Witbank - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Witbank also known as eMalahleni (meaning "place of coal") is a city situated on the Highveld

Highveld

The Highveld is a high plateau region of inland South Africa which is largely home to the largest metropolitan area in the country, the Gauteng City Region, which accounts for one-third of South Africa's population.-Location and description:...

of 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...

, 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...

, within the eMalahleni Local Municipality

Emalahleni Local Municipality, Mpumalanga

Emalahleni Local Municipality is located in the Nkangala District Municipality of Mpumalanga province, South Africa. Emalahleni is an isiZulu and isiNdebele name meaning coal.-Towns:* Ga-Nala* Kriel* Ogies* Phola* Rietspruit* Thubelihle* Van Dyksdrift...

. The name Witbank is Afrikaans

Afrikaans

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...

for White Ridge and is named after a white sandstone

Sandstone

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

outcrop where wagon

Wagon

A wagon is a heavy four-wheeled vehicle pulled by draught animals; it was formerly often called a wain, and if low and sideless may be called a dray, trolley or float....

transport drivers rested. The city is known for the coal-mining in the surrounding region.

History

Witbank was established in 1890 and early attempts to exploit the coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

deposits failed until the railway from Pretoria

Pretoria

Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital; the others are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.Pretoria is...

reached the area in 1894. It was proclaimed a town in 1903 and 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 1914. Despite attempts by governing bodies to establish the use of the name, eMalahleni, for the city as well as for the district, locals still tend to call the city by its original name. Similarly to the anglicised pronunciation of Johannesburg

Johannesburg

Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...

, English-speaking residents

South African English

The term South African English is applied to the first-language dialects of English spoken by South Africans, with the L1 English variety spoken by Zimbabweans, Zambians and Namibians, being recognised as offshoots.There is some social and regional variation within South African English...

pronounce the name as “wit•bank” and not as “vit•bunk” as in the original Afrikaans pronunciation, nor as “vit•bank” as English-speaking visitors are prone to say.

There are many stories about the city and its origination but the top story would be the arrival of Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...

at the nearby Transvaal

Transvaal

The Transvaal is the name of an area of northern South Africa. The land originally comprised most of the independent Boer South African Republic, which had existed since 1856, despite two previous attempts by the British of varying success to establish supremacy...

and Delagoa Bay Colliery during his escape from Boer imprisonment in Pretoria

Pretoria

, on his way to Delagoa Bay (later Lourenço Marques, and then Maputo

Maputo

Maputo, also known as Lourenço Marques, is the capital and largest city of Mozambique. It is known as the City of Acacias in reference to acacia trees commonly found along its avenues and the Pearl of the Indian Ocean. It was famous for the inscription "This is Portugal" on the walkway of its...

, in Mozambique

Mozambique

Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...

). Some local residents, loyal to the Crown, assisted him in hiding and making the final leg of his escape, thus gaining Witbank the consequent credit once the details of these events could be made known. The town has grown since then from a farming community into a business destination where companies such as Anglo American, BHP Billiton

BHP Billiton

BHP Billiton is a global mining, oil and gas company headquartered in Melbourne, Australia and with a major management office in London, United Kingdom...

, Evraz, Eskom

Eskom

Eskom is a South African electricity public utility, established in 1923 as the Electricity Supply Commission by the government of South Africa in terms of the Electricity Act . It was also known by its Afrikaans name Elektrisiteitsvoorsieningskommissie . The two acronyms were combined in 1986 and...

, Exxaro, Joy, Komatsu

Komatsu

orKomatsu is a multinational corporation that manufactures construction, mining, and military equipment, Industrial equipments such as press machines, lasers, and thermoelectric generators.Its headquarters is at 2-3-6, Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo, Japan...

, the Renova Group

Renova Group

Renova Group is a large Russian conglomerate with interests in aluminium, oil, energy, telecoms and a variety of other sectors. The main owner and president is Viktor Vekselberg....

, SAB Miller, SAMANCOR, Shanduka Beverages, Xstrata

Xstrata

Xstrata plc is a global mining company headquartered in Zug, Switzerland and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is a major producer of coal , copper, nickel, primary vanadium and zinc and the world's largest producer of ferrochrome...

and Zenith Inc amongst many others have found substantial returns on their investments.

Name change

On 3 March 2006, Witbank was officially renamed eMalahleni, meaning "place of coal" matching the name of the municipality that contains it. A large number of signs to the town have already changed, but many still remain. In general the name hasn't caught on as well as some other towns in South Africa (such as Centurion

Centurion

A centurion was a professional officer of the Roman army .Centurion may also refer to:-Military:* Centurion tank, British battle tank* HMS Centurion, name of several ships and a shore base of the British Royal Navy...

or Polokwane

Polokwane

Polokwane, meaning "Place of Safety",is a city in the Polokwane Local Municipality and the capital of the Limpopo province, South Africa. It is also often referred to by its former name, Pietersburg. Polokwane is a major urban centre, the biggest and most important north of Gauteng. The population...

) possibly because it was renamed later on or because the new name is very different to the original name. Some landmarks bearing the name Witbank have remained, while others (such as the Witbank/eMalahleni dam) have been renamed.

Transport

Witbank is located along the railway line linking Pretoria to Maputo and for many years served as the transport gateway to the Mozambiquean port. In recent years, this line has been under frequent threat of collapse due to underground coal fires in disused mines in the area. Two national highways, the N4 from Pretoria and the N12 from Johannesburg, converge at Witbank and then continue to Komatipoort, on the border of Mozambique. Together, these routes form the Maputo Corridor, a strategically important alternative to the South African ports of Richards Bay and Durban on the Indian Ocean shores of the country.

Economy

Witbank is in a coal mining

Coal mining

The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...

area with more than 22 collieries in the municipal radius. There are a number of power stations

Fossil fuel power plant

A fossil-fuel power station is a power station that burns fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas or petroleum to produce electricity. Central station fossil-fuel power plants are designed on a large scale for continuous operation...

(such as the Duvha Power Station

Duvha Power Station

Duvha Power Station in Mpumalanga, South Africa, is a coal-fired power plant operated by Eskom. The tall chimneys at Duvha are the tallest structures in Africa.-History:...

), as well as a steel mill (Evraz Highveld Steel and Vanadium Limited) nearby which all require coal. The farm land surrounding Witbank is fast being bought by investors, coal mining companies and real estate developers to accommodate the rapid growth of the city which is good for local businesses and residents.

Likewise, the sustained growth of the commercial areas and suburbs has presented significant challenges to the municipal government. Potable water supplies, sewage treatment, electricity distribution, refuse collection and road maintenance are particularly affected, arousing sustained ire amongst the local residents. Relatively high summer rainfall since 2008 has caused significant damage to municipal roads, creating large numbers of potholes and leaving large amounts of debris on the road surfaces.

Population

The 2001 census found that Witbank had a population of 61,093, of which 50.6% were female and 49.4% male.

Ethnic groups

According to the 2001 cenus the largest ethnic groups in Witbank were Whites at 54.2%, Blacks

Black people

The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...

at 40.3% and the remainder consisting of Coloured

Coloured

In the South African, Namibian, Zambian, Botswana and Zimbabwean context, the term Coloured refers to an heterogenous ethnic group who possess ancestry from Europe, various Khoisan and Bantu tribes of Southern Africa, West Africa, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaya, India, Mozambique,...

s (4.8%) and Asians (0.7%).

Language

Among the white population, Witbank (like the rest of Mpumalanga), is mainly Afrikaans speaking. The Black population speak mostly Zulu, the Coloureds speak Afrikaans and Asians mostly English. According to the 2001 census the largest languages in Witbank were as followed: Afrikaans

Afrikaans

(48.8%), Zulu

Zulu language

Zulu is the language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa as well as being understood by over 50% of the population...

(23.1%), English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

(11.7%), Northern Sotho (5.2%) and Swazi (3.0%).

Communities

To the east of the city, two large communities, Vosman and Kwa-Guqa (“the Place of Kneeling” in Zulu), and two smaller communities, Ackerville and Schoongesicht, are home to approximately 440,000 (in 2005) residents, predominantly black. While many of these residents aspire to relocate to the more spacious suburbs around the city center, generally this has only been affordable to a few thousand, due to the prices of the suburban real estate. A community on the northwest side of the city has been established at Pine Ridge, consisting predominantly of Indian residents. Pressure to develop the city’s suburbs has been exacerbated by the gradual de-population of the surrounding colliery villages as well as the continued development of new coal-fired power stations in the area.

Tourism

As Witbank is en route to travellers from the Gauteng province to the Kruger National Park, attempts have been made to capture some of the potential tourist spend. Apart from a few hotels, there are many guest houses. These vary from the utilitarian to the luxurious, and also cater for many of the business travellers visiting Witbank as well as those travelling to Nelspruit, Swaziland and Mozambique. A casino complex is accessible within a few hundred meters from the N4 highway, providing two hotels, cinemas, ten-pin bowling and restaurants as well as the traditional gambling facilities. The Highveld Mall is built immediately next to the casino and is a retail hub for locals as well as for many residents of towns in the vicinity.

Witbank dam

The Witbank dam is reputed to be the largest municipal dam in South Africa. Once a thriving resort for camping, water-sports and animal viewing, the area has come under increasing criticism due to degradation of the facilities.

Sport

Witbank is the home town of the Mpumalanga Black Aces

Mpumalanga Black Aces F.C.

Mpumalanga Black Aces are a South African football club based in Witbank, Mpumalanga that plays in the National First Division.-Honours:*Bob Save Super Bowl winners: 1993*BP Top Eight Cup winners: 1980...

football team and the Pumas

Pumas (rugby team)

The Ford Pumas are a South African rugby union team that competes in the Premier Division of the 2011 Currie Cup. Based at Puma Stadium in Witbank as well as the Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit, the team draws their players from Mpumalanga Province .The Pumas won the Currie Cup First Division The...

provincial rugby union

Rugby union

Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

team. It is also the home town of Miss World

Miss World

The Miss World pageant is the oldest surviving major international beauty pageant. It was created in the United Kingdom by Eric Morley in 1951...

of 1974

Miss World 1974

Miss World 1974, the 24th Miss World pageant, was held on November 22, 1974 in the Royal Albert Hall, London, England.Helen Elizabeth Morgan of the United Kingdom was crowned the winner at the end of the event, becoming the second Welsh and fourth woman from the United Kingdom to win the title. She...

, Anneline Kriel

Anneline Kriel

Anneline Kriel is a South African model and actress. She won the 1974 Miss World contest at age 19, representing South Africa, after UK's Helen Morgan had resigned only four days after her victory. She became the second woman from her country to win the title...

, who was crowned with this title at the age of 19. The Witbank Skydiving Club is one of the better-known clubs catering for this form of recreation and has been in existence for 30 years. Hiking trails and bushveld walks are offered by various enterprises in the surrounding area.

External links

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