Dali Mpofu calls today the ‘tragic day’ Van Riebeeck arrived

Economic Freedom Fighters chairperson Advocate Dali Mpofu took to Twitter on Saturday to bemoan a date he considers “tragic”, the arrival of the Dutch East India company to the Cape 367 years ago.

The day used to be celebrated as a holiday by the apartheid government, but was taken off the calendar by the democratic government in the 1990s.

The holiday was first established on 6 April 1952 during the Van Riebeeck Festival in honour of the 300th anniversary of the arrival of the Dutch in South Africa. Van Riebeeck arrived at Table Bay on 6 April 1652, and as a result Cape Town was founded.

From 1980, the day became known as Founders Day (Stigtingsdag).

However, Mpofu claims it was the start of “367 years of misery”, and he included 25 years of “ANC misrule” as one of its after-effects.

Then president Jacob Zuma courted controversy in January 2015 when he declared that “Jan van Riebeeck’s arrival in Cape Town was the beginning of all South Africa’s problems.”

That statement prompted late president Nelson Mandela’s assistant Zelda La Grange to take exception and change her surname to Van Riebeeck on Twitter. She said it was unacceptable that whites were being made to feel unwelcome in South Africa.

She, however, later apologised, saying: “I apologise unconditionally and without reservation to all South Africans who were offended by my tweets this morning,” she said in a statement.

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