North West province lies to the west of the Johannesburg-Pretoria axis
and is one of Africa's great food-growing regions. The province borders on
Botswana and is fringed by the Kalahari desert in the west and the Witwatersrand
area in the east.
In its natural state it is largely bushveld and thornveld, but most of the
land is under cultivation; the warmth, the good summer rains and rich soils
combine to create ideal farming conditions and the land yields splendid crops of
sunflowers and groundnuts, citrus, tobacco and especially maize. The maize
fields are enormous stretching away like great golden lakes across the hot, flat
countryside as far as the eye can see.
North-West has no cities and few towns. The largest is Potchestroom founded
in 1838, the one-time capital of the old South African Republic or Transvaal and
now a dignified seat of learning. Close by is the gold-mining centre of
Klerksdorp, far to the west, in remote ranchland country, is Vryheid. None of
these fairly substantial places, however, serves as the provincial capital that
status belongs to Mmabatho, a modest little centre that started as an appendage
of Mafikeng. The latter enjoys a prominent place in the annals: hitting the
headlines in 1900, then known as Mafeking when the Boer forces laid siege to its
British garrison.
Two other centres of note are Lichtenburg, scene of South Africa's last great
diamond rush and Rustenburg, a largish country town overlooked by the red-tinged
heights of the lovely Magaliesberg range of hills. Rustenburg lies about halfway
along the route from Johannesburg-Pretoria to North-West's main tourist area of
the glittering pleasure-palaces of Sun City and its adjacent Pilanesberg
National Park. The latter is the product of 'Operation Genesis', launched in the
1970s and rated among Africa's most successful game-stocking ventures.
Most of the people of North-West are of Tswana stock, a rather loosely
defined linguistic and cultural group that extends across neighbouring Botswana
and has close historical affiliations to the Sotho of the regions to the east
and south.
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