Piet Retief is a town situated in a timber

Timber

Timber may refer to:* Timber, a term common in the United Kingdom and Australia for wood materials * Timber, Oregon, an unincorporated community in the U.S...

 growing region in Mpumalanga

Mpumalanga

Mpumalanga , is a province of South Africa. The name means east or literally "the place where the sun rises" in Swazi, Xhosa, Ndebele and Zulu. Mpumalanga lies in eastern South Africa, north of KwaZulu-Natal and bordering Swaziland and Mozambique. It constitutes 6.5% of South Africa's land area...

 province, South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

. Its is the seat of the Mkhondo Local Municipality

Mkhondo Local Municipality

Mkhondo Local Municipality, is a South African Local Municipality situated in the Gert Sibande District Municipality, of Mpumalanga. Piet Retief is the Seat of the municipality.- Towns :*Altonia,*Amsterdam,*Belgrade,*Diamant,*Dirkiesdorp,*Driefontein,...

. It is located not far from the Swaziland

Swaziland

Swaziland, officially the Kingdom of Swaziland , and sometimes called Ngwane or Swatini, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, bordered to the north, south and west by South Africa, and to the east by Mozambique...

 border. The town was founded by the Voortrekkers in 1883 and named it after the Voortrekker leader, Piet Retief

Piet Retief

Pieter Mauritz Retief was a South African Boer leader. Settling in 1814 in the frontier region of the Cape Colony, he assumed command of punitive expeditions in response to raiding parties from the adjacent Xhosa territory...

, who was killed by the Zulus

Zulu Kingdom

The Zulu Kingdom, sometimes referred to as the Zulu Empire or, rather imprecisely, Zululand, was a monarchy in Southern Africa that extended along the coast of the Indian Ocean from the Tugela River in the south to Pongola River in the north....

 under their King Dingane

Dingane

Dingane kaSenzangakhona Zulu —commonly referred to as Dingane or Dingaan—was a Zulu chief who became king of the Zulu Kingdom in 1828...

's orders after he tried to settle on their land.

In 1886 the inhabitants of the town declared the Klein Vrystaat

Klein Vrystaat

Klein Vrystaat was a short-lived Boer republic in what is now South Africa.-History of the Little Free State :From around 1876, a group of Boers lived on land bought from the Swazi king Mbandzeni. In 1886, a formal government was formed, following the adoption of a constitution.King Mbandzeni sold...

(Little Free State), which contained a population of only 72. This Republic existed until 1891, when it was incorporated into the South African Republic

South African Republic

The South African Republic , often informally known as the Transvaal Republic, was an independent Boer-ruled country in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century. Not to be confused with the present-day Republic of South Africa, it occupied the area later known as the South African...

.

The town became a municipality

Municipality

A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...

 in 1932. Its main tourist attraction is the Dutch Reformed Church

Dutch Reformed Church

The Dutch Reformed Church was a Reformed Christian denomination in the Netherlands. It existed from the 1570s to 2004, the year it merged with the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands to form the Protestant Church in the...

 that was designed by the architect Gerard Moerdijk

Gerard Moerdijk

Gerard Leendert Pieter Moerdijk , also known as Gerard Moerdyk, was a South African architect best-known for designing the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria....

 and built in 1921.

The area has an annual rainfall of 1000 mm. Its main economic activities are timber

Timber

Timber may refer to:* Timber, a term common in the United Kingdom and Australia for wood materials * Timber, Oregon, an unincorporated community in the U.S...

, paper

Paper

Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon, drawing or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....

 and wattle

Acacia

Acacia is a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, first described in Africa by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1773. Many non-Australian species tend to be thorny, whereas the majority of Australian acacias are not...

 bark production as well as mica

Mica

The mica group of sheet silicate minerals includes several closely related materials having highly perfect basal cleavage. All are monoclinic, with a tendency towards pseudohexagonal crystals, and are similar in chemical composition...

, kaolin and iron

Iron

Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...

 mining

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

.

Name change

On 2 February 2010, Arts and Culture minister, Lulu Xingwana, approved for Piet Retief to be renamed to eMkhondo. Like almost every name change in South Africa, it is very controversial. Most whites do not know what the new name means and have argued that Piet Retief was not an offensive name, such as Verwoerdburg. Also, like most name changes, this one will be contested and the Freedom Front Plus have warned against the name change.

People

• Jack Diamond
  Jack Diamond (architect)
  A.J. "Jack" Diamond, OC, O.Ont is a Canadian architect.Born in Piet Retief, South Africa, he received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Cape Town in 1956. He received a Master of Arts degree in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University in 1958...
  
  , architect, born in Piet Retief
• Sandra Laing
  Sandra Laing
  Sandra Laing, is a woman who was born to white parents but reclassified as Coloured during the apartheid era in South Africa as she has dark skin...
  
  , woman who was born to white parents but reclassified as coloured during the apartheid era in South Africa, born in Piet Retief
• Jabulani Mbatha, lifetime Chief, died in Mkhondo in 1945