Name: Merafe
Merafe Station (Next to Mapetla Bottle Store)
...our next party at a warehouse next door to Merafe Station in Soweto. See the flyer or Facebook invite... http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=191640840668&ref=m
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Sunday, February 28, 2010
Mdantsane (H 15)
Name: Mdantsane
Mdantsane is a South African township situated between East London and King William's Town in the Eastern Cape province. It is reputed to be the second largest township in South Africa after Soweto and houses the second biggest shopping mall in the Eastern Cape Province (called Mdantsane City and open since April 2008). The original inhabitants are people who were forcibly removed from what was known as East Bank in East London. The East Bank was a multiracial residential area. Mdantsane was located within an apartheid structure, then known by the name of Ciskei.
Wikipedia
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Mdantsane is a South African township situated between East London and King William's Town in the Eastern Cape province. It is reputed to be the second largest township in South Africa after Soweto and houses the second biggest shopping mall in the Eastern Cape Province (called Mdantsane City and open since April 2008). The original inhabitants are people who were forcibly removed from what was known as East Bank in East London. The East Bank was a multiracial residential area. Mdantsane was located within an apartheid structure, then known by the name of Ciskei.
Wikipedia
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Mbalane (K 6)
Name: Mbalane
Mbalane is a stream in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
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the official opening of Mbalane Bridge
22 February 2009
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Mbalane is a stream in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
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Date:
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Other interesting info:
the official opening of Mbalane Bridge
22 February 2009
Where to stay:
Mazabuka (F 4)
Name: Mazabuka
Mazabuka is a town in the Southern Province of Zambia, lying south west of Lusaka, on the main road and railway to Livingstone. The town has grown around sugar cane plantations and the current Zambia sugar (Nakambala estate run by Illovo sugar)is being set up to by Zambia's leading sugar producers. It lies near the Mwanachingwala Conservation Area. Its population in 2000 was estimated at 35,000 inhabitants
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Mazabuka is a town in the Southern Province of Zambia, lying south west of Lusaka, on the main road and railway to Livingstone. The town has grown around sugar cane plantations and the current Zambia sugar (Nakambala estate run by Illovo sugar)is being set up to by Zambia's leading sugar producers. It lies near the Mwanachingwala Conservation Area. Its population in 2000 was estimated at 35,000 inhabitants
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Mayfair (F 9)
Name: Mayfair
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Mayfair Mercy Convent
Mayfair
Founding and history
From the beginning of 1908, in response to a request from the Bishop, the Sisters of Mercy began to teach at a small school in Crown Road , Fordsburg. At Fordsburg the classes were taught in a large hall lent by Mr Arthur Connoly, a baker and confectioner. This large room was well ventilated and when the Sisters took over on January 29 1908, the walls had been freshly coloured and the floor scrubbed white. The seating accommodation was enough for about forty children. All classes were taught in this one room.
For the first six months the Sisters walked daily to and from Braamfontein, where they lived. The Catholics of Braamfontein considered the walk too much for the Sisters and organised a concert and dance which realised sufficient funds to buy a pony and trap. The pony was kept at the stables of Lion Brewery.
The Fordsburg district was very poor, but nearly all the pupils who attended paid a few shillings a month in fees. The Priest lent a room where music lessons were given twice a week at first, but later the numbers required two additional days and an additional Sister.
The surroundings were really unsuitable for a school but many attempts top get a better site were in vain. Then, in 1913, through the influence of Mr Sheridan of the Revenue Department, whose sister was a member of the Mafikeng community of the Sisters of Mercy, the present site in Mayfair was bought at a very reasonable price. There was not a single house between the mine dumps and the Convent at that time, but later the district grew into a popular suburb.
Other interesting info:
Masjid Ash Shifa 5th Ave,Mayfair West
Masjid-E-khair St Gothard ave,Mayfair
MMu’aaz-Bin-Jabal Kilmore ave east,crosby
Babus-Salaam Proserpine Street,Mayfair
Mayfair Jumu'ah Masjid Cnr Hanover St & 10th Ave, Mayfair
Masjidul Falaah 14th Avenue,Mayfair
Sultan Bahu 44 4th Avenue, Mayfair
Baitun Nur Masjid 19 11th Ave, Mayfair
Masjidul Muslimeen 77 Clifton st, Mayfair
Masjidul Islam St. Albans Rd, Brixton
Churches
mayfair baptist church Nurney Ave,Crosby
Temples
Mayfair Mandir St. Gothard Ave,Mayfair
More Info: http://www.mymayfair.co.za/community
Where to stay:
Google count:
Date:
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Mayfair Mercy Convent
Mayfair
Founding and history
From the beginning of 1908, in response to a request from the Bishop, the Sisters of Mercy began to teach at a small school in Crown Road , Fordsburg. At Fordsburg the classes were taught in a large hall lent by Mr Arthur Connoly, a baker and confectioner. This large room was well ventilated and when the Sisters took over on January 29 1908, the walls had been freshly coloured and the floor scrubbed white. The seating accommodation was enough for about forty children. All classes were taught in this one room.
For the first six months the Sisters walked daily to and from Braamfontein, where they lived. The Catholics of Braamfontein considered the walk too much for the Sisters and organised a concert and dance which realised sufficient funds to buy a pony and trap. The pony was kept at the stables of Lion Brewery.
The Fordsburg district was very poor, but nearly all the pupils who attended paid a few shillings a month in fees. The Priest lent a room where music lessons were given twice a week at first, but later the numbers required two additional days and an additional Sister.
The surroundings were really unsuitable for a school but many attempts top get a better site were in vain. Then, in 1913, through the influence of Mr Sheridan of the Revenue Department, whose sister was a member of the Mafikeng community of the Sisters of Mercy, the present site in Mayfair was bought at a very reasonable price. There was not a single house between the mine dumps and the Convent at that time, but later the district grew into a popular suburb.
Other interesting info:
Masjid Ash Shifa 5th Ave,Mayfair West
Masjid-E-khair St Gothard ave,Mayfair
MMu’aaz-Bin-Jabal Kilmore ave east,crosby
Babus-Salaam Proserpine Street,Mayfair
Mayfair Jumu'ah Masjid Cnr Hanover St & 10th Ave, Mayfair
Masjidul Falaah 14th Avenue,Mayfair
Sultan Bahu 44 4th Avenue, Mayfair
Baitun Nur Masjid 19 11th Ave, Mayfair
Masjidul Muslimeen 77 Clifton st, Mayfair
Masjidul Islam St. Albans Rd, Brixton
Churches
mayfair baptist church Nurney Ave,Crosby
Temples
Mayfair Mandir St. Gothard Ave,Mayfair
More Info: http://www.mymayfair.co.za/community
Where to stay:
Matsapha
Name: Matsapha
Swaziland.
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Swazi Paper Mills Ltd company profile in Matsapha, Swaziland.
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Swaziland.
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Other interesting info:
Swazi Paper Mills Ltd company profile in Matsapha, Swaziland.
Where to stay:
Matola (M 8)
Name: Matola
Matola, Mozambique is located at -25.9622 [latitude in decimal degrees], 32.4589 [longitude in decimal degrees]
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Matola, Mozambique is located at -25.9622 [latitude in decimal degrees], 32.4589 [longitude in decimal degrees]
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Matjiesfontein (C 15)
Name: Matjiesfontein
Matjiesfontein was founded in 1884 by the legendary James Douglas Logan. It has become well known for its splendid historical buildings and in testament the entire Village was restored in 1970 and declared a National Historic Monument.
he recently established Transport Museum is located on the edge of the town, east of the Lord Milner Hotel. This victorian style building with its amiable staff, features a remarkable collection of vintage cars and trains in all styles and brands - a must see for the curious eye.
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Matjiesfontein was founded in 1884 by the legendary James Douglas Logan. It has become well known for its splendid historical buildings and in testament the entire Village was restored in 1970 and declared a National Historic Monument.
he recently established Transport Museum is located on the edge of the town, east of the Lord Milner Hotel. This victorian style building with its amiable staff, features a remarkable collection of vintage cars and trains in all styles and brands - a must see for the curious eye.
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Matatiele (J 14)
Name: Matatiele
Matatiele is a mid-sized town serving the farming and trading communities of East Griqualand in the foothills of the western Drakensberg, Eastern Cape, South Africa, on the border with KwaZulu-Natal and 20 km from the southern frontier of Lesotho. Dairy farming is the principal activity. Good trout fishing is to be had in the numerous streams of the area. As a town, Matatiele is the reference point for all of the northern Transkei.
The name "Matatiele" is clearly a Sotho word, based on the Sesotho phrase "matata aile" meaning "the ducks have gone"
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Matatiele is a mid-sized town serving the farming and trading communities of East Griqualand in the foothills of the western Drakensberg, Eastern Cape, South Africa, on the border with KwaZulu-Natal and 20 km from the southern frontier of Lesotho. Dairy farming is the principal activity. Good trout fishing is to be had in the numerous streams of the area. As a town, Matatiele is the reference point for all of the northern Transkei.
The name "Matatiele" is clearly a Sotho word, based on the Sesotho phrase "matata aile" meaning "the ducks have gone"
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Mataffin (K 8)
Name: Mataffin
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The construction of two new schools to replace those that had to be vacated for the 2010 soccer stadium in Mpumalanga is expected to be completed by March 31.
Mpumalanga education MEC Rejinah Mhaule toured the construction sites of the John Mdluli primary and Cyril Clark secondary schools in Mataffin outside Mbombela on Monday.
“Since we commenced work on December 4, about 85% of the first phase for John Mdluli primary has been completed. We have began with phase two and have done 65% of the work,” said spokesperson for construction company Clear Choice Builders, Joe Manonga.
Construction of the computer lab, library, kitchen and most of the classrooms was going smoothly, he added.
He said the company was still waiting for structural engineers to forwarded plans so that construction could begin on the soccer field and hall.
Spokesperson for Mpfumelelo Business Enterprise, which is building Cyril Clark secondary school, Susan Nyathi, said the project was almost complete.
“We are also almost complete. We are now busy fitting the roof on the classrooms and we are left with the soccer and netball fields,” said Nyathi.
MEC Mhaule and her delegation commended the builders for the pace of their work, as they were not expected to complete phase two of their projects until after the 2010 FIFA World Cup in June.
“But I’m surprised to see they have already started with phase two and are a step ahead,” said Mhaule. “I am indeed encouraged by what I see here, this is work in progress and if the construction continues to unfold at this pace we will meet our deadlines.”
The classes, administration blocks and toilets of the two schools are expected to be completed by the end of March.
Teachers and pupils are expected to move in by April 1, ending nearly four years of learning in stuffy prefabricated buildings that were provided when they were moved from their original brick and mortar schools in late 2006.
The community was promised two new schools in 2007, and pupils rioted violently against the delays, most recently in October last year. Some were injured when police were forced to fire rubber bullets at them.
Their old schools now serve as offices for resident engineer Leon Botha and hostels for workers who live far.
Cyril Clarke secondary school will have 20 classrooms, a state-of-the-art laboratory, administration block, library, assembly hall, computer centre, kitchen, soccer field and three netball fields.
The new John Mdluli Primary will have 16 classrooms, 20 toilets and similar facilities to those of Cyril Clark Secondary.
Other interesting info:
Mataffin Riding Club, Nelspruit
Where to stay:
Google count:
Date:
Historic fact:
The construction of two new schools to replace those that had to be vacated for the 2010 soccer stadium in Mpumalanga is expected to be completed by March 31.
Mpumalanga education MEC Rejinah Mhaule toured the construction sites of the John Mdluli primary and Cyril Clark secondary schools in Mataffin outside Mbombela on Monday.
“Since we commenced work on December 4, about 85% of the first phase for John Mdluli primary has been completed. We have began with phase two and have done 65% of the work,” said spokesperson for construction company Clear Choice Builders, Joe Manonga.
Construction of the computer lab, library, kitchen and most of the classrooms was going smoothly, he added.
He said the company was still waiting for structural engineers to forwarded plans so that construction could begin on the soccer field and hall.
Spokesperson for Mpfumelelo Business Enterprise, which is building Cyril Clark secondary school, Susan Nyathi, said the project was almost complete.
“We are also almost complete. We are now busy fitting the roof on the classrooms and we are left with the soccer and netball fields,” said Nyathi.
MEC Mhaule and her delegation commended the builders for the pace of their work, as they were not expected to complete phase two of their projects until after the 2010 FIFA World Cup in June.
“But I’m surprised to see they have already started with phase two and are a step ahead,” said Mhaule. “I am indeed encouraged by what I see here, this is work in progress and if the construction continues to unfold at this pace we will meet our deadlines.”
The classes, administration blocks and toilets of the two schools are expected to be completed by the end of March.
Teachers and pupils are expected to move in by April 1, ending nearly four years of learning in stuffy prefabricated buildings that were provided when they were moved from their original brick and mortar schools in late 2006.
The community was promised two new schools in 2007, and pupils rioted violently against the delays, most recently in October last year. Some were injured when police were forced to fire rubber bullets at them.
Their old schools now serve as offices for resident engineer Leon Botha and hostels for workers who live far.
Cyril Clarke secondary school will have 20 classrooms, a state-of-the-art laboratory, administration block, library, assembly hall, computer centre, kitchen, soccer field and three netball fields.
The new John Mdluli Primary will have 16 classrooms, 20 toilets and similar facilities to those of Cyril Clark Secondary.
Other interesting info:
Mataffin Riding Club, Nelspruit
Where to stay:
Maseru Bridge (F 12)
Name: Maseru Bridge
Maseru is located in northwest Lesotho by the South African border, denoted by the Mohokare River. The two countries are connected by a border post at the Maseru Bridge, which crosses the river. On the South African side, Ladybrand is the town closest to Maseru. The city lies in a shallow valley at the foot of the Hlabeng-Sa-Likhama, foothills of the Maloti Mountains.[1] The elevation of the city is listed as 1,600 metres (5,200 ft) above sea level.[9]
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Maseru is located in northwest Lesotho by the South African border, denoted by the Mohokare River. The two countries are connected by a border post at the Maseru Bridge, which crosses the river. On the South African side, Ladybrand is the town closest to Maseru. The city lies in a shallow valley at the foot of the Hlabeng-Sa-Likhama, foothills of the Maloti Mountains.[1] The elevation of the city is listed as 1,600 metres (5,200 ft) above sea level.[9]
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Maseru (F 12)
Name: Maseru
Maseru is the capital of Lesotho. Located on the Caledon River, bordering South Africa, Maseru is Lesotho's only sizable city, with a population of approximately 227,880 (2006). The city was established as a police camp and assigned as the capital after the country became a British protectorate in 1869. When the country achieved independence in 1966, Maseru retained its status as capital. The name of the city is a Sesotho word meaning "place of the red sandstone".
Wikipedia
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Maseru is the capital of Lesotho. Located on the Caledon River, bordering South Africa, Maseru is Lesotho's only sizable city, with a population of approximately 227,880 (2006). The city was established as a police camp and assigned as the capital after the country became a British protectorate in 1869. When the country achieved independence in 1966, Maseru retained its status as capital. The name of the city is a Sesotho word meaning "place of the red sandstone".
Wikipedia
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Marseilles (F 11)
Name: Marseilles
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The Department of Social Development in the Free State led by the Honourable MEC Ouma Tsopo in partnership with the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) have been hard at work in implementing the adjusted allocation of R34,5 million meant for Social Relief of Distress (a programme that provides temporary relief in the form of food parcels to families and individuals that are hit hard by poverty). This programme which started in December 2008 and is ending in March 2009 seeks to ensure that the dignity of the Free Staters is restored by ensuring that families have food and that their children have access to school uniforms.
The Motheo District Office started in December 2008 to identify children in need of school uniforms and falling under the category of designated needy persons who qualify to receive the Social Relief of Distress. The department is humbly requesting parents to apply for school uniforms under the following arrangements:
Date: Friday, 13 February 2009
Time: 08:00
Place: Marseilles Farms
Where to stay:
Google count:
Date:
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Other interesting info:
The Department of Social Development in the Free State led by the Honourable MEC Ouma Tsopo in partnership with the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) have been hard at work in implementing the adjusted allocation of R34,5 million meant for Social Relief of Distress (a programme that provides temporary relief in the form of food parcels to families and individuals that are hit hard by poverty). This programme which started in December 2008 and is ending in March 2009 seeks to ensure that the dignity of the Free Staters is restored by ensuring that families have food and that their children have access to school uniforms.
The Motheo District Office started in December 2008 to identify children in need of school uniforms and falling under the category of designated needy persons who qualify to receive the Social Relief of Distress. The department is humbly requesting parents to apply for school uniforms under the following arrangements:
Date: Friday, 13 February 2009
Time: 08:00
Place: Marseilles Farms
Where to stay:
Marquart (F 11)
Name: Marquart
Marquard. Situated on the R708, Marquard lies between Winburg , Clocolan and Senekal in the Eastern Free State.
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The Marquard HotelHotelA visit to the hundred year old, lateVictorian-, early Edwardian Marquard Hotel will be well worth theirwhile to tourists as the hotel strives to upkeep its motto;W HERE HISTORY AND EXCELLENCEMEET.Address: 34 Unie StreetTel: 051 991 0040/1Fax: 086 589 3379E-mail: marquardhotel@telkomsa.netGPS: S28 39.904 E27 25.739 More information on the Marquard Hotelcan be found at www.marquardhotel.co.zaB & G SlaghuisButcheryAddress: 33 Van der W att StreetTel: 051 991 0086E-mail: skeba@telkomsa.netSpartaFeedlotSparta MarquardTelephone: +27 51 991 9200 Fax: +27 51 9919205 E-mail: contactus@sparta.co.zaPO Box 64, Marquard 9610, South AfricaOppi StoepRestaurantOppi Stoep is an experience not to be missed!Address: 22 Van der W att StreetTel: 051 991 0210
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A. W olmarans Attorney & Anne PropertiesLaw Firm and Estate AgencyAfter you've visited our town my number isthe first you'll dial !Addresss: 16 Hamilton StreetTel: 082 377 6676Fax: 086 570 8319E-mail: anne.w@mtnloaded.co.zaW ebsite: www.anneprop.co.zaorwww.myproperty.co.zaunder MarquardKorannaberg AdventuresGuesthouseKorannaberg Adventures andVanzoelenshoek Guesthouse is situated atthe foot of the Korannaberg near Marquardin the beautiful Eastern Free State. W ith 7 picturesque waterfalls, 769 plantspecies, 52 tree species, 277 bird species and15 species of game in between amazing rockformations, it‘s a nature lovers playground.Addresss: VanZoelenshoek, Excelsior, Free State, 9760Tel: 082 706 0058E-mail: korannaberg@vodamail.co.zaW ebsite: www.korannabergadventures.co.zaACCOMMODATIONMarquard Hotel051 991 0040051 991 0044Vine VillaFrank 051 991 0209Cell 082 970 8726Le ChériJana 079 527 7070OppiStoepSandra 051 991 1210Country CottageCarmen Longland 082 571 2198Korannaberg Adventures051 973 7282Bruwer 072 847 8383Heleen 082 706 0058Koranna W egbreekIsa 082 302 9638Obbie 072 831 0457LeeukopElmari 083 281 7234R2 RanchingBernadine 076 760 3937RietfonteinFay 083 297 7067For any additional accommodationqueries:Stephen Naudé 082 771 9088
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Page 4
SPORTBowls Rentia Azar083 452 4256PoloJan du Plooy072 853 5242SquashPeet van Rooyen084 444 6570AerobicsMarie Longland083 388 1121Pigeon ClubJaco Bekker083 381 4925Remote Control Airplanes Edwin Spence083 305 0784TennisDavid Brink076 390 0755GolfJaco Wessels082 876 9108
Marquard. Situated on the R708, Marquard lies between Winburg , Clocolan and Senekal in the Eastern Free State.
Google count:
Date:
Historic fact:
Other interesting info:
Where to stay:
The Marquard HotelHotelA visit to the hundred year old, lateVictorian-, early Edwardian Marquard Hotel will be well worth theirwhile to tourists as the hotel strives to upkeep its motto;W HERE HISTORY AND EXCELLENCEMEET.Address: 34 Unie StreetTel: 051 991 0040/1Fax: 086 589 3379E-mail: marquardhotel@telkomsa.netGPS: S28 39.904 E27 25.739 More information on the Marquard Hotelcan be found at www.marquardhotel.co.zaB & G SlaghuisButcheryAddress: 33 Van der W att StreetTel: 051 991 0086E-mail: skeba@telkomsa.netSpartaFeedlotSparta MarquardTelephone: +27 51 991 9200 Fax: +27 51 9919205 E-mail: contactus@sparta.co.zaPO Box 64, Marquard 9610, South AfricaOppi StoepRestaurantOppi Stoep is an experience not to be missed!Address: 22 Van der W att StreetTel: 051 991 0210
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Page 3
A. W olmarans Attorney & Anne PropertiesLaw Firm and Estate AgencyAfter you've visited our town my number isthe first you'll dial !Addresss: 16 Hamilton StreetTel: 082 377 6676Fax: 086 570 8319E-mail: anne.w@mtnloaded.co.zaW ebsite: www.anneprop.co.zaorwww.myproperty.co.zaunder MarquardKorannaberg AdventuresGuesthouseKorannaberg Adventures andVanzoelenshoek Guesthouse is situated atthe foot of the Korannaberg near Marquardin the beautiful Eastern Free State. W ith 7 picturesque waterfalls, 769 plantspecies, 52 tree species, 277 bird species and15 species of game in between amazing rockformations, it‘s a nature lovers playground.Addresss: VanZoelenshoek, Excelsior, Free State, 9760Tel: 082 706 0058E-mail: korannaberg@vodamail.co.zaW ebsite: www.korannabergadventures.co.zaACCOMMODATIONMarquard Hotel051 991 0040051 991 0044Vine VillaFrank 051 991 0209Cell 082 970 8726Le ChériJana 079 527 7070OppiStoepSandra 051 991 1210Country CottageCarmen Longland 082 571 2198Korannaberg Adventures051 973 7282Bruwer 072 847 8383Heleen 082 706 0058Koranna W egbreekIsa 082 302 9638Obbie 072 831 0457LeeukopElmari 083 281 7234R2 RanchingBernadine 076 760 3937RietfonteinFay 083 297 7067For any additional accommodationqueries:Stephen Naudé 082 771 9088
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Page 4
SPORTBowls Rentia Azar083 452 4256PoloJan du Plooy072 853 5242SquashPeet van Rooyen084 444 6570AerobicsMarie Longland083 388 1121Pigeon ClubJaco Bekker083 381 4925Remote Control Airplanes Edwin Spence083 305 0784TennisDavid Brink076 390 0755GolfJaco Wessels082 876 9108
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Marikana (G 6)
Name: Marikana
Marikana, North West Province, South Africa
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Other interesting info:
Lonmin is a producer of platinum group metals operating mainly in the Bushveld Complex in South Africa. It has two multi-shaft mining operations, located respectively in:
Marikana Region
Limpopo Region
Where to stay:
Marikana, North West Province, South Africa
Google count:
Date:
Historic fact:
Other interesting info:
Lonmin is a producer of platinum group metals operating mainly in the Bushveld Complex in South Africa. It has two multi-shaft mining operations, located respectively in:
Marikana Region
Limpopo Region
Where to stay:
Mariental (A 8)
Name: Mariental
Namibia
Mariental is a town in south-central Namibia, lying on the B1 road and the Trans-Namib Railway from Windhoek to Keetmanshoop. It lies at an elevation of 3,576 feet (1,090 metres) and is situated 145 miles (232 km) north of Keetmanshoop and 170 miles (274 km) southeast of Windhoek, the national capital.
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Named by local Rhenish (German Lutheran) missionaries, The town was founded in 1912 as a railway stop between Windhoek and Keetmanshoop and named after Maria, the wife of the first colonial settler of the area, Herman Brandt. It was proclaimed a town in 1920 and a municipality in 1946.
Other interesting info:
Where to stay:
Namibia
Mariental is a town in south-central Namibia, lying on the B1 road and the Trans-Namib Railway from Windhoek to Keetmanshoop. It lies at an elevation of 3,576 feet (1,090 metres) and is situated 145 miles (232 km) north of Keetmanshoop and 170 miles (274 km) southeast of Windhoek, the national capital.
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Named by local Rhenish (German Lutheran) missionaries, The town was founded in 1912 as a railway stop between Windhoek and Keetmanshoop and named after Maria, the wife of the first colonial settler of the area, Herman Brandt. It was proclaimed a town in 1920 and a municipality in 1946.
Other interesting info:
Where to stay:
Mariannhill (L13)
Name: Mariannhill
If no one else will go, I will.' And with these now-legendary words, controversial Trappist monk Wendelin Pfanner - Prior Francis - sparked a chain of events which would lead him to establish what became the largest and best-known Trappist abbey in the world: Mariannhill, on the outskirts of Pinetown, west of Durban.
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Other interesting info:
Links: www.catholicshop.co.za/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=MET6
http://sites.google.com/site/saplacenames/
Where to stay:
If no one else will go, I will.' And with these now-legendary words, controversial Trappist monk Wendelin Pfanner - Prior Francis - sparked a chain of events which would lead him to establish what became the largest and best-known Trappist abbey in the world: Mariannhill, on the outskirts of Pinetown, west of Durban.
Google count:
Date:
Historic fact:
Other interesting info:
Links: www.catholicshop.co.za/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=MET6
http://sites.google.com/site/saplacenames/
Where to stay:
Mareetsane (D 8)
Photo supplied by Boet Wessels (Monday, March 8, 2010)
Name: Mareetsane
A settlement in the North-West Province, South Africa.
64 K NW of Sannieshof)
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Where to stay:
Links: http://sites.google.com/site/saplacenames/
Friday, February 26, 2010
Marble Hall (J 7)
Name: Marble Hall
Marble Hall lies ideally in the Cultural Heartland of the Mpumalanga Province in South Africa. Marble deposits were discovered here in 1920 by Christoffel Visagie and family while on a hunting trip from Pretoria. Soon, The Marble Lime Company was developed to work the beautiful deposit in 1929. Marble Hall developed in 1942 and was originally known as Marmerhol, meaning Marble Hole. Mr. Visagie took some English speaking people to the site because they wanted to see the “Marble Hole”.
Mr. Visagie’s English was not very good and he spoke of “Marble Hol” instead of “ Marble Hole”. This became “ Marble Hall” - although there had originally been no mention of a “hall”. Marble is not being quarried here anymore.
. Today, Marble Hall is known as the agricultural centre of the area and is the residential base for all the workers of the marble lime mine situated here.
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Links: http://sites.google.com/site/saplacenames/
Where to stay:
Marble Hall lies ideally in the Cultural Heartland of the Mpumalanga Province in South Africa. Marble deposits were discovered here in 1920 by Christoffel Visagie and family while on a hunting trip from Pretoria. Soon, The Marble Lime Company was developed to work the beautiful deposit in 1929. Marble Hall developed in 1942 and was originally known as Marmerhol, meaning Marble Hole. Mr. Visagie took some English speaking people to the site because they wanted to see the “Marble Hole”.
Mr. Visagie’s English was not very good and he spoke of “Marble Hol” instead of “ Marble Hole”. This became “ Marble Hall” - although there had originally been no mention of a “hall”. Marble is not being quarried here anymore.
. Today, Marble Hall is known as the agricultural centre of the area and is the residential base for all the workers of the marble lime mine situated here.
Google count:
Date:
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Other interesting info:
Links: http://sites.google.com/site/saplacenames/
Where to stay:
Maraisburg (F 9)
Name: Maraisburg
Roodepoort, meaning "red valley" in Afrikaans, is a sprawling residential area, in parts dominated by light industry and small businesses. It gets its name from the red soil in the area. It dates back to 1884, when Fred Struben discovered the first payable gold in the area at what he called the Confidence Reef, a large rocky outcrop in the centre of Roodepoort.
At the time the area was settled by scattered Boer farmers on nine farms. Four of the farms - Roodepoort, Vogelstruisfontein, Paardekraal and Wilgrespruit - were soon declared public diggings.
The city of Roodepoort originated when Jan Bantjies secured the prospecting rights on the farm Roodepoort. Gold was discovered the following year and the farm was declared open for public diggings. Other discoveries followed and as the diggers needed a place to pitch their tents, the farm Roodepoort opened up its land.
A shantytown sprang up. Between 1886 and 1888, four mining towns, Roodepoort, Florida, Hamberg and Maraisburg, were proclaimed. The Goldfields Diggers Committee was formed in 1886 to represent the farmers' interests. This was the first form of local government in the area, which became known as Roodepoort-Maraisburg.
The search for gold spread, and in 1886 the main reef at Langlaagte in Johannesburg was discovered. The gold at Confidence Reef, mostly surface gold in quartz rock, soon ran out, but by then a settled community was established in Roodepoort.
In 1903 the Roodepoort-Maraisburg Urban District Board was established, and the first election was held in January 1904. The status of the Board was soon raised to that of a municipality, and in 1963 the Roodepoort-Maraisburg municipality was changed to Roodepoort and city status was granted in 1977 (at which time Maraisburg was dropped from the name).
Train related:
Maraisburg Train Station is from where the club start many of their steam train journeys. To board our steam train, you need to drive around to the back of the Train Station, to 6th Street, as shown on the map on the site. The nearest highway exit is Maraisburg Road (R24) off the N1 Western Bypass.
As of end 2008, Reefsteamers will be using this station as a terminal point for day-trip trains to Magaliesburg instead of the original terminal point of Boksburg East. We now use the Maraisburg Train Station, an operating commuter station west of Johannesburg, for such departures.
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This small cemetery is found just off the Maraisburg turn off on the Concrete Highway. It does not have a lot of World War 1 and 2 burials in it, but curiously there is a small Boer War Plot which has recently had new headstones erected. Sadly once again the vandals have been busy, and I am surprised that the cemetery is as intact as it was when I was there in October 2007.
Where to stay:
Roodepoort, meaning "red valley" in Afrikaans, is a sprawling residential area, in parts dominated by light industry and small businesses. It gets its name from the red soil in the area. It dates back to 1884, when Fred Struben discovered the first payable gold in the area at what he called the Confidence Reef, a large rocky outcrop in the centre of Roodepoort.
At the time the area was settled by scattered Boer farmers on nine farms. Four of the farms - Roodepoort, Vogelstruisfontein, Paardekraal and Wilgrespruit - were soon declared public diggings.
The city of Roodepoort originated when Jan Bantjies secured the prospecting rights on the farm Roodepoort. Gold was discovered the following year and the farm was declared open for public diggings. Other discoveries followed and as the diggers needed a place to pitch their tents, the farm Roodepoort opened up its land.
A shantytown sprang up. Between 1886 and 1888, four mining towns, Roodepoort, Florida, Hamberg and Maraisburg, were proclaimed. The Goldfields Diggers Committee was formed in 1886 to represent the farmers' interests. This was the first form of local government in the area, which became known as Roodepoort-Maraisburg.
The search for gold spread, and in 1886 the main reef at Langlaagte in Johannesburg was discovered. The gold at Confidence Reef, mostly surface gold in quartz rock, soon ran out, but by then a settled community was established in Roodepoort.
In 1903 the Roodepoort-Maraisburg Urban District Board was established, and the first election was held in January 1904. The status of the Board was soon raised to that of a municipality, and in 1963 the Roodepoort-Maraisburg municipality was changed to Roodepoort and city status was granted in 1977 (at which time Maraisburg was dropped from the name).
Train related:
Maraisburg Train Station is from where the club start many of their steam train journeys. To board our steam train, you need to drive around to the back of the Train Station, to 6th Street, as shown on the map on the site. The nearest highway exit is Maraisburg Road (R24) off the N1 Western Bypass.
As of end 2008, Reefsteamers will be using this station as a terminal point for day-trip trains to Magaliesburg instead of the original terminal point of Boksburg East. We now use the Maraisburg Train Station, an operating commuter station west of Johannesburg, for such departures.
Google count:
Date:
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Other interesting info:
This small cemetery is found just off the Maraisburg turn off on the Concrete Highway. It does not have a lot of World War 1 and 2 burials in it, but curiously there is a small Boer War Plot which has recently had new headstones erected. Sadly once again the vandals have been busy, and I am surprised that the cemetery is as intact as it was when I was there in October 2007.
Where to stay:
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Mara (H 5)
Name: Mara
Mara Post Office and Railway Station (Louis Trichardt Rural)
Mara Agricultural Development Centre The Mara Agricultural Development Centre The Bonsmara cattle breed was developed at this station, 54 km west of Louis Trichardt. ... The historical single-line steel railway bridge built around 1928 was in service until 1975. cattle breed was developed at this station, 54 km west of Louis Trichardt. ... The historical single-line steel railway bridge built around 1928 was in service until 1975.
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quovadis-southern-africa.co.za/pdf.php?cat=11&id=3699&lang=en
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Mara Post Office and Railway Station (Louis Trichardt Rural)
Mara Agricultural Development Centre The Mara Agricultural Development Centre The Bonsmara cattle breed was developed at this station, 54 km west of Louis Trichardt. ... The historical single-line steel railway bridge built around 1928 was in service until 1975. cattle breed was developed at this station, 54 km west of Louis Trichardt. ... The historical single-line steel railway bridge built around 1928 was in service until 1975.
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quovadis-southern-africa.co.za/pdf.php?cat=11&id=3699&lang=en
Where to stay:
Maputo (M 8)
Name: Maputo
Maputo, formerly Lourenço Marques, is the capital and largest city of Mozambique. A port on the Indian Ocean, its economy is centered around the harbour. It has an official population of approximately 1,244,227 (2006),[1] but the actual population is estimated to be much higher because of slums and other unofficial settlements. Coal, cotton, sugar, chromite, sisal, copra, and hardwood are the chief exports. The city manufactures cement, pottery, furniture, shoes, and rubber. There is also a large aluminium smelting plant, Mozal. The city is surrounded by Maputo Province, but is administered as its own province.
Wikipeadia
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On the northern bank of Espírito Santo Estuary of Delagoa Bay, an inlet of the Indian Ocean, Lourenço Marques was named after the Portuguese navigator, who with a companion (António Caldeira) was sent in 1544 by the governor of Mozambique on a voyage of exploration. They explored the lower courses of the rivers emptying their waters into Delagoa Bay, notably the Espírito Santo. The various forts and trading stations which the Portuguese established, abandoned and reoccupied on the north bank of the river were all called Lourenço Marques. The existing town dates from about 1850, the previous settlement having been entirely destroyed by the natives. The town developed around a Portuguese fortress completed in 1787. In 1871 the town was described as a poor place, with narrow streets, fairly good flat-roofed houses, grass huts, decayed forts and rusty cannon, enclosed by a wall 6 ft. high then recently erected and protected by bastions at intervals. The growing importance of the Transvaal led, however, to greater interest being taken in Portugal in the port. A commission was sent by the Portuguese government in 1876 to drain the marshy land near the settlement, to plant the blue gum tree, and to build a hospital and a church. A city since 1887, it superseded the Island of Mozambique as the capital of Mozambique in 1898. In 1895, construction of a railroad to Pretoria, South Africa caused the city's population to grow.
View of Lourenço Marques, ca. 1905In the early 1900s, with a well equipped seaport, with piers, quays, landing sheds and electric cranes, enabling large vessels to discharge cargoes direct into the railway trucks, Lourenço Marques developed under Portuguese rule and achieved great importance as a lively cosmopolitan city. It was served by British, Portuguese and German liners, and the majority of its imported goods were shipped at Southampton, Lisbon and Hamburg. With the continuous growth of the city's population and its expanding economy centered on the seaport, from the 1940s, Portugal's administration built a network of primary and secondary schools, industrial and commercial schools as well as the first university in the region - the University of Lourenço Marques opened in 1962. Portuguese, Islamic (including Ismailis), Indian (including from Portuguese India) and Chinese (including Macanese) communities managed to achieve great prosperity - but not the unskilled African majority - by developing the industrial and commercial sectors of the city. Prior to Mozambique's independence in 1975, thousands of tourists from South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) frequented the city and its scenic beaches, high-quality hotels, restaurants, casinos and brothels.[2][3]
The Mozambique Liberation Front, or FRELIMO, formed in Tanzania in 1962. Led by Eduardo Mondlane, FRELIMO fought for independence from Portuguese rule. The Mozambican War of Independence lasted over 10 years, ending only in 1974 when the Estado Novo regime was overthrown in Lisbon by a leftist military coup - the Carnation Revolution. The new government of Portugal granted independence to all Portuguese overseas territories
Wikipedia
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Where to stay:
Maputo, formerly Lourenço Marques, is the capital and largest city of Mozambique. A port on the Indian Ocean, its economy is centered around the harbour. It has an official population of approximately 1,244,227 (2006),[1] but the actual population is estimated to be much higher because of slums and other unofficial settlements. Coal, cotton, sugar, chromite, sisal, copra, and hardwood are the chief exports. The city manufactures cement, pottery, furniture, shoes, and rubber. There is also a large aluminium smelting plant, Mozal. The city is surrounded by Maputo Province, but is administered as its own province.
Wikipeadia
Google count:
Date:
Historic fact:
On the northern bank of Espírito Santo Estuary of Delagoa Bay, an inlet of the Indian Ocean, Lourenço Marques was named after the Portuguese navigator, who with a companion (António Caldeira) was sent in 1544 by the governor of Mozambique on a voyage of exploration. They explored the lower courses of the rivers emptying their waters into Delagoa Bay, notably the Espírito Santo. The various forts and trading stations which the Portuguese established, abandoned and reoccupied on the north bank of the river were all called Lourenço Marques. The existing town dates from about 1850, the previous settlement having been entirely destroyed by the natives. The town developed around a Portuguese fortress completed in 1787. In 1871 the town was described as a poor place, with narrow streets, fairly good flat-roofed houses, grass huts, decayed forts and rusty cannon, enclosed by a wall 6 ft. high then recently erected and protected by bastions at intervals. The growing importance of the Transvaal led, however, to greater interest being taken in Portugal in the port. A commission was sent by the Portuguese government in 1876 to drain the marshy land near the settlement, to plant the blue gum tree, and to build a hospital and a church. A city since 1887, it superseded the Island of Mozambique as the capital of Mozambique in 1898. In 1895, construction of a railroad to Pretoria, South Africa caused the city's population to grow.
View of Lourenço Marques, ca. 1905In the early 1900s, with a well equipped seaport, with piers, quays, landing sheds and electric cranes, enabling large vessels to discharge cargoes direct into the railway trucks, Lourenço Marques developed under Portuguese rule and achieved great importance as a lively cosmopolitan city. It was served by British, Portuguese and German liners, and the majority of its imported goods were shipped at Southampton, Lisbon and Hamburg. With the continuous growth of the city's population and its expanding economy centered on the seaport, from the 1940s, Portugal's administration built a network of primary and secondary schools, industrial and commercial schools as well as the first university in the region - the University of Lourenço Marques opened in 1962. Portuguese, Islamic (including Ismailis), Indian (including from Portuguese India) and Chinese (including Macanese) communities managed to achieve great prosperity - but not the unskilled African majority - by developing the industrial and commercial sectors of the city. Prior to Mozambique's independence in 1975, thousands of tourists from South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) frequented the city and its scenic beaches, high-quality hotels, restaurants, casinos and brothels.[2][3]
The Mozambique Liberation Front, or FRELIMO, formed in Tanzania in 1962. Led by Eduardo Mondlane, FRELIMO fought for independence from Portuguese rule. The Mozambican War of Independence lasted over 10 years, ending only in 1974 when the Estado Novo regime was overthrown in Lisbon by a leftist military coup - the Carnation Revolution. The new government of Portugal granted independence to all Portuguese overseas territories
Wikipedia
Other interesting info:
Where to stay:
Mapai (K 5)
Name: Mapai
In June 1976 a Selous Scouts attack from Rhodesia named Operation Long John was launched on the ZANLA transit camp in Mapai and Chicualacuala. The area again came under attack on October 31 of 1976. [1]
Transport
It is served by a way station and junction of the southern railway line which runs between Maputo and the Zimbabwe border.
Google count: 4,100 for mapai mozambique
Date: 24 February 2010
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In June 1976 a Selous Scouts attack from Rhodesia named Operation Long John was launched on the ZANLA transit camp in Mapai and Chicualacuala. The area again came under attack on October 31 of 1976. [1]
Transport
It is served by a way station and junction of the southern railway line which runs between Maputo and the Zimbabwe border.
Google count: 4,100 for mapai mozambique
Date: 24 February 2010
Historic fact:
Other interesting info:
Where to stay:
Manhica (M 7)
Name: Manhica
The Manhiça DSA is in the district of Manhiça (Maputo Province) in southern Mozambique at latitude 25°24'S and longitude 32°48'E
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The Manhiça DSA is in the district of Manhiça (Maputo Province) in southern Mozambique at latitude 25°24'S and longitude 32°48'E (Figure 15.1). It lies at an average altitude of 50 m above sea level and covers an area of 100 km2. The district has two distinct zones: the fertile lowlands, which comprise the floodplains of the Incomati River, are sparsely inhabited, and are subject to intensive sugar cane and fruit farming; and an escarpment of moderate height, which gives rise to a flat plateau on which virtually the entire DSA is situated. The area has two distinct seasons. The warm season is between November and April, when most of the rains fall (annual rainfall during 1998 was 1100 mm); a cool, dry season lasts for the rest of the year.
Figure 15.1. Location of the Manhiça DSS site, Mozambique (monitored population, 36 000).
1 Manhiça Health Research Centre.
Population characteristics of the Manhiça DSA
The town of Manhiça and the surrounding villages have a population of about 36 600 inhabitants, with a density of 360 inhabitants/km2. The population is peri-urban and rural. People of the area are mainly Xironga and Xichangana, and their languages are often termed Ronga and Changana. The two dominant religions are Islam and Christianity. The people of the DSA are mostly subsistence farmers and workers in an agricultural cooperative that grows sugarcane, bananas, and rice. Workers also operate a large sugarcane-processing factory. An increasing number of small traders are establishing shops and businesses along the busy road that transects the district from north to south. There are 10 primary schools in the study area (6768 students and 85 teachers) and 1 secondary school (1492 students and 32 teachers). The rate of illiteracy is higher among females, at 47%, than among males, at 24%. Whereas 66% of men and 49% of women have primary education, only 9% of men and 4% of women have secondary education; and less than 1% of both men and women have gone beyond their secondary education.
Villages in this area typically comprise a loose conglomeration of compounds separated by garden plots and grazing land. Houses are simple, with walls typically made of cane, with thatched or corrugated roofs. In towns, houses are often grouped into family compounds and surrounded by grass fences. Towns grew substantially during the civil war in the 1980s as displaced people looked for refuge. After the end of the war, few inhabitants returned to their original homes, and displaced settlements have now been integrated into towns. Water comes mainly from community wells, although some households have their own wells. Some areas have community-run pumps. Both wells and pumps are supervised and chlorinated regularly by the District Water and Sanitation Department. The Maputo–Beira road and the Maputo–Xai railroad cross the area from north to south. With the exception of the (small) centre of the town of Manhiça, which has an erratic public-electricity service, the rest of the area relies on more traditional systems for lighting.
Centro de Investigação em Saúde de Manhiça (CISM, Manhiça health research centre) is in the centre of the study area. This 80-bed health facility includes a busy outpatient clinic, a maternity and child-care unit with an expanded immunization program and nutritional services, and a 24-hour emergency room. A smaller, 10-bed health centre is located 6 km south of the village of Manhiça. Malaria, acute respiratory infection, and malnutrition remain the most important causes of illness and death in children <5 years old.
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-43017-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
Where to stay:
The Manhiça DSA is in the district of Manhiça (Maputo Province) in southern Mozambique at latitude 25°24'S and longitude 32°48'E
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Date:
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The Manhiça DSA is in the district of Manhiça (Maputo Province) in southern Mozambique at latitude 25°24'S and longitude 32°48'E (Figure 15.1). It lies at an average altitude of 50 m above sea level and covers an area of 100 km2. The district has two distinct zones: the fertile lowlands, which comprise the floodplains of the Incomati River, are sparsely inhabited, and are subject to intensive sugar cane and fruit farming; and an escarpment of moderate height, which gives rise to a flat plateau on which virtually the entire DSA is situated. The area has two distinct seasons. The warm season is between November and April, when most of the rains fall (annual rainfall during 1998 was 1100 mm); a cool, dry season lasts for the rest of the year.
Figure 15.1. Location of the Manhiça DSS site, Mozambique (monitored population, 36 000).
1 Manhiça Health Research Centre.
Population characteristics of the Manhiça DSA
The town of Manhiça and the surrounding villages have a population of about 36 600 inhabitants, with a density of 360 inhabitants/km2. The population is peri-urban and rural. People of the area are mainly Xironga and Xichangana, and their languages are often termed Ronga and Changana. The two dominant religions are Islam and Christianity. The people of the DSA are mostly subsistence farmers and workers in an agricultural cooperative that grows sugarcane, bananas, and rice. Workers also operate a large sugarcane-processing factory. An increasing number of small traders are establishing shops and businesses along the busy road that transects the district from north to south. There are 10 primary schools in the study area (6768 students and 85 teachers) and 1 secondary school (1492 students and 32 teachers). The rate of illiteracy is higher among females, at 47%, than among males, at 24%. Whereas 66% of men and 49% of women have primary education, only 9% of men and 4% of women have secondary education; and less than 1% of both men and women have gone beyond their secondary education.
Villages in this area typically comprise a loose conglomeration of compounds separated by garden plots and grazing land. Houses are simple, with walls typically made of cane, with thatched or corrugated roofs. In towns, houses are often grouped into family compounds and surrounded by grass fences. Towns grew substantially during the civil war in the 1980s as displaced people looked for refuge. After the end of the war, few inhabitants returned to their original homes, and displaced settlements have now been integrated into towns. Water comes mainly from community wells, although some households have their own wells. Some areas have community-run pumps. Both wells and pumps are supervised and chlorinated regularly by the District Water and Sanitation Department. The Maputo–Beira road and the Maputo–Xai railroad cross the area from north to south. With the exception of the (small) centre of the town of Manhiça, which has an erratic public-electricity service, the rest of the area relies on more traditional systems for lighting.
Centro de Investigação em Saúde de Manhiça (CISM, Manhiça health research centre) is in the centre of the study area. This 80-bed health facility includes a busy outpatient clinic, a maternity and child-care unit with an expanded immunization program and nutritional services, and a 24-hour emergency room. A smaller, 10-bed health centre is located 6 km south of the village of Manhiça. Malaria, acute respiratory infection, and malnutrition remain the most important causes of illness and death in children <5 years old.
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-43017-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
Where to stay:
Mangulane (L 8)
Name: Mangulane
Geocode for Mangulane, Mozambique: Latitude: -25.361389 / Longitude: 32.449722
Spot Feature: Railroad station | Abbrev: MZ
It is a populated place; a city, town, village, or other agglomeration of buildings where people live and work.
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Geocode for Mangulane, Mozambique: Latitude: -25.361389 / Longitude: 32.449722
Spot Feature: Railroad station | Abbrev: MZ
It is a populated place; a city, town, village, or other agglomeration of buildings where people live and work.
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Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Manga (L 4)
Name: Manga (Beira Mocambique)
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Tokens were widely used in this area - more info to be found at: "Tokens of Mocambique"
http://www.wbcc.fsnet.co.uk/aftmoz2.htm
Two pieces were issued in the name of “EMPRESA DOS TABACOS DA BEIRA LTDA”. This name appears on the obverse of each piece, around a large, central “3” on the smaller piece and around a large, central “12” on the larger piece. The issuer’s Portuguese name translates as “Beira Tobacco Enterprise Ltd”. The obverses also feature a pearled border. The reverse, common to each piece has “MANGA” horizontally and “TABACOS” vertically, such that the first “A” in “MANGA” is used as the second “A” in “TABACOS”.
The amounts indicated on these pieces i.e. 3 and 12, are unlikely to be amounts of money, as normal amounts of money in a decimal system would be such as 5 and 10. Perhaps the two amounts each represent an amount of work done or product produced. Manga is in District Beira and Beira is the country’s second largest city.
Both pieces are of Aluminium and have a crudely milled edge. P&S state that these tokens were made in England but no further details are given.
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Date:
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Other interesting info:
Tokens were widely used in this area - more info to be found at: "Tokens of Mocambique"
http://www.wbcc.fsnet.co.uk/aftmoz2.htm
Two pieces were issued in the name of “EMPRESA DOS TABACOS DA BEIRA LTDA”. This name appears on the obverse of each piece, around a large, central “3” on the smaller piece and around a large, central “12” on the larger piece. The issuer’s Portuguese name translates as “Beira Tobacco Enterprise Ltd”. The obverses also feature a pearled border. The reverse, common to each piece has “MANGA” horizontally and “TABACOS” vertically, such that the first “A” in “MANGA” is used as the second “A” in “TABACOS”.
The amounts indicated on these pieces i.e. 3 and 12, are unlikely to be amounts of money, as normal amounts of money in a decimal system would be such as 5 and 10. Perhaps the two amounts each represent an amount of work done or product produced. Manga is in District Beira and Beira is the country’s second largest city.
Both pieces are of Aluminium and have a crudely milled edge. P&S state that these tokens were made in England but no further details are given.
Where to stay:
Mandini (M 12)
Name: Mandini
Mandini:(106 km from Durban on the Durban – Empangeni – Golela line)
The large paper mill here received over 300 000 tons of hardwood and softwood from various originating points countrywide during 2005 – 2006. Over 200 000 tons of coal was received during the same period. Some 18 000 tons of paper products (mainly paper rolls) was dispatched to the Western Cape during this period as well.
http://www.kzntransport.gov.za/public_trans/freight_databank/kzn/rail/Other_lines/index.html
Isithebe Industrual Township (near Mandini)
This is aother former ‘border’ industrial development area, located about 10 km north of Mandini on the North Coast line. It was developed by the KwaZulu Finance & Development Corporation and rail lines were provided in the area. While these are largely intact, there has been little rail traffic in recent times. Nevertheless, a thorough evaluation of a future rail potential should be undertaken before any of the lines are removed.
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Mandini:(106 km from Durban on the Durban – Empangeni – Golela line)
The large paper mill here received over 300 000 tons of hardwood and softwood from various originating points countrywide during 2005 – 2006. Over 200 000 tons of coal was received during the same period. Some 18 000 tons of paper products (mainly paper rolls) was dispatched to the Western Cape during this period as well.
http://www.kzntransport.gov.za/public_trans/freight_databank/kzn/rail/Other_lines/index.html
Isithebe Industrual Township (near Mandini)
This is aother former ‘border’ industrial development area, located about 10 km north of Mandini on the North Coast line. It was developed by the KwaZulu Finance & Development Corporation and rail lines were provided in the area. While these are largely intact, there has been little rail traffic in recent times. Nevertheless, a thorough evaluation of a future rail potential should be undertaken before any of the lines are removed.
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Mamathwane (B 10)
Name: Mamathwane
Mamathwane, Northern Cape, South Africa.
The closest regional town is Kuruman, on the N14 to Upington.
There are very small settlements in the area surrounding Hotazel with names such as Witloop, Black Rock, Sonstraal, Mamathwane, Sutton, Vlermuisvlakte, Wincanton, Dibeng, Tsineng.
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MSII recently completed the design and construction supervision of a 5 km electrified and signalled private siding for United Manganese of Kalahari near Hotazel in the Northern Cape.
The siding, which connects to the Transnet Freight Rail mainline near Mamathwane Station, was designed for rapid loading of 104 wagon trains, and can accommodate up to three trains on the siding at a time. The siding, in the form of a balloon, minimises train loading time and shunting movements since trains enter the siding, load manganese, undergo wagon examination and depart the siding in the same direction without any uncoupling of wagons being necessary. The permitted turnaround time for the whole operation on the siding is 12 hours, which is made possible by loading the trains with a rapid loadout silo with a loading rate of 2000 tons per hour and capacity of 4000 tons
Where to stay:
Mamathwane, Northern Cape, South Africa.
The closest regional town is Kuruman, on the N14 to Upington.
There are very small settlements in the area surrounding Hotazel with names such as Witloop, Black Rock, Sonstraal, Mamathwane, Sutton, Vlermuisvlakte, Wincanton, Dibeng, Tsineng.
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Date:
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Other interesting info:
MSII recently completed the design and construction supervision of a 5 km electrified and signalled private siding for United Manganese of Kalahari near Hotazel in the Northern Cape.
The siding, which connects to the Transnet Freight Rail mainline near Mamathwane Station, was designed for rapid loading of 104 wagon trains, and can accommodate up to three trains on the siding at a time. The siding, in the form of a balloon, minimises train loading time and shunting movements since trains enter the siding, load manganese, undergo wagon examination and depart the siding in the same direction without any uncoupling of wagons being necessary. The permitted turnaround time for the whole operation on the siding is 12 hours, which is made possible by loading the trains with a rapid loadout silo with a loading rate of 2000 tons per hour and capacity of 4000 tons
Where to stay:
Malvern (M 13)
Name: Malvern
Malvern, some five kilometres east of the city centre. The suburb has its own slogan: "The village suburb for families where neighbours are side-by-side friends".
One of the city's oldest suburbs, it is an example to all Johannesburgers on how to care for neighbours, and how to care for your surrounds so that everyone benefits, and everyone becomes "side-by-side friends". And it's clear that being neighbourly is partly a consequence of low wire fences and gates, a feature that is prominent in the suburb but long gone from other suburbs.
Read more: http://www.joburg.org.za/content/view/914/#ixzz0gWReRyti
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Malvern, some five kilometres east of the city centre. The suburb has its own slogan: "The village suburb for families where neighbours are side-by-side friends".
One of the city's oldest suburbs, it is an example to all Johannesburgers on how to care for neighbours, and how to care for your surrounds so that everyone benefits, and everyone becomes "side-by-side friends". And it's clear that being neighbourly is partly a consequence of low wire fences and gates, a feature that is prominent in the suburb but long gone from other suburbs.
Read more: http://www.joburg.org.za/content/view/914/#ixzz0gWReRyti
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Malmesbury (B 15)
Name: Malmesbury
Malmesbury is the largest town in the Swartland and is about 65km north of Cape Town. It is especially known for its grain and wine cultivation as well as sheep and poultry farming. The town originally developed around a tepid sulphur spring and the first farms were allocated in 1703. The area was first known as "Het Zwartland" (Black Land) apparently because of the typical rhinoceros bush, which has a black appearance during a certain time of the year. When the fifth Dutch Reformed congregation in the Cape was established here, it became known as Zwartlands-kerk but was renamed Malmesbury in 1829 by the Cape governor Sir Lowry Cole in honour of his father-in-law Sir James Harris, First Earl of Malmesbury. The town acquired municipal status in 1860.
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Information:
Swartland Tourism
1 Church Street
P.O. Box 591
Malmesbury
7299
Malmesbury is the largest town in the Swartland and is about 65km north of Cape Town. It is especially known for its grain and wine cultivation as well as sheep and poultry farming. The town originally developed around a tepid sulphur spring and the first farms were allocated in 1703. The area was first known as "Het Zwartland" (Black Land) apparently because of the typical rhinoceros bush, which has a black appearance during a certain time of the year. When the fifth Dutch Reformed congregation in the Cape was established here, it became known as Zwartlands-kerk but was renamed Malmesbury in 1829 by the Cape governor Sir Lowry Cole in honour of his father-in-law Sir James Harris, First Earl of Malmesbury. The town acquired municipal status in 1860.
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Information:
Swartland Tourism
1 Church Street
P.O. Box 591
Malmesbury
7299
Malelane (L 8)
Name: Malelane
Malelane is a small town in Mpumalanga near to the Kruger National Park
The town of Malelane got its name from either the Swazi word, "emlalani" which means "place of the lala palms", or was named after a Swazi tribe which meant "guardians" - of the ford in the Crocodile River. The spelling of "Malalane " is also sometimes used.
The farm Malelane was originally owned by "Mkonto" Elphick who sold it after the death of his wife, Rosa Louisa, to Andrews of Barberton. Andrews then sold the farm to Allan Francis Dowdle in 1940. Not interested in farming the land, Dowdle, a businessman from Johannesburg, divided it into 50 acre plots and in 1943 advertised the plots at £1 000 each.
More Info http://www.mpumalangahappenings.co.za/malelane_komatipoort_homepage.htm
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http://www.mpumalangahappenings.co.za/malelane_komatipoort_homepage.htm
Near the station at Malelane were three shops, one of which was owned by Minty and Sons. The station building in Malelane housed the post office. There were a few English speaking and Portuguese farmers. One of the earliest farmers to buy ground south of Malelane was James Henry Martins who farmed cattle on the farm Minnehaha. He built a stone house on the mountain because he was very afriad of contracting Malaria, which was (and still is) rife in this area of Mpumalanga. The stone was produced from a quarry on the farm and the wooden door and window frames were made from local timber by a builder from Wales and a cabinet maker from England. During the war years he accommodated refugees in the cellar of the house. He was known by the Swazi as "Mkulumazonke", which means, "he who can speak of everything"
Dowdle sold plots with water rights.Water for irrigation would be brought from the Spago dam on the farm Spago, to supply the plot owners. A canal was constructed from the dam by Dowdle, but owing to financial problems this was never completed. However, the plot owners became angry because they had no water. Barry de Villiers was one of these, and although he harassed Dowdle for water, he received no joy. Dowdle continued to sell the plots with the right to a water supply, even though he was unable to supply it.Barry had two options, either to pump water himself as his plots were close to the Crocodile River, or to develop an irrigation scheme which would benefit the community as a whole.
Eventually, Dowdle was persuaded to pay for Alan Andrews' old steam boiler next to the river and Barry supplied the equipment. The canal was made just south of the national road up to the station. Barry was the first plot owner next to the canal and those on the upper part of the canal were supplied by means of an intermediate pump. This eventually led to the establishment of the Malelane Irrigation Board in 1955. On another portion of the farm Malelane, Dowdle planned a town in the form of a wagon wheel which was surveyed in 1944. The plan was approved in 1945 and he then applied for the establishment of the town. Dowdle, sadly, was declared insolvent and all his assets were sold by public auction. Hr left Malelane and lived with family in Sabie. He died in Johannesburg in 1947.
The first and only 'street' - Stasieweg (Station Road) - in the town was also the entry road from the national road to the station. One of the 'establishment stipulations' for the tarring of this road by the state, was that water be provided to the houses along 'Stasieweg' as well as to at least three further points convenient to the residents of the town. Water was obtained from a borehole and pumped to a reservoir. In order to obtain this service, stands were bought along 'Stasieweg". Home-owners had to see to their own sewerage and rubbish removal. Nico Horn established the first electricity scheme for the town in the Malelane Garage . A 75kW generator supplied electricity daily from 07:00 to 23:00 to homes, shops, a butchery and garage. This scheme continued until Eskom began to supply power to Malelane in 1962. As there was no community hall in existence for church services, and other activities, these were held in the show room of the Malelane Garage. Cornelius Weyers donated the first £30 towards the building of the hall. Rob Ferreira, as representative of Malelane Development Company (Pty) Ltd., donated the stand for the building, through the negotiation and support of Mrs Lala de Villiers.
Until the 1940's there was no control over malaria, and houses had to be sprayed with insecticide during the summer months to eradicate mosquitoes. A clinic was a necessity because of the large labour force for farming in and around Malelane.A Clinic was founded at Malelane and was originally under control of the Shongwe hospital. Later they could no longer assist financially, so the clinic functioned independently but eventually fell into disuse. Because a clinic was an absolute necessity, the Community Development Association, assisted by John Roberts and the Malelane Farmers Association, obtained a suitable portion of land from Malelane Estates, free of charge, for the establishment of a clinic. During 1991 this clinic, known as Malelane Estates Clinic, was declared open by the Mayor, Dr Willem Bekker.
The Post Office was built in 1952 during the first ten years of the town's existence , and the school in 1955. Other than that, until 1960 the only development which took place was the establishment of a few shops around the Rotunda Circle, a café, Catholic Church, with Father Francis Morscher as the first Priest, Police Station, which was transferred from Kaalrug and a few houses. The N G Church and manse were erected in 1961, with Rev Lodewyk de Clercq as the first Minister.
The Sugar Industry, which was established in 1965, had a great impact on the economy of Malelane. An aerial photograph taken in 1964 shows that there were only 23 buildings or structures in and around the town, including two banks, two filling stations, two shops, a hotel, and four churches. There were no houses in Malelane to buy or to rent and TSB ( Transvaal Suiker Beperk)had to undertake the building of 70 homes in the town. Facilities for sport and recreation had to be made available. The factory's personnel were housed close to the mill in its own little town known as Mhlathi Kop.
During the 1980's Malelane developed rapidly as the sugar mill expanded its activities. In 1985 a new rest camp 'Berg en Dal' was opened in the Kruger National Park, as well as the Malelane Lodge, in 1988, on the banks of the Crocodile River.,This brought a large number of tourists to the area.The opening of a modern airport, 6 km east of Malelane by TSB at the beginning of 1991, was a further development in the area. In addition to the Malelane Mill and its associated activities, Malelane also boasts a citrus co-operative and fruit juice factory located in the industrial area adjacent to the railway line in the northern part of town
Where to stay:
As one of the smallest camps in the Kruger National Park, Malelane Camp is an ideal African escape and offers guests privacy and seclusion.
accommodation
location
activities
Accommodation for maximum of 19 people
No day visitors are allowed
Several caravan and camping sites are available
Guided bushwalks are available
Malelane Camp is one of several caravan / camping sites in the Kruger National Park, each of which offers a different variety of activities and attractions while you are camping in Kruger National Park.
The facilities, while excellent, are generally of a similar type. i.e a maximum of 6 persons, one caravan with a side tent and one vehicle, or one tent and one vehicle, or one autovilla, or one motorized caravan is permitted per site for camping in Kruger National Park.
Malelane Camp accommodates a maximum of 19 persons. No day visitors are allowed, therefore resident guests can enjoy the privacy and intimacy offered by this camp.
Witness the spectacular beauty of the rising morning sun illuminating the sky during morning drives, and the seemingly sudden awakening of the bush with the shrill burst of bird song and the canter of animals to waterholes.
Night drives commence during the twilight hours of the day, before the park is steeped into total darkness. Armed with spotlights, the transportation guides identify elements in the environment and seek to find the nocturnal animals. The open vehicles normally stop at a waterhole to allow you to stretch your legs and to enjoy sundowners and snacks.
In order to enjoy the game drive experience, guests are advised to wear a weatherproof jacket and a cap. Binoculars and cameras are a must for camping in Kruger National Park.
Game walks allow you to experience the wilderness at close quarters. Whilst on walks, you can witness the cocking of Rhino's ears and their pawing of the ground on smelling the presence of 'intruders' on their turf, as well as the flight of Zebras and Buck when their safety space is compromised. Trained field guides take groups of up to 8 people out into the bush for a few hours to learn and observe fascinating facts about the African bush.
Accompanied by two armed and accredited field guides, the behaviour of Africa's rich animal life takes on a new meaning due to the guides' identification and interpretation of animal features, analysing spoor prints and droppings, and the vegetation throughout the duration of the walk.
There are also braai (barbecue) facilities, as well as open parking. The nearest shop to Malelane Camp is at Berg-en-Dal Restcamp 9 kilometres (6 miles) away, which also has a popular internet cafe. Malelane Camp is situated 3 kilometres (1.8 miles) from the Malelane Gate on the Berg-en-dal Road (S110) and is administered from Malelane Gate.
http://www.krugerpark.co.za/Kruger_National_Park_Satellite_Camps-travel/malelane-camp.html
Malelane is a small town in Mpumalanga near to the Kruger National Park
The town of Malelane got its name from either the Swazi word, "emlalani" which means "place of the lala palms", or was named after a Swazi tribe which meant "guardians" - of the ford in the Crocodile River. The spelling of "Malalane " is also sometimes used.
The farm Malelane was originally owned by "Mkonto" Elphick who sold it after the death of his wife, Rosa Louisa, to Andrews of Barberton. Andrews then sold the farm to Allan Francis Dowdle in 1940. Not interested in farming the land, Dowdle, a businessman from Johannesburg, divided it into 50 acre plots and in 1943 advertised the plots at £1 000 each.
More Info http://www.mpumalangahappenings.co.za/malelane_komatipoort_homepage.htm
Google count:
Date:
Historic fact:
Other interesting info:
http://www.mpumalangahappenings.co.za/malelane_komatipoort_homepage.htm
Near the station at Malelane were three shops, one of which was owned by Minty and Sons. The station building in Malelane housed the post office. There were a few English speaking and Portuguese farmers. One of the earliest farmers to buy ground south of Malelane was James Henry Martins who farmed cattle on the farm Minnehaha. He built a stone house on the mountain because he was very afriad of contracting Malaria, which was (and still is) rife in this area of Mpumalanga. The stone was produced from a quarry on the farm and the wooden door and window frames were made from local timber by a builder from Wales and a cabinet maker from England. During the war years he accommodated refugees in the cellar of the house. He was known by the Swazi as "Mkulumazonke", which means, "he who can speak of everything"
Dowdle sold plots with water rights.Water for irrigation would be brought from the Spago dam on the farm Spago, to supply the plot owners. A canal was constructed from the dam by Dowdle, but owing to financial problems this was never completed. However, the plot owners became angry because they had no water. Barry de Villiers was one of these, and although he harassed Dowdle for water, he received no joy. Dowdle continued to sell the plots with the right to a water supply, even though he was unable to supply it.Barry had two options, either to pump water himself as his plots were close to the Crocodile River, or to develop an irrigation scheme which would benefit the community as a whole.
Eventually, Dowdle was persuaded to pay for Alan Andrews' old steam boiler next to the river and Barry supplied the equipment. The canal was made just south of the national road up to the station. Barry was the first plot owner next to the canal and those on the upper part of the canal were supplied by means of an intermediate pump. This eventually led to the establishment of the Malelane Irrigation Board in 1955. On another portion of the farm Malelane, Dowdle planned a town in the form of a wagon wheel which was surveyed in 1944. The plan was approved in 1945 and he then applied for the establishment of the town. Dowdle, sadly, was declared insolvent and all his assets were sold by public auction. Hr left Malelane and lived with family in Sabie. He died in Johannesburg in 1947.
The first and only 'street' - Stasieweg (Station Road) - in the town was also the entry road from the national road to the station. One of the 'establishment stipulations' for the tarring of this road by the state, was that water be provided to the houses along 'Stasieweg' as well as to at least three further points convenient to the residents of the town. Water was obtained from a borehole and pumped to a reservoir. In order to obtain this service, stands were bought along 'Stasieweg". Home-owners had to see to their own sewerage and rubbish removal. Nico Horn established the first electricity scheme for the town in the Malelane Garage . A 75kW generator supplied electricity daily from 07:00 to 23:00 to homes, shops, a butchery and garage. This scheme continued until Eskom began to supply power to Malelane in 1962. As there was no community hall in existence for church services, and other activities, these were held in the show room of the Malelane Garage. Cornelius Weyers donated the first £30 towards the building of the hall. Rob Ferreira, as representative of Malelane Development Company (Pty) Ltd., donated the stand for the building, through the negotiation and support of Mrs Lala de Villiers.
Until the 1940's there was no control over malaria, and houses had to be sprayed with insecticide during the summer months to eradicate mosquitoes. A clinic was a necessity because of the large labour force for farming in and around Malelane.A Clinic was founded at Malelane and was originally under control of the Shongwe hospital. Later they could no longer assist financially, so the clinic functioned independently but eventually fell into disuse. Because a clinic was an absolute necessity, the Community Development Association, assisted by John Roberts and the Malelane Farmers Association, obtained a suitable portion of land from Malelane Estates, free of charge, for the establishment of a clinic. During 1991 this clinic, known as Malelane Estates Clinic, was declared open by the Mayor, Dr Willem Bekker.
The Post Office was built in 1952 during the first ten years of the town's existence , and the school in 1955. Other than that, until 1960 the only development which took place was the establishment of a few shops around the Rotunda Circle, a café, Catholic Church, with Father Francis Morscher as the first Priest, Police Station, which was transferred from Kaalrug and a few houses. The N G Church and manse were erected in 1961, with Rev Lodewyk de Clercq as the first Minister.
The Sugar Industry, which was established in 1965, had a great impact on the economy of Malelane. An aerial photograph taken in 1964 shows that there were only 23 buildings or structures in and around the town, including two banks, two filling stations, two shops, a hotel, and four churches. There were no houses in Malelane to buy or to rent and TSB ( Transvaal Suiker Beperk)had to undertake the building of 70 homes in the town. Facilities for sport and recreation had to be made available. The factory's personnel were housed close to the mill in its own little town known as Mhlathi Kop.
During the 1980's Malelane developed rapidly as the sugar mill expanded its activities. In 1985 a new rest camp 'Berg en Dal' was opened in the Kruger National Park, as well as the Malelane Lodge, in 1988, on the banks of the Crocodile River.,This brought a large number of tourists to the area.The opening of a modern airport, 6 km east of Malelane by TSB at the beginning of 1991, was a further development in the area. In addition to the Malelane Mill and its associated activities, Malelane also boasts a citrus co-operative and fruit juice factory located in the industrial area adjacent to the railway line in the northern part of town
Where to stay:
As one of the smallest camps in the Kruger National Park, Malelane Camp is an ideal African escape and offers guests privacy and seclusion.
accommodation
location
activities
Accommodation for maximum of 19 people
No day visitors are allowed
Several caravan and camping sites are available
Guided bushwalks are available
Malelane Camp is one of several caravan / camping sites in the Kruger National Park, each of which offers a different variety of activities and attractions while you are camping in Kruger National Park.
The facilities, while excellent, are generally of a similar type. i.e a maximum of 6 persons, one caravan with a side tent and one vehicle, or one tent and one vehicle, or one autovilla, or one motorized caravan is permitted per site for camping in Kruger National Park.
Malelane Camp accommodates a maximum of 19 persons. No day visitors are allowed, therefore resident guests can enjoy the privacy and intimacy offered by this camp.
Witness the spectacular beauty of the rising morning sun illuminating the sky during morning drives, and the seemingly sudden awakening of the bush with the shrill burst of bird song and the canter of animals to waterholes.
Night drives commence during the twilight hours of the day, before the park is steeped into total darkness. Armed with spotlights, the transportation guides identify elements in the environment and seek to find the nocturnal animals. The open vehicles normally stop at a waterhole to allow you to stretch your legs and to enjoy sundowners and snacks.
In order to enjoy the game drive experience, guests are advised to wear a weatherproof jacket and a cap. Binoculars and cameras are a must for camping in Kruger National Park.
Game walks allow you to experience the wilderness at close quarters. Whilst on walks, you can witness the cocking of Rhino's ears and their pawing of the ground on smelling the presence of 'intruders' on their turf, as well as the flight of Zebras and Buck when their safety space is compromised. Trained field guides take groups of up to 8 people out into the bush for a few hours to learn and observe fascinating facts about the African bush.
Accompanied by two armed and accredited field guides, the behaviour of Africa's rich animal life takes on a new meaning due to the guides' identification and interpretation of animal features, analysing spoor prints and droppings, and the vegetation throughout the duration of the walk.
There are also braai (barbecue) facilities, as well as open parking. The nearest shop to Malelane Camp is at Berg-en-Dal Restcamp 9 kilometres (6 miles) away, which also has a popular internet cafe. Malelane Camp is situated 3 kilometres (1.8 miles) from the Malelane Gate on the Berg-en-dal Road (S110) and is administered from Malelane Gate.
http://www.krugerpark.co.za/Kruger_National_Park_Satellite_Camps-travel/malelane-camp.html
Makwassie (D 10)
Name: Makwassie
Makwassie, a village in the North-west Province, South Africa
Makwassie is a peaceful safe rural town with almost no insidents of crime; 12km from bigger town Wolmaransstad, 25km from Leeudoringstad and only 85km from the rapid developing city Klerksdorp in the North West Province.
More interesting info: Makwassie
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Makwassie
South of Wolmaransstad and named after the nearby Makwassie River, this town is a centre for milk, maize and groundnut production. The scenic hills which surround the town are frequented by hikers and birders.
Where to stay:
Makwassie, a village in the North-west Province, South Africa
Makwassie is a peaceful safe rural town with almost no insidents of crime; 12km from bigger town Wolmaransstad, 25km from Leeudoringstad and only 85km from the rapid developing city Klerksdorp in the North West Province.
More interesting info: Makwassie
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Makwassie
South of Wolmaransstad and named after the nearby Makwassie River, this town is a centre for milk, maize and groundnut production. The scenic hills which surround the town are frequented by hikers and birders.
Where to stay:
Makokskraal (D 9)
Name: Makokskraal
Makokwe Family (R/E of Ptn 25 & Ptn 30 of Makokskraal 203 IP)
(Dr K K Kaunda District)
Vegetables
Makokskraal: a town in North-West, South Africa :: View in Google Earth
Nearest places to Makokskraal
Ventersdorp (17.4 Km)
Coligny (31.6 Km)
GaMogopa (31.7 Km)
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Makokwe Family (R/E of Ptn 25 & Ptn 30 of Makokskraal 203 IP)
(Dr K K Kaunda District)
Vegetables
Makokskraal: a town in North-West, South Africa :: View in Google Earth
Nearest places to Makokskraal
Ventersdorp (17.4 Km)
Coligny (31.6 Km)
GaMogopa (31.7 Km)
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Monday, February 22, 2010
Maitland (A 16)
Name: Maitland
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http://www.kehls.co.za/about.htm
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http://www.kehls.co.za/about.htm
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Mahalapye (E 6)
Name: Mahalapye
Mahalapye is a town located in the Central District of Botswana. The town has about 39,000 inhabitants[citation needed] and is situated along the main road between the capital Gaborone and the second largest city Francistown. Mahalapye has a bus station, a railwaystation, a couple of hotels and a market area with many shops and fastfood restaurants. It also has several petrol stations, some open 24/7. Being situated on the edge of the Kalahari desert it is quite dry, and the local waterways are dry except during the rainy season. In recent times, it has become a convenient stop-over town for travellers travelling to and from Gaborone.
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Mahalapye is a town located in the Central District of Botswana. The town has about 39,000 inhabitants[citation needed] and is situated along the main road between the capital Gaborone and the second largest city Francistown. Mahalapye has a bus station, a railwaystation, a couple of hotels and a market area with many shops and fastfood restaurants. It also has several petrol stations, some open 24/7. Being situated on the edge of the Kalahari desert it is quite dry, and the local waterways are dry except during the rainy season. In recent times, it has become a convenient stop-over town for travellers travelling to and from Gaborone.
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Magude (M 7)
Name: Magude
Magude is a town in Maputo Province in southern Mozambique. It is the seat of Magude District.
The town lies on a railway junction on the southern system.
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Magude is a town in Maputo Province in southern Mozambique. It is the seat of Magude District.
The town lies on a railway junction on the southern system.
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Sunday, February 21, 2010
Magogong (C10)
Name: Magogong
Magogong is a town situated on the Vaalharts-irrigation scheme in the North West Province of South Africa, between the towns Hartswater and Taung.
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Magogong is a town situated on the Vaalharts-irrigation scheme in the North West Province of South Africa, between the towns Hartswater and Taung.
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Magaliesburg (E 8)
Name: Magaliesberg (spelt with an "e" on map).
Travel to the beautiful Magaliesburg countryside on a classic old steam train, enjoy a leisurely lunch, explore the village with its arts and crafts shops, and come back to the big city behind steam. (Much to the surprise and the envy of the commuters we usually pass!) The train usually leaves Maraisburg Station at about 8:45am and arrives at Magaliesburg Village at about 10:30am. The Maraisburg station has safe, guarded parking for your vehicle. The train will stop at platform 1 or 2, but these tracks are on either side of a single platform, so you won't have to scramble across tracks or run across a bridge to board the train. We usually leave Magaliesburg at about 2:30pm and we return home at Maraisburg about 4:30pm. We will get you home in time for supper!
Maraisburg
Roodepoort
1725
Phone 011-956-6409
Email bookings@reefsteamers.co.za
Website http://www.reefsteamers.co.za/
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Travel to the beautiful Magaliesburg countryside on a classic old steam train, enjoy a leisurely lunch, explore the village with its arts and crafts shops, and come back to the big city behind steam. (Much to the surprise and the envy of the commuters we usually pass!) The train usually leaves Maraisburg Station at about 8:45am and arrives at Magaliesburg Village at about 10:30am. The Maraisburg station has safe, guarded parking for your vehicle. The train will stop at platform 1 or 2, but these tracks are on either side of a single platform, so you won't have to scramble across tracks or run across a bridge to board the train. We usually leave Magaliesburg at about 2:30pm and we return home at Maraisburg about 4:30pm. We will get you home in time for supper!
Maraisburg
Roodepoort
1725
Phone 011-956-6409
Email bookings@reefsteamers.co.za
Website http://www.reefsteamers.co.za/
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Mafikeng (D 8)
Name: Mafikeng
Mafikeng (previously Mafeking), "The City of Goodwill",[1] is the capital of the North-West Province of South Africa. Located on South Africa's border with Botswana, it is 1,400 km (870 mi) northeast of Cape Town and 260 km (160 mi) west of Johannesburg. In 2007, Mafikeng was reported to have a population of 250,000.
Mafikeng was originally headquarters of the Barolong people. The town was founded in the 1880s by British mercenaries granted land by a Barolong chief. The settlement was named Mafikeng, a Setswana name meaning "place of stones". Later British settlers spelled the name Mafeking. It was from Pitsani Pothlugo (or Potlogo), 24 miles (39 km) north of Mafeking, that the Jameson Raid started, on December 29, 1895.
On the outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899, the town was besieged. The Siege of Mafeking lasted 217 days from October 1899 to May 1900, and turned Robert Baden-Powell into a national hero. In September 1904, Lord Roberts unveiled an obelisk at Mafeking bearing the names of those who fell in defence of the town. In all, 212 people were killed during the siege, with more than 600 wounded. Boer losses were significantly higher.
Mafikeng served as capital of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, even though it was outside the protectorate's borders, from 1894 until 1965, when Gaborone was made the capital of what was to become Botswana.
Mafeking briefly served as capital of the pre-independence Bantustan of Bophuthatswana in the 1970s before the adjoining town of Mmabatho was established as capital. In 1980[citation needed] the spelling Mafikeng was restored and following the end of apartheid in 1994, Mafikeng and Mmabatho were merged and made capital of the new North-West Province.
(Wikipedia)
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Mafikeng (previously Mafeking), "The City of Goodwill",[1] is the capital of the North-West Province of South Africa. Located on South Africa's border with Botswana, it is 1,400 km (870 mi) northeast of Cape Town and 260 km (160 mi) west of Johannesburg. In 2007, Mafikeng was reported to have a population of 250,000.
Mafikeng was originally headquarters of the Barolong people. The town was founded in the 1880s by British mercenaries granted land by a Barolong chief. The settlement was named Mafikeng, a Setswana name meaning "place of stones". Later British settlers spelled the name Mafeking. It was from Pitsani Pothlugo (or Potlogo), 24 miles (39 km) north of Mafeking, that the Jameson Raid started, on December 29, 1895.
On the outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899, the town was besieged. The Siege of Mafeking lasted 217 days from October 1899 to May 1900, and turned Robert Baden-Powell into a national hero. In September 1904, Lord Roberts unveiled an obelisk at Mafeking bearing the names of those who fell in defence of the town. In all, 212 people were killed during the siege, with more than 600 wounded. Boer losses were significantly higher.
Mafikeng served as capital of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, even though it was outside the protectorate's borders, from 1894 until 1965, when Gaborone was made the capital of what was to become Botswana.
Mafeking briefly served as capital of the pre-independence Bantustan of Bophuthatswana in the 1970s before the adjoining town of Mmabatho was established as capital. In 1980[citation needed] the spelling Mafikeng was restored and following the end of apartheid in 1994, Mafikeng and Mmabatho were merged and made capital of the new North-West Province.
(Wikipedia)
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Madonela (K 14)
Name: Madonela
The story of relaying track:
http://www.futurenet.co.za/pcngr/ncalumadonela.htm
Thanks to Total Ixopo the project can continue. The project was put on hold when Spoornet suddenly closed the Banana Express - 35 people were dismissed or lost contracts. Workers departing from Ncalu station
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The story of relaying track:
http://www.futurenet.co.za/pcngr/ncalumadonela.htm
Thanks to Total Ixopo the project can continue. The project was put on hold when Spoornet suddenly closed the Banana Express - 35 people were dismissed or lost contracts. Workers departing from Ncalu station
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Madibogo (C 9)
Name: Madibogo
(Area: Kgwedimopitlo)
Latitude : -26 25' 00'' Longitude : 25 12' 00''
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placenamessa.blogspot.com/ - Similar
www.mbendi.com/a_sndmsg/place_view.asp?pid=4034009 - Cached
zeropages.info/?cp=451&lp=10064&a=l&lang=10&cplv...
Browse Small Towns in South Africa
www.blogabond.com/LocationBrowse.aspx?countryCode=SF...1 - Similar
palm.parashara.com/Download/Atlas/Pl_Regional/.../South%20Africa.pdb
Cities of South Africa
www.newstrackindia.com/information/.../CitiesofSouth%20Africa.htm -
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2.6 Km Railway Station Rabatho
11.2 Km Railway Station Wirsing
18.7 Km Railway Station Doornbult
24.4 Km Railway Station Kameel
37.1 Km Railway Station Curnow
38.9 Km Railway Station Mareetsane
39.7 Km Service Station Samjan Onderdele
39.8 Km Service Station (Fuel Only) B & R Motors
39.9 Km Railway Station Delareyville
41.3 Km Railway Station Mnyani
43.8 Km Railway Station Barberspan
48.5 Km Railway Station Devondale
51.7 Km Railway Station Bossies
54.5 Km Railway Station Vryhof
57.4 Km Railway Station Europafric
57.8 Km Railway Station Madiba
59.0 Km Railway Station Migdol
62.3 Km Railway Station Vryburg
62.3 Km Railway Station Sannieshof
62.6 Km Service Station (Fuel Only) Noord-Wes Auto Sentrum
(Area: Kgwedimopitlo)
Latitude : -26 25' 00'' Longitude : 25 12' 00''
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placenamessa.blogspot.com/ - Similar
www.mbendi.com/a_sndmsg/place_view.asp?pid=4034009 - Cached
zeropages.info/?cp=451&lp=10064&a=l&lang=10&cplv...
Browse Small Towns in South Africa
www.blogabond.com/LocationBrowse.aspx?countryCode=SF...1 - Similar
palm.parashara.com/Download/Atlas/Pl_Regional/.../South%20Africa.pdb
Cities of South Africa
www.newstrackindia.com/information/.../CitiesofSouth%20Africa.htm -
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2.6 Km Railway Station Rabatho
11.2 Km Railway Station Wirsing
18.7 Km Railway Station Doornbult
24.4 Km Railway Station Kameel
37.1 Km Railway Station Curnow
38.9 Km Railway Station Mareetsane
39.7 Km Service Station Samjan Onderdele
39.8 Km Service Station (Fuel Only) B & R Motors
39.9 Km Railway Station Delareyville
41.3 Km Railway Station Mnyani
43.8 Km Railway Station Barberspan
48.5 Km Railway Station Devondale
51.7 Km Railway Station Bossies
54.5 Km Railway Station Vryhof
57.4 Km Railway Station Europafric
57.8 Km Railway Station Madiba
59.0 Km Railway Station Migdol
62.3 Km Railway Station Vryburg
62.3 Km Railway Station Sannieshof
62.6 Km Service Station (Fuel Only) Noord-Wes Auto Sentrum
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Maclear (H 12)
Name: Maclear
First white people in the area
[a]. Portuguese. On 24th March, 1593 the Portuguese ship Sao Alberto, on it's way from Cochin, East India to Lisbon was wrecked on the East Coast of S. A. on the rocks near the mouth of the Mbashe River. The captain of the ship Nuno Pereira, the pilot Rodrigo Migueis, 125 Portuguese men and women and 160 slaves survived the accident. The next day they decided to walk toe Lourenco Marques, now Maputo, in Mozambique where there was a Portuguese settlement. Two Portuguese priests, one carrying a wooden cross, led the company. After 121 days of hardships and difficulty, 115 Portuguese and 65 slaves reached Maputo.
The route followed by them passed a few miles south of the present Maclear. According to all historical records they were the first Europeans ever to enter the area. A portrayal of this procession was painted by the San in a cave on the farm Ben Strachan in the Inxu Gorge ward of the present Maclear district. During 1895 this and adjoining farms were cut off from Maclear and incorporated into the Tsolo district. It is not known if the painting is today still visible and accessible.
[b]. Sir Thomas Maclear, His Majesty the King of England's Astronomer at the Cape Colony, while remeasuring and extending the arc of the meridian, arrived during November 1843 at the Nqanqaru River. See Why Maclear?
[c]. Dutch/Afrikaans Frontiers. Die Dutch/Afrikaans speaking frontiers of the Cape Colony were dissatisfied with the way they were treated by the British Government and they sent an expedition to the present Kwazulu Natal province of the RSA to investigate the possibility of leaving the Cape Colony and to settle there.
On 14th January, 1834 a party under leadership of Piet Uys left Grahamstown in fourteen ox wagons. On 30th January they passed Gatberg and spent the night of 31st January at Nqanqaru[Maclear]. Uys named the river the Mooi [pretty] River and up to date it is known under that name.
A member of the San painted one of these ox wagons under an overhanging rock on the farm Craigmore. With the permission of Mondi Paper Co. the spot can be visited.
[d]. English. The first white man to settle in the present Maclear district was the medical doctor and missionary Rev. William Murray. He was born on 15 July 1837 at Newdeer near Tillinamoult, New Pitsligo in the county Aberdeenshire in Scotland. He was the son of John and Isabella Murray., John was a shoemaker and farmer who rented a small plot on the banks of the Ugie River.
William started school in New Pitsligo and eventually became a medical doctor. He gave his heart to God when he was still very young and always dreamt to do missionary work in Dark Africa. He was a member of the Congregational Church of Scotland but after being qualified as doctor, studied for minister of the Church of Scotland. With the assistance of the London Missionary Society he was sent to the Cape Colony to do mission work under the Griquas.
William married Ann Elliott on 20 April 1861 and their first child Ann Isabella was born on 1 February 1862. On 27 July 1862 Dr. Murray, his wife and child left by steamer of the Union Line from Southhampton for the Cape. On 24 August they arrived at Port Elizabeth. Via Grahamstown and Fort Beaufort they traveled by ox wagon to Hackney in the Queenstown district. On the way in the Katberg they were caught in a snowstorm. Due to all the hardship they went through the Murray's' daughter Ann died the same night of their arrival at Hackney on 9 September and Mrs. Murray the following day. The death of his family was a heavy blow to this young man.
Griquas from Inxu Drift came by ox wagon to fetch Rev. Murray at Hackney. They arrived back at Inxu Drift on 8 March 1863. While standing on the banks of the Inxu River Murray became homesick and as the river, the mountains and vegetation reminded him of his birthplace he changed the name of his missionary to Ugie. He was the first white man to settle permanently in the area called Kapaailand at that stage.
In Scotland the name Ugie is pronounced as "Oogie". The name comes from the word "oorie" or "ougie" from the Vikings of Iceland and means to get cold, literally "to shiver of the cold". In isiXhosa it is pronounced as Dyoki.
http://www.maclear.co.za/AboutMaclear.htm
Google count:
Date:
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Other interesting info:
Why Maclear?
Question: Why was the name Nqanqaru Drift changed to Maclear?
Answer: As seen in the profile of Sir Thomas Maclear he remeasured and extended, between the years 1840 and 1847, the arc of the meridian as it was previously surveyed by N. L. de la Caille. He removed a long-standing discordance and provided a sound foundation for a trigonometrical survey of the Cape Colony.
In doing so he traveled during October/November 1843 to the furthest or utmost eastern point of the Cape Colony and even a bit further. He reached the Nqanqaru River during November. On a hill away from the western bank of the river he made a survey. He marked the spot with a steel pin and an inscription in wet cement. Such a point is called a merridor. He then turned back to Cape Town.
The British Colony called St. John's Territory was created on 14 July, 1873. Capt. J. R. Thomson was appointed as one of the assistant magistrates for the Gatberg district with his seat at Nqanqaru Drift. He was called from Grahamstown to Cape Town to be sworn in his new capacity.
While in Cape Town he met Sir Thomas Maclear. They had long discussions and even became friends. Sir Thomas informed him of his visit to Nqanqaru Drift and the observations he made. As soon as Thomson, after his arrival at Nqanqaru Drift, had time he set out to look for Sir Thomas's observation point. He found it and during another visit to Cape Town during 1877 he reported back to Sir Thomas. Thomson- not aware of the ship wrecked Portuguese and Dutch speaking frontier farmers- was convinced that Sir Thomas was the first white man to enter that area and that he should be honored as such. That was the reason why Thomson, after his return to Nqanqaru Drift after the Mpondomise rebellion asked the authorities to change the name to Maclear, in honor of Sir Thomas who died on 14 July 1879.
After the rebellion the Maclear district was surveyed 1882/86 and divided into farms disposed to loyal Griquas and white soldiers who fought on the British side. When surveying the farm Ranscombe the surveyor discovered the point from where Sir Thomas Maclear made his observations. He pointed it out to Mr. L. C. Cole, who was the magistrate at that time.
During 1927 the farm Ranscombe was subdivided. Mr. Robert Viedge became the owner of the subdivision on 19 June 1928. He called his new farm Merridor.
Sir Thomas Maclear was also the man who made the first complete survey of Table Mountain, overlooking the City of Cape Town. He planted a beacon on the highest point of the Eastern table of the mountain. Up to date this beacon is known as Maclear's Beacon.
Sir Thomas also loved an isolated beach near Cape Point on the Cape Peninsula. During the hot and dry summer months he often got up early on a Sunday morning and took his family by horse cart from the Observatory to this beach for a picnic. In course of time the beach became known as Maclear's Beach and the name lasts till to-day.
The main street of the town Elliot is called Maclear Road. There is also a Maclear Street in Lone Hill, Sandton, a suburb of the City of Johannesburg.
Near the Observatory in Cape Town several streets were named after Sir Thomas namely in the suburbs of Bishop's Court, Belhar, Edgemead and Ruyterwacht.
http://www.maclear.co.za/WhyMaclear.htm
Where to stay:
First white people in the area
[a]. Portuguese. On 24th March, 1593 the Portuguese ship Sao Alberto, on it's way from Cochin, East India to Lisbon was wrecked on the East Coast of S. A. on the rocks near the mouth of the Mbashe River. The captain of the ship Nuno Pereira, the pilot Rodrigo Migueis, 125 Portuguese men and women and 160 slaves survived the accident. The next day they decided to walk toe Lourenco Marques, now Maputo, in Mozambique where there was a Portuguese settlement. Two Portuguese priests, one carrying a wooden cross, led the company. After 121 days of hardships and difficulty, 115 Portuguese and 65 slaves reached Maputo.
The route followed by them passed a few miles south of the present Maclear. According to all historical records they were the first Europeans ever to enter the area. A portrayal of this procession was painted by the San in a cave on the farm Ben Strachan in the Inxu Gorge ward of the present Maclear district. During 1895 this and adjoining farms were cut off from Maclear and incorporated into the Tsolo district. It is not known if the painting is today still visible and accessible.
[b]. Sir Thomas Maclear, His Majesty the King of England's Astronomer at the Cape Colony, while remeasuring and extending the arc of the meridian, arrived during November 1843 at the Nqanqaru River. See Why Maclear?
[c]. Dutch/Afrikaans Frontiers. Die Dutch/Afrikaans speaking frontiers of the Cape Colony were dissatisfied with the way they were treated by the British Government and they sent an expedition to the present Kwazulu Natal province of the RSA to investigate the possibility of leaving the Cape Colony and to settle there.
On 14th January, 1834 a party under leadership of Piet Uys left Grahamstown in fourteen ox wagons. On 30th January they passed Gatberg and spent the night of 31st January at Nqanqaru[Maclear]. Uys named the river the Mooi [pretty] River and up to date it is known under that name.
A member of the San painted one of these ox wagons under an overhanging rock on the farm Craigmore. With the permission of Mondi Paper Co. the spot can be visited.
[d]. English. The first white man to settle in the present Maclear district was the medical doctor and missionary Rev. William Murray. He was born on 15 July 1837 at Newdeer near Tillinamoult, New Pitsligo in the county Aberdeenshire in Scotland. He was the son of John and Isabella Murray., John was a shoemaker and farmer who rented a small plot on the banks of the Ugie River.
William started school in New Pitsligo and eventually became a medical doctor. He gave his heart to God when he was still very young and always dreamt to do missionary work in Dark Africa. He was a member of the Congregational Church of Scotland but after being qualified as doctor, studied for minister of the Church of Scotland. With the assistance of the London Missionary Society he was sent to the Cape Colony to do mission work under the Griquas.
William married Ann Elliott on 20 April 1861 and their first child Ann Isabella was born on 1 February 1862. On 27 July 1862 Dr. Murray, his wife and child left by steamer of the Union Line from Southhampton for the Cape. On 24 August they arrived at Port Elizabeth. Via Grahamstown and Fort Beaufort they traveled by ox wagon to Hackney in the Queenstown district. On the way in the Katberg they were caught in a snowstorm. Due to all the hardship they went through the Murray's' daughter Ann died the same night of their arrival at Hackney on 9 September and Mrs. Murray the following day. The death of his family was a heavy blow to this young man.
Griquas from Inxu Drift came by ox wagon to fetch Rev. Murray at Hackney. They arrived back at Inxu Drift on 8 March 1863. While standing on the banks of the Inxu River Murray became homesick and as the river, the mountains and vegetation reminded him of his birthplace he changed the name of his missionary to Ugie. He was the first white man to settle permanently in the area called Kapaailand at that stage.
In Scotland the name Ugie is pronounced as "Oogie". The name comes from the word "oorie" or "ougie" from the Vikings of Iceland and means to get cold, literally "to shiver of the cold". In isiXhosa it is pronounced as Dyoki.
http://www.maclear.co.za/AboutMaclear.htm
Google count:
Date:
Historic fact:
Other interesting info:
Why Maclear?
Question: Why was the name Nqanqaru Drift changed to Maclear?
Answer: As seen in the profile of Sir Thomas Maclear he remeasured and extended, between the years 1840 and 1847, the arc of the meridian as it was previously surveyed by N. L. de la Caille. He removed a long-standing discordance and provided a sound foundation for a trigonometrical survey of the Cape Colony.
In doing so he traveled during October/November 1843 to the furthest or utmost eastern point of the Cape Colony and even a bit further. He reached the Nqanqaru River during November. On a hill away from the western bank of the river he made a survey. He marked the spot with a steel pin and an inscription in wet cement. Such a point is called a merridor. He then turned back to Cape Town.
The British Colony called St. John's Territory was created on 14 July, 1873. Capt. J. R. Thomson was appointed as one of the assistant magistrates for the Gatberg district with his seat at Nqanqaru Drift. He was called from Grahamstown to Cape Town to be sworn in his new capacity.
While in Cape Town he met Sir Thomas Maclear. They had long discussions and even became friends. Sir Thomas informed him of his visit to Nqanqaru Drift and the observations he made. As soon as Thomson, after his arrival at Nqanqaru Drift, had time he set out to look for Sir Thomas's observation point. He found it and during another visit to Cape Town during 1877 he reported back to Sir Thomas. Thomson- not aware of the ship wrecked Portuguese and Dutch speaking frontier farmers- was convinced that Sir Thomas was the first white man to enter that area and that he should be honored as such. That was the reason why Thomson, after his return to Nqanqaru Drift after the Mpondomise rebellion asked the authorities to change the name to Maclear, in honor of Sir Thomas who died on 14 July 1879.
After the rebellion the Maclear district was surveyed 1882/86 and divided into farms disposed to loyal Griquas and white soldiers who fought on the British side. When surveying the farm Ranscombe the surveyor discovered the point from where Sir Thomas Maclear made his observations. He pointed it out to Mr. L. C. Cole, who was the magistrate at that time.
During 1927 the farm Ranscombe was subdivided. Mr. Robert Viedge became the owner of the subdivision on 19 June 1928. He called his new farm Merridor.
Sir Thomas Maclear was also the man who made the first complete survey of Table Mountain, overlooking the City of Cape Town. He planted a beacon on the highest point of the Eastern table of the mountain. Up to date this beacon is known as Maclear's Beacon.
Sir Thomas also loved an isolated beach near Cape Point on the Cape Peninsula. During the hot and dry summer months he often got up early on a Sunday morning and took his family by horse cart from the Observatory to this beach for a picnic. In course of time the beach became known as Maclear's Beach and the name lasts till to-day.
The main street of the town Elliot is called Maclear Road. There is also a Maclear Street in Lone Hill, Sandton, a suburb of the City of Johannesburg.
Near the Observatory in Cape Town several streets were named after Sir Thomas namely in the suburbs of Bishop's Court, Belhar, Edgemead and Ruyterwacht.
http://www.maclear.co.za/WhyMaclear.htm
Where to stay:
Machipanda (J 3)
Name: Machipanda
Machipanda is a town in Mozambique near the border with Zimbabwe.
Machipanda Border Post (Zimbabwe, between Mutare and Manica).
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Machipanda is a town in Mozambique near the border with Zimbabwe.
Machipanda Border Post (Zimbabwe, between Mutare and Manica).
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Macheke (H 3)
Name: Macheke
The population of Macheke, Zimbabwe is 3642 according to the GeoNames geographical database.
Two more girls at Macheke Primary School have revealed that they were raped, bringing to eight the number of pupils raped by a school teacher or unidentified people so far as police investigations intensify.
The two pupils were allegedly raped last Tuesday by unknown assailants who sneaked into the school premises. (July 2005)
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The population of Macheke, Zimbabwe is 3642 according to the GeoNames geographical database.
Two more girls at Macheke Primary School have revealed that they were raped, bringing to eight the number of pupils raped by a school teacher or unidentified people so far as police investigations intensify.
The two pupils were allegedly raped last Tuesday by unknown assailants who sneaked into the school premises. (July 2005)
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Machava (M 8)
Name:Machava
Machava, a mainly residential town in the northwestern outskirts of Maputo, Mozambique.
Estádio da Machava is a multi-purpose stadium in Machava. It is used for football matches and can hold 45,000 spectators
Machava prison, a huge penitentiary complex built in the early 1950s for common criminals. With the beginning of the independence guerrilla warfare led by Frelimo in 1964, PIDE, the Portuguese dictatorship's political police, created a special section in the complex where it would keep political opponents and prisoners of war under custody.
After Mozambique's independence in 1975, the new government, led by marxist-orientated Frelimo, continued to use this section of the Machava penitentiary for political prisoners. Though most of its infrastructures, such as classrooms, an infirmary, a library, an open-air cinema and a chapel, quickly deteriorated and became useless, it continued to serve the same purpose of repressing any opposition to the new ruling power. Yet this time the detainees were so-called «reactionaries». SNASP (Serviço Nacional de Segurança Popular), a political police created by the new Mozambican government, commonly employed torture and other degrading forms of treatment, both as punishment and as a means to obtain «confessions».
The political section in the Machava complex was also used by Frelimo as a stopover for prisoners on their way to the so-called «campos de reeducação», places in uninhabited areas of Central and Northern Mozambique where they were supposed to become ideologically reeducated, but many would die of illness, starvation and exposure.
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Machava, a mainly residential town in the northwestern outskirts of Maputo, Mozambique.
Estádio da Machava is a multi-purpose stadium in Machava. It is used for football matches and can hold 45,000 spectators
Machava prison, a huge penitentiary complex built in the early 1950s for common criminals. With the beginning of the independence guerrilla warfare led by Frelimo in 1964, PIDE, the Portuguese dictatorship's political police, created a special section in the complex where it would keep political opponents and prisoners of war under custody.
After Mozambique's independence in 1975, the new government, led by marxist-orientated Frelimo, continued to use this section of the Machava penitentiary for political prisoners. Though most of its infrastructures, such as classrooms, an infirmary, a library, an open-air cinema and a chapel, quickly deteriorated and became useless, it continued to serve the same purpose of repressing any opposition to the new ruling power. Yet this time the detainees were so-called «reactionaries». SNASP (Serviço Nacional de Segurança Popular), a political police created by the new Mozambican government, commonly employed torture and other degrading forms of treatment, both as punishment and as a means to obtain «confessions».
The political section in the Machava complex was also used by Frelimo as a stopover for prisoners on their way to the so-called «campos de reeducação», places in uninhabited areas of Central and Northern Mozambique where they were supposed to become ideologically reeducated, but many would die of illness, starvation and exposure.
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Machadadorp (J 8)
Name: Machadadorp
Machadodorp was established on the farm "Geluk" (happiness) in 1894 and was named after Joachim Machado, the Portuguese engineer who first surveyed the railway route between Pretoria and Delagoa Bay. Today Machadodorp is known for its temperate climate and superb trout fishing waters.
The Elands River runs through the town and Machadodorp's natural sulphur is said to have healing properties. The town is a repository for numerous turn-of-the-century buildings.
http://www.highlandsmeander.co.za/machadodorp/directory_machadodorp.html
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Machadodorp was established on the farm "Geluk" (happiness) in 1894 and was named after Joachim Machado, the Portuguese engineer who first surveyed the railway route between Pretoria and Delagoa Bay. Today Machadodorp is known for its temperate climate and superb trout fishing waters.
The Elands River runs through the town and Machadodorp's natural sulphur is said to have healing properties. The town is a repository for numerous turn-of-the-century buildings.
http://www.highlandsmeander.co.za/machadodorp/directory_machadodorp.html
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Mabopane (G 6)
Name: Mabopane
Mabopane is situated in the Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, in the north of Gauteng. The town hosts the Morula Sun, and the Nooitgedacht dam is also nearby. [1] The Odi Stadium is in Mabopane.
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Mabopane is situated in the Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, in the north of Gauteng. The town hosts the Morula Sun, and the Nooitgedacht dam is also nearby. [1] The Odi Stadium is in Mabopane.
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Lynedoch (B 16)
Name: Lynedoch
Lynedoch is a small node that developed as a result of a railway station
and a road intersection. The Annandale Road and the R310 intersect at
the Lynedoch Station. A number of historical farms such as Spier,
Welmoed, Meerlust, Vergenoegd– Glen Eagles are within close proximity.
The former Drie Gewels hotel is located within this node.
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Lynedoch is a small node that developed as a result of a railway station
and a road intersection. The Annandale Road and the R310 intersect at
the Lynedoch Station. A number of historical farms such as Spier,
Welmoed, Meerlust, Vergenoegd– Glen Eagles are within close proximity.
The former Drie Gewels hotel is located within this node.
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Lynchfield (E 12)
Name: Lynchfield
Thomas John Lynch
Written by Administrator
Thursday, 22 February 2007
Thomas John Lynch was the eldest son of Catherine and Patrick Lynch of Springfield. He was born in Reddersburg on the 8th February 1866. The family travelled down to Grahamstown later that year for his baptism in St Patrick’s on 29 July 1866.1 Tom attended St Aiden’s College in Grahamstown but little else is known about his early years.
Tom joined his brothers on Commando during the Anglo Boer War and was also a despatch rider. In his statement supporting his father's claim for damages, Tom says:
The brief comment below about De Wet’s attack on the British would explain why they were smarting and took action against the Lynch family!
“Out on the veldt, Boer commandos were still skirmishing and attacking. At Sannah's Post, not far from Bloemfontein, three squadrons of British cavalry, two Royal Horse Artillery batteries and some infantry were guarding a large convoy of supplies when de Wet struck with 2,000 men and field guns. In a fast, savage fight, 19 British officers and 136 of their men were killed or wounded and 426 taken prisoner. Seven guns were lost and the whole of the convoy.”3
Mrs Swartz, wife of the current owner of Springfield, says she is able to point out shell holes on Springfield which were caused by Gen de Wet shelling the British forces after his Commando had occupied the waterworks at Sannah’s Post.
While is custody, as has been reported elsewhere, the farm house was looted. Three of the Lynch brothers later worked for the British at Remount Stations, but, as Patrick was ill, Tom and the others remained to farm Springfield. Tom, Jack and John Thomas seem to have buyers of wheat for a Mr Sonnenberg, who had a contract to supply the British forces. In one incident, 40 bags of their wheat were destroyed when the British burned down the mill and they submitted a claim for compensation. After a long time their claim was disallowed. It is interesting to note the animosity in the official comments of senior officers upon the claim documentation, which, once again, has its origin in British Intelligence. “I don’t think these people deserve any consideration. This man was a Boer dispatch rider like his brothers.” “On no occasion has he ever in the very slightest offered us assistance toward bringing the war to an end with information or by joining the F.G. (farm guard). Bad business character”4 So much for the Oath of Neutrality and its protection of burghers; it would seem that you were required to rat on your mates as well! This is probably early evidence of the British frustration with their inability to bring the war to a quick conclusion and which later resulted in Kitchener's scorched earth policy.
When Patrick Lynch of Springfield drew up his will in November 1909, shortly before his death, he instructed that the farm be subdivided. Springfield (1113 Morgen), which included the original Springfield homestead and outbuildings, the shop near the top dam, the top dam and the lands and garden at the homestead, was left to Tom Lynch.5 This was possibly fortuitous, for Tom was the only son to have retained possession of most of his inheritance until his death. There is a story in the family that the name of the farm was changed from Springfield to Lynchfield, apparently at the suggestion of Jan Smuts, but this is not borne out by the current title deeds. Possibly this originated from the fact that the nearby station is known as Lynchfield? In any event, Springfield became the haven for many of the Lynch clan who had fallen on hard times. My father would tell of the fact that there were 17 children in residence at Springfield when he was a child.
http://www.inrelation.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35&Itemid=28
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Thomas John Lynch
Written by Administrator
Thursday, 22 February 2007
Thomas John Lynch was the eldest son of Catherine and Patrick Lynch of Springfield. He was born in Reddersburg on the 8th February 1866. The family travelled down to Grahamstown later that year for his baptism in St Patrick’s on 29 July 1866.1 Tom attended St Aiden’s College in Grahamstown but little else is known about his early years.
Tom joined his brothers on Commando during the Anglo Boer War and was also a despatch rider. In his statement supporting his father's claim for damages, Tom says:
The brief comment below about De Wet’s attack on the British would explain why they were smarting and took action against the Lynch family!
“Out on the veldt, Boer commandos were still skirmishing and attacking. At Sannah's Post, not far from Bloemfontein, three squadrons of British cavalry, two Royal Horse Artillery batteries and some infantry were guarding a large convoy of supplies when de Wet struck with 2,000 men and field guns. In a fast, savage fight, 19 British officers and 136 of their men were killed or wounded and 426 taken prisoner. Seven guns were lost and the whole of the convoy.”3
Mrs Swartz, wife of the current owner of Springfield, says she is able to point out shell holes on Springfield which were caused by Gen de Wet shelling the British forces after his Commando had occupied the waterworks at Sannah’s Post.
While is custody, as has been reported elsewhere, the farm house was looted. Three of the Lynch brothers later worked for the British at Remount Stations, but, as Patrick was ill, Tom and the others remained to farm Springfield. Tom, Jack and John Thomas seem to have buyers of wheat for a Mr Sonnenberg, who had a contract to supply the British forces. In one incident, 40 bags of their wheat were destroyed when the British burned down the mill and they submitted a claim for compensation. After a long time their claim was disallowed. It is interesting to note the animosity in the official comments of senior officers upon the claim documentation, which, once again, has its origin in British Intelligence. “I don’t think these people deserve any consideration. This man was a Boer dispatch rider like his brothers.” “On no occasion has he ever in the very slightest offered us assistance toward bringing the war to an end with information or by joining the F.G. (farm guard). Bad business character”4 So much for the Oath of Neutrality and its protection of burghers; it would seem that you were required to rat on your mates as well! This is probably early evidence of the British frustration with their inability to bring the war to a quick conclusion and which later resulted in Kitchener's scorched earth policy.
When Patrick Lynch of Springfield drew up his will in November 1909, shortly before his death, he instructed that the farm be subdivided. Springfield (1113 Morgen), which included the original Springfield homestead and outbuildings, the shop near the top dam, the top dam and the lands and garden at the homestead, was left to Tom Lynch.5 This was possibly fortuitous, for Tom was the only son to have retained possession of most of his inheritance until his death. There is a story in the family that the name of the farm was changed from Springfield to Lynchfield, apparently at the suggestion of Jan Smuts, but this is not borne out by the current title deeds. Possibly this originated from the fact that the nearby station is known as Lynchfield? In any event, Springfield became the haven for many of the Lynch clan who had fallen on hard times. My father would tell of the fact that there were 17 children in residence at Springfield when he was a child.
http://www.inrelation.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35&Itemid=28
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Lydenburg (J 7)
Name: Lydenburg
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More than 1300 years before the first Europeans entered the area, there were thriving communities of probably Nguni people, as demonstrated by the Lydenburg Masks found here. The first Europeans entered the area in the 1840s. The town itself was founded in 1849 by a group of Voortrekkers (pioneers) under the leadership of Andries Potgieter.
Different groups of Voortrekkers proclaimed their own republics. In 1856 'De Republiek Lydenburg in Zuid Afrika' was proclaimed, and in 1857 it joined the Republic of Utrecht. Three years later in 1860 they joined the Pretoria based Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR).
Sekhukhune (1814 - 1882), was king of the Marota (or baPedi) people who lived in this region. He defended his people against both the ZAR (1st Sekhukhune War or ZAR-Pedi War) and the British (2nd Sekhukhune War, or Anglo-Pedi War).
In 1871 a road was built between Pretoria and Delagoa Bay (today known as Maputo, and previously known as Lorenco Marques) in Mocambique, which was the closest harbour. Lydenburg was an important stop-over on this route.
In 1873 alluvial gold was discovered in Lydenburg and the town experienced a gold rush. The British wished to control the gold industry and eventually annexed the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR).
The First Anglo-Boer War (16 December 1880 until 23 March 1881) was fought mainly between the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR) and Britain, hence also known as the Transvaal War. Skirmishes between the warring factions happened in the Lydenburg area.
The planned railway between Pretoria and Delagoa Bay only reached Lydenburg in 1910.
More info: http://www.routes.co.za/mp/lydenburg/index.html
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More than 1300 years before the first Europeans entered the area, there were thriving communities of probably Nguni people, as demonstrated by the Lydenburg Masks found here. The first Europeans entered the area in the 1840s. The town itself was founded in 1849 by a group of Voortrekkers (pioneers) under the leadership of Andries Potgieter.
Different groups of Voortrekkers proclaimed their own republics. In 1856 'De Republiek Lydenburg in Zuid Afrika' was proclaimed, and in 1857 it joined the Republic of Utrecht. Three years later in 1860 they joined the Pretoria based Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR).
Sekhukhune (1814 - 1882), was king of the Marota (or baPedi) people who lived in this region. He defended his people against both the ZAR (1st Sekhukhune War or ZAR-Pedi War) and the British (2nd Sekhukhune War, or Anglo-Pedi War).
In 1871 a road was built between Pretoria and Delagoa Bay (today known as Maputo, and previously known as Lorenco Marques) in Mocambique, which was the closest harbour. Lydenburg was an important stop-over on this route.
In 1873 alluvial gold was discovered in Lydenburg and the town experienced a gold rush. The British wished to control the gold industry and eventually annexed the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR).
The First Anglo-Boer War (16 December 1880 until 23 March 1881) was fought mainly between the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR) and Britain, hence also known as the Transvaal War. Skirmishes between the warring factions happened in the Lydenburg area.
The planned railway between Pretoria and Delagoa Bay only reached Lydenburg in 1910.
More info: http://www.routes.co.za/mp/lydenburg/index.html
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Lutzville (B 13)
Name: Lutzville
The small town of Lutzville is situated on the banks of the Olifants River within the West Coast Region. The famous and impressive Sishen-Saldanha Railway bridges the river at Lutzville. This region is well known for its hospitality, excellent wines and agricultural produce.
Lutzville
They are a mere three hour's drive from Cape Town and about 25km from the snoek and crayfish-filled West Coast waters. Lutzville, previously known as Vleermuijskip, is synonymous with quality wine, beautiful spring flowers, the tea, unforgettable holiday experience, a moderate climate and friendly people. 7km from Lutzville, the close by hamlet of Koekenaap is set in a patchwork landscape of farming units. As in Lutzville, farmers produce grapes, tomatoes, beans, potatoes, beetroot, pumpkin and a variety of fruit.
As in most of the smaller towns, the church steeple can be seen from the surrounding countryside
Who to contact
Tel : +27 27 2013376
Fax : +27 27 2134819
Email : tourism@matzikamamun.co.za
Physical Address: Church Street
Vredendal
8160
How to get here
Two Villages very close together 50km northwest of the N7 in the Matzikama Sub Region.
The friendly town of Lutzville is situated 59 km northwest on the R363 of the national N7 road and is sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean on the West Coast and inland by the Olifantsriver.
Lutzville has a unique golf course and golfers usually end up having a refreshing drink in the adjacent Lutzville Wine Cellar. This is South Africa´s most westerly cellar. Lutzville Wine Cellar was established in 1962 and has produces some of the finest wines in the world. This can possibly be attributed to the area´s misty mornings, sunny days and fresh sea breezes - all conditions under which the vines flourish. This small town was originally named "Vleermuijsklip" which means bat rock. It derived this name from a rocky outcrop and overhang just outside the town - early travelling parties such as Pieter Everhaert and missionaries used to notice hoards of bats congregating at the rock. Today this rocky outcrop is a national monument, and one can even still see the marks were elephants used to rub themselves on their way to a nearby spring. At the beginning of the early 1800s, large herds of elephant were often seen in the area, hence the name Olifants River Valley. Vlermuisklip later became Luztville, named after the irrigation engineer, Johan Lutz.
In close vicinity you will find the impressive Sishen Saldanha Railway Bridge which crosses the Olifants River on the R363.
click to enlarge
History and Activities for Lutzville
Initially known as Vlermuisklip, it was renamed Lutzville in 1923 in honour of John Lutz. Vlermuisklip (Bats Rock) was the rocky overhang on the outskirts of the town that was used on various expeditions as an overnight camp. This rock has since been declared a National Monument.
The following activities are available:
Birding
Bushmen Paintings
Canoeing
Cray fishing
Diving
Ebenhaezer Mission Station
Fishing
Hiking
Koekenaap
Namaqua Sand Mineral Mining
National Monuments
River Cruises
Rose Nursery
Seal Island
Sishen-Saldanha Railway Bridge
Tomato Factory
Wild flowers
Wine Cellar
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The small town of Lutzville is situated on the banks of the Olifants River within the West Coast Region. The famous and impressive Sishen-Saldanha Railway bridges the river at Lutzville. This region is well known for its hospitality, excellent wines and agricultural produce.
Lutzville
They are a mere three hour's drive from Cape Town and about 25km from the snoek and crayfish-filled West Coast waters. Lutzville, previously known as Vleermuijskip, is synonymous with quality wine, beautiful spring flowers, the tea, unforgettable holiday experience, a moderate climate and friendly people. 7km from Lutzville, the close by hamlet of Koekenaap is set in a patchwork landscape of farming units. As in Lutzville, farmers produce grapes, tomatoes, beans, potatoes, beetroot, pumpkin and a variety of fruit.
As in most of the smaller towns, the church steeple can be seen from the surrounding countryside
Who to contact
Tel : +27 27 2013376
Fax : +27 27 2134819
Email : tourism@matzikamamun.co.za
Physical Address: Church Street
Vredendal
8160
How to get here
Two Villages very close together 50km northwest of the N7 in the Matzikama Sub Region.
The friendly town of Lutzville is situated 59 km northwest on the R363 of the national N7 road and is sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean on the West Coast and inland by the Olifantsriver.
Lutzville has a unique golf course and golfers usually end up having a refreshing drink in the adjacent Lutzville Wine Cellar. This is South Africa´s most westerly cellar. Lutzville Wine Cellar was established in 1962 and has produces some of the finest wines in the world. This can possibly be attributed to the area´s misty mornings, sunny days and fresh sea breezes - all conditions under which the vines flourish. This small town was originally named "Vleermuijsklip" which means bat rock. It derived this name from a rocky outcrop and overhang just outside the town - early travelling parties such as Pieter Everhaert and missionaries used to notice hoards of bats congregating at the rock. Today this rocky outcrop is a national monument, and one can even still see the marks were elephants used to rub themselves on their way to a nearby spring. At the beginning of the early 1800s, large herds of elephant were often seen in the area, hence the name Olifants River Valley. Vlermuisklip later became Luztville, named after the irrigation engineer, Johan Lutz.
In close vicinity you will find the impressive Sishen Saldanha Railway Bridge which crosses the Olifants River on the R363.
click to enlarge
History and Activities for Lutzville
Initially known as Vlermuisklip, it was renamed Lutzville in 1923 in honour of John Lutz. Vlermuisklip (Bats Rock) was the rocky overhang on the outskirts of the town that was used on various expeditions as an overnight camp. This rock has since been declared a National Monument.
The following activities are available:
Birding
Bushmen Paintings
Canoeing
Cray fishing
Diving
Ebenhaezer Mission Station
Fishing
Hiking
Koekenaap
Namaqua Sand Mineral Mining
National Monuments
River Cruises
Rose Nursery
Seal Island
Sishen-Saldanha Railway Bridge
Tomato Factory
Wild flowers
Wine Cellar
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Place Names Southern Africa: Kapiri M'poshi (F 3)
Place Names Southern Africa: Kapiri M'poshi (F 3)
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Lusaka (F 3)
Name: Lusaka
Lusaka is the capital and largest city of Zambia. The two main languages spoken in Lusaka are English and Nyanja. It is located in the southern part of the central plateau of the country, at an elevation of 1279 m. It has a population of 3,100,000 (2007 estimate). It is a commercial centre as well as centre of government.
(Wikipedia)
Lusaka was the site of a village named after its headman Lusakasa, which, according to history, was located at Manda Hill, near where the Zambia's National Assembly building now stands. In the Nyanja language, Manda means graveyard. The area was expanded by European (mainly British) settlers in 1905 with the building of the railway.
In 1935, due to its fairly central location, its situation on the railway and at the crossroads of the Great North Road and Great East Road, it was chosen to replace Livingstone as the capital of the British colony of Northern Rhodesia.
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Lusaka is the capital and largest city of Zambia. The two main languages spoken in Lusaka are English and Nyanja. It is located in the southern part of the central plateau of the country, at an elevation of 1279 m. It has a population of 3,100,000 (2007 estimate). It is a commercial centre as well as centre of government.
(Wikipedia)
Lusaka was the site of a village named after its headman Lusakasa, which, according to history, was located at Manda Hill, near where the Zambia's National Assembly building now stands. In the Nyanja language, Manda means graveyard. The area was expanded by European (mainly British) settlers in 1905 with the building of the railway.
In 1935, due to its fairly central location, its situation on the railway and at the crossroads of the Great North Road and Great East Road, it was chosen to replace Livingstone as the capital of the British colony of Northern Rhodesia.
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Lumbo (M 3)
Name: Lumbo
Lumbo es un pequeño centro pesquero de Mozambique, en el distrito de Nampula junto al canal de Mozambique (15°00′S 40°33′E / -15, 40.55).
Datos generales [editar]Se encuentra en una bahía amplia pero recogida en la parte más estrecha del Canal de Mozambique. Su economía se basa en la pesca, así como en la exportación de anacardos y madera, así como del turismo, gracias en parte a la declaración de la Unesco como Patrimonio de la Humanidad a la Isla de Mozambique, que se encuentra frente al puerto de Lumbo y desde el cual parte el puente que une la isla a tierra. Lumbo podría ser considerada por tanto la parte continental de la histórica colonia portuguesa.
Comunicaciones y turismo [editar]La ciudad tiene una estación de tren por la que no transita ningún ferrocarril desde la última Guerra Civil de Mozambique. También dispone de un pequeño aeropuerto para pequeños aviones y aeroplanos, que tampoco registra tráfico habitual. Existen sin embargo varios hoteles de gran categoría repartidos por la ciudad.
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Lumbo es un pequeño centro pesquero de Mozambique, en el distrito de Nampula junto al canal de Mozambique (15°00′S 40°33′E / -15, 40.55).
Datos generales [editar]Se encuentra en una bahía amplia pero recogida en la parte más estrecha del Canal de Mozambique. Su economía se basa en la pesca, así como en la exportación de anacardos y madera, así como del turismo, gracias en parte a la declaración de la Unesco como Patrimonio de la Humanidad a la Isla de Mozambique, que se encuentra frente al puerto de Lumbo y desde el cual parte el puente que une la isla a tierra. Lumbo podría ser considerada por tanto la parte continental de la histórica colonia portuguesa.
Comunicaciones y turismo [editar]La ciudad tiene una estación de tren por la que no transita ningún ferrocarril desde la última Guerra Civil de Mozambique. También dispone de un pequeño aeropuerto para pequeños aviones y aeroplanos, que tampoco registra tráfico habitual. Existen sin embargo varios hoteles de gran categoría repartidos por la ciudad.
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Luipaardsvlei (E 9)
Name: Luipaardsvlei
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Jameson's troops were captured to the southof the town, an event that seems to have traumatised the Dutch-speaking whites ofthe area and prompted displays of rampant Boer national chauvinism. Poems wereprinted in Ons Volk, the local Dutch newspaper that condemned the display of ‘HetJingodom’ at ‘Luipaardsvlei’, the farm where some of the action took place and where a major British-owned mine, the Luipaard's Vlei Estates and G.M.____________________________
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195Co. Ltd., was situated. A local Boer resident wrote a letter to Ons Volk, whichreferred to the ‘rednecks’ (‘rooinekken’), an insulting term used by Boers in referenceto Englishmen. Another resident wrote the following words:By Luipaardsvlei, o jingoes, hebt gy op meuw geboet,/ Majubaskruinblyft vas staan, tot schande voor den Brit42Changes in the townscape reflected these tensions and there are indications thatboth the architectural design and the sites chosen for key government buildings inKrugersdorp expressed what could be termed an aggressive ‘Boer nationalchauvinism’. For example, the Krugersdorp railway station which was built in 1896was placed in the south because it was designed to be used mostly by miners, but itcan also be ‘read’, in so far as a city is text, as an ‘counter-invasion’ of BritishUitlander space by technological elements (the NZASM railway service was ownedby Dutch capital) sympathetic to the Republic.43 Like the courthouse built earlier, therailway station (figure 3.5) was opened by Kruger himself and expressed TransvaalRepublican architecture found in key government symbols such as, for example, thePalace of Justice and Staatsmodelskool in Pretoria.44Unlike this courthouse, though - which was built further north and overlooking theMarket where many Dutch-speaking farmers gathered - the railway station was builtfurther to the south, close to the mines and in a space almost entirely used byEnglish-speaking miners. In this case, the Krugersdorp Railway station’sarchitecture clashed more starkly with its immediate surroundings of miningheadgear. It had ‘ornate gables’ of the Cape tradition and the usual array ofembellishments that became the signature of M.C.A. Meischke the man who built___________________________42 Ons Volk, 13 June 1896, untitled. Loosely translated as ‘By Luipaardsvlei, o jingoes, you were punished, Majuba Ridge still stands to disgrace the British’43 Such military terminology is appropriate in the circumstances, tensions were high and the town was militarised to some extent. In January 1896 Commandant-general Piet Joubert visited Krugersdorp and a Volunteer Corps was established. In February they were given their first task: to guard the Paardekraal Monument as there were rumours that ‘criminal elements’ from Johannesburg were planning to blow it up. See Krugersdorp 100 jare/years, p. 53.44 Picton-Seymour, Victorian Buildings, p. 283.
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196these stations throughout the Transvaal and who had arrived from Utrecht a fewyears earlier. It was seen by contemporary English-speakers as ‘one of the mostimportant projects’ seen in a long time in the town and its timing and its architecturemust have had a deep and profound impact.45Figure 3.5. The Krugersdorp Railway Station, 1896.Source: Krugersdorp 100 Years/Jare, p. 43A police station was also built in 189746 (figure 3.6) because the town's growingpopulation and increasing crime necessitated such a structure. However thisstructure can also be interpreted as evidence for growing Boer national chauvinism.Although it was established in the western section of the town (see Map Seven),which seems to undermine the argument that it was intended to project Boer poweronto the English-speaking mining population, one can, nonetheless, make the casethat it constituted a symbol of Boer authority by exploring the ideological values ofthe east-west axis along the same lines as the north-south axis were explored___________________________45 This is quoted in Afrikaans as a paraphrase from the Krugersdorp Times and West Rand Advertiser, 1 August 1896, in Schutte, ‘Die Geskiedenis van Krugersdorp’, p. 53, (‘was een van die belangrikste projekte wat in `n groot behoefte voorsien het’). How Schutte obtained this source is a mystery as no copies of the newspaper survive in the State library. 46 Krugersdorp 100 jare/years, p. 136.
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197earlier. Figure 3.6. Krugersdorp’s Police Station, 1897Source: Krugersdorp 100 Years, p. 137.The western section of the town, it is contended, was developed after the JamesonRaid, as an additional ‘sacred’ region for Dutch-speaking whites and so marked anextension of the sacred territory around the Paardekraal Monument and the DistrictTownship to the western parts of the town. This made sense because the westernpart of the town faced the rural hinterland of Boer farms rather than in the east thatfaced Johannesburg or in the south near the mines dominated by English-speakingminers (the reef turns sharply south as it reaches Krugersdorp and the Randfonteinmines and Randfontein Village are to the south-west of Krugersdorp). Further to thewest was the Boer dorp of Potchefstroom, a symbol, along with Pretoria to the northof the town, of Boer Independence. Map Seven: The Position of Krugersdorp’s Police station in West Krugersdorp.
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198Source: CAD, Transvaal Public Works department (TPB), TALG 494, Town Engineer’s Department, 1938This area lay lower than the rest of the town and further from the mines (see MapEight), so it may well have been cheaper land, but there may also have beenimportant symbolic considerations as well. The architecture of the police station wasagain typically Republican and, to reinforce the ‘message’ of Boer nationalchauvinism, the foundation stone was laid by President Kruger.47It was asubstantial building 26 metres in length and thus successfully projected Republicanpower.48 The Republican police were used not only to suppress crime but to ensurethe preservation of Boer control over an increasingly restive Uitlander population on___________________________47 Schutte, ‘Die Geskiedenis van Krugersdorp’, p. 52 (‘...reghoekige gebou waarwan die sye 26 meter lank was...’)48 ibid.
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199the Rand. A number of police residences were also constructed,49 using distinctiveRepublican redbrick walls, in the ‘sacred’ north of District Township, underlying theideological connections that were being made between north and west in the town.The visual effects of these two new buildings, in the south and the west, togetherwith police residences to the north and the ‘Transvaal Republican’ architecturalfeatures these incorporated, would have had the effect of ‘redundancy’ combininginto a powerful ‘mnemonic of Republican power. This would have been furtherreinforced by the presence of Boer commandoes marching through the town and thedisplay of the Republican ‘Vierkleur’, hoisted and visible at different points of thetown. The ‘British’ town, centred on the Luipaard's Vlei Estate and G.M. Co. Ltd.,was, thus, ‘surrounded’ by a national chauvinist, military aggressive TransvaalRepublican built environment.The effect was deepened by the establishment of` the Boer residential area of‘Burghershoop’, also in 1897 (see Map Eight). This space was composed of free‘Government’ stands to the west of the town50 and was purpose-built toaccommodate marginalised, poverty-stricken Dutch-speaking Boers. These peoplehad been thrown off the land during the 1890s as victims of a process ofproletarianisation, as farmland became increasingly capitalised and relationshipsbetween landowners and a type of sharecropper class, known as the ‘by-woner’ wastransformed into a capitalist-worker relationship.Bywoners, as a small under-capitalised agricultural class, could not retain theiraccess to the land under these circumstances and many refused to work for thelandowners as a rural proletariat or were seen as unsuitable by the commercialfarmers in this regard. Similar areas were laid out around the Rand, for example,___________________________49 ibid.50 CAD, Transvaal Local Government archives (TPB) 542, TA 1408, Krugersdorp Asiatics Locations Inquiry, 1910, evidence of J.A. Burger, p. 63.
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200Vrededorp.51 These ‘poor whites’ made a living partly from brick-making activities, inthe case of Johannesburg, at the Braamfontein Spruit or in Krugersdorp, at theDistrict Township ‘spruit’ which constituted the ‘Monument Brickfields’, to the north-east of the town. The encirclement of ‘British’ space by ‘Boer space’ was, thus,completed at this point.Map Eight: A Topographical map of Krugersdorp depicting Burghershoop Source: J. Henning, ‘the Evolution, Land Use and Land Use Patterns of Krugersdorp’, BA Honours dissertation, University ofthe Witwatersrand, 1963, p.2.It can further be argued that the ‘reach’ of this cosmology was extended to include‘black space’ as well, but in complex and contested ways. Colonial towns whether‘British’ mining towns or ‘Boer dorps’ were ‘white spaces’. Black residents essentially___________________________51 See C. van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1887-1914, vol. one, New Babylon, Ravan, Johannesburg, 1982, pp. 114-21 and 158-9.
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201had to ‘fit in’, and had no capacity to choose their living spaces as these wereallocated by local authorities, usually on the periphery and on undesirable land (nearsewerage farms and rubbish dumps, for example). This created segregated spacesin these towns where blacks and whites lived apart in different parts of the town andthese were usually separated by a natural border like a stream or by artificial man-made structures such as factories.52Urban segregation was so common to colonies all around the world that Ross andTelkamp53 as well as King54 define it the quintessential feature of the ‘colonial city’This is not to say that the urban subaltern groups had no effect on the allocation ofspace or the dynamics of urban living - many works in urban history testify to theinfluential roles that the subaltern plays in constructing colonial urban space, as doesmy own work55 as will be demonstrated in later chapters.In the same year that Burghershoop was established in the west of the town, the‘mixed’ (Indian, Coloured and African) location was removed from the town, a ‘KaffirLocatie’ was laid out a mile to its north-west Africans and Coloureds and a ‘KoelieLocatie’ immediately beside the ‘white space’ of Burghershoop (see Chapter Five).56This latter development is particularly significant as there is no doubt that Indianswere seen in a broadly if muted negative light by Boers who freely used thederogatory appellation of ‘Koelie’ in reference to Indians. It is, thus, a matter of some___________________________52 This pattern appears in both ‘Boer’ and ‘British’ towns, see, for example, A.J. Christopher, ‘Race and Residence in Colonial Port Elizabeth’ in South African Geographical Journal, 1986, pp. 1-19 and E. Nel, ‘Racial Segregation in East London, 1836-1948’, in South African Geographical Journal, 1991, 73, pp. 60-68.54 R. Ross and G. Telkamp (eds.), Colonial Cities, Essays on Urbanism in a Colonial Context, Martinus Nijhoff, Dordrecht, 1985.55 A. King, Colonial Urban Development, Culture, Social Power and Environment, Routledge andKegan Paul, 1976.56 C. Dugmore, ‘Blurred Demarcations of Authority and Power: the Conflict Between Indian and White Shopkeepers in Krugersdorp, 1887-1923: Towards a Pragmatic Conceptualisation of Democracy and Local Government’, History Workshop Paper, University of the Witwatersrand, 1994.
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202difficulty to explain why the Boer authorities would place them next to ‘poor Burghers'especially during a phase of Republican chauvinism and the construction of aRepublican cosmology, especially given President Kruger's profound sympathy forthis class of marginalised ‘poor Burghers’57One possible explanation is that the Indian residents were, in fact, ambivalentlytreated by the Voortrekker state and by ‘Boers’ generally, as Chapter Five will argue.Kruger himself noted on several occasions that Indians provided necessary goods toBoers at a cheaper rate than ‘English’ traders and could not use Boer debt to gainmortgages as they could not own land.58 Thus, locating Indians next to the poorBurghers made sense as it lumped the providers of cheap goods with those most inneed for such services. The Dutch-speaking whites did, nonetheless, look down atthose with darker skins than themselves, particularly if they were non-Christians, aswas the case with the Hindu and Muslim Indians in Krugersdorp. The residents ofBurghershoop complained almost immediately of their proximity to a ‘Koelie’ locationand argued that this stigmatised them as Indians were stereotyped as ‘insanitary’and ‘unscrupulous’.59 Thus, this does not seem to be a satisfactory explanation.A more probable explanation is the pressure resulting from the political power playbetween British and Boer in the late 1890s. The ex-Mining Commissioner of___________________________57 CAD, TPB 542, TA 1408, Asiatics Inquiry, 1910, evidence of J.A. Burger, p. 63.58 See van Onselen, New Babylon and C. van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886-1914, vol. 2, New Nineveh, (New Nineveh), Ravan, Johannesburg, 1982, especially the chapters on ‘Johannesburg's Jehus’ on cabdrivers, and ‘The Main Reef Road into the Working Class’.59 Pillay reports that the Volksraad supported the segregation of Indians by a narrow margin of 24 votes to 18, and President Kruger remarked that Indian traders provided ‘...a reasonable service at reasonable prices for poor burghers’, B. Pillay, British Indians in the Transvaal: Trade, Race Relations and Imperial Policy in Republican and Colonial Transvaal, Longmans, London, 1976, p. 13.
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203Krugersdorp gave evidence during a 1910 inquiry into the Indian location that theBoer authorities had wanted to place the Indian location further to the west in 1897(presumably to be close enough for the Burgher consumers to visit but sufficientlydistant to remove the ‘stigma’ that was felt by proximity to a ‘Koelie Location’) butyielded to pressure arising from the stipulations of the London Convention to treat‘British subjects’ fairly.60 Indians were included under the rubric ‘British subjects’ bydint of their citizenship of a British colony in Indian or in other colonies like Natal. Indians themselves made the most of this pressure to secure concessions forthemselves in the Republic and would complain frequently and vociferouslywhenever they perceived that they were badly treated by the Republic's officials.Hence my contention that Indians were both the victims of competing whitenationalist struggles and, simultaneously played Boer off against Briton, adopting anactive role to secure a desirable commercial and residential area in the heart of thetown. To avoid a potential casus belli, the Republican officials had to ensure thatIndian traders, as a general principle in the Republic, although segregated fromwhite residents, were in sufficiently close proximity to white customers so that theirbusiness would not suffer harm. This suggests that the spatial expression of a Boernational chauvinist cosmology had its limitations and was constrained through fear ofprovoking war with Imperial Britain. Nonetheless, the establishment of Burghershoop, its location on the westernperiphery, the building of the railway and the police station in ‘Transvaal Republic’architectural styles and the blatant Boer chauvinist displays in the streets ofKrugersdorp by the Krugersdorp Commando, all point to the imposition of Boernationalist ideology onto the formerly ‘mosaic’ town where a degree of co-operation___________________________60 See, for example, De Voortrekker, 15February 1899, ‘Koelie Locaties’, an editorial that reflected its readership among the literate Dutch-speaking residents of Krugersdorp that expressed ‘deep dissatisfaction’ (‘groot ontevredenheid’) with the placing of burghers next to an IndianLocation.
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204and social harmony used to prevail prior to 1895. Krugersdorp's English-speaking middle and working class had to endure a period ofhostility and an overtly aggressive assertion of the Transvaal Republic's hegemonyover the town that led, in turn, to the inscription of Boer ideology onto Krugersdorp'sbuilt environment. However, given the small size of the town and the economicinterdependence of its two white groups, such hostility was not likely to last. The Restoration of Spatial Harmony, 1897-1899As time wore on, the pain caused by the Jameson Raid steadily gradually eased forKrugersdorp's Boer residents who returned to the day-to-day grind of routine andhabit. Then, in 1898, Krugersdorp’s built environment was profoundly altered in away that can be explained as a return to the social harmony that existed before theJameson Raid. Luipaardsvlei, a British middle class suburb to the Southeast of thetown was constructed, restoring the spatial balance in the layout of the town tooffset, as it were, Burghershoop in the west. 61 A harmony in the town's layout bothreflected and helped to advance a more balanced and friendly relationship betweenits English- and Dutch-speaking residents - it was almost as if the brick and mortar ofthe town was permeating the consciousness of the town dwellers, restoring the easyamicability of Boer and Briton. Conventional explanations will point out that a mining boom meant increaseddemand for housing stock in close proximity to the mines and that a propertysyndicate took the opportunity to lay out stands and auction these for a quick profit.The ‘ecological model’ also seems to apply here where the middle class and upperworking class moved out of the increasingly less desirable stands in the town itself tomake way for a new influx or ‘wave’ of working class miners who, in turn, moved out____________________________61 CAD, TPB 542, TA 1408, 1910 Asiatic Inquiry, evidence of J.A. Burger, p. 63.
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205of the boarding houses and single residences of the mines on Krugersdorp’speriphery as they started to marry and raise families (see Chapter Two).Burgess and other writers from the ‘Chicago School’ explain this process in terms of‘invasion’ and ‘succession’, drawing from botany. In this view, lower status minersmoved into the centre of Krugersdorp and made this residential area less appealing tothe middle class and upper stratum of workers such as foremen, who lived there, andthey began to look for new homes. 62 Sensing an opportunity, the LuipaardsvleiSyndicate, like property developers across the Rand, developed the LuipaardsvleiTownship as a relatively elite residential area, a suburb situated at some distance fromthe increasingly crowded, noisy and unpleasant town. Luipaardsvlei, thus,corresponded to Burgess's ‘Deutschland’, an environmentally superior living space inChicago for the ‘labour aristocracy’ and the lower middle class. Luipaardsvlei seems tohave retained this reputation as an elite space for many decades thereafter.63However, the timing and position of these stands, together with their architecturalfeatures and the circumstances in which these houses were built, suggest thatsomething altogether more interesting was occurring and requires more detailedexamination. Luipaardsvlei was designed as a ‘semi-government township’, where theLuipaardsvlei Syndicate received one-third and the state two-thirds of the stand licencemoney. This, too, could provide an explanation for the government’s decision to grantpermission to build a township although further investigation reveals that ideology mayalso have played a role. The Luipaardsvlei Syndicate was owned by the Luipaards' Vlei Estate G.M. Co. Ltd.64 which was, in turn, owned by Rhodes' Goldfields of South Africa___________________________62 Burgess, ‘The Growth of the City’, p. 91. For a discussion of this approach to South African towns, see also J. McCarthy and D.P. Smit (eds.), South African City: Theory in Analysis and Planning, Juta, Cape Town, 1984, p. 13. 63 The Standard, Krugersdorp 3 July 1912, ‘Townships in the Krugersdorp Area’.64 See The Standard, Krugersdorp, 21 October, 1905, ‘As Others See Us!: A Few Impressions by a
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206G.M. Co. Ltd.. It was remarkable, then, that the Boer government would grantpermission to build a township to a company owned by Rhodes who was, after all, thenemesis of the Boer Republic, having had attempted to overthrow the Boer governmentduring the Jameson Raid. Furthermore, Rhodes had earlier built a sandstone cottage on the Luipaard’s Vlei mineand it was rumoured that weapons and ammunition were stored there during theJameson Raid65. The co-operation of the Republic in building a township in such anideologically loaded space is highly significant and cannot be attributed merely to therelatively trivial income that would be secured through stand licences. Rather, theconstruction of Luipaardsvlei Township should be understood as attempt by theEnglish- and Dutch-speaking white residents - especially its elite elements - to restoresocial harmony after the traumatic events of 1895.There is ample evidence of such attempts at rapprochement between Krugersdorp’stwo white communities. For example, the local English language newspaper, TheStandard, Krugersdorp, which began publishing in late 1898, openly criticised theUitlander political associations on a number of occasions. Run by the local Britishmiddle class trio of Stammers, Wallis and Law and their ‘Standard Printers andPublishers Co. Ltd.’, the newspaper declared that it would refuse to toady ‘to this orthat political party or clique’, it would be ‘absolutely fearless and independent’.66 Thenewspaper demonstrated its conciliatory approach by describing the PaardekraalMonument as ‘a sacred place’, indicating that at least some elements within theEnglish-speaking middle class had recognized and had internalised the core featuresof the cosmology suggested earlier, concerning this monument.67____________________________Visitor’. 65 See, for example, the history of the company published by the proprietors: The Goldfields of South Africa, The Goldfields, 1887-1937, Goldfields of South Africa, Johannesburg, 1937, p. 10. 66 See Krugersdorp 100 jare/years, p. 8067 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 31 December, 1898, untitled.
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207In this, they shared much in common with the proprietors and editors of Ons Volkthat - after its short-lived patriotic vitriol described above - took great pains to bringabout Boer and British reconciliation after the Raid, in 1897. Thus, the newspapercongratulated the British residents over the celebrations commemorating QueenVictoria's Jubilee, wishing her a ‘long and prosperous life’ (‘een lang en voorspoedigleven’).68 The Standard, Krugersdorp showed a similar respect for President PaulKruger, praising his ‘seasonal and tactful speech’ on Old Year's Eve and noted that itshould go a long way in removing the obstacles that stood in the way of ‘a completefusion between the old and new populations’69One can likewise detect a return to the normal friendly relations betweentownspeople and farmers from the rural hinterland which is reflected in calls by thelocal newspaper to improve conditions in the ‘Markt Plain’ and to clean up the‘sloots’, as the English-language newspaper put it, and to build a covered MarketBuilding to protect farmers' produce from the elements.70 Improved economicconditions also helped to repair the wounds of the Jameson Raid. It was reported in1898 that ‘the market is beginning to boom once more’,71 a testament to theeconomic benefits of co-operation and reconciliation.The symbiosis captured in the rebuilding of the Market House reflected a realisationthat English-speaking town and Dutch-speaking countryside were economicallyinterdependent. The Market Master was an Englishman, Mr. Bedford, who worked hardto secure such a building from the government, a fact gratefully acknowledged by thelocal Dutch-speaking farmers.72 Mr. Bedford had a very close relationship with the local___________________________68 Ons Volk, 23 June 1897, ‘...a long and prosperous life’.69 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 31 December 1899, untitled.70 De Voortrekker, 14 September 1898, untitled. See also The Standard, Krugersdorp, 21 January, 1899, untitled.71 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 31 December 1898, untitled.72 The Standard, Krugersdorp 10 December 1898, ‘Ourselves’.73 Schutte, ‘Die Geskiedenis van Krugersdorp’, p. 90. See also P. Fitzpatrick, The Transvaal From Within, Heinemann, London, 1899, p. 188.
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208farmers and was an elder in the N.G.K. He was one of the many ‘pro-Boers’ that lived inKrugersdorp, as will be discussed later in this Chapter. The symbolic restoration ofspatial harmony indicated by the Market Square is remarkable given that theJameson Raid soldiers had actually been held prisoner in that square, guarded byheavily armed Boer Troops, just two years earlier.73 Nevertheless, hostility hadremained latent and the spirit of reconciliation began to break down as war cloudsgathered in 1899.The Rise of the British Imperial Colonial Town, Krugersdorp 1899–1902The rapprochement between Boer and Briton was not to last long in Krugersdorp asforces much more powerful than small town editors, landdrosts or shopkeepers,were shaping events at a national level. Major figures like Rhodes and Chamberlain,together with the new British High Commissioner, Sir Alfred Milner, applied pressureon the Boer authorities to extend the franchise to the English-speaking Uitlanders -which both sides believed outnumbered the Boers - and war grew imminent. A flurryof negotiations took place between February when a massive Uitlander petition wassent to the Queen and September 1899. People talked freely and constantly of thepossibility of war, encouraged by a shamelessly ‘jingo’ British press, particularly theTimes and The Star, the Johannesburg newspaper.As with the Jameson Raid, but now from the British point of view, an identity shifttook place from ambiguity and hybridity to a form of unreasoning patriotic chauvinismdescribed as ‘jingoism’, among Krugersdorp's English-speaking residents by the startof the South African War. This shift can be detected in the growing use of Britishsymbols. The Standard, Krugersdorp’s leader articles and editorials can be analysedand this transformation can be traced in the changes in the terms and metaphorsthat were used in headlines and in major articles in the newspaper. There was adistinct shift from broad declarations in support for peace to distinctly war-mongering____________________________
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209terms.The earlier editorials warn about war's destruction and talk about the tragedy ofneighbours and friends fighting one another: ‘WAR, war with all its attendant horrors’including ‘friends hacking at each other’.74 Later articles, however, offered veiledthreats in an analogous fashion to the famous Battle of Dorking that appeared inBritain in 1870s and its many French and German imitators, which anticipated WorldWar One.75 During the months leading up to war, the newspaper carried a number ofsuch articles. An early editorial took pride in Britain's immense power by pointing outthat ‘50 000 soldiers’ could be quickly mobilised and sent to the Transvaal in theevent of war:Suppose these 50 000 English troops were to join hands and extend in a line. They would form an unbroken chain reaching 56 miles, or equal to the distance from Pretoria to Heidelberg...If they were in skirmishing order twenty paces apart, and advanced they would form a line 188 miles long, and could stretch from Laing's Nek to Komatie Poort. Suppose they came in on ordinary bullock wagons, 50 men on each, they would fill 1000 wagons, a procession that would extend from the Market Square, Krugersdorp, to well up Pritchard Street, Johannesburg, and would be six hours passing any given spot... 76The use of familiar place names such as the Market Square and natural features,such as those associated with Boer power like ‘Laing's Nek’, were designed toproduce an immediate and concrete sense of menace. A later editorial was infused by this late-Victorian idolisation of force77 and appears to be even more aggressive,____________________________74 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 29 April 1899, untitled.75 See I.F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War, 1763–1984, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1966.76 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 9 September 1899, untitled.77 See W. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1870, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1957.78The Standard, Krugersdorp, 18 May 1899, untitled.
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210wondering ...how anyone could even contemplate war with so powerful a nation..., a power that holds the armies of Europe in chain will [not] hesitate to crush without mercy a twopenny-halfpenny crowd of men with guns who are foolish enough to challenge and defy.78This demeaning and belittling characterisation of the Boer armed forces wascomplemented by a subsequent depiction of Kruger's advisers as ‘harpies’ givingPresident Kruger ‘evil advice’.79 A note of dehumanisation and demonisation of theBoer political elite had now crept into the newspaper’s discourse. The shift inattitudes to Boers culminated in one of the last pre-war editorials from The Standard,Krugersdorp that again visualised a future war with Britain, warning that: The [British] advance will be under a paralysing shell fire from a line of seven or eight miles long.... The Boer's sole idea of fighting is lying quietly...behind a kopje and taking slow and deliberate aim. He had never known what it is to have to lie quietly when his comrades are being smashed around him by deadly hail of bullets falling from the sky... killing his horses and picking off men lying like ant bears in the holes.80Another striking shift in the discourse of the local English newspaper was its use ofDutch words, as already mentioned above. Dutch aphorisms like ‘Wacht Een Betjie’81 and ‘Alles Zal Recht Kommen’82 were used in earlier editorials untranslated,____________________________79The Standard, Krugersdorp, 5 September 1899. untitled.80 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 26 August 1899, untitled.81 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 29 April 1899, ‘Wacht Een Betjie’ (this can be translated as ‘Wait
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211assuming that British leaders would understand these terms and as a sign offriendship and respect for their language and idiom. Later editorials would no longeruse such Dutch phrases.In a similar vein, the word ‘jingo’ that had earlier been used to attack ‘hotheads’ orthe tub-thumping imperialists that Kipling derided, disappeared from the newspaper'sleading articles and editorials as the war grew more imminent. While the newspaperearlier played down the ‘Edgar Incident’ involving alleged ill-treatment of an Uitlanderby a Boer policeman or ‘ZARP’, it later played up a trivial incident involving anEnglishman's arrest in Krugersdorp, into ‘Police Terrorism’.83All these signs indicate a marked identity shift in the English-speaking population ofKrugersdorp. Boers became steadily demonised in the local newspaper's pageswhile British icons, particularly military men like Roberts and Kitchener, appearedmore frequently and were referred to with admiration. The Queen's Birthday marksan excuse for the most sentimental and jingoistic mush where the monarch's virtueswere supposed to be so self-evident that even the perfidious Boer must secretlyadmire her. In an article entitled ‘God Bless Her’, the editor remarks that,...there were few tutored hearts in this country which did not thrill with pleasure on the occasion of the eightieth birthday of Her Majesty, QueenVictoria. Her virtues as a mother, her powers as a ruler of vast Kingdom and as Empress spreading over a territory equal in size to all the Russias,her influence for the welfare of her people, in many cases preventing bloodshed, her heartfelt sympathy with them in times of trouble and disaster, and above all her true womanly qualities have endeared her to all, and the spontaneous prayer, ‘Long may she reign’, uttered this week, comesnot from the hearts of Britons alone.84____________________________a Moment’).82The Standard, Krugersdorp, 15 April 1899, ‘Alles Zal Recht Kommen’ (this can be translated as ‘Everything Will Be All Right’).83 The Standard Krugersdorp, 27July 1899, untitled.
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212The friendly, co-operative atmosphere between Boer and Briton in Krugersdorpdeteriorated in bar brawls and bravado in the streets. English-speaking miners andthe middle class began to book railway tickets to Kimberley or Mafeking.85 Many ofKrugersdorp's English-speaking residents volunteered to fight against theirneighbours and friends by joining the Imperial Light Horse86 and other similarregiments while, on the Boer's side, many Dutch-speaking men joined theKrugersdorp Commando and were soon in action at some of the key battles of thewar. Most of Krugersdorp’s English-speaking residents, however, fled to the coastaltowns of the British colonies in the Cape and Natal. Pietermaritzburg’s population, forexample, more doubled during the war from 9 000 to 19 000 whites clearly indicatingthat it was a major destination for British refugees from the Rand.87 It seems likelythat at least some of Krugersdorp’s British residents made their way to this town andif they did, the similarities with Krugersdorp would be immediately evident. Aspointed out earlier, ‘Pieter Mauritz burg’ as it was originally called, was once a Boerdorp and shared many features of the District Township of Krugersdorp includingwide streets and long blocks typical of dorps laid out in erven. It even shared withKrugersdorp a powerful Boer monument in the form of the iconic Boer symbol, theChurch of the Vow.88 When the British took over the town in the 1840s, it quicklytransformed the Boer dorp into a British Imperial Town and its parks and MarketSquare may have served as a model for the later transformation of Krugersdorp___________________________84 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 27 May 1899, untitled.85 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 8 July 1899, ‘Of General Interest’.87 See, for example, R. Viney, ‘Officers and Gentlemen: Masculinity, English Speaking South African Colonial Troops and the British Army during the South African War, 1899–1902’, Paper presented at ‘The Anglo–Boer War: a reappraisal’ Conference, 12–15 October, 1999. See also, W. Ramsay Macnab and J.W. Smith, Guide to Krugersdorp and the West Rand, W. & A.K. Johnston, Edinburgh, n.d., p. 29.88 See T. Wills, ‘The Segregated City’, in J. Laband and R. Haswell (eds.), Pietermaritzburg, 1888-1938: A New Portrait of an African City (Pietermaritzburg), University of Natal, Shuter/Shooter, Pietermaritzburg, 1989, pp. 33–47.
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213along similar lines.Those who stayed in Cape Town and Durban would also have imbibed the culturalinfluences of Imperial Britain that were omnipresent in these British colonial townsespecially in the parks that were heavily infused with statues and other Imperialimagery.89 It is striking that even while hostilities still raged, plans were made in 1902for a park in Krugersdorp, to commemorate the coronation of King Edward VII.90 Theseeds for this idea may well have been planted in the minds of Krugersdorp’sEnglish-speaking residents during their stay in the Imperial towns of Cape Town,Durban and Pietermaritzburg in the course of the war.After the South African War ended, the English-speaking residents returned to theirhomes and businesses profoundly aware that the Union Jack now flew over theTransvaal. The Dutch-speaking officials were gone, replaced by military authoritiesthat imposed martial law on the town. A large ‘Burgher Camp’ was situated close tothe town and held Boer POWs. The surrounding farms were burnt-out shells.The local newspaper described the new Imperial Krugersdorp with evident delightwhen it resumed publication in 1902:Never before in the history of Krugersdorp has the town presented such a military...appearance as it has acquired since the British occupation. Columns of soldiers frequently move about the district, generally to the accompaniment of martial music, and it is certain that such unwonted gaiety is not a little appreciated by the inhabitants.91____________________________89 For example the statue of Queen Victoria in front of Cape Town's Houses of Parliament, and in Durban's Town Gardens, see Picton-Seymour, Victorian Buildings in South Africa, pp. 51 and 243. An elaborate fountain commemorated the Queen's Golden Jubilee opposite Durban's Town Hall while the Town Gardens also sported an ornate bandstand.90 CAD, Archives of the Colonial Secretary (CS), 85, 3851/02, Assistant Resident Magistrate Krugersdorp to the Acting Secretary, Transvaal Administration, Pretoria, 22 April 1902..The name was later changed to Coronation Park.91 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 6 September 1902, untitled.92 Personal inspection of the Monument.
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214The Paardekraal Monument had been desecrated during the war, or at least, this isreported in a plaque affixed to the Monument.92 Apparently a command was issued thatthe Paardekraal stones had to be taken to Vereeniging and were to be thrown into theVaal River beneath the railway bridge. 93 Whether this was a symbolic act tocommemorate the signing of the Peace Treaty, which seems likely; or a deliberateofficial desecration of the monument, needs to be further investigated. By contrast, the graves of ‘War Heroes’ who ‘fell in the Empire's cause’ were carefullytended by the Krugersdorp branch of the Guild of Loyal Women of South Africawhose members decorated the graves during the Christmas season using whiteribbon and evergreens (figure 3.7).94 The most blatant display of ‘jingoism’ camewith the Coronation day celebrations. Among the many events of the day, for whichbunting was lavishly laid out, was the unveiling of a garish, monstrously huge giltcrown. It was suspended in the air above Commissioner street, illuminated by lightsat night and decorated using Union Jacks.95 It must have been a sight for soreImperial eyes.96The most substantial alteration to the townscape was the building of the triumphal‘Coronation Park’ to the Southeast of the town, gazing out towards Johannesburgand set firmly in the ‘British’ quadrant of the town. The park was enormous in scale; itwas meant to mark the victory of Britain over the Boer Republic and, through itssheer size, conveyed British territorial expansion and hegemony. It was seeded___________________________93 see Krugersdorp, 100 years, p. 11. 94 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 17 January 1903, untitled.95 The Standard, Krugersdorp 13 December 1902, untitled. Such events, of course, occurred all over South Africa as well as elsewhere in British Empire, see Picton-Seymour, Victorian Buildings, p.133.96 Thompson argues that such ‘rituals and symbols’ were key elements in the construction of a ‘civic culture’ in towns across Natal. See P.S. Thompson, Natalians First: Separatism in South Africa, 1909-1961, (Natalians), Southern Book Publishers, Johannesburg, 1990.
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215intentionally with evergreens to evoke the enduring sway of the empire. An ‘oakpath’97 was laid out somewhat like a procession of British soldiers parading throughits heart. In the centre of the park were two large circular pathways intersectedpartially by converging pathways from all four compass points98 to be ‘read’, in thisreproduction of the great parks of London99 as the Empire upon which the sun neversets (see Map Nine).Figure 3.7: War Graves in Krugersdorp’s Cemetery after the South African WarSource: Krugersdorp 100 Years, p. 51.Rappaport states that ‘...parks have important meaning in the urban environment ...they communicate meanings of positive environmental quality’.100 The late Victorian and____________________________97 Krugersdorp 100 years, p. 73. See also Picton-Seymour, Victorian Buildings, p. 141 for a descriptionof a similar park in Paarl.98 Inspection of site by author, September, 1997.99 D. McCracken, ‘Parks and Gardens’ , in Laband and Haswell, Pietermaritzburg, pp. 59–65. The Queen Alexandra Park, established in 1863, and its nearby Botanic Gardens, may have served as a model for the Coronation Park in Krugersdorp.100 Rappaport, Meaning, p. 34.
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216the early Edwardian periods are well-known for the emphasis on parks that culminatedin Ebenezer Howard's ‘Garden City’ movement. Central Park in New York and Regent'sPark are two great parks established during this period influenced by a belief that parkswere the ‘lungs’ of the city.101Map Nine: Coronation Park c. 1905Source: CAD, Transvaal Public Works department (TPB), TALG 494, Town Engineer’s Department, 1938Thompson is one of the few South Africans to consider the importance of parks inpromoting a ‘civic culture’ to provide identity to the British settler within a wider Britishimperialism.102 He argues that civic ‘rituals and symbols’ were key elements in theconstruction of a ‘civic culture’ in towns across Natal which helped to sustain the___________________________101 See R. Beevers, The Garden City Utopia: a Critical Biography of Ebenezer Howard, Macmillan, London, 1988 and D. Schuyler, The New Urban Landscape: the Redefinition of City-form in Nineteenth Century England, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1986.102 Thompson, ‘Natalians’.
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217authority of - and provided the identity of - the British settler community.103 The‘symbols’ included flags, bunting, public monuments, certain public buildings and evenmicro symbols’ such as postage stamps, coins, royal monograms. The ‘rituals’ includedthe reception of dignitaries – especially royal visitors – and occasions of celebration likeroyal birthdays, coronations and the installation of officials.Through the combination of ‘many artefacts grouped together in particularrelationships’, these homogenous areas ‘add up’ and produce ‘strong, clear andredundant cues’, a ‘cultural landscape’. The construction of ‘English landscapes’ isfound in all the Dominions such as Australia, Canada and South Africa and, in eachof them, the indigenous flora and fauna was treated as an ‘alien landscape’ as‘negative’ that had to be supplanted by ‘familiar cues’.104 Coronation Park was abeautiful, restful place (figure 3.8) but it was also an ideologically-loaded space.Figure 3.8: Coronation Park c. 1905.Source: Krugersdorp: Official Illustrated Handbook, Krugersdorp Municipality, 1924, p. 11.___________________________103 ibid., p. 1.104 Rappaport, Meaning, pp. 137 and 140. The reproduction of British urban forms and urban culture could be found all over the empire. After the South African War, Johannesburg was described by J.A. Hobson as possessing an ‘aggressively British tone’, quoted in B. Kennedy, A Tale of Two Mining Cities: Johannesburg and Broken Hill, 1885–1925, A.D. Donker,Johanesburg, 1984.
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218In this way, the town's physical space and built environment was upset, transformingit into an ‘Imperial Town’. Burghershoop and the District Township was thrown opento speculators who bought up many of the stands, leaving the repatriated burgherswith no homes or means to make their livelihood.105 British rule ushered in aparticularly aggressive form of local capitalism that drove the ‘poor Burghers’ whomade bricks at the ‘Monument Brickfields’ out of business (who were replaced by the‘Victory Brick Company’106and the local amaWasha who washed clothes at thespruits107 (and who were replaced by the West Rand Steam Laundry).108In the military’s wake followed British property developers and businessmen whobuilt sumptuous new buildings in the sturdy classical lines of Edwardianarchitecture.109 They gave patriotic names to these buildings like ‘Jubilee’ and‘Victoria’.110 A new ‘men's outfitters’ shop advertised in a local newspaper that theywould take a gentleman's measurements and send these to London's Saville Rowwhere the whole suit would be made up and sent to the customer in Krugersdorp, allwithin as little as eight weeks!Krugersdorp became more aggressively imperialist and Edwardian in other ways,notably through its disciplining of the town. The ‘street’ in colonial towns was often aparticularly contested space. As a ‘public’ space, it was used by the dominant groupto assert its authority and its claims of superiority over the subordinated black___________________________105 CAD, Archives of the Lieutenant-Governor (LG) 128, 111/23 (2494), Deputation from Licensees and Inhabitants of stands – Burghershoop, Krugersdorp, 17 March 1903. The deputation noted that ‘...residents and licensees of Burghershoop had been deprived of stands during absence as Refugees, on Commando or as POWs, without any notification...’.106 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 6 December 1903.107 See van Onselen, New Babylon, chapter on the ‘AmaWasha’. Krugersdorp's laundry services seems to have been run by Indian ‘knights of the wash tub’ as the local newspaper facetiously putit, The Standard, Krugersdorp, 2 May 1903, ‘Street Whispers’.108 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 8 April 1905, ‘A Promising Local Company’.109 See Picton-Seymour, Victorian Buildings.110 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 24 February 1906, ‘The Rise of a Krugersdorp Firm’, refers to Robson and Holton Enterprises, which commenced business in 1895 and built over a hundredbuildings in Krugersdorp including the ‘Victoria’ and ‘Pioneer’ buildings. The partners also
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219residents. In 1903, a Krugersdorp resident asked impatiently,...is there not some by-law or regulation whereby Mr. Jack Kafir is requested to avoid obstructing the pathway? ...If you walk down Ockerse street...you can scarcily [sic] get foot away. Any lady coming down has to elbow her way through these louts or walk in the mud...111A number of by-laws were soon passed to ‘reclaim’ the streets and impose imperialdiscipline on these public spaces and, particularly over ‘non-white’ users of thestreets. If the Africans, Indians and Coloureds expected to be treated as ‘Britishsubjects’ after the war – and many did – their fond hopes were quickly and cruellydashed. Gambling in the streets, a remnant of the transient mining town, asdiscussed in Chapter One, was prohibited. Imperialism blended with the middleclass's desire for the stabilisation of the town, discussed in Chapter Two, to make thetown safe and a pleasant place in which to live. The reference to any ‘lady’ in thequotation above, reveals that the Imperial town was also one increasingly populatedby women and one that was both patriarchal and patriotic.New imperial legislation also clamped down upon the violence of the ephemeralmining town, particularly the threat of violence posed by the presence of largenumbers of black residents as the mines began to start up again and attract migrantworkers. The carrying of ‘dangerous weapons’ was prohibited but ‘weapons’ wereinterpreted so broadly that even walking sticks were banned.112 With the support ofthe English-speaking shopkeepers, the imperial government also clamped downupon the colonial street by imposing severe restrictions on Indian hawkers.113Congregations of blacks, for whatever purpose, could be broken up under new public____________________________established the ‘Victory Brick co.’ in 1906.111 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 27 June 1903, ‘Correspondence’: ‘Pertinent Queries’. See also The Standard, Krugersdorp, 9 May 1903 ‘Street Whispers’ that claimed that ‘black pandemonium’ existed in Ockerse street. See also The Standard, Krugersdorp, 24 January 1903, ‘Walking on the Footpath’.112 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 28 October 1905, ‘Dangerous Weapons’.113 The Standard, Krugersdorp, untitled, 20 January 1906, exorbitant licence fees were charged: 7 pounds for hawkers and 5 pounds for pedlars; hawkers could stay in one spot for more than 20 minutes and could not return to the same site within 24 hours.
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220disturbance laws. Responding to the above call to put Africans ‘back in their place’,new legislation prevented Africans from walking on the sidewalks.114Linton's Directory, printed to provide British investors with information, conducteddoor-to-door visits in Krugersdorp,115 as did another guide for merchants in England,which highlighted what products were in demand in the town.116 There was anobsessive ‘mapping out’ of Krugersdorp by various authorities with which‘geographers of empire’ are familiar with. A new rigid conception of time wasimposed on the town. A new clock was placed above the Post Office, a miniatureversion of Big Ben,117 while a ‘Hambe Kahle’ bell reminded black residents that theycould not be on Krugersdorp's streets after the nine o' clock curfew.118 The disciplineand rhythms of Industrial capitalism permeated the town, mingling with the militaryrigidity of barracks, curfews and policed space.Even the Dutch language of the ‘Other’, was proscribed in certain ways fromKrugersdorp. Alpheus Snell, born in the United Kingdom and trained at the ‘CapeUniversity’ (see Chapter Two), acted as schoolmaster in Aliwal North,119 ran the pro-Boer, Dutch language newspaper De Voortrekker, before the South African War.When he applied to re-start a similar newspaper after the war, his background waschecked by the local Resident Magistrate who described him as ‘Anti-English’.120___________________________114 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 29 November 1903, ‘A Ten Shilling Jeer’, apparently Town Regulations of 1889 covered this ‘offence’ at a fine of 10 shillings.115 The Standard, Krugersdorp 28 February 1903, untitled.116 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 7 February 1903, untitled.117 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 28 February 1903, untitled. The clock was ubiquitous throughout the Empire, adorning railway stations, post offices and particularly Town Halls, see Picton-Seymour, Victorian Buildings, ‘those clock-towered halls being built throughout the empire since the 1860s’, p. 110.118 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 9 March 1907, ‘night curfew’, by this time the efficacy of the curfew had come under question. Similarly, Austalian Aborigines were excluded from Darwinby a curfew between sunset and sunrise, see Kennedy, A Tale of Two Cities, p. 46.119 The South African Who’s Who, an Illustrated Biography and Sketch book of South Africa, (S.A.’s Who’s Who) South African Who’s Who Publishers Company, Durban, 1908, p. 377. 120 CAD, Archives of the Colonial Secretary (CS), 12821/02, Assistant Resident Magistrate, Krugersdorp to Colonial Secretary, 17 October 1902.
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221What was held against him particularly, was his reluctance to decorate hisemployer’s building using bunting during the Coronation festivities when instructed todo so. He was also reported to have taken the ‘oath of Allegiance’ as late as August1902.121 Thus Krugersdorp was denied a Dutch newspaper while the Englishnewspaper, The Standard, Krugersdorp, held exclusive sway.The Decline of the Jingo and the Imperial TownThe decline of Jingoism came with the passing of time, as the war grew more distantin people's memories. Reminders of the war disappeared from view as the BurgherCamp was rapidly emptied of its prisoners who were returned to their homes. MartialLaw was lifted and British troops left the town. A clear indication that time washealing and transforming the hurt and bitterness of war, was the remarkably speedyrendering of the war into a curiosity, a souvenir stand for tourists, and mementoes forcollectors. An exhibition of ‘War Pictures’ was advertised in the local newspaperpromising photographs on glass plates with images projected onto a screen thatwould depict, of all things, war scenes from ‘Bullwer's Campaign’.122 Since thesewould depict the defeat of British troops at the hands of the Boer commandoes, theexhibition marked an important turning point from the arrogant triumphal boastings ofthe immediate post-war period.123Even more remarkably, the popular Ben Viljoen mentioned earlier, who had servedas veldcornet and as Krugersdorp's representative in the Volksraad as well as aBoer officer during the South African War, left Krugersdorp to join a lucrative lecturecircuit in Europe and the United States. This was reported with pride in the localEnglish-speaking newspaper.124 An auction was held in Krugersdorp of ‘Boer curios’,___________________________121 CAD, Archives of the Colonial Secretary (CS), 12821/02, Assistant Resident Magistrate, Krugersdorp to Colonial Secretary, 17 October 1902. 122 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 25 October 1902, untitled.123 ibid.123 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 24 January 1902, untitled.124 ibid.
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222articles such as carvings and jewellery made by Boer prisoners on the islands of St.Helena and Bermuda,125 surely the ultimate example of the commodification andtrivialisation of the pain and suffering experienced by combatants of the war. The warhad grown distant and its effects in polarising Boer from Briton was weakened overtime.There can be detected in The Standard, Krugersdorp, an identity shift from exclusive‘jingo’ to a more balanced and inclusive identity that merged and synthesised Boerand British cultural traits into something new that was greater than a sum of its parts,perhaps even a new embryonic ‘South Africanism’. Boers who were ridiculed innewspaper columns in the early months after the South African War, were treatedwith more respect. This can be detected in the local newspaper's treatment of the exiled PresidentKruger. One article viciously opposed a proposal to allow the ailing former Presidentto return to his country to die and said that he had made his bed and should lie init.126 However, when Kruger died in 1904, the newspaper's owners, editor andreaders had abandoned such jingoistic knee-jerk responses and a sensitive articlereported that ‘widespread regret’ was felt throughout Krugersdorp upon his death.127We can also detect a drop in imperial fervour associated with imperial occasions.The King's Birthday was still celebrated in the Coronation Park with a ‘parade of alltroops in the garrison’ at noon in the park ‘at the east end of the town’, but the articleannouncing it was just four lines long and buried in amongst other ‘parish pump’ orparochial, municipal news.128Chamberlain's visit to Krugersdorp, while it was given all the full page treatment onewould expect for the arch-imperialist; was followed by a number of letters that are___________________________125 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 13 January 1902, untitled.126 ibid.127 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 5 November, 1904, Editorial. See also, same edition, ‘Talk of the Town’.128 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 8 November 1902, untitled.
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223revealing of identity shift towards a more conciliatory stance. The newspaper hadcriticised the poor grammar and bombastic language of the speech given by theReception Committee that, in the spirit of rapprochement was a mixed body of localBoer notables and British ‘pro-Boers’.129 Two successive letters by residents callingthemselves, respectively ‘Britisher’ and ‘Another Britisher’ condemned this attack onthe Reception Committee as ‘bad form’.130 The writers noted that Chamberlain hadstruck a conciliatory note in his speech by offering to repair the PaardekraalMonument that had been damaged by British troopers (although he remarked mostinsensitively that it would be fitting to include the names of British fallen on therestored Monument).131 The inclusion of such letters and the passion with which theywere written, is powerfully suggestive of a return to pre-war reconciliation. As jingoism declined the use of Dutch words in the local English newspaper seemedto alter. Dutch phrases again appeared, for example, ‘Langzaam mark zeker’ (‘slowbut sure’) in an editorial entitled ‘Moving Slowly’ which referred to the process ofreconstruction.132 As words changed (significantly, ‘jingo’ made a re-appearanceindicating a distancing by the editors from ‘them’, the arch-imperialists),133 so didattitudes and, reflecting these, the built environment also underwent transformationas the town, bent out of shape, began to return to its erstwhile ambience andharmony. What is particularly remarkable is how imperialist symbolism appears to have beenquickly and literally rubbished. The Coronation gilt crown seems to have beenabandoned on a rubbish heap on the Market Square even before Chamberlainarrived, a powerful symbol of how quickly overt patriotism was jettisoned.134 That the___________________________129 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 24 January 1903, ‘A Puerile Tirade of Venomous Vapourings’.130 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 7 February 1903, untitled. See also The Standard, Krugersdorp, 14 February 1903.131 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 24 Janaury 1903, ‘Mr. Chamberlain, Reception Krugersdorp’.132 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 13 September 1902, ‘Moving Slowly’.133 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 6 December 1902, ‘General’.134 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 13 December 1902, ‘A Derelict Crown’.
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224‘decline’ of such a powerful imperial icon should occur in the ‘node’ at the heart ofthe town so strongly associated with spatial and cultural harmony, is, indeed,remarkable. It was as if the Market Square was re-asserting itself as a symbol of co-operation between townspeople and rural folk, between Dutch- and English-speakingwhites, that is, between Briton and Boer.The Coronation Park, too, was transformed from imperial symbol, to a much moresedate, family-orientated and domesticated symbol as it became a favourite haunt ofblack nannies and their white charges rather than an imperial rallying ground. Noneof the typical array of heroic statues, plaques and fountains seems to have beenerected there. Plans had been made to erect a fountain in Market Square but whilecastings had been commissioned from Carnegie and Jamieson, local iron foundryowners, these were never bought by the Health Board that was subsequently sued bythe local firm. This failure is rather telling as fountains were a quintessential Victorianprop, and one that could easily be embellished into imperialist imagery with its virile jetsof water and the symbolism of fertility, eternity and purity that flowing water conveyed(see Chapter Seven).135An effort to Anglicise the Market Square by building a bandstand also proveddoomed and by 1905 it was described as a ‘relic of a bygone musical age...leaningout of true in the last stages of decrepitude’.136 Once the ‘pride of the Coronationcelebrations’, the crown was reported as lying ‘abandoned, unhonoured, unsung, and tosay the truth, a bit of a nuisance, on the Market Square’, which had itself become quitea ‘rubbish heap’.137 It was felt that the practice of ‘dropping golden crowns about thetown’ ought to be stopped before Mr Chamberlain arrived otherwise it might lead to ‘thewrong impressions’.138 The image of fallen crowns powerfully conveys the rapid decline___________________________135 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 28 February 1911, ‘W.C.T.U. Annual Meeting’. See also Picton- Seymour, Victorian Buildings ,various pages, where she highlights some striking fountains in Pietermaritzburg and other British colonial towns.136 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 25 March 1905, ‘Market Square’.137 ibid.138 ibid.
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225of unabashed patriotism and the demise of the ‘Jingo Town’. In its stead, the firstglimmerings of a hybrid South Africanism can be detected during 1905.The Rise of an Embryonic ‘South African’ Colonial Town, 1903–1906The Market Square lay at the heart of emergent rapprochement between English-and Afrikaans-speaking whites in Krugersdorp. It was, after all the market itself thatbrought together local Boers from the surrounding farms and rooinek townsmen asconsumers, in one place and at the same time. The English-speakingrepresentatives on the Health Board and, later, the Town Council, did much topromote reconciliation by pushing for improvements in the Market Square, especiallya plan to build a new market house to protect farmers' products from the elements,as already mentioned above. The English-speaking newspaper revived thiscampaign as early as September, 1902 when it published the ‘impressions’ of areturning Prisoner-of-War who condemned the ‘apology for a market house’.139 There-built Market house adjoined the new Town Hall, crowned with a clock tower, thequintessential British Victorian civic symbol (see Figure 3.9).Figure 3.9. Krugersdorp’s New Town Hall and the Market Hall in 1908___________________________139 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 6 September, 1902, ‘Impressions on returning to Krugersdorp of an ex-P.O.W.’.
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226Source: Krugersdorp 100 Years/Jare, p. 71.The Town Hall’s architect was an Englishman, C. Hoskings, and the foundation stonewas laid by Selborne, the High Commissioner, who placed British coins under it. Inaddition six different newspapers and the Mayor's Minutes, including those of G. vanBlommenstein, the Mayor in 1905–6, were also placed under the stone. General Smuts,the famous Boer general, formally opened the Town Hall on 21 December 1907, as asenior member of the new Het Volk government, again underlining the hybrid nature ofthis central municipal symbol.140The spatial proximity of these two spaces indicate that a balance was being restoredto the built environment. The importance of the Market Square to the economic life ofthe town meant that it was restored to its old position as a meeting ground betweentwo white groups and a symbol of co-operation and harmony. The local farmersbrought large quantities of local tobacco which had become popular with English-speaking residents, indeed, exports to Britain had taken off because during the War,the ‘Tommy’ or ‘British Soldier’, had acquired a taste for Magaliesburg tobacco.141Here was a perfect example of a merging between the two white groups: if thearchetypes of British ‘Tommy’ soldier and the Boer, the ‘son of the soil’, could find acommon ground; then there was hope of reconciliation. The Wanderers Sports Grounds were laid out in 1906, situated between thePaardekraal Monument and the Coronation Park (see Figure 3.10). It created aneutral meeting place for the two white elites. Krugersdorp’s Town Hall adjacent tothe Market Square in 1908.142 An abattoir was built in 1906 to serve the farmingcommunity but was placed in the southern British space of the mining area143 despitethe ‘negative externalities’ associated with such structures (see Figure 3.11). By1905, under the pressure of all these influences, the tensions between English-___________________________140 Krugersdorp 110 years, pp. 68–71.141 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 20 May 1905, ‘My Lady Nicotine’.142 ibid., pp. 96–7. 143 ibid., pp. 102–3.
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227speaking and Dutch/Afrikaans-speaking whites in Krugersdorp had dissipatedsignificantly. As if to underline this restoration of harmony and balance, two newbuilding developments commenced in different parts of the town. In 1905, a newworking class suburb was built in the Boer ‘territory’ to the west, beyondBurghershoop. This was to be called West Krugersdorp.144 The following year, 1906,Lewisham, a middle-class residential area was laid out as a semi-governmenttownship to the southeast of the town, further south and further to the east than anyprevious township.145 Again, a spatial balance had been restored to the town.Figure 3.10: The Krugersdorp Wanderers Sports Grounds in 1906Source: Krugersdorp 100 Years/Jare, p. 96.The District Township, long a symbol of the town's separation, became one of itsmost important symbols of reconciliation as a growing number of the English-speaking middle class made their homes there, happy to live close to thePaardekraal Monument and among Dutch-speaking neighbours who, for their part,welcomed them. Probably one of the most remarkable signs of reconciliation in this___________________________144 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 29 July, 1905, ‘New Freehold Township’.145 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 13 July 1912, ‘Townships in the Krugersdorp Area’.
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228regard was Abner Cohen who was, in many ways, the nemesis of the old BoerRepublic, as pointed out at the start of this Chapter. Figure 3.11: Krugersdorp’s Abattoir, 1907.Source: Krugersdorp 100 Years/Jare, p. 103.Cohen sold up his ‘Court Bar’ to allow for the expansion of the court building146 andthen appears to have used the proceeds to buy a number of erven as a consolidatedblock in the District Township. He proudly referred to his peri-urban plot as‘Homelands’ (See Map Ten). If Cohen could feel sufficiently welcome andcomfortable to set down roots in the heart of a Boer dorp and a stone throw’sdistance to the Paardekraal monument from which he had been evicted less thantwenty years earlier, then there was, indeed, meaningful reconciliation amongKrugersdorp’s residents.Even more significant as a symbol of reconciliation, the Paardekraal Monument wasrestored. The sandstone tablets bearing inscriptions ‘in the taal’ were restored inmore expensive marble, a poignant gesture of respect not only for the monument but___________________________146 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 17 October 1903, ‘The Court Bar’.147 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 30 January 1904, ‘Paardekraal Restored’.
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229also the Boer language itself.147 The Hospital, built in 1911 after the Union, wasnamed, not after Victoria, Albert or King Edward, but after the original farm,Paardekraal, an almost poetic return in full circle to Krugersdorp's hybrid roots.148Reconciliation is powerfully conveyed by the trade directory which promotedKrugersdorp to investors and industrialists (figure 3.12).Map Ten: Abner Cohen’s ‘Homelands’ in District TownshipSource: Archives of the Krugersdorp Town Planner’s Office, Plan showing the sub-division of ‘Homelands’ being the property ofAbner Cohen Esq: consisting of Erven Nos. 212-4, 251-3, situated in the District Township of Krugersdorp, compiled by theGovernment Land Surveyor, July 1904. A new building in the town was significantly named ‘Monument Buildings’ and wasbuilt for ‘Stegmann and Tindall’, a local law firm that promoted a partnership between‘Dutch’ and ‘English’ lawyers. This was one of the many such partnerships thatbegan to spring up in the town. The building was built in the ‘most modern’architectural style, with a forward-looking approach, rather than in the backward-looking ‘Republican’ and ‘Victorian’ styles.___________________________148 Krugersdorp 110 years, p. 151.
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230Figure 3.12: Cover of a Krugersdorp Promotional BookletSource: W. Ramsay MacNab and J.W. Smith, Guide to Krugersdorp and the West Rand, Johnston Ltd, Edinburgh, n.d., coverpage.ConclusionThis Chapter suggests that the concept of a ‘cosmology’, usually reserved fortraditional, pre-industrial urban spaces, can be borrowed from cultural anthropologyand applied to a modern town under particular circumstances of ideological tension.Co-operation between the white residents of the town and its surrounding hinterlandcharacterised the town's ’natural' state given the dynamics of the town's size, mutualeconomic interdependence and racial identity within a socio-economic systemcharacterised by racial capitalism. Conflict tended to arise mostly from outside thetown, through externally imposed ideologies and the effects of the onset of war, ofwar itself and then its aftermath on the town lying in its path.Conflict resulted in the growth of ethnic identification, of narrow nationalist
chauvinism that was reflected in the architecture and the distribution of buildings andresidences in the town which, in turn, influenced the people resident in town in theform of a ‘dialogue’ of ‘environment–behaviour’, between ‘flesh’ and ‘stone’.149 Theterminology of ‘cues’ and ‘mnemonic’ devices, of reading the city as a ‘text’, is drawnfrom urban semiotics and helps to shed light on the processes involved. The use ofan interdisciplinary approach opens up new opportunities for understanding urbanspaces and the built environment.___
The term is derived from R. Sennett, Flesh and Stone: the Body and the City in Western Civilization, Faber and Faber, New York, 1994.
Other interesting info:
JOHANNESBURG June 14 Sapa
An off-duty police officer travelling on a suburban train from
Johannesburg to Luipaardsvlei on the West Rand on Sunday evening
was attacked and robbed of his pistol and wristwatch.
The officer escaped injury.
The train was carrying about 500 Inkatha supporters on their way
back from an Inkatha Freedom Party rally at Soweto's Jabulani
stadium when on the platform of Princess station a group robbed
a woman, Police liaision officer Capt Eugene Opperman said.
The off-duty policeman evidently tried to foil the robbery and
was then attacked and relieved of his 9mm pistol and his watch,
Capt Opperman said.
Subsequently, a large group of Inkatha supporters left the train
at Luipaardsvlei station and started walking home only to be
confronted by a large contingent of police who searched the group
and retrieved the policeman's pistol as well as a .38 revolver.
A woman found in possession of the police firearm was arrested.
The group was then escorted by the police to their quarters.
http://70.84.171.10/~etools/newsbrief/1992/news9206.15
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Date:
Historic fact:
Jameson's troops were captured to the southof the town, an event that seems to have traumatised the Dutch-speaking whites ofthe area and prompted displays of rampant Boer national chauvinism. Poems wereprinted in Ons Volk, the local Dutch newspaper that condemned the display of ‘HetJingodom’ at ‘Luipaardsvlei’, the farm where some of the action took place and where a major British-owned mine, the Luipaard's Vlei Estates and G.M.____________________________
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195Co. Ltd., was situated. A local Boer resident wrote a letter to Ons Volk, whichreferred to the ‘rednecks’ (‘rooinekken’), an insulting term used by Boers in referenceto Englishmen. Another resident wrote the following words:By Luipaardsvlei, o jingoes, hebt gy op meuw geboet,/ Majubaskruinblyft vas staan, tot schande voor den Brit42Changes in the townscape reflected these tensions and there are indications thatboth the architectural design and the sites chosen for key government buildings inKrugersdorp expressed what could be termed an aggressive ‘Boer nationalchauvinism’. For example, the Krugersdorp railway station which was built in 1896was placed in the south because it was designed to be used mostly by miners, but itcan also be ‘read’, in so far as a city is text, as an ‘counter-invasion’ of BritishUitlander space by technological elements (the NZASM railway service was ownedby Dutch capital) sympathetic to the Republic.43 Like the courthouse built earlier, therailway station (figure 3.5) was opened by Kruger himself and expressed TransvaalRepublican architecture found in key government symbols such as, for example, thePalace of Justice and Staatsmodelskool in Pretoria.44Unlike this courthouse, though - which was built further north and overlooking theMarket where many Dutch-speaking farmers gathered - the railway station was builtfurther to the south, close to the mines and in a space almost entirely used byEnglish-speaking miners. In this case, the Krugersdorp Railway station’sarchitecture clashed more starkly with its immediate surroundings of miningheadgear. It had ‘ornate gables’ of the Cape tradition and the usual array ofembellishments that became the signature of M.C.A. Meischke the man who built___________________________42 Ons Volk, 13 June 1896, untitled. Loosely translated as ‘By Luipaardsvlei, o jingoes, you were punished, Majuba Ridge still stands to disgrace the British’43 Such military terminology is appropriate in the circumstances, tensions were high and the town was militarised to some extent. In January 1896 Commandant-general Piet Joubert visited Krugersdorp and a Volunteer Corps was established. In February they were given their first task: to guard the Paardekraal Monument as there were rumours that ‘criminal elements’ from Johannesburg were planning to blow it up. See Krugersdorp 100 jare/years, p. 53.44 Picton-Seymour, Victorian Buildings, p. 283.
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196these stations throughout the Transvaal and who had arrived from Utrecht a fewyears earlier. It was seen by contemporary English-speakers as ‘one of the mostimportant projects’ seen in a long time in the town and its timing and its architecturemust have had a deep and profound impact.45Figure 3.5. The Krugersdorp Railway Station, 1896.Source: Krugersdorp 100 Years/Jare, p. 43A police station was also built in 189746 (figure 3.6) because the town's growingpopulation and increasing crime necessitated such a structure. However thisstructure can also be interpreted as evidence for growing Boer national chauvinism.Although it was established in the western section of the town (see Map Seven),which seems to undermine the argument that it was intended to project Boer poweronto the English-speaking mining population, one can, nonetheless, make the casethat it constituted a symbol of Boer authority by exploring the ideological values ofthe east-west axis along the same lines as the north-south axis were explored___________________________45 This is quoted in Afrikaans as a paraphrase from the Krugersdorp Times and West Rand Advertiser, 1 August 1896, in Schutte, ‘Die Geskiedenis van Krugersdorp’, p. 53, (‘was een van die belangrikste projekte wat in `n groot behoefte voorsien het’). How Schutte obtained this source is a mystery as no copies of the newspaper survive in the State library. 46 Krugersdorp 100 jare/years, p. 136.
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197earlier. Figure 3.6. Krugersdorp’s Police Station, 1897Source: Krugersdorp 100 Years, p. 137.The western section of the town, it is contended, was developed after the JamesonRaid, as an additional ‘sacred’ region for Dutch-speaking whites and so marked anextension of the sacred territory around the Paardekraal Monument and the DistrictTownship to the western parts of the town. This made sense because the westernpart of the town faced the rural hinterland of Boer farms rather than in the east thatfaced Johannesburg or in the south near the mines dominated by English-speakingminers (the reef turns sharply south as it reaches Krugersdorp and the Randfonteinmines and Randfontein Village are to the south-west of Krugersdorp). Further to thewest was the Boer dorp of Potchefstroom, a symbol, along with Pretoria to the northof the town, of Boer Independence. Map Seven: The Position of Krugersdorp’s Police station in West Krugersdorp.
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198Source: CAD, Transvaal Public Works department (TPB), TALG 494, Town Engineer’s Department, 1938This area lay lower than the rest of the town and further from the mines (see MapEight), so it may well have been cheaper land, but there may also have beenimportant symbolic considerations as well. The architecture of the police station wasagain typically Republican and, to reinforce the ‘message’ of Boer nationalchauvinism, the foundation stone was laid by President Kruger.47It was asubstantial building 26 metres in length and thus successfully projected Republicanpower.48 The Republican police were used not only to suppress crime but to ensurethe preservation of Boer control over an increasingly restive Uitlander population on___________________________47 Schutte, ‘Die Geskiedenis van Krugersdorp’, p. 52 (‘...reghoekige gebou waarwan die sye 26 meter lank was...’)48 ibid.
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199the Rand. A number of police residences were also constructed,49 using distinctiveRepublican redbrick walls, in the ‘sacred’ north of District Township, underlying theideological connections that were being made between north and west in the town.The visual effects of these two new buildings, in the south and the west, togetherwith police residences to the north and the ‘Transvaal Republican’ architecturalfeatures these incorporated, would have had the effect of ‘redundancy’ combininginto a powerful ‘mnemonic of Republican power. This would have been furtherreinforced by the presence of Boer commandoes marching through the town and thedisplay of the Republican ‘Vierkleur’, hoisted and visible at different points of thetown. The ‘British’ town, centred on the Luipaard's Vlei Estate and G.M. Co. Ltd.,was, thus, ‘surrounded’ by a national chauvinist, military aggressive TransvaalRepublican built environment.The effect was deepened by the establishment of` the Boer residential area of‘Burghershoop’, also in 1897 (see Map Eight). This space was composed of free‘Government’ stands to the west of the town50 and was purpose-built toaccommodate marginalised, poverty-stricken Dutch-speaking Boers. These peoplehad been thrown off the land during the 1890s as victims of a process ofproletarianisation, as farmland became increasingly capitalised and relationshipsbetween landowners and a type of sharecropper class, known as the ‘by-woner’ wastransformed into a capitalist-worker relationship.Bywoners, as a small under-capitalised agricultural class, could not retain theiraccess to the land under these circumstances and many refused to work for thelandowners as a rural proletariat or were seen as unsuitable by the commercialfarmers in this regard. Similar areas were laid out around the Rand, for example,___________________________49 ibid.50 CAD, Transvaal Local Government archives (TPB) 542, TA 1408, Krugersdorp Asiatics Locations Inquiry, 1910, evidence of J.A. Burger, p. 63.
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200Vrededorp.51 These ‘poor whites’ made a living partly from brick-making activities, inthe case of Johannesburg, at the Braamfontein Spruit or in Krugersdorp, at theDistrict Township ‘spruit’ which constituted the ‘Monument Brickfields’, to the north-east of the town. The encirclement of ‘British’ space by ‘Boer space’ was, thus,completed at this point.Map Eight: A Topographical map of Krugersdorp depicting Burghershoop Source: J. Henning, ‘the Evolution, Land Use and Land Use Patterns of Krugersdorp’, BA Honours dissertation, University ofthe Witwatersrand, 1963, p.2.It can further be argued that the ‘reach’ of this cosmology was extended to include‘black space’ as well, but in complex and contested ways. Colonial towns whether‘British’ mining towns or ‘Boer dorps’ were ‘white spaces’. Black residents essentially___________________________51 See C. van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1887-1914, vol. one, New Babylon, Ravan, Johannesburg, 1982, pp. 114-21 and 158-9.
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201had to ‘fit in’, and had no capacity to choose their living spaces as these wereallocated by local authorities, usually on the periphery and on undesirable land (nearsewerage farms and rubbish dumps, for example). This created segregated spacesin these towns where blacks and whites lived apart in different parts of the town andthese were usually separated by a natural border like a stream or by artificial man-made structures such as factories.52Urban segregation was so common to colonies all around the world that Ross andTelkamp53 as well as King54 define it the quintessential feature of the ‘colonial city’This is not to say that the urban subaltern groups had no effect on the allocation ofspace or the dynamics of urban living - many works in urban history testify to theinfluential roles that the subaltern plays in constructing colonial urban space, as doesmy own work55 as will be demonstrated in later chapters.In the same year that Burghershoop was established in the west of the town, the‘mixed’ (Indian, Coloured and African) location was removed from the town, a ‘KaffirLocatie’ was laid out a mile to its north-west Africans and Coloureds and a ‘KoelieLocatie’ immediately beside the ‘white space’ of Burghershoop (see Chapter Five).56This latter development is particularly significant as there is no doubt that Indianswere seen in a broadly if muted negative light by Boers who freely used thederogatory appellation of ‘Koelie’ in reference to Indians. It is, thus, a matter of some___________________________52 This pattern appears in both ‘Boer’ and ‘British’ towns, see, for example, A.J. Christopher, ‘Race and Residence in Colonial Port Elizabeth’ in South African Geographical Journal, 1986, pp. 1-19 and E. Nel, ‘Racial Segregation in East London, 1836-1948’, in South African Geographical Journal, 1991, 73, pp. 60-68.54 R. Ross and G. Telkamp (eds.), Colonial Cities, Essays on Urbanism in a Colonial Context, Martinus Nijhoff, Dordrecht, 1985.55 A. King, Colonial Urban Development, Culture, Social Power and Environment, Routledge andKegan Paul, 1976.56 C. Dugmore, ‘Blurred Demarcations of Authority and Power: the Conflict Between Indian and White Shopkeepers in Krugersdorp, 1887-1923: Towards a Pragmatic Conceptualisation of Democracy and Local Government’, History Workshop Paper, University of the Witwatersrand, 1994.
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202difficulty to explain why the Boer authorities would place them next to ‘poor Burghers'especially during a phase of Republican chauvinism and the construction of aRepublican cosmology, especially given President Kruger's profound sympathy forthis class of marginalised ‘poor Burghers’57One possible explanation is that the Indian residents were, in fact, ambivalentlytreated by the Voortrekker state and by ‘Boers’ generally, as Chapter Five will argue.Kruger himself noted on several occasions that Indians provided necessary goods toBoers at a cheaper rate than ‘English’ traders and could not use Boer debt to gainmortgages as they could not own land.58 Thus, locating Indians next to the poorBurghers made sense as it lumped the providers of cheap goods with those most inneed for such services. The Dutch-speaking whites did, nonetheless, look down atthose with darker skins than themselves, particularly if they were non-Christians, aswas the case with the Hindu and Muslim Indians in Krugersdorp. The residents ofBurghershoop complained almost immediately of their proximity to a ‘Koelie’ locationand argued that this stigmatised them as Indians were stereotyped as ‘insanitary’and ‘unscrupulous’.59 Thus, this does not seem to be a satisfactory explanation.A more probable explanation is the pressure resulting from the political power playbetween British and Boer in the late 1890s. The ex-Mining Commissioner of___________________________57 CAD, TPB 542, TA 1408, Asiatics Inquiry, 1910, evidence of J.A. Burger, p. 63.58 See van Onselen, New Babylon and C. van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886-1914, vol. 2, New Nineveh, (New Nineveh), Ravan, Johannesburg, 1982, especially the chapters on ‘Johannesburg's Jehus’ on cabdrivers, and ‘The Main Reef Road into the Working Class’.59 Pillay reports that the Volksraad supported the segregation of Indians by a narrow margin of 24 votes to 18, and President Kruger remarked that Indian traders provided ‘...a reasonable service at reasonable prices for poor burghers’, B. Pillay, British Indians in the Transvaal: Trade, Race Relations and Imperial Policy in Republican and Colonial Transvaal, Longmans, London, 1976, p. 13.
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203Krugersdorp gave evidence during a 1910 inquiry into the Indian location that theBoer authorities had wanted to place the Indian location further to the west in 1897(presumably to be close enough for the Burgher consumers to visit but sufficientlydistant to remove the ‘stigma’ that was felt by proximity to a ‘Koelie Location’) butyielded to pressure arising from the stipulations of the London Convention to treat‘British subjects’ fairly.60 Indians were included under the rubric ‘British subjects’ bydint of their citizenship of a British colony in Indian or in other colonies like Natal. Indians themselves made the most of this pressure to secure concessions forthemselves in the Republic and would complain frequently and vociferouslywhenever they perceived that they were badly treated by the Republic's officials.Hence my contention that Indians were both the victims of competing whitenationalist struggles and, simultaneously played Boer off against Briton, adopting anactive role to secure a desirable commercial and residential area in the heart of thetown. To avoid a potential casus belli, the Republican officials had to ensure thatIndian traders, as a general principle in the Republic, although segregated fromwhite residents, were in sufficiently close proximity to white customers so that theirbusiness would not suffer harm. This suggests that the spatial expression of a Boernational chauvinist cosmology had its limitations and was constrained through fear ofprovoking war with Imperial Britain. Nonetheless, the establishment of Burghershoop, its location on the westernperiphery, the building of the railway and the police station in ‘Transvaal Republic’architectural styles and the blatant Boer chauvinist displays in the streets ofKrugersdorp by the Krugersdorp Commando, all point to the imposition of Boernationalist ideology onto the formerly ‘mosaic’ town where a degree of co-operation___________________________60 See, for example, De Voortrekker, 15February 1899, ‘Koelie Locaties’, an editorial that reflected its readership among the literate Dutch-speaking residents of Krugersdorp that expressed ‘deep dissatisfaction’ (‘groot ontevredenheid’) with the placing of burghers next to an IndianLocation.
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204and social harmony used to prevail prior to 1895. Krugersdorp's English-speaking middle and working class had to endure a period ofhostility and an overtly aggressive assertion of the Transvaal Republic's hegemonyover the town that led, in turn, to the inscription of Boer ideology onto Krugersdorp'sbuilt environment. However, given the small size of the town and the economicinterdependence of its two white groups, such hostility was not likely to last. The Restoration of Spatial Harmony, 1897-1899As time wore on, the pain caused by the Jameson Raid steadily gradually eased forKrugersdorp's Boer residents who returned to the day-to-day grind of routine andhabit. Then, in 1898, Krugersdorp’s built environment was profoundly altered in away that can be explained as a return to the social harmony that existed before theJameson Raid. Luipaardsvlei, a British middle class suburb to the Southeast of thetown was constructed, restoring the spatial balance in the layout of the town tooffset, as it were, Burghershoop in the west. 61 A harmony in the town's layout bothreflected and helped to advance a more balanced and friendly relationship betweenits English- and Dutch-speaking residents - it was almost as if the brick and mortar ofthe town was permeating the consciousness of the town dwellers, restoring the easyamicability of Boer and Briton. Conventional explanations will point out that a mining boom meant increaseddemand for housing stock in close proximity to the mines and that a propertysyndicate took the opportunity to lay out stands and auction these for a quick profit.The ‘ecological model’ also seems to apply here where the middle class and upperworking class moved out of the increasingly less desirable stands in the town itself tomake way for a new influx or ‘wave’ of working class miners who, in turn, moved out____________________________61 CAD, TPB 542, TA 1408, 1910 Asiatic Inquiry, evidence of J.A. Burger, p. 63.
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205of the boarding houses and single residences of the mines on Krugersdorp’speriphery as they started to marry and raise families (see Chapter Two).Burgess and other writers from the ‘Chicago School’ explain this process in terms of‘invasion’ and ‘succession’, drawing from botany. In this view, lower status minersmoved into the centre of Krugersdorp and made this residential area less appealing tothe middle class and upper stratum of workers such as foremen, who lived there, andthey began to look for new homes. 62 Sensing an opportunity, the LuipaardsvleiSyndicate, like property developers across the Rand, developed the LuipaardsvleiTownship as a relatively elite residential area, a suburb situated at some distance fromthe increasingly crowded, noisy and unpleasant town. Luipaardsvlei, thus,corresponded to Burgess's ‘Deutschland’, an environmentally superior living space inChicago for the ‘labour aristocracy’ and the lower middle class. Luipaardsvlei seems tohave retained this reputation as an elite space for many decades thereafter.63However, the timing and position of these stands, together with their architecturalfeatures and the circumstances in which these houses were built, suggest thatsomething altogether more interesting was occurring and requires more detailedexamination. Luipaardsvlei was designed as a ‘semi-government township’, where theLuipaardsvlei Syndicate received one-third and the state two-thirds of the stand licencemoney. This, too, could provide an explanation for the government’s decision to grantpermission to build a township although further investigation reveals that ideology mayalso have played a role. The Luipaardsvlei Syndicate was owned by the Luipaards' Vlei Estate G.M. Co. Ltd.64 which was, in turn, owned by Rhodes' Goldfields of South Africa___________________________62 Burgess, ‘The Growth of the City’, p. 91. For a discussion of this approach to South African towns, see also J. McCarthy and D.P. Smit (eds.), South African City: Theory in Analysis and Planning, Juta, Cape Town, 1984, p. 13. 63 The Standard, Krugersdorp 3 July 1912, ‘Townships in the Krugersdorp Area’.64 See The Standard, Krugersdorp, 21 October, 1905, ‘As Others See Us!: A Few Impressions by a
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206G.M. Co. Ltd.. It was remarkable, then, that the Boer government would grantpermission to build a township to a company owned by Rhodes who was, after all, thenemesis of the Boer Republic, having had attempted to overthrow the Boer governmentduring the Jameson Raid. Furthermore, Rhodes had earlier built a sandstone cottage on the Luipaard’s Vlei mineand it was rumoured that weapons and ammunition were stored there during theJameson Raid65. The co-operation of the Republic in building a township in such anideologically loaded space is highly significant and cannot be attributed merely to therelatively trivial income that would be secured through stand licences. Rather, theconstruction of Luipaardsvlei Township should be understood as attempt by theEnglish- and Dutch-speaking white residents - especially its elite elements - to restoresocial harmony after the traumatic events of 1895.There is ample evidence of such attempts at rapprochement between Krugersdorp’stwo white communities. For example, the local English language newspaper, TheStandard, Krugersdorp, which began publishing in late 1898, openly criticised theUitlander political associations on a number of occasions. Run by the local Britishmiddle class trio of Stammers, Wallis and Law and their ‘Standard Printers andPublishers Co. Ltd.’, the newspaper declared that it would refuse to toady ‘to this orthat political party or clique’, it would be ‘absolutely fearless and independent’.66 Thenewspaper demonstrated its conciliatory approach by describing the PaardekraalMonument as ‘a sacred place’, indicating that at least some elements within theEnglish-speaking middle class had recognized and had internalised the core featuresof the cosmology suggested earlier, concerning this monument.67____________________________Visitor’. 65 See, for example, the history of the company published by the proprietors: The Goldfields of South Africa, The Goldfields, 1887-1937, Goldfields of South Africa, Johannesburg, 1937, p. 10. 66 See Krugersdorp 100 jare/years, p. 8067 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 31 December, 1898, untitled.
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207In this, they shared much in common with the proprietors and editors of Ons Volkthat - after its short-lived patriotic vitriol described above - took great pains to bringabout Boer and British reconciliation after the Raid, in 1897. Thus, the newspapercongratulated the British residents over the celebrations commemorating QueenVictoria's Jubilee, wishing her a ‘long and prosperous life’ (‘een lang en voorspoedigleven’).68 The Standard, Krugersdorp showed a similar respect for President PaulKruger, praising his ‘seasonal and tactful speech’ on Old Year's Eve and noted that itshould go a long way in removing the obstacles that stood in the way of ‘a completefusion between the old and new populations’69One can likewise detect a return to the normal friendly relations betweentownspeople and farmers from the rural hinterland which is reflected in calls by thelocal newspaper to improve conditions in the ‘Markt Plain’ and to clean up the‘sloots’, as the English-language newspaper put it, and to build a covered MarketBuilding to protect farmers' produce from the elements.70 Improved economicconditions also helped to repair the wounds of the Jameson Raid. It was reported in1898 that ‘the market is beginning to boom once more’,71 a testament to theeconomic benefits of co-operation and reconciliation.The symbiosis captured in the rebuilding of the Market House reflected a realisationthat English-speaking town and Dutch-speaking countryside were economicallyinterdependent. The Market Master was an Englishman, Mr. Bedford, who worked hardto secure such a building from the government, a fact gratefully acknowledged by thelocal Dutch-speaking farmers.72 Mr. Bedford had a very close relationship with the local___________________________68 Ons Volk, 23 June 1897, ‘...a long and prosperous life’.69 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 31 December 1899, untitled.70 De Voortrekker, 14 September 1898, untitled. See also The Standard, Krugersdorp, 21 January, 1899, untitled.71 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 31 December 1898, untitled.72 The Standard, Krugersdorp 10 December 1898, ‘Ourselves’.73 Schutte, ‘Die Geskiedenis van Krugersdorp’, p. 90. See also P. Fitzpatrick, The Transvaal From Within, Heinemann, London, 1899, p. 188.
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208farmers and was an elder in the N.G.K. He was one of the many ‘pro-Boers’ that lived inKrugersdorp, as will be discussed later in this Chapter. The symbolic restoration ofspatial harmony indicated by the Market Square is remarkable given that theJameson Raid soldiers had actually been held prisoner in that square, guarded byheavily armed Boer Troops, just two years earlier.73 Nevertheless, hostility hadremained latent and the spirit of reconciliation began to break down as war cloudsgathered in 1899.The Rise of the British Imperial Colonial Town, Krugersdorp 1899–1902The rapprochement between Boer and Briton was not to last long in Krugersdorp asforces much more powerful than small town editors, landdrosts or shopkeepers,were shaping events at a national level. Major figures like Rhodes and Chamberlain,together with the new British High Commissioner, Sir Alfred Milner, applied pressureon the Boer authorities to extend the franchise to the English-speaking Uitlanders -which both sides believed outnumbered the Boers - and war grew imminent. A flurryof negotiations took place between February when a massive Uitlander petition wassent to the Queen and September 1899. People talked freely and constantly of thepossibility of war, encouraged by a shamelessly ‘jingo’ British press, particularly theTimes and The Star, the Johannesburg newspaper.As with the Jameson Raid, but now from the British point of view, an identity shifttook place from ambiguity and hybridity to a form of unreasoning patriotic chauvinismdescribed as ‘jingoism’, among Krugersdorp's English-speaking residents by the startof the South African War. This shift can be detected in the growing use of Britishsymbols. The Standard, Krugersdorp’s leader articles and editorials can be analysedand this transformation can be traced in the changes in the terms and metaphorsthat were used in headlines and in major articles in the newspaper. There was adistinct shift from broad declarations in support for peace to distinctly war-mongering____________________________
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209terms.The earlier editorials warn about war's destruction and talk about the tragedy ofneighbours and friends fighting one another: ‘WAR, war with all its attendant horrors’including ‘friends hacking at each other’.74 Later articles, however, offered veiledthreats in an analogous fashion to the famous Battle of Dorking that appeared inBritain in 1870s and its many French and German imitators, which anticipated WorldWar One.75 During the months leading up to war, the newspaper carried a number ofsuch articles. An early editorial took pride in Britain's immense power by pointing outthat ‘50 000 soldiers’ could be quickly mobilised and sent to the Transvaal in theevent of war:Suppose these 50 000 English troops were to join hands and extend in a line. They would form an unbroken chain reaching 56 miles, or equal to the distance from Pretoria to Heidelberg...If they were in skirmishing order twenty paces apart, and advanced they would form a line 188 miles long, and could stretch from Laing's Nek to Komatie Poort. Suppose they came in on ordinary bullock wagons, 50 men on each, they would fill 1000 wagons, a procession that would extend from the Market Square, Krugersdorp, to well up Pritchard Street, Johannesburg, and would be six hours passing any given spot... 76The use of familiar place names such as the Market Square and natural features,such as those associated with Boer power like ‘Laing's Nek’, were designed toproduce an immediate and concrete sense of menace. A later editorial was infused by this late-Victorian idolisation of force77 and appears to be even more aggressive,____________________________74 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 29 April 1899, untitled.75 See I.F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War, 1763–1984, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1966.76 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 9 September 1899, untitled.77 See W. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1870, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1957.78The Standard, Krugersdorp, 18 May 1899, untitled.
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210wondering ...how anyone could even contemplate war with so powerful a nation..., a power that holds the armies of Europe in chain will [not] hesitate to crush without mercy a twopenny-halfpenny crowd of men with guns who are foolish enough to challenge and defy.78This demeaning and belittling characterisation of the Boer armed forces wascomplemented by a subsequent depiction of Kruger's advisers as ‘harpies’ givingPresident Kruger ‘evil advice’.79 A note of dehumanisation and demonisation of theBoer political elite had now crept into the newspaper’s discourse. The shift inattitudes to Boers culminated in one of the last pre-war editorials from The Standard,Krugersdorp that again visualised a future war with Britain, warning that: The [British] advance will be under a paralysing shell fire from a line of seven or eight miles long.... The Boer's sole idea of fighting is lying quietly...behind a kopje and taking slow and deliberate aim. He had never known what it is to have to lie quietly when his comrades are being smashed around him by deadly hail of bullets falling from the sky... killing his horses and picking off men lying like ant bears in the holes.80Another striking shift in the discourse of the local English newspaper was its use ofDutch words, as already mentioned above. Dutch aphorisms like ‘Wacht Een Betjie’81 and ‘Alles Zal Recht Kommen’82 were used in earlier editorials untranslated,____________________________79The Standard, Krugersdorp, 5 September 1899. untitled.80 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 26 August 1899, untitled.81 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 29 April 1899, ‘Wacht Een Betjie’ (this can be translated as ‘Wait
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211assuming that British leaders would understand these terms and as a sign offriendship and respect for their language and idiom. Later editorials would no longeruse such Dutch phrases.In a similar vein, the word ‘jingo’ that had earlier been used to attack ‘hotheads’ orthe tub-thumping imperialists that Kipling derided, disappeared from the newspaper'sleading articles and editorials as the war grew more imminent. While the newspaperearlier played down the ‘Edgar Incident’ involving alleged ill-treatment of an Uitlanderby a Boer policeman or ‘ZARP’, it later played up a trivial incident involving anEnglishman's arrest in Krugersdorp, into ‘Police Terrorism’.83All these signs indicate a marked identity shift in the English-speaking population ofKrugersdorp. Boers became steadily demonised in the local newspaper's pageswhile British icons, particularly military men like Roberts and Kitchener, appearedmore frequently and were referred to with admiration. The Queen's Birthday marksan excuse for the most sentimental and jingoistic mush where the monarch's virtueswere supposed to be so self-evident that even the perfidious Boer must secretlyadmire her. In an article entitled ‘God Bless Her’, the editor remarks that,...there were few tutored hearts in this country which did not thrill with pleasure on the occasion of the eightieth birthday of Her Majesty, QueenVictoria. Her virtues as a mother, her powers as a ruler of vast Kingdom and as Empress spreading over a territory equal in size to all the Russias,her influence for the welfare of her people, in many cases preventing bloodshed, her heartfelt sympathy with them in times of trouble and disaster, and above all her true womanly qualities have endeared her to all, and the spontaneous prayer, ‘Long may she reign’, uttered this week, comesnot from the hearts of Britons alone.84____________________________a Moment’).82The Standard, Krugersdorp, 15 April 1899, ‘Alles Zal Recht Kommen’ (this can be translated as ‘Everything Will Be All Right’).83 The Standard Krugersdorp, 27July 1899, untitled.
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212The friendly, co-operative atmosphere between Boer and Briton in Krugersdorpdeteriorated in bar brawls and bravado in the streets. English-speaking miners andthe middle class began to book railway tickets to Kimberley or Mafeking.85 Many ofKrugersdorp's English-speaking residents volunteered to fight against theirneighbours and friends by joining the Imperial Light Horse86 and other similarregiments while, on the Boer's side, many Dutch-speaking men joined theKrugersdorp Commando and were soon in action at some of the key battles of thewar. Most of Krugersdorp’s English-speaking residents, however, fled to the coastaltowns of the British colonies in the Cape and Natal. Pietermaritzburg’s population, forexample, more doubled during the war from 9 000 to 19 000 whites clearly indicatingthat it was a major destination for British refugees from the Rand.87 It seems likelythat at least some of Krugersdorp’s British residents made their way to this town andif they did, the similarities with Krugersdorp would be immediately evident. Aspointed out earlier, ‘Pieter Mauritz burg’ as it was originally called, was once a Boerdorp and shared many features of the District Township of Krugersdorp includingwide streets and long blocks typical of dorps laid out in erven. It even shared withKrugersdorp a powerful Boer monument in the form of the iconic Boer symbol, theChurch of the Vow.88 When the British took over the town in the 1840s, it quicklytransformed the Boer dorp into a British Imperial Town and its parks and MarketSquare may have served as a model for the later transformation of Krugersdorp___________________________84 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 27 May 1899, untitled.85 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 8 July 1899, ‘Of General Interest’.87 See, for example, R. Viney, ‘Officers and Gentlemen: Masculinity, English Speaking South African Colonial Troops and the British Army during the South African War, 1899–1902’, Paper presented at ‘The Anglo–Boer War: a reappraisal’ Conference, 12–15 October, 1999. See also, W. Ramsay Macnab and J.W. Smith, Guide to Krugersdorp and the West Rand, W. & A.K. Johnston, Edinburgh, n.d., p. 29.88 See T. Wills, ‘The Segregated City’, in J. Laband and R. Haswell (eds.), Pietermaritzburg, 1888-1938: A New Portrait of an African City (Pietermaritzburg), University of Natal, Shuter/Shooter, Pietermaritzburg, 1989, pp. 33–47.
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213along similar lines.Those who stayed in Cape Town and Durban would also have imbibed the culturalinfluences of Imperial Britain that were omnipresent in these British colonial townsespecially in the parks that were heavily infused with statues and other Imperialimagery.89 It is striking that even while hostilities still raged, plans were made in 1902for a park in Krugersdorp, to commemorate the coronation of King Edward VII.90 Theseeds for this idea may well have been planted in the minds of Krugersdorp’sEnglish-speaking residents during their stay in the Imperial towns of Cape Town,Durban and Pietermaritzburg in the course of the war.After the South African War ended, the English-speaking residents returned to theirhomes and businesses profoundly aware that the Union Jack now flew over theTransvaal. The Dutch-speaking officials were gone, replaced by military authoritiesthat imposed martial law on the town. A large ‘Burgher Camp’ was situated close tothe town and held Boer POWs. The surrounding farms were burnt-out shells.The local newspaper described the new Imperial Krugersdorp with evident delightwhen it resumed publication in 1902:Never before in the history of Krugersdorp has the town presented such a military...appearance as it has acquired since the British occupation. Columns of soldiers frequently move about the district, generally to the accompaniment of martial music, and it is certain that such unwonted gaiety is not a little appreciated by the inhabitants.91____________________________89 For example the statue of Queen Victoria in front of Cape Town's Houses of Parliament, and in Durban's Town Gardens, see Picton-Seymour, Victorian Buildings in South Africa, pp. 51 and 243. An elaborate fountain commemorated the Queen's Golden Jubilee opposite Durban's Town Hall while the Town Gardens also sported an ornate bandstand.90 CAD, Archives of the Colonial Secretary (CS), 85, 3851/02, Assistant Resident Magistrate Krugersdorp to the Acting Secretary, Transvaal Administration, Pretoria, 22 April 1902..The name was later changed to Coronation Park.91 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 6 September 1902, untitled.92 Personal inspection of the Monument.
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214The Paardekraal Monument had been desecrated during the war, or at least, this isreported in a plaque affixed to the Monument.92 Apparently a command was issued thatthe Paardekraal stones had to be taken to Vereeniging and were to be thrown into theVaal River beneath the railway bridge. 93 Whether this was a symbolic act tocommemorate the signing of the Peace Treaty, which seems likely; or a deliberateofficial desecration of the monument, needs to be further investigated. By contrast, the graves of ‘War Heroes’ who ‘fell in the Empire's cause’ were carefullytended by the Krugersdorp branch of the Guild of Loyal Women of South Africawhose members decorated the graves during the Christmas season using whiteribbon and evergreens (figure 3.7).94 The most blatant display of ‘jingoism’ camewith the Coronation day celebrations. Among the many events of the day, for whichbunting was lavishly laid out, was the unveiling of a garish, monstrously huge giltcrown. It was suspended in the air above Commissioner street, illuminated by lightsat night and decorated using Union Jacks.95 It must have been a sight for soreImperial eyes.96The most substantial alteration to the townscape was the building of the triumphal‘Coronation Park’ to the Southeast of the town, gazing out towards Johannesburgand set firmly in the ‘British’ quadrant of the town. The park was enormous in scale; itwas meant to mark the victory of Britain over the Boer Republic and, through itssheer size, conveyed British territorial expansion and hegemony. It was seeded___________________________93 see Krugersdorp, 100 years, p. 11. 94 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 17 January 1903, untitled.95 The Standard, Krugersdorp 13 December 1902, untitled. Such events, of course, occurred all over South Africa as well as elsewhere in British Empire, see Picton-Seymour, Victorian Buildings, p.133.96 Thompson argues that such ‘rituals and symbols’ were key elements in the construction of a ‘civic culture’ in towns across Natal. See P.S. Thompson, Natalians First: Separatism in South Africa, 1909-1961, (Natalians), Southern Book Publishers, Johannesburg, 1990.
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215intentionally with evergreens to evoke the enduring sway of the empire. An ‘oakpath’97 was laid out somewhat like a procession of British soldiers parading throughits heart. In the centre of the park were two large circular pathways intersectedpartially by converging pathways from all four compass points98 to be ‘read’, in thisreproduction of the great parks of London99 as the Empire upon which the sun neversets (see Map Nine).Figure 3.7: War Graves in Krugersdorp’s Cemetery after the South African WarSource: Krugersdorp 100 Years, p. 51.Rappaport states that ‘...parks have important meaning in the urban environment ...they communicate meanings of positive environmental quality’.100 The late Victorian and____________________________97 Krugersdorp 100 years, p. 73. See also Picton-Seymour, Victorian Buildings, p. 141 for a descriptionof a similar park in Paarl.98 Inspection of site by author, September, 1997.99 D. McCracken, ‘Parks and Gardens’ , in Laband and Haswell, Pietermaritzburg, pp. 59–65. The Queen Alexandra Park, established in 1863, and its nearby Botanic Gardens, may have served as a model for the Coronation Park in Krugersdorp.100 Rappaport, Meaning, p. 34.
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216the early Edwardian periods are well-known for the emphasis on parks that culminatedin Ebenezer Howard's ‘Garden City’ movement. Central Park in New York and Regent'sPark are two great parks established during this period influenced by a belief that parkswere the ‘lungs’ of the city.101Map Nine: Coronation Park c. 1905Source: CAD, Transvaal Public Works department (TPB), TALG 494, Town Engineer’s Department, 1938Thompson is one of the few South Africans to consider the importance of parks inpromoting a ‘civic culture’ to provide identity to the British settler within a wider Britishimperialism.102 He argues that civic ‘rituals and symbols’ were key elements in theconstruction of a ‘civic culture’ in towns across Natal which helped to sustain the___________________________101 See R. Beevers, The Garden City Utopia: a Critical Biography of Ebenezer Howard, Macmillan, London, 1988 and D. Schuyler, The New Urban Landscape: the Redefinition of City-form in Nineteenth Century England, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1986.102 Thompson, ‘Natalians’.
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217authority of - and provided the identity of - the British settler community.103 The‘symbols’ included flags, bunting, public monuments, certain public buildings and evenmicro symbols’ such as postage stamps, coins, royal monograms. The ‘rituals’ includedthe reception of dignitaries – especially royal visitors – and occasions of celebration likeroyal birthdays, coronations and the installation of officials.Through the combination of ‘many artefacts grouped together in particularrelationships’, these homogenous areas ‘add up’ and produce ‘strong, clear andredundant cues’, a ‘cultural landscape’. The construction of ‘English landscapes’ isfound in all the Dominions such as Australia, Canada and South Africa and, in eachof them, the indigenous flora and fauna was treated as an ‘alien landscape’ as‘negative’ that had to be supplanted by ‘familiar cues’.104 Coronation Park was abeautiful, restful place (figure 3.8) but it was also an ideologically-loaded space.Figure 3.8: Coronation Park c. 1905.Source: Krugersdorp: Official Illustrated Handbook, Krugersdorp Municipality, 1924, p. 11.___________________________103 ibid., p. 1.104 Rappaport, Meaning, pp. 137 and 140. The reproduction of British urban forms and urban culture could be found all over the empire. After the South African War, Johannesburg was described by J.A. Hobson as possessing an ‘aggressively British tone’, quoted in B. Kennedy, A Tale of Two Mining Cities: Johannesburg and Broken Hill, 1885–1925, A.D. Donker,Johanesburg, 1984.
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218In this way, the town's physical space and built environment was upset, transformingit into an ‘Imperial Town’. Burghershoop and the District Township was thrown opento speculators who bought up many of the stands, leaving the repatriated burgherswith no homes or means to make their livelihood.105 British rule ushered in aparticularly aggressive form of local capitalism that drove the ‘poor Burghers’ whomade bricks at the ‘Monument Brickfields’ out of business (who were replaced by the‘Victory Brick Company’106and the local amaWasha who washed clothes at thespruits107 (and who were replaced by the West Rand Steam Laundry).108In the military’s wake followed British property developers and businessmen whobuilt sumptuous new buildings in the sturdy classical lines of Edwardianarchitecture.109 They gave patriotic names to these buildings like ‘Jubilee’ and‘Victoria’.110 A new ‘men's outfitters’ shop advertised in a local newspaper that theywould take a gentleman's measurements and send these to London's Saville Rowwhere the whole suit would be made up and sent to the customer in Krugersdorp, allwithin as little as eight weeks!Krugersdorp became more aggressively imperialist and Edwardian in other ways,notably through its disciplining of the town. The ‘street’ in colonial towns was often aparticularly contested space. As a ‘public’ space, it was used by the dominant groupto assert its authority and its claims of superiority over the subordinated black___________________________105 CAD, Archives of the Lieutenant-Governor (LG) 128, 111/23 (2494), Deputation from Licensees and Inhabitants of stands – Burghershoop, Krugersdorp, 17 March 1903. The deputation noted that ‘...residents and licensees of Burghershoop had been deprived of stands during absence as Refugees, on Commando or as POWs, without any notification...’.106 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 6 December 1903.107 See van Onselen, New Babylon, chapter on the ‘AmaWasha’. Krugersdorp's laundry services seems to have been run by Indian ‘knights of the wash tub’ as the local newspaper facetiously putit, The Standard, Krugersdorp, 2 May 1903, ‘Street Whispers’.108 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 8 April 1905, ‘A Promising Local Company’.109 See Picton-Seymour, Victorian Buildings.110 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 24 February 1906, ‘The Rise of a Krugersdorp Firm’, refers to Robson and Holton Enterprises, which commenced business in 1895 and built over a hundredbuildings in Krugersdorp including the ‘Victoria’ and ‘Pioneer’ buildings. The partners also
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219residents. In 1903, a Krugersdorp resident asked impatiently,...is there not some by-law or regulation whereby Mr. Jack Kafir is requested to avoid obstructing the pathway? ...If you walk down Ockerse street...you can scarcily [sic] get foot away. Any lady coming down has to elbow her way through these louts or walk in the mud...111A number of by-laws were soon passed to ‘reclaim’ the streets and impose imperialdiscipline on these public spaces and, particularly over ‘non-white’ users of thestreets. If the Africans, Indians and Coloureds expected to be treated as ‘Britishsubjects’ after the war – and many did – their fond hopes were quickly and cruellydashed. Gambling in the streets, a remnant of the transient mining town, asdiscussed in Chapter One, was prohibited. Imperialism blended with the middleclass's desire for the stabilisation of the town, discussed in Chapter Two, to make thetown safe and a pleasant place in which to live. The reference to any ‘lady’ in thequotation above, reveals that the Imperial town was also one increasingly populatedby women and one that was both patriarchal and patriotic.New imperial legislation also clamped down upon the violence of the ephemeralmining town, particularly the threat of violence posed by the presence of largenumbers of black residents as the mines began to start up again and attract migrantworkers. The carrying of ‘dangerous weapons’ was prohibited but ‘weapons’ wereinterpreted so broadly that even walking sticks were banned.112 With the support ofthe English-speaking shopkeepers, the imperial government also clamped downupon the colonial street by imposing severe restrictions on Indian hawkers.113Congregations of blacks, for whatever purpose, could be broken up under new public____________________________established the ‘Victory Brick co.’ in 1906.111 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 27 June 1903, ‘Correspondence’: ‘Pertinent Queries’. See also The Standard, Krugersdorp, 9 May 1903 ‘Street Whispers’ that claimed that ‘black pandemonium’ existed in Ockerse street. See also The Standard, Krugersdorp, 24 January 1903, ‘Walking on the Footpath’.112 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 28 October 1905, ‘Dangerous Weapons’.113 The Standard, Krugersdorp, untitled, 20 January 1906, exorbitant licence fees were charged: 7 pounds for hawkers and 5 pounds for pedlars; hawkers could stay in one spot for more than 20 minutes and could not return to the same site within 24 hours.
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220disturbance laws. Responding to the above call to put Africans ‘back in their place’,new legislation prevented Africans from walking on the sidewalks.114Linton's Directory, printed to provide British investors with information, conducteddoor-to-door visits in Krugersdorp,115 as did another guide for merchants in England,which highlighted what products were in demand in the town.116 There was anobsessive ‘mapping out’ of Krugersdorp by various authorities with which‘geographers of empire’ are familiar with. A new rigid conception of time wasimposed on the town. A new clock was placed above the Post Office, a miniatureversion of Big Ben,117 while a ‘Hambe Kahle’ bell reminded black residents that theycould not be on Krugersdorp's streets after the nine o' clock curfew.118 The disciplineand rhythms of Industrial capitalism permeated the town, mingling with the militaryrigidity of barracks, curfews and policed space.Even the Dutch language of the ‘Other’, was proscribed in certain ways fromKrugersdorp. Alpheus Snell, born in the United Kingdom and trained at the ‘CapeUniversity’ (see Chapter Two), acted as schoolmaster in Aliwal North,119 ran the pro-Boer, Dutch language newspaper De Voortrekker, before the South African War.When he applied to re-start a similar newspaper after the war, his background waschecked by the local Resident Magistrate who described him as ‘Anti-English’.120___________________________114 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 29 November 1903, ‘A Ten Shilling Jeer’, apparently Town Regulations of 1889 covered this ‘offence’ at a fine of 10 shillings.115 The Standard, Krugersdorp 28 February 1903, untitled.116 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 7 February 1903, untitled.117 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 28 February 1903, untitled. The clock was ubiquitous throughout the Empire, adorning railway stations, post offices and particularly Town Halls, see Picton-Seymour, Victorian Buildings, ‘those clock-towered halls being built throughout the empire since the 1860s’, p. 110.118 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 9 March 1907, ‘night curfew’, by this time the efficacy of the curfew had come under question. Similarly, Austalian Aborigines were excluded from Darwinby a curfew between sunset and sunrise, see Kennedy, A Tale of Two Cities, p. 46.119 The South African Who’s Who, an Illustrated Biography and Sketch book of South Africa, (S.A.’s Who’s Who) South African Who’s Who Publishers Company, Durban, 1908, p. 377. 120 CAD, Archives of the Colonial Secretary (CS), 12821/02, Assistant Resident Magistrate, Krugersdorp to Colonial Secretary, 17 October 1902.
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221What was held against him particularly, was his reluctance to decorate hisemployer’s building using bunting during the Coronation festivities when instructed todo so. He was also reported to have taken the ‘oath of Allegiance’ as late as August1902.121 Thus Krugersdorp was denied a Dutch newspaper while the Englishnewspaper, The Standard, Krugersdorp, held exclusive sway.The Decline of the Jingo and the Imperial TownThe decline of Jingoism came with the passing of time, as the war grew more distantin people's memories. Reminders of the war disappeared from view as the BurgherCamp was rapidly emptied of its prisoners who were returned to their homes. MartialLaw was lifted and British troops left the town. A clear indication that time washealing and transforming the hurt and bitterness of war, was the remarkably speedyrendering of the war into a curiosity, a souvenir stand for tourists, and mementoes forcollectors. An exhibition of ‘War Pictures’ was advertised in the local newspaperpromising photographs on glass plates with images projected onto a screen thatwould depict, of all things, war scenes from ‘Bullwer's Campaign’.122 Since thesewould depict the defeat of British troops at the hands of the Boer commandoes, theexhibition marked an important turning point from the arrogant triumphal boastings ofthe immediate post-war period.123Even more remarkably, the popular Ben Viljoen mentioned earlier, who had servedas veldcornet and as Krugersdorp's representative in the Volksraad as well as aBoer officer during the South African War, left Krugersdorp to join a lucrative lecturecircuit in Europe and the United States. This was reported with pride in the localEnglish-speaking newspaper.124 An auction was held in Krugersdorp of ‘Boer curios’,___________________________121 CAD, Archives of the Colonial Secretary (CS), 12821/02, Assistant Resident Magistrate, Krugersdorp to Colonial Secretary, 17 October 1902. 122 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 25 October 1902, untitled.123 ibid.123 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 24 January 1902, untitled.124 ibid.
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222articles such as carvings and jewellery made by Boer prisoners on the islands of St.Helena and Bermuda,125 surely the ultimate example of the commodification andtrivialisation of the pain and suffering experienced by combatants of the war. The warhad grown distant and its effects in polarising Boer from Briton was weakened overtime.There can be detected in The Standard, Krugersdorp, an identity shift from exclusive‘jingo’ to a more balanced and inclusive identity that merged and synthesised Boerand British cultural traits into something new that was greater than a sum of its parts,perhaps even a new embryonic ‘South Africanism’. Boers who were ridiculed innewspaper columns in the early months after the South African War, were treatedwith more respect. This can be detected in the local newspaper's treatment of the exiled PresidentKruger. One article viciously opposed a proposal to allow the ailing former Presidentto return to his country to die and said that he had made his bed and should lie init.126 However, when Kruger died in 1904, the newspaper's owners, editor andreaders had abandoned such jingoistic knee-jerk responses and a sensitive articlereported that ‘widespread regret’ was felt throughout Krugersdorp upon his death.127We can also detect a drop in imperial fervour associated with imperial occasions.The King's Birthday was still celebrated in the Coronation Park with a ‘parade of alltroops in the garrison’ at noon in the park ‘at the east end of the town’, but the articleannouncing it was just four lines long and buried in amongst other ‘parish pump’ orparochial, municipal news.128Chamberlain's visit to Krugersdorp, while it was given all the full page treatment onewould expect for the arch-imperialist; was followed by a number of letters that are___________________________125 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 13 January 1902, untitled.126 ibid.127 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 5 November, 1904, Editorial. See also, same edition, ‘Talk of the Town’.128 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 8 November 1902, untitled.
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223revealing of identity shift towards a more conciliatory stance. The newspaper hadcriticised the poor grammar and bombastic language of the speech given by theReception Committee that, in the spirit of rapprochement was a mixed body of localBoer notables and British ‘pro-Boers’.129 Two successive letters by residents callingthemselves, respectively ‘Britisher’ and ‘Another Britisher’ condemned this attack onthe Reception Committee as ‘bad form’.130 The writers noted that Chamberlain hadstruck a conciliatory note in his speech by offering to repair the PaardekraalMonument that had been damaged by British troopers (although he remarked mostinsensitively that it would be fitting to include the names of British fallen on therestored Monument).131 The inclusion of such letters and the passion with which theywere written, is powerfully suggestive of a return to pre-war reconciliation. As jingoism declined the use of Dutch words in the local English newspaper seemedto alter. Dutch phrases again appeared, for example, ‘Langzaam mark zeker’ (‘slowbut sure’) in an editorial entitled ‘Moving Slowly’ which referred to the process ofreconstruction.132 As words changed (significantly, ‘jingo’ made a re-appearanceindicating a distancing by the editors from ‘them’, the arch-imperialists),133 so didattitudes and, reflecting these, the built environment also underwent transformationas the town, bent out of shape, began to return to its erstwhile ambience andharmony. What is particularly remarkable is how imperialist symbolism appears to have beenquickly and literally rubbished. The Coronation gilt crown seems to have beenabandoned on a rubbish heap on the Market Square even before Chamberlainarrived, a powerful symbol of how quickly overt patriotism was jettisoned.134 That the___________________________129 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 24 January 1903, ‘A Puerile Tirade of Venomous Vapourings’.130 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 7 February 1903, untitled. See also The Standard, Krugersdorp, 14 February 1903.131 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 24 Janaury 1903, ‘Mr. Chamberlain, Reception Krugersdorp’.132 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 13 September 1902, ‘Moving Slowly’.133 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 6 December 1902, ‘General’.134 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 13 December 1902, ‘A Derelict Crown’.
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224‘decline’ of such a powerful imperial icon should occur in the ‘node’ at the heart ofthe town so strongly associated with spatial and cultural harmony, is, indeed,remarkable. It was as if the Market Square was re-asserting itself as a symbol of co-operation between townspeople and rural folk, between Dutch- and English-speakingwhites, that is, between Briton and Boer.The Coronation Park, too, was transformed from imperial symbol, to a much moresedate, family-orientated and domesticated symbol as it became a favourite haunt ofblack nannies and their white charges rather than an imperial rallying ground. Noneof the typical array of heroic statues, plaques and fountains seems to have beenerected there. Plans had been made to erect a fountain in Market Square but whilecastings had been commissioned from Carnegie and Jamieson, local iron foundryowners, these were never bought by the Health Board that was subsequently sued bythe local firm. This failure is rather telling as fountains were a quintessential Victorianprop, and one that could easily be embellished into imperialist imagery with its virile jetsof water and the symbolism of fertility, eternity and purity that flowing water conveyed(see Chapter Seven).135An effort to Anglicise the Market Square by building a bandstand also proveddoomed and by 1905 it was described as a ‘relic of a bygone musical age...leaningout of true in the last stages of decrepitude’.136 Once the ‘pride of the Coronationcelebrations’, the crown was reported as lying ‘abandoned, unhonoured, unsung, and tosay the truth, a bit of a nuisance, on the Market Square’, which had itself become quitea ‘rubbish heap’.137 It was felt that the practice of ‘dropping golden crowns about thetown’ ought to be stopped before Mr Chamberlain arrived otherwise it might lead to ‘thewrong impressions’.138 The image of fallen crowns powerfully conveys the rapid decline___________________________135 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 28 February 1911, ‘W.C.T.U. Annual Meeting’. See also Picton- Seymour, Victorian Buildings ,various pages, where she highlights some striking fountains in Pietermaritzburg and other British colonial towns.136 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 25 March 1905, ‘Market Square’.137 ibid.138 ibid.
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225of unabashed patriotism and the demise of the ‘Jingo Town’. In its stead, the firstglimmerings of a hybrid South Africanism can be detected during 1905.The Rise of an Embryonic ‘South African’ Colonial Town, 1903–1906The Market Square lay at the heart of emergent rapprochement between English-and Afrikaans-speaking whites in Krugersdorp. It was, after all the market itself thatbrought together local Boers from the surrounding farms and rooinek townsmen asconsumers, in one place and at the same time. The English-speakingrepresentatives on the Health Board and, later, the Town Council, did much topromote reconciliation by pushing for improvements in the Market Square, especiallya plan to build a new market house to protect farmers' products from the elements,as already mentioned above. The English-speaking newspaper revived thiscampaign as early as September, 1902 when it published the ‘impressions’ of areturning Prisoner-of-War who condemned the ‘apology for a market house’.139 There-built Market house adjoined the new Town Hall, crowned with a clock tower, thequintessential British Victorian civic symbol (see Figure 3.9).Figure 3.9. Krugersdorp’s New Town Hall and the Market Hall in 1908___________________________139 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 6 September, 1902, ‘Impressions on returning to Krugersdorp of an ex-P.O.W.’.
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226Source: Krugersdorp 100 Years/Jare, p. 71.The Town Hall’s architect was an Englishman, C. Hoskings, and the foundation stonewas laid by Selborne, the High Commissioner, who placed British coins under it. Inaddition six different newspapers and the Mayor's Minutes, including those of G. vanBlommenstein, the Mayor in 1905–6, were also placed under the stone. General Smuts,the famous Boer general, formally opened the Town Hall on 21 December 1907, as asenior member of the new Het Volk government, again underlining the hybrid nature ofthis central municipal symbol.140The spatial proximity of these two spaces indicate that a balance was being restoredto the built environment. The importance of the Market Square to the economic life ofthe town meant that it was restored to its old position as a meeting ground betweentwo white groups and a symbol of co-operation and harmony. The local farmersbrought large quantities of local tobacco which had become popular with English-speaking residents, indeed, exports to Britain had taken off because during the War,the ‘Tommy’ or ‘British Soldier’, had acquired a taste for Magaliesburg tobacco.141Here was a perfect example of a merging between the two white groups: if thearchetypes of British ‘Tommy’ soldier and the Boer, the ‘son of the soil’, could find acommon ground; then there was hope of reconciliation. The Wanderers Sports Grounds were laid out in 1906, situated between thePaardekraal Monument and the Coronation Park (see Figure 3.10). It created aneutral meeting place for the two white elites. Krugersdorp’s Town Hall adjacent tothe Market Square in 1908.142 An abattoir was built in 1906 to serve the farmingcommunity but was placed in the southern British space of the mining area143 despitethe ‘negative externalities’ associated with such structures (see Figure 3.11). By1905, under the pressure of all these influences, the tensions between English-___________________________140 Krugersdorp 110 years, pp. 68–71.141 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 20 May 1905, ‘My Lady Nicotine’.142 ibid., pp. 96–7. 143 ibid., pp. 102–3.
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227speaking and Dutch/Afrikaans-speaking whites in Krugersdorp had dissipatedsignificantly. As if to underline this restoration of harmony and balance, two newbuilding developments commenced in different parts of the town. In 1905, a newworking class suburb was built in the Boer ‘territory’ to the west, beyondBurghershoop. This was to be called West Krugersdorp.144 The following year, 1906,Lewisham, a middle-class residential area was laid out as a semi-governmenttownship to the southeast of the town, further south and further to the east than anyprevious township.145 Again, a spatial balance had been restored to the town.Figure 3.10: The Krugersdorp Wanderers Sports Grounds in 1906Source: Krugersdorp 100 Years/Jare, p. 96.The District Township, long a symbol of the town's separation, became one of itsmost important symbols of reconciliation as a growing number of the English-speaking middle class made their homes there, happy to live close to thePaardekraal Monument and among Dutch-speaking neighbours who, for their part,welcomed them. Probably one of the most remarkable signs of reconciliation in this___________________________144 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 29 July, 1905, ‘New Freehold Township’.145 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 13 July 1912, ‘Townships in the Krugersdorp Area’.
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228regard was Abner Cohen who was, in many ways, the nemesis of the old BoerRepublic, as pointed out at the start of this Chapter. Figure 3.11: Krugersdorp’s Abattoir, 1907.Source: Krugersdorp 100 Years/Jare, p. 103.Cohen sold up his ‘Court Bar’ to allow for the expansion of the court building146 andthen appears to have used the proceeds to buy a number of erven as a consolidatedblock in the District Township. He proudly referred to his peri-urban plot as‘Homelands’ (See Map Ten). If Cohen could feel sufficiently welcome andcomfortable to set down roots in the heart of a Boer dorp and a stone throw’sdistance to the Paardekraal monument from which he had been evicted less thantwenty years earlier, then there was, indeed, meaningful reconciliation amongKrugersdorp’s residents.Even more significant as a symbol of reconciliation, the Paardekraal Monument wasrestored. The sandstone tablets bearing inscriptions ‘in the taal’ were restored inmore expensive marble, a poignant gesture of respect not only for the monument but___________________________146 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 17 October 1903, ‘The Court Bar’.147 The Standard, Krugersdorp, 30 January 1904, ‘Paardekraal Restored’.
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229also the Boer language itself.147 The Hospital, built in 1911 after the Union, wasnamed, not after Victoria, Albert or King Edward, but after the original farm,Paardekraal, an almost poetic return in full circle to Krugersdorp's hybrid roots.148Reconciliation is powerfully conveyed by the trade directory which promotedKrugersdorp to investors and industrialists (figure 3.12).Map Ten: Abner Cohen’s ‘Homelands’ in District TownshipSource: Archives of the Krugersdorp Town Planner’s Office, Plan showing the sub-division of ‘Homelands’ being the property ofAbner Cohen Esq: consisting of Erven Nos. 212-4, 251-3, situated in the District Township of Krugersdorp, compiled by theGovernment Land Surveyor, July 1904. A new building in the town was significantly named ‘Monument Buildings’ and wasbuilt for ‘Stegmann and Tindall’, a local law firm that promoted a partnership between‘Dutch’ and ‘English’ lawyers. This was one of the many such partnerships thatbegan to spring up in the town. The building was built in the ‘most modern’architectural style, with a forward-looking approach, rather than in the backward-looking ‘Republican’ and ‘Victorian’ styles.___________________________148 Krugersdorp 110 years, p. 151.
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230Figure 3.12: Cover of a Krugersdorp Promotional BookletSource: W. Ramsay MacNab and J.W. Smith, Guide to Krugersdorp and the West Rand, Johnston Ltd, Edinburgh, n.d., coverpage.ConclusionThis Chapter suggests that the concept of a ‘cosmology’, usually reserved fortraditional, pre-industrial urban spaces, can be borrowed from cultural anthropologyand applied to a modern town under particular circumstances of ideological tension.Co-operation between the white residents of the town and its surrounding hinterlandcharacterised the town's ’natural' state given the dynamics of the town's size, mutualeconomic interdependence and racial identity within a socio-economic systemcharacterised by racial capitalism. Conflict tended to arise mostly from outside thetown, through externally imposed ideologies and the effects of the onset of war, ofwar itself and then its aftermath on the town lying in its path.Conflict resulted in the growth of ethnic identification, of narrow nationalist
chauvinism that was reflected in the architecture and the distribution of buildings andresidences in the town which, in turn, influenced the people resident in town in theform of a ‘dialogue’ of ‘environment–behaviour’, between ‘flesh’ and ‘stone’.149 Theterminology of ‘cues’ and ‘mnemonic’ devices, of reading the city as a ‘text’, is drawnfrom urban semiotics and helps to shed light on the processes involved. The use ofan interdisciplinary approach opens up new opportunities for understanding urbanspaces and the built environment.___
The term is derived from R. Sennett, Flesh and Stone: the Body and the City in Western Civilization, Faber and Faber, New York, 1994.
Other interesting info:
JOHANNESBURG June 14 Sapa
An off-duty police officer travelling on a suburban train from
Johannesburg to Luipaardsvlei on the West Rand on Sunday evening
was attacked and robbed of his pistol and wristwatch.
The officer escaped injury.
The train was carrying about 500 Inkatha supporters on their way
back from an Inkatha Freedom Party rally at Soweto's Jabulani
stadium when on the platform of Princess station a group robbed
a woman, Police liaision officer Capt Eugene Opperman said.
The off-duty policeman evidently tried to foil the robbery and
was then attacked and relieved of his 9mm pistol and his watch,
Capt Opperman said.
Subsequently, a large group of Inkatha supporters left the train
at Luipaardsvlei station and started walking home only to be
confronted by a large contingent of police who searched the group
and retrieved the policeman's pistol as well as a .38 revolver.
A woman found in possession of the police firearm was arrested.
The group was then escorted by the police to their quarters.
http://70.84.171.10/~etools/newsbrief/1992/news9206.15
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