English: These are examples of beacons that marked key sites in territory at the Cape claimed by the Dutch. Both are made of Robben Island slate and bear the coat-of-arms of the Netherlands (a lion with seven arrows representing the seven Dutch provinces) and the VOC monogram.

This beacon was found on the farm Ongegundefontein on the southern side of Olifants River mouth, near present-day Papendorp, and was donated to the South African Museum in 1893. It would have marked the northern boundary of the Cape for a short time in the 1760s.

Khoekhoe resistance to aggression by visiting European sea traders in Table Ba dates back to 1510. In 1672, twenty years after the establishment of the beginnings of European settlement at the Cape, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) concluded two treaties with certain of the KhoeKhoe leaders. On 19th April it formally took possession of the coastal strip between Hout Bay and Saldanha Bay, and then on 5 May of the land between Cape Point and the southern Berg River, including the Cape Flats and Boland. The territory was mapped and marked as a Dutch possession with durable stone beacons. Khoekhoe leaders received only a portion of the payment set out in the treaties, and large amounts of land, as well as their right to rule themselves we lost in the process.

SACHM 6120