1 Cent, South Africa, 1961

One (1) cent coin South Africa, 1961 Obverse Image: Bust of Jan van Riebeeck. Obverse Text: UNITY IS STRENGTH / EENDRAG MAAK MAG Reverse Image: Covered wagon. Reverse Text: SOUTH AFRICA / 1961 / SUID-AFRIKA / 1C. South Africa broke its political ties with Great Britain in 1961 and became an independent republic. In the years that followed, it changed the design of its coins to replace the portrait of Queen Elizabeth with a portrait of Jan van Riebeeck. Van Riebeeck was an official of the Dutch East India Company and the first commander of the Cape of Good Hope in the mid-1600s. For Afrikaner South Africans, Van Riebeeck represented the historical origins of a white-led state. The coins were minted at a time when apartheid political ideology dominated South African society. Apartheid laws enforced racial segregation and oppressed Africans and other people of color. This coin also depicts a wagon, which was a symbol of the movement of the Great Trek of the 1830s, a period in which the ancestors of European immigrants migrated from the Cape of Good Hope into the South African interior. Currently not on view