Angela of Bengal and the Basson family

Angela of Bengal was born in India around 1641 and was one of the earliest enslaved people at the Cape in the time of Jan van Riebeeck. She was freed in 1666.

She had seven children with Arnoldus Basson. Her first child, Anna de Coningh, married Olof Bergh and became the owner of Groot Constantia.

The Basson name runs through the history of the Riebeek Valley. Together with the Laubscher and Walters families, the Bassons dominated land ownership here for more than a century, marrying into farms such as Allesverloren, Kloovenburg and Weltevreden.

In the twentieth century the name stayed visible in the village: Basson's General Store on Plein Street, and the red ox sculpture made by Christoffel Basson in 1938.