Van Rhynsdorp (Afrikaans: Vanrhynsdorp) is a settlement in

West Coast District Municipality The West Coast District Municipality is a district municipality located in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Its municipality code is DC1. Moorreesburg is the seat of the district. As of 2011 it had a total population of 391,766. Geograp ...

in the

Western Cape The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 2020 ...

province of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

. Van Rhynsdorp was founded as Trutro ("TroeTroe") after the area was first explored by Europeans in 1661 by Pieter van Meerhoff.Van Rhynsdorp
SA Places. Retrieved 2012-05-06. The Troe-Troe Zending ("Mission") dates to the 1751 completion of the Trutro Homestead which is still standing at Van Rhynsdorp. The name of the town was changed to Van Rhynsdorp (in Afrikaans, Vanrhynsdorp) in 1881. A significant proportion of Van Rhynsdorp's indigenous Khoe population are victims of alcoholism as a result of the European colonists “dop system” where historically the European colonists created apartheid to evict the indigenous Khoe from their own lands; European colonist farmers later paid their indigenous Khoe farm workers with alcohol and subsequent generations continued this cycle. The Khoe people are recognised, along with the San, as being the earliest residents of South Africa and are in fact the oldest people on Earth. The town is located at the edge of the

Nama Karoo Nama Karoo is a xeric shrubland ecoregion located on the central plateau of South Africa and Namibia. It occupies most of the interior of the western half of South Africa and extends into the southern interior of Namibia. Climate The climate t ...

, an area of semi-desert succulent vegetation.Van Rhynsdorp, Cape West Coast
SA venues. Retrieved 2012-05-06. The mountains around the town were populated by the

San people The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are members of various Khoe, Tuu, or Kxʼa-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures that are the first cultures of Southern Africa, and whose territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia ...

, a group of late stone age hunter-gatherers. Examples of rock art exist dating from this period exist in the area. The Steenkampskraal rare earth mineral deposit lies 80 km to the north east of the town in nearby

Namaqualand Namaqualand (khoekhoe: "Nama-kwa" meaning Nama Khoe people's land) is an arid region of Namibia and South Africa, extending along the west coast over and covering a total area of . It is divided by the lower course of the Orange River into ...

References

Populated places in the Matzikama Local Municipality Populated places established in 1751 1751 establishments in the Dutch Empire {{WesternCape-geo-stub