Lydenburg, also known as Mashishing,[2][3] is a town in Thaba Chweu Local Municipality, on the Mpumalanga highveld, South Africa.

"[5] Lydenburg has become the centre of the South African fly-fishing industry and is an agricultural, tourism and mining hub.

Rock paintings in surrounding areas point to early Khoe-San hunter-gather groups living on the land.

[6] Dating back to AD 500, the earliest known forms of African Iron Age sculpture below the equator, known as the Lydenburg heads were found in the area.

[8] Lydenburg was founded in 1849 by a group of Voortrekkers under the leadership of Andries Potgieter when they abandoned their previous settlement Ohrigstad (to the north) due to a malaria epidemic.

In 2001, in one of South Africa's first completed land restitution claims, Boomplaats farm was bought from Willem Pretorius and returned by the state to the Dinkwanyane community.

[13] In June 2006, it was announced that Arts and Culture minister, Pallo Jordan, had approved the renaming Lydenburg to Mashishing, meaning "long green grass".