Groot Marico is a hamlet in the

North West Province North West is a province of South Africa. Its capital is Mahikeng. The province is located to the west of the major population centre of Gauteng and south of Botswana. History North West was incorporated after the end of Apartheid in 1994, an ...

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

. The economy relies heavily on agriculture, mining and tourism. Groot Marico is named after the

Marico River The Marico River or Madikwe is a river in Southern Africa. There are a number of dams in its basin. Groot Marico town is named after the Marico River. After it is joined on its right bank by the Crocodile River it is known as the Limpopo River. ...

Description

The topography comprises dry bushveld with a climate that is ideal for cattle,

maize Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The ...

citrus fruit ''Citrus'' is a genus of flowering trees and shrubs in the rue family, Rutaceae. Plants in the genus produce citrus fruits, including important crops such as oranges, lemons, grapefruits, pomelos, and limes. The genus ''Citrus'' is native to ...

and

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus ''Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the chie ...

. Open pit quarries in the area extract

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite. Marble is typically not foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the term ''marble'' refers to metamorphose ...

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

and

andalusite Andalusite is an aluminium nesosilicate mineral with the chemical formula Al2SiO5. This mineral was called andalousite by Delamétehrie, who thought it came from Andalusia, Spain. It soon became clear that it was a locality error, and that the spe ...

, with prospects of large-scale

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow to ...

mining on the banks of the Groot Marico river as well as the majority of the farms surrounding the hamlet having sparked a successful regional petition against such development. In 2016 a new diamond prospecting application was initiated, bringing a new round of local communit
objections
and petitioning. The town was formed by the

Voortrekker The Great Trek ( af, Die Groot Trek; nl, De Grote Trek) was a Northward migration of Dutch-speaking settlers who travelled by wagon trains from the Cape Colony into the interior of modern South Africa from 1836 onwards, seeking to live beyo ...

s in the 1850s and was only proclaimed in 1948. The word "Marico" was made famous in South Africa by

Herman Charles Bosman Herman Charles Bosman (5 February 1905 – 14 October 1951) is widely regarded as South Africa's greatest short-story writer. He studied the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain and developed a style emphasizing the use of satire. His English ...

's writings of this area and later re-enactments of these tales by actor

Patrick Mynhardt Patrick Beattie Mynhardt (12 June 1932 in Bethulie, Free State, South Africa – 25 October 2007 in London, England) was a well-known South African film and theatre actor. He appeared in over 150 stage plays in South Africa and Engla ...

. Bosman described the area thus: At least part of Bosman's musings may have been inspired by sips of the

mampoer Moonshine is high-proof liquor that is usually produced illegally. The name was derived from a tradition of creating the alcohol during the nighttime, thereby avoiding detection. In the first decades of the 21st century, commercial dist ...

for which Groot Marico is infamous. In 2010, the farms surrounding Groot Marico were among the last in South Africa to still be connected through party lines to a manual

telephone exchange telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It interconnects telephone subscriber lines or virtual circuits of digital syste ...

, which require callers to ask an operator to connect them to other telephone lines by pushing jacks into slots. Groot Marico is the smallest town in South Africa that host an annual arts festival as well as a mountain bike race.

References

{{Ngaka Modiri Molema District Municipality Populated places in the Ramotshere Moiloa Local Municipality Populated places founded by Afrikaners