Governor van Plettenberg

 In 1767, aged 28, Van Plettenberg was appointed as the first legal officer, or independent fiscal, at Cape Town.

 In 1774 he rose to the position of governor, a post he held for eleven eventful years. His predecessor in office was the best loved of all the Dutch governors, Rijk Tulbagh, whose administration for 20 years had been one of honourable rectitude. The burghers who had enjoyed a warm and close admiration for “Father Tulbagh” never had the same regard for the well-born, reserved and overfed van Plettenberg.

Van Plettenberg chose as his fiscal a sophisticated but arrogant man named Willem Cornelius Boers, and the two of them had little sympathy for those among the free burghers of the Colony who launched petitions of grievance against their administration. Van Plettenberg specifically declared that the petitioners of 1779 were a small and insignificant group among the burghers. Nonetheless, although he was impatient with the demands of these burghers, he went to endless lengths to understand the needs of the farmers, especially those in the more distant parts of the Colony.

In 1778 he had travelled as far as Colesberg and it was on the same trip that he came to Bahia Formosa, a place he liked so much that he renamed it – Plettenberg Bay – and also erected a pillar to commemorate his visit. Two years later he again travelled extensively through the Colony.

Baron van Plettenberg spoke several languages and was certainly regarded as an enlightened thinker; it is generally considered that he would have been more highly regarded and his administration more rewarding and successful had his term of office as governor not coincided with a period of turbulence and unrest.

By Chris Hummel: Professor in History at Rhodes University