Dirk Coetsee

Dirk Coetsee (1655 – 1725) was the Hoofdheemraad (mayor) of the town of Stellenbosch (the second oldest European town in South Africa), captain of the Stellenbosch Infantry and deacon of the Stellenbosch Moederkerk (Dutch Reformed Mother Church) in South Africa. As captain of the Stellenbosch Infantry, which comprised mostly Huguenots, he provided military backing for a rebellion which began in 1706 against the Governor of the Cape Colony, Willem Adriaan van der Stel, whom the vrijburghers (free burghers, i.e. citizens of the colony not in the employ of the Dutch East India Company) had accused of tyranny, corruption and racketeering. Coetsee was imprisoned in the dungeon of the Castle of Good Hope along with the other leaders of the Huguenots but he was released after a year. The rebellion ultimately succeeded in 1707 when the Dutch East India Company recalled the Governor and other colonial officials. An account of the rebellion is vividly described in the "Diary of Adam Tas".

Dirk Coetsee established Coetsenburg, one of the oldest wine estates in South Africa, in 1682, on land that was granted to him by the Dutch Governor of the Cape Colony, Simon van der Stel, on the banks of the Eerste River at the foot of the Stellenbosch Mountain. He was the progenitor (Afrikaans: stamvader) of the influential French Huguenot- Cape Dutch Coetsee / Coetzee family in South Africa, a branch of which became Anglicized through intermarriage with British settlers after the British conquest in 1795. (Newton-King, Susan (November 2007). "Sodomy, Race and Respectability in Stellenbosch and Drakenstein, 1689–1762". Kronos. 33: 6–44. )

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