Johannesburg and Gauteng

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t The exhilarating Anaconda ride is one of several rollercoasters in the park.

EXPERIENCE Johannesburg and Gauteng

Fossils unearthed in the Gauteng’s Cradle of Humankind site indicate that hominin habitation goes back at least three million years. Much of the region’s early history is unknown, but around the 11th century AD Sotho and Tswana pastoralists arrived from the north to establish large stone settlements. These were evacuated in the mid 19th century in the aftermath of the Mfecane, around the same time that Pretoria was founded as the capital of the 19th-century South African Republic; the city has been the national capital since 1910. Further south, Johannesburg owes its existence to the discovery of the world’s richest gold deposits in 1886; by the turn of the 20th century, it was southern Africa’s largest and wealthiest city. Residential segregation along racial lines was formalized under apartheid with the creation of “townships” such as Soweto (Blacks), Eldorado Park (Coloureds) and Lenasia (Indians). Gauteng, a seSotho name meaning “Place of Gold”, is now the country’s most progressive and urbanized province. Astonishingly, though it covers less than 1.5 per cent of South Africa’s surface area, a full 20 per cent of the national population is crammed into Gauteng’s cities, and the region generates 10 per cent of the entire African GDP.

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