The Dutch national hero initiated the settlement that led to apartheid

Evidence

In 2004, a widely publicized Dutch opinion poll crowned Pim Fortuyn the most important figure in Dutch history. Actually, it was reported a day or two later that an undercount of votes had him second, behind the Dutch national hero of the seventeenth century, William of Orange, ruler, uniter, insurrectionist against the Spanish, Vader des Vaderlands. But also, revealingly and less remarked, initiator of Dutch settlement of the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, setting in motion, it could be said, the processes that led three centuries later to apartheid South Africa. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 836

Categorization

• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone interested in colonial history - the unsettling tie between William of Orange, Dutch founding myth, the Cape settlement of 1652, and apartheid.
• SEED: An essay angle: the hero cult of empire-builders whose settlements seed later atrocity, and the poll’s failure to mark this significance.