History of Johannesburg

Many of these sites contain the ruins of Sotho–Tswana mines and iron smelting furnaces, suggesting that the area was being exploited for its mineral wealth before the arrival of Europeans or the discovery of gold.

[4] On 8 September 1886 nine farms, extending from Driefontein in the east to Roodepoort in the west, were declared public diggings[5] Carl von Brandis was appointed as the mining commissioner for the area.

Within ten years of the discovery of gold in Johannesburg by Jan Gerrit Bantjes, 100 000 people flocked to this part of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republic in search of riches.

Artisans and miners from the gold and silver fields of the Americas and Australia, from coal and tin mines of Europe, joined the wagon loads of men who had learnt their craft in the pits of Kimberley.

New suburbs included: Klipfontein, Forest Town, Hillbrow, Berea, Yeoville, Bellevue, Houghton, Vrededorp, Paarl's Hoop, Robinson, Ophirton, La Rochelle, Rosettenville, Klipriviersberg, City & Suburban, Doornfontein, Bertrams, Lorentzville and Troyeville.

The government, who sought to differentiate the white working class from the black, laid out new suburbs for the Burghers, Indians, Coloureds and Africans, but the whole area simply stayed multiracial.

The law of the land provided that every White (European) male who had resided in the Transvaal for five years, could be naturalized and become entitled to vote for a representative in the Volksraad (house of assembly).

In Johannesburg a Reform Committee was formed, while Cecil John Rhodes, the prime minister of the Cape Colony, arranged for Leander Starr Jameson to invade the republic from the west.

[9] Over the weekend of 30 September many of the well-known mines closed, including Simmer & Jack, Wolhuter, Geldenhuis Deep, Henry Nourse and Ferreira.

Thomas Begbie & Company, a foundry situated near the City and Suburban mine just south of Johannesburg, was commandeered by the government two days after the war had begun.

Municipal boundaries were extended to embrace, within a six-mile radius of the central area, mining properties and all vacant land of which the suburbs of the town were likely to develop.

Beforehand most of the Africans living there were moved far out of town to Klipspruit (later called Pimville), where the council had erected iron barracks and a few triangular hutments.

[70] Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a qualified English barrister, came to southern Africa in 1893 to act as legal representative of some Indian traders in Pretoria.

Eventually he reached agreement with General Smuts, resulting in the South African Parliament passing the Indian Relief Act of 1914.

The plan for the current, third, clubhouse was put on paper in 1902 and its construction was finished in 1904 on the design by architects Leck & Emley in the Edwardian neo-baroque style.

[78] In 1909 a National Convention was attended by the four self-governing British colonies in South Africa, namely Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Transvaal and Orange River, to consider closer cooperation.

[83] A municipal system of exemption certificates obtained through employers did exist to grant African workers the right to live in urban areas.

The architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens, came to South Africa in 1910 to examine the site and begin the designs, after Lady Florence Phillips had secured funding from the city for a purpose-built museum.

The Johannesburg municipality donated a site in Milner Park, north-west of Braamfontein, to the new institution as its campus and construction began the same year, on 4 October.

The measure gave the Board the right to impound annually sufficient of the Vaal River's surplus water to supply the Witwatersrand with 20 million gallons a day.

This Act required local authorities to provide accommodation for Natives (then the polite term for Africans or Blacks) lawfully employed and resident within the area of their jurisdiction.

Pursuant to this Act the Johannesburg town council formed a Municipal Native Affairs Department in 1927.It bought a large tract on the farm Klipspruit No.

The support the National Party gained from the electorate was largely the result of white fears regarding the rapid urbanisation of blacks after the Second World War.

Sir Ernest was aghast and he arranged with other mining companies to join Anglo-American in providing the city with a loan of £3 million to be repaid over thirty years.

Between 1956 and the early 1960s 23,995 houses were built, particularly for those Blacks evicted from Sophiatown, Martindale, Newclare and Western Native Township in terms of the Group Areas Act.

The name Randburg was chosen in a competition, and is derived from the South African Rand currency, which was introduced at around the same time that the new municipality was established.

In terms of this Act the central government appointed the West Rand Administration Board to take over the powers and obligations of the Johannesburg City Council in respect of Soweto.

[101] The Soweto Uprising was a series of protests led by high school students in South Africa that began on the morning of 16 June 1976.

Midrand was established as a municipality in 1981 (in an area known as Halfway House, after its position between Pretoria and Johannesburg), but ceased to be an independent town in the restructuring of local government that followed the end of apartheid in 1994.

The Act provided for a two-tier system of government with strong local councils and a weaker metro tier playing a coordinating role.