find the famed river of gold as his travel brochure indicated that it was north on the N7, right at Malmesbury towards Ceres.

Corporal Pieter Cruythoff then coyly asked Surgeon Pieter van Meerhoff to accompany him on this exciting tour of the hinterland.
Thereby setting a precedent that lasts to this day.

According to the archives they rode off into the morning dawn, ignoring the lure of the Paardeberg, Piketberg, and Paarlberg and headed almost straight to a yet unnamed mountain. They felt as if it was their mountain to name and called it Kasteelberg. (They did ponder the name “Brokeback Mountain”, but it did not roll of the Dutch tongue so well.) On the western slope of the mountain they found a cosy spot next to a river that sprouted right out of the mountain. They unfolded a tartan picnic blanket under yet unnamed trees and called the trees “Cape Yellowwood”. They marvelled at flowers without names, buck so tame they ate Lindt out of their palms, the mosquitoes and muggies that were absolutely everywhere. The remainder of the day was spent drinking Jan’s first vintage and smoking Satin Leaf cigarettes. Camping was fun indeed. The wine provided some inspiration and they named another 14 mammals and another 28 plants. After even more of Jan’s Kaapsche Wijn it was only apt that they then named the whole area, Riebeecks Kasteel. Somehow this was better than the Vigiti Magna and Monomotapa they set out to find.

Today on the western side of their beloved Kasteelberg, the same Riebeek’s River still pours out of Kasteelberg towards the sea, unfortunately via Malmesbury and not Riebeek Kasteel.

And then…. Pieter van Meerhoff got over the corporal and married Kratoa, a Khoi queen. He was stabbed through the heart whilst pillaging the island of Madagascar and thus died of a broken heart.

Pieter Cruythoff just kept on moving and was reportedly last seen in a Green Point bar.

Source: PPC Environmental Report Phase 1

“In 1661, Pieter Cruythoff, one of Jan van Riebeeck’s corporals, led a reconnaissance team of eleven men to explore the hinterland. A myth had been circulating for some time about the city of gold, Monomotapa, which allegedly lay somewhere to the immediate north of the Cape settlement.3 The VOC headquarters were impatient for their envisioned instant profits and commissioned several expeditions to find the fabled land. While the mission obviously never succeeded in locating a town saturated with gold, it did provide one of the earliest written records describing the interior of the Cape. The surgeon, Pieter van Meerhoff, accompanied the first mission and kept the journal and wrote of plains teeming with wildlife. From one vantage point at Kasteelberg, on one day, they saw “thirteen horses (quagga), five rhinoceros, ostrich, thousands of hartebeest” It is also in this journal that ‘Riebeek Kasteel’ was first mentioned. They camped on the western side of the mountain next to a beautiful river that sprouted from the mountain.”

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