Under the distinguished patronage of Alderman Geordin Hill-Lewis, Mayor of the City of Cape Town
The Koffyfontein Boer War Siege Five Pound Notes
Pierre H. Nortje (June 2026)
Introduction
Various monetary notes have been issued during the Anglo Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa, either as “good fors” due to a lack of hard currency or as prisoner of war issues. One of the scarcest of these is the £5 note issued under instruction of Major J.W. Robertson, the military commander of the besieged diamond producing town of Koffiefontein in the Orange Free State.
In his book Money in South Africa (1987:92) C. L. Engelbrecht tell us that not much is known about the circumstances in which the notes were issued. Many questions still remain: Historians and numismatists to this day, for instance, disagree on the number that were produced. Engelbrecht notes thirty-five while Brian Hern in his Handbook on South African Banknotes believes fifty to be the correct number. In his book Paper Currency of the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902, John Ineson (1999:26) states that a note numbered 91 is known.
Whatever the correct number is, we know today that very few survived. In 2017, Spink of London offered a specimen in their world banknote auction of April 26-27 that was estimated at £6 000-8 000 but sold for double that at £15,200 (R335 125) confirming its ultra-rarity. A note was again put on the auction block in 2023 by Noonans Mayfair that sold for approximately £18 600 (R414 500) if one includes their standard buyer's premium of 24%. They described it as “… arguably the most difficult and certainly desirable Boer War note to find with only four other examples in private hands.”
Koffiefontein (spelled Koffyfontein on the notes)
During the late 1800s, Koffiefontein was a sojourn spot (out-span) for transport riders traveling from the Cape to the diamond and gold fields of the north. The name “Koffiefontein” is a reference to the coffee that was brewed by them during their stopovers. They used the water of a natural spring (“Fontein” in Afrikaans) to boil the brew. A diamond was discovered by one of the transport riders in the spring of 1870, after which a town quickly developed by the influx of many prospectors in search of high-quality diamonds for which the area became known.
Boer War
Because of the proximity of the town to Kimberley, the diamond capital of South Africa, Koffiefontein soon became involved in the Second Anglo-Boer War with defensive fortresses, called blockhouses, being erected by the British in 1900 to protect the small diamond-rich town against Boer commandos from the Transvaal.
Due to the advancing threat, the British authorities decided to appoint Cape-born James Wege Robertson (1873-1950), an officer in the Kimberley Light Horse (a voluntary force), as Assistant Resident Magistrate at Koffiefontein. Robertson armed the resident miners as a defensive unit and commanded the town garrison from 1900 to 1901.
On the 12th of October, a Boer Commando under Commandant Visser demanded the surrender of the town, but Robertson declined. Four days later, the miners withdrew from the town and barricaded themselves in a nearby mine. On the 21st of October, General Barry Hertzog, who would later become the Prime Minister of South Africa, turned up with a large Boer force, but was unable to capture Koffiefontein. A number of skirmishes took place in the ensuing days as the fight ebbed and flowed with no one getting the upper hand.