Brakpan is a mining town in the

Gauteng Gauteng ( ) is one of the nine provinces of South Africa. The name in Sotho-Tswana languages means 'place of gold'. Situated on the Highveld, Gauteng is the smallest province by land area in South Africa. Although Gauteng accounts for only ...

province of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...

History

The name Brakpan comes from a small pan on a farm called Weltevreden, which was filled with very

brackish Brackish water, sometimes termed brack water, is water occurring in a natural environment that has more salinity than freshwater, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing seawater (salt water) and fresh water together, as in estua ...

water and was probably referred to as the "brakpan," and it was near this pan that the first settlement started. In 1888, a

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

seam was discovered and a coal mine under the name of Brakpan Collieries was started. When a railway line was constructed from

Germiston Germiston, also known as kwaDukathole, is a small city in the East Rand region of Gauteng, South Africa, administratively forming part of the City of Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality since the latter's establishment in 2000. It functions a ...

to Springs, Brakpan became one of the stations along the route. With

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile ...

fever running high on the

Witwatersrand The Witwatersrand () (locally the Rand or, less commonly, the Reef) is a , north-facing scarp in South Africa. It consists of a hard, erosion-resistant quartzite metamorphic rock, over which several north-flowing rivers form waterfalls, which ...

in the early years of the twentieth century, it was not long before gold was discovered. In 1905, Brakpan Mines Company sunk its first two gold mining shafts. One of its claims to fame was that it had the highest mine dump in the world at that time, above ground level. This was higher than any of the pyramids of

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...

except the Pyramid of Cheops. From 1905 the village began to grow rapidly, remaining a suburb of Benoni until 1912 when it was granted the status of a municipality and proclaimed as a town. Brakpan's central position makes it a good distribution centre for industry, especially engineering works and foundries. In the late 1990s the municipality approved the construction of a huge casino and entertainment complex, Carnival City,
Carnival City's web page which opened the town to tourists and provided much-needed jobs for the people. The first activity which drew people to the area was the British coal mining in 1888 and the large coal powered power station also built by the British. A tram line to Johannesburg was built at this time to service the power station. The Main Reef Road (today part of the R29 (South Africa), R29) linked Brakpan to all the other mining towns in the

. Brakpan was a suburb of Benoni from 1914–1919, when it was granted municipal status. The Brakpan miners were involved in the miners' strike of 1922. The town has gradually lost its importance as a gold mining area as the surrounding mines suffered from low yield over high cost. Many British residents emigrated during the apartheid era leaving a vacuum in the town which was filled by mostly Afrikaner farmers who had lost interest in farming. Situated between Springs and Benoni, it forms part of the Ekurhuleni Metro. The main road through town is Voortrekker Street. Brakpan is often used in memes in South African online communities, often depicted in a way similar to

Southern US The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

locations in US centric memes.

References

{{Authority control Populated places in Ekurhuleni Mining communities in South Africa