Ekurhuleni. Phil Bonner

by a 500-year blank in Gauteng and the southern part of North West Province.⁶ The reason for this occupation record may again lie in climate flux. The Little Ice Age, which opened around 1300 and continued to 1700 AD and brought especially cold and windy conditions to the Highveld, thereafter served as a major brake on and disincentive to occupation of the entire area, Ekurhuleni included. It was nevertheless broken from time to time by warmer interludes, and it was during one of these that a distinct and separate group of later Iron Age (as opposed to early Iron Age) people (the Bafokeng) entered the Highveld via the Free State between AD 1 400 and 1 600.⁷

      Much of this area was relatively treeless (in contrast to today) which led these Sotho Tswana people to start building in stone. Known as Moloko to archaeologists (after its pottery) their settlements were laid out according to a distinct and characteristic plan. A significant concentration of such settlements can be found on the Vredefort Dome, and in the Klipriviersberg, Suikerbosrand Rand and Johannesburg areas. The settlement pattern consisted of homesteads situated a few hundred metres apart, each containing 30 to 50 people. Chiefs’ settlements were larger consisting of 300 residents or more.⁸ This period of occupation ended when the climate again deteriorated. The deepest drought in centuries gripped the whole of the interior of South Africa just after 1 700 AD.⁹ How far this extended into the Ekurhuleni area is unclear, as no serious Iron Age archaeology has been undertaken there. At around 1750, however, a new phase of climatic change commenced promoting a fresh wave of colonisation in the Gauteng area – this time comprising other Sotho Tswana groups. Their settlement pattern differs significantly from those that preceded them. Multiple arcs in the outer wall mark the back courtyards of individual households which themselves surround the cattle enclosure/kraal at the core. Among these, population densities were higher suggesting greater political centralisation. A number of these concentrated in defensive positions on hill tops or koppies such as at Meyersdal just outside the Alberton edge of Ekurhuleni.¹⁰

      As much of the Ekurhuleni area was blessed with permanent springs, this would have added to its attractions for potential settlers. The site of the early 20th century town of Germiston was a farm known as Elandsfontein, named after one such spring which provided water for large herds of eland.¹¹ Aerial photographs taken in 1933 show now unpopulated African villages dotted across the Benoni suburbs of Farramere and Northmead as well as further afield which would certainly have been occupied in the wetter, warmer period of 1750–1800.¹² This remained nevertheless a marginal area which was likely to have been abandoned once colder and drier weather took hold, as happened at the beginning of the 1800s. It thus did not require any depredation from the armies of Mzilikazi’s Ndebele who intruded into the interior from KwaZulu-Natal in the early 1820s to depopulate this area (although they probably contributed to this outcome).¹³

      The Ekurhuleni, Gauteng and particularly the Magaliesberg areas were thus home, with occasional intermissions, to a black population (Bantu-speaking and San) for several tens of thousands of years before white settlers arrived in this area. Even though we know they were present, however, their voices remain mute. Certainly next to no oral traditions survive. We possess simply (and importantly) an archaeological record, which tells us that they were there, but comparatively little information about their social relations and how they behaved.

       VOORTREKKER OCCUPATION

      Boer voortrekkers first moved into parts of this still marginal and fairly depopulated area in the course of the 1840s but remain almost equally anonymous. Such historical record as we have is equally sketchy, comprising the bald record of land grants made to individuals by the South African Republic and then housed as a record in their archives. Admittedly, names appear for the first time, but very little else. Those carrying them remain faceless and shadowy leaving the area historically as threadbare as in earlier centuries and decades. One such farm, Elandsfontein, upon which Germiston later grew up, was purchased by Johan Meyer from its previous occupant for the price of an ox-wagon in 1849.¹⁴ In 1860 J.P. Botha bought the farm Weltevreden (delimited two years before) where Brakpan subsequently arose.¹⁵ In 1869 Carl Ziervogel purchased 3 000 morgen of rocky veld, called Leeupoort, for £75, which subsequently gave birth to Boksburg.¹⁶

      In 1862 four Boer farming families likewise became the first trekker outriders to settle in the Benoni area. The first farm to be officially registered by the then government of the Transvaal was granted to D.J.J. Strydom. He named it Rietfontein, half of which is now within Benoni’s municipal boundaries. Other farms in the area were also named after springs – Kleinfontein (little spring), Vlakfontein (shallow spring), Modderfontein (muddy spring) and so on. A large farmhouse built near Kleinfontein by Johan Hendrik Botha in the late 1870s was still standing on the outskirts of the suburb of Farramere a century later. Remains of several others also survive.¹⁷

      The historical record becomes slightly denser when a newly installed government of the South African Republic made a concerted attempt in the early 1880s to put its administration on a firmer and more professional footing. The origins of the name of Benoni (and its history as a town) go back to this point. In 1881 the Kruger government, which was desperately short of funds, began the resurvey of the irregularly shaped triangles of unclaimed land which lay between the boundaries of farms (uitvalgrond or ‘falling out ground’), named them and then put them up for rental or sale. Johan Rissik, the Surveyor General, who was charged with this task, named Benoni after the Book of Genesis, chapter 35, where Jacob’s wife Rachel died after giving birth to a son whom she named Benoni, meaning ‘Son of My Sorrow’. Rissik allegedly found the name appealing because of the difficult conditions he was encountering doing this part of the survey.¹⁸ As we now know, the name stuck. Boksburg was named in a similar fashion, following the discovery of gold. At that time the wider area consisted of three farms: Leeupoort, Driefontein and Klipfontein. As in the case of Benoni, it was resurveyed, resulting in the release of a block of land which could accommodate 1 000 stands. Here a new township was established and named after the South African Republic’s State Secretary of the time, Dr W.E. Bok.¹⁹

      Springs was born in much the same way. Rough surveys had loosely delineated the farms Geduld, De Rietfontein and Brakpan in the 1860s. An early owner of geduld, Albert Brodrick, sold it to Paul kruger in 1886. William Steyn acquired ownership of De rietfontein in the 1860s, selling it on to two mineral prospectors, Johan Ludwig gauf and W.B.M. vogts in 1888, allegedly in return for a horse’s saddle and bridle. By this time most of the farms in the Ekurhuleni area had been resurveyed, with Pretoria resident James Brookes having redrawn the boundaries of the farms geduld, De rietfontein and Brakpan in 1883. What Brookes’ survey revealed was an unbroken block of uitvalgrond 685 hectares in extent, an even larger area than had been the case with Benoni. Brookes named this chunk of uitvalgrond Die Spring’s because of the large number of natural springs in the area. Following the resurvey of the land, a farmer, W.J. Snyman, rented the farms Cloverfield and Die Springs from the then republican government, the leases of which ended when coal was found on Die rietfontein in 1888.²⁰

      W.E. Bok, after whom Boksburg was named

      Brakpan’s early development followed a similar trajectory.²¹ Brakpan sprang up on the farm Weltevreden whose boundaries were delimited in 1864. It was sold twice after its initial owner, J.P. Botha, purchased it in 1886, ending up 20 years later in the hands of State President Paul kruger’s son-in-law, F.C. Eloff. Both kruger and Eloff anticipated gold being found in the area, kruger himself having bought the neighbouring farm geduld.²² The practice of using insider connections clearly extends back far from present times. It was not gold, however, but coal that brought the modern towns of Brakpan and Springs into existence.

       DISCOVERING GOLD

      only with the discovery of almost unimaginably rich seams of conglomerate gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 did the history of Ekurhuleni acquire a more human face. It is possible that far distant Nigel led the way, with gold being discovered there on Petrus Maree’s farm in 1886 or 1887.²³ however the discovery of gold at Benoni marks a more substantial beginning when in August