The historical roots of the region trace back to the 13th century, and it is noted that the area around Gauteng province was initially occupied by the Batswana.

[2] The Batswana Chief Mokgatla dominated the area to the north of what is known today as the Gauteng province, and his descendants are known as the Bakgatla.

[4] The Great Trek that took place in the first half of the 19th century saw the inward movement of Dutch settlers from the cape into the interior of South Africa.

As time went by, the Dutch settlers forcefully occupied land, dispossessing the indigenous tribes in the process.

The discovery of gold about 60 kilometers to the south of Hammanskraal lead to a boom of economic activity in the region and the agricultural sector flourished.

The 1913 Natives Land Act and the implementation of the Apartheid laws by the 1940s saw a larger program of forced removals around the Pretoria, Witwatersrand and Vaal regions.

This once again had a profound impact in the developmental trajectory of the area and resulted in the continued decentralized settlement model that persists today.

This and other investments in infrastructure, schools and utilities saw the generally underserved and overlooked region obtain some much needed economic injection in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Unsuccessful attempts in the 1970s to amalgamate with the predominately white St. John Vianney Seminary, due to opposition from St. Peters.

[8] The remainder of the spatial composition of the region consists of a combination of rural and urban residential settlements in a decentralized model and, an industrial development zone at Babelegi which is now partially functional and a cluster of retail offerings.

to draw conclusions on the: 1) Human behavioural 2) Environmental 3) Economic features That give the area a special character.

At a residential settlement scale, there is a fair mix between rural and urban settlement patterns with a concentration of the urban environment around the Temba, Kanana, Lephengville, Ramotse, Mashemong, Sekampaneng and Suurman areas while there is a large cluster of rural communities to the Northern part of the Region such as Mathibestad, Makapanstad and Danhouse.

The area also hosted a police training college which contributed to a large growth of black policemen in Apartheid South Africa during the late 1980s.

It has been said that the chiefdom or Makapanstad is slowly transitioning into letting the larger government take over since Kgosi Boisi Makapan's death.