Roodepoort

Roodepoort is a city in the Greater Johannesburg area, Gauteng, South Africa. Johannesburg's most famous botanical garden, Witwatersrand National Botanical Gardens (now renamed Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden), is located in Roodepoort. Formerly an independent municipality, Roodepoort became part of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality in the late 1990s, along with Randburg and Sandton.

Overview

Although Roodepoort has traditionally been regarded as being part of the West Rand, it was not made part of the West Rand District Municipality, instead being integrated into the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, following the post-apartheid reorganisation of local government in the late 1990s.

In 1884, brothers Fred and Harry Struben, having discovered gold on the farm Wilgespruit at the western end of the Witwatersrand, were granted concessions to mine the area. When George Harrison's find at Langlaagte came to light and gold fever took hold, the Strubens brothers were joined by a swarm of gold diggers. Though the Confidence Reef bore little gold and their mine was unprofitable, the ramshackle town that grew around it became the Roodepoort Municipality in 1903. Incorporating the towns of Hamburg, Florida and Maraisburg, Roodepoort became a city in 1977, and has since developed as one of Johannesburg's most prominently-Afrikaans-speaking districts.