The Klerksdorper
All about the city of Klerksdorp
Global Learning Services
Dec 10th
Manager: Mandy Hughes
20 Chris Hani Street, Klerksdorp
Cell: 071 453 4684
Tel: 087 808 5314 / 018 462 2392
Fax: 086 541 8725
E-mail: klerksd@globaltraining.co.za
Website: www.globaltraining.co.za
In loving memory: Marlene Evans
Oct 7th
Marlene Evans (Milner High School) passed away on Monday 5th of October 2009. Visit www.milnerhigh.com for more information.
The Rotary Club of Klerksdorp
Oct 7th
The Rotary Club of Klerksdorp serves the community of Klerksdorp in the North West province of South Africa.
What is Rotary?
Rotary is a service organization that was started in 1905 with the formation of the Rotary Club of Chicago. Today there are more than 1.2 million Rotarians worldwide that are members of over 32 000 Rotary clubs. The Rotary clubs belong to a global association, Rotary International.
Rotarians form a global network of business, professional and community leaders who volunteer their time and talents to serve their communities and the world . Strong fellowship among Rotarians and meaningful community and international service projects characterize Rotary worldwide.
The Rotary Club of Klerksdorp was founded in November 1953. It forms part of RI District 9320. The Rotarians of Klerksdorp meet every week (excluding the last week of the month) at Rota Park Hall, du Toit Street, Freemanville on a Friday from 13h00 to 14h00. On the last Thursday of the month they meet at 19h00.
President Alma Piek 083 444 9027
or Margie Constantinidis 082 445 9199
Postal Address:
P/O Box 985 Klerksdorp 2570
E-mail: secretary@rotaryklerksdorp.co.za
Bona Bona Game Lodge
Oct 7th
In the Tswana language, Bona Bona means “to look or to see”. Our aim at Bona Bona is to ensure that you never forget the Fauna and Flora as well as the tranquillity of the African bush. Conveniently located on the N12 Treasure Route, 2 and a half hours drive from Jo’burg Bona Bona is “NATURE on your DOORSTEP”.
The one-of-kind Bona Bona invites guests to rest and relax in a setting that celebrates the sights and sounds, the people and the memories of a piece of Bushveld in South Africa. Welcome to an experience you will never forget.
The unique surroundings in which Bona Bona is situated ensures luxury and comfort while experiencing the beauty of the North West Province. Relax with a sun downer and listen to the roar of the African Lion while enjoying a dramatic sunset.
We also offer you:
- An unforgettable wedding!
- A very productive and dynamic atmosphere to host your business conference!
- A unique wildlife experience via an open 4×4 vehicle to view our range antelope, 3 of the big five, Rhino, Buffalo and Lion!
- Rustic accommodation that ranges from our very popular bush camp to our Royal Suite!
- Last but not least… Bona Bona is the first to introduce an African Revitalisation Spa experience on the N12 Treasure Route!
Bona Bona is situated 50km south west of Klerksdorp, adjacent to the N12 Treasure Route in the direction of Wolmaransstad in the North West Province of South Africa. Approximately 2 hours drive from Johannesburg and with our own airstrip, Bona Bona is within easy reach.
Our airstrip (27°02”32”S and 26°14”21”E) is available for guests who wish to fly in, but contact us first should you want to make use of this.
Bona Bona was proclaimed a Game Farm in 1993. This area, with its wide variety of fauna and flora, consists of approximately 1 600ha bushveld and gives you an experience which is a true reflection of the ecosystem that we are in – an ecological tapestry of Acacia veld, Rosyntjiebos and abundant wildlife.
Reservations / Contact
Tel: +27 (18) 451 1188
Fax: +27 (18) 451 1188 / +27 (18) 451 1012
E-Mail: info@bonabona.co.za
Lime
Oct 7th
Visiting Klerksdorp? Party the night away at Lime.
The club is buzzing every Wednesday – Saturday night.
Contact: Eugene Rossouw and Robbie Rossouw for more info.
Klerksdorp business directory
Oct 7th
Add your Klerksdorp business profile to our website today. THAT’S RIGHT! FULL COLOUR ADVERTISING FOR FREE! Submit a request for your business’ inclusion on our directory via our advertising page today. Please remember to specify which category your business falls under. Refer to the tags above for available categories. Please suggest a category should your business not fit into the above categories.
Hotels scramble for 2010 pie
Oct 1st
Some of South Africa’s top hotels are going all out to ensure that they get selected as “base camps” by soccer World Cup sides.
With 11 teams so far having qualified for the tournament , Fifa’s Delia Fischer says a hotel catalogue for teams has been drawn up by the organisation’s accommodation arm, Match.
“Certain teams have been here for the last couple of months to look at hotels,” she said.
Last week, the boss of the local World Cup organising committee, Danny Jordaan, said 55 base camps throughout the country had been identified.
“Sixteen teams have already identified where they would like to base themselves. Of course, it is subject to the teams qualifying,” he said.
Reuters reported last week that Germany, which has yet to qualify, had chosen the unfinished Velmore hotel, near Pretoria, as its 2010 base camp.
Fifa, Fisher said, will publish its camp list in early January.
Meanwhile, some hotels are sending marketers overseas to better their chances of scoring teams. Others are upgrading their facilities.
Val de Vie, a wine and polo estate in the Franschhoek Valley, is going to great lengths to lure a top squad, including converting its polo fields into practise soccer pitches and planting Fifa-specified turf on them.
The estate’s 2010 co-ordinator, Martin Botha, said they already have massage and medical treatment rooms and team-building facilities.
“We’re going to change the grass to the Fifa specifications for practice fields but otherwise everything else is in place,” he says.
This month, Botha is heading to Europe to join a delegation from his local Drakenstein municipality at a marketing expo in Serbia.
He says that any of the top 12 seeded teams would be perfect for Val de Vie.
“We have made contact with some of the federations but at this stage we are not willing to make any comment on who we’re focusing on because they are also very reluctant to say or to make any official comment,” he said.
“But we can say we’ve approached top countries according to the Fifa rankings.”
East London’s Blue Lagoon hotel hosted the Italian rugby team for the 1995 World Cup and would like to host a soccer team next year.
Its general manager, Peter Gregerson, said he was in discussions with the Buffalo City municipality and had “followed up on some leads”.
“We’ve got three or four countries that have contacted us and are interested. They found us through their contacts, or we spoke to them through personal communication,” he says.
Gregerson would not say which teams had expressed interest but said he would be able to confirm a booking towards the end of November.
Sandy Botha, head of marketing for Klerksdorp, in the North West, and its municipality, Matlosana, said the economic spin-offs of attracting a popular soccer team would be huge.
“We’re targeting a team with a strong fan base so that we can benefit from the economic spin- offs.
“We’d love Portugal or Ivory Coast or Holland,” she said.
“The team that comes must have lots of fans so the city can benefit. The fans will have to eat in restaurants. We’ve got lots of restaurants and a couple of shopping centres.”
Botha said that, since her city was chosen by Fifa as a “base camp city”, two new hotels had been built and “guesthouses are springing up everywhere”.
Source: The Times
Hailstorm hits Klerksdorp
Oct 1st
For more news: http://www.news24.com/Content/SouthAfrica/News/1059/885318371e98457a91ebc91cb4f956f9/01-10-2009-08-53/Hailstorm_hits_Klerksdorp
Hail lay up to 20cm deep in Klerksdorp after a powerful storm. (Beeld)
Klerksdorp has for the second time this year been hit by powerful thunderstorms, causing millions of rands of damage.
Roofs were ripped off houses in less than an hour, homes flooded and gardens devastated by a violent hailstorm late on Tuesday afternoon.
Large parts of the city looked like they were under snow, as hail lay up to 20cm deep in places.
Some of the northern suburbs were without power for a while and the N12 highway was temporarily closed after branches and hail covered the road.
The worst damage was in La Hoff, Doringkruin, Wilkoppies, Flamwood, the city centre, extension 10 of Jouberton (near Klerksdorp) and extension 8 of Kanana (near Orkney).
Hospitals flooded
“Three hospitals – the Klerksdorp provincial hospital, the Tshepong hospital in Jouberton and the Sunningdale hospital in Wilkoppies – sustained water damage but patients were not removed,” said provincial police spokesperson, Superintendent Lesego Metsi.
He said no one was injured or killed in the storm.
“The rain wasn’t as bad as the hail,” said Tommy Deysel of the Matlosana municipality’s department for disaster management.
“People were inconvenienced, but it was definitely not a disaster. We are continuously monitoring the situation.”
“People should report damages to their ward council member or ward committee members and I will afterwards submit a complete report to the municipality.”
Trail of devastation
Beeld followed the trail of devastation caused by the storm. At Autorama, a used car dealer, the roof collapsed and two cars were slightly damaged. Mr Price and Mr Price Home near the Pick n Pay Hypermarket sustained serious water damage, but were open for business as usual.
At some shops in the Wilkoppies area, notices were stuck up in windows to inform customers that shops were closed due to storm damage.
Klerksdorp and surrounding areas were hit hard by storms in January. Parts of the Kosh area (Klerksdorp, Orkney, Stilfontein and Hartbeesfontein) where then declared disaster areas.
More about Klerksdorp
Oct 1st
The city was founded in 1837 when the Voortrekkers settled on the banks of the Schoonspruit (”Clear stream”), which flows through the town. Klerksdorp is the oldest European (white) settlement of the then Transvaal.
The most prominent of the first settlers was C.M. du Plooy who claimed a farm of about 160 km², called it Elandsheuwel (”Hill of the Eland”). He gave plots of land and communal grazing rights on this farm to other Voortrekkers in return for their labour in building a dam and an irrigation canal. This collection of smallholdings was later given the name of Klerksdorp in honour of the first landdrost (magistrate) of the area, Jacob de Clerq.
In August 1886 gold was discovered in the Klerksdorp district by M.G. Jansen van Vuuren as well as on the Witwatersrand, which lies about 160 km to the east. As a consequence, thousands of fortune-seekers descended on the small village, turning it into a town with 70 taverns and even a stock exchange of its own.
However, the nature of the gold reef demanded expensive and sophisticated equipment to mine and extract the gold, causing the majority of diggers to move away in the late 1890s and leading to a decline in the gold mining industry.
During the Second Boer War (1899-1902), heavy fighting occurred in the area, which also housed a large concentration camp. The most famous of the battles around Klerksdorp, is that of the Battle of Ysterspruit (Iron Stream), in which the Boer General, Koos de la Rey, achieved a great victory. The battle is one of the most celebrated of the general’s career, being the battle in which the Boer soldiers pioneered the art of firing from horseback. On April 11, 1902, Rooiwal, near Klerkdorp, saw the Battle of Rooiwal, the last major engagement of the war, where a Boer charge was beaten off by entrenched British troops.
The graves of the victims of the concentration camps, namely Boer women and children, can still be visited today in the old cemetery just outside of town, numbering just below a thousand.
Klerksdorp was connected by rail to Krugersdorp on 3 August 1897 and to Kimberley in 1906.
The gold mining industry was revived by large mining companies in 1932, causing the town to undergo an economic revival, which accelerated after World War II.
Klerksdorp today
The greater city area of Klerksdorp today incorporates the towns of Orkney, Kanana, Stilfontein, Khuma, Hartbeesfontein and Tigane to give it a population of more than 350,000 inhabitants (Census Statistics South Africa 2001). Together with Rustenburg, Klerksdorp forms the economic heart of North West Province. It is still one of the hubs of the South African gold mining industry , although its importance has been decreasing in recent years. A major earthquake in March 2005 caused significant damage to the eastern suburb of Stilfontein and caused widespread damage to the mining activities in that part of the city. In addition, it is also expected to be a large uranium producer in the future. Apart from mining activities, Klerksdorp is also positioned as a notable medical, retail and education centre for North West Province and Northern Free State.
The Klerksdorp district is also a major player in South African agriculture; important crops that are farmed in the district include maize, sorghum, groundnuts and sunflowers. Klerksdorp has the largest agricultural company in the southern hemisphere, Senwes.
The district is also known for its Sussex cattle herds – the city is the headquarters of the South African Sussex Cattle Breeders Association.
Tourist attractions
- Mining shafts excavated in the 1880s.
- The Klerksdorp Museum. It was built in 1891 as a prison and served as such until 1973. The house of the warden hosts period exhibitions. It exhibits the Klerksdorp sphere, spherical to subspherical objects that pseudoarcheologists consider to be man-made.
- The Faan Meintjies Nature Reserve, located about 15 km from Klerksdorp. It has 30 species of game and 150 species of birds.
- The Oudorp hiking trail. It is a 12 km long trail and winds its way through the oldest parts of the town.
- Goudkoppie (Gold Hill) is the city’s latest tourist attraction. It is situated near both the N12 highway and the Johannesburg-Cape Town railway line.
- The Klerksdorp Dam, 10 km outside Klerksdorp on the road to Ventersdorp.
Sport
Markotter stadium situated between Klerksdorp and Vaal Reefs is a popular sports field for some of the bigger school’s athletics competitions.
Health
Four private hospitals in the city lifts Klerksdorp’s medical status in the North West Province. Adding to this is the advanced cancer treatment at some hospitals drawing in patients from all over the district.
Crime in Klerksdorp
The latest crime statistics for Klerksdorp Police Precinct was issued by the South African Police Service (SAPS) in July 2008. The SAPS crime report[1] showed the 2007/2008 Murder figure is at a 7 year high. Robberies at residences increased from 1 case in 2006/2007 to 10 cases in 2007/2008. Robberies at businesses showed an increase from 1 case in 2006/2007 to 15 cases in 2007/2008. This increase in violent crimes is cause of serious concern.
In comparison to other major towns and cities in South Africa, Klersdorp is still considered one of the safer locations in the nation.
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