On the right hand side of the arms a man in national costume with a gun and accessories.

On the left hand side a lion.The earliest known appearance of the arms was on banknotes issued in 1866.

[2] The crudely drawn arms were depicted as a shield with a lion, an anchor, and a man in the upper half, an ox-wagon in the lower half, and the motto 'Eendragt maakt magt' (sic, cf.

[1] A better version, in which the shield was divided into sections, an eagle was perched on top, and three flags were draped down each side, first appeared on the postage stamps in 1869, and this became the preferred rendition.

In 1950, the Transvaal provincial administration decided to adopt the old arms as provincial arms and commissioned chief archivist Dr Coenraad Beyers to investigate and report on the most suitable version.