5 Rand Griqua Town Coinage Bicentennial

Griqua Town — established by the London Missionary Society around 1804 near the confluence of the Vaal and Harts rivers — became the unlikely site of one of the earliest coinage experiments in southern African history. The original Griqua coinage, struck in London circa 1815–1816, was privately commissioned for the Griqua people, a mixed-heritage community operating well outside Cape Colony's formal economy. Those pieces, denominated in stuivers and half-stuivers, predated any official South African government coinage by over a century.

The 2015 commemorative marks the approximate bicentennial of that 1815 issue.