Johannesburg
City
Facts abot Johannesbrug
Johannesbrug History
Settlement of Johannesburg began in 1886, when gold was discovered in the Witwatersrand by an Australian prospector named George Harrison. The discovery spurred a feverish gold rush as fortune hunters from all over the world descended on the area. Blacks from all parts of southern Africa came to work the gold fields either permanently or temporarily as contract laborers. The government of the Transvaal, then a Boer republic, established a city at the site, and in the space of three years it became the largest settlement in South Africa. By the 1890s, several large mining companies had taken control of the area's gold mines, creating huge fortunes for their owners. Tensions between the mine barons, the English-speaking newcomers to the area, and the Transvaal's Boer government—fed by British colonial aspirations in the region—led to the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1901. By its end, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State were under British control.
At the start of the twentieth century, the population of Johannesburg had reached 100,000. Early in the century, the British colonial government began forcibly relocating blacks from the central city to areas on its outskirts, inaugurating the principle of racial separation that became entrenched in the administration of the city and eventually led to the system known as apart-heid. The substandard conditions in which most of the city's black majority lived led to protests and strikes, including a 1920 strike by 70,000 black mine workers. There was agitation among Johannesburg's white miners as well, culminating in the general strike and "Rand Revolt" of 1922, in which over 200 people died.