Carletonville

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Carletonville
Carletonville (South Africa)
Carletonville
Carletonville
Coordinates 26 ° 21 ′  S , 27 ° 23 ′  E Coordinates: 26 ° 21 ′  S , 27 ° 23 ′  E
Basic data
Country South Africa

province

Gauteng
District West edge
ISO 3166-2 ZA-GP
local community Merafong City
Residents 23,000 (2011)
founding 1937

Carletonville is a gold mining town, about 50 kilometers southwest of Johannesburg , between the Gatsrand mountain ranges in the south and the Witwatersrand in the north and at the intersection of the regional roads R500 and R501. In 2011 it had 23,000 inhabitants.

Administratives, population

It originally belonged to the West Rand District Municipality of the South African province of Gauteng . In the course of the dissolution of cross-border municipalities, Carletonville, like the entire Merafong City Local Municipality, was added to the Southern District Municipality in the Northwest Province . This reclassification aroused great opposition from the population, particularly in Khutsong. Carletonville's neighboring towns are Khutsong, Blybank and Welverdiend.

The infection rate with regard to sexually transmitted diseases , and in particular HIV is high for the miners, and in the townships of Carletonville.

history

The region is one of the largest gold mining regions in the world, because the largest known gold soap in the world is located on the Witwatersrand . Gold has been mined there since the early 1930s. Since 1937 a disorderly settlement has developed due to the claim staking of the various gold mining companies active there. In November 1946 the Consolidated Gold Fields company (former owner was Cecil Rhodes ) decided to create a proper settlement and proclaimed it publicly in 1948.

Carletonville is named after the engineer and longtime director of Consolidated Gold Fields , Guy Carleton Jones. The official status of a town ( Town Council Status ) was given Carletonville on July 1, 1959 by merging with the neighboring settlement of the gold field Oberholzer , today a suburb of Carletonville. In the mid-1970s, hundreds of people died and thousands were injured when the police put down several waves of black miners' strike ( Carletonville massacre ).

Post-mining damage, environmental protection, conversion

Since the 1960s, Carletonville, whose subsoil consists of dolomite rock , has suffered multiple mountain damage , sometimes with entire houses collapsing in holes in the ground . Strong groundwater lowering due to targeted drainage of the mining fields and considerable water pollution from heavy metals and radioactive waste water are also attributed to gold mining in the area. To cool the air in the Carletonville gold mines, which reach extremely deep into the earth, huge air conditioning systems are installed above ground, the emission of CFC gases into the atmosphere is extremely high.

Since the gold reserves will be depleted by the middle of the 21st century, the mining companies are starting to plan for agricultural re-use of the land. In the region around Carletonville, for example, hydroponic roses are being grown for export.

sons and daughters of the town

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 2011 census , accessed on October 3, 2013. Other data differ depending on which areas are included in Carletonville. The Encyclopædia Britannica gives for 2001 a population of 210,478 in the agglomeration. A study published in 2005 by the South African Institute for Security Studies shows the number of 45,000 for Carletonville itself, for the directly neighboring township of Khutsong, on the other hand, for around 200,000 inhabitants: Jonny Steinberg: The Future of Rural Policing in South Africa , Monograph No 120, ISBN 1 -919913-90-4
  2. ^ STD and HIV infection in Carletonville, South Africa: a community-based survey. , Van Dam J et al .: Int Conf AIDS . 2000 Jul 9-14; 13
  3. ↑ Article of the Encyclopædia Britannica about Carletonville  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / edit.bridica.com  
  4. ↑ Historical Overview Of Carletonville In The West Rand, South Africa ( Memento of October 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), www.vuvuzela.com, March 1, 2007
  5. ↑ History of Merafong ( Memento from July 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ^ Resurgence of African Mine Workers ( Memento of October 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), ( African National Congress / South African Congress of Trade Unions )
  7. ↑ Elise Tempelhoff, Beeld: Study warns of radioactive food ( Memento of April 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), www.news24.com, July 31, 2007, 9:27 am; The notification relates to a study Impact of gold mining on levels of naturally occurring radionuclides inaquatic ecosystems of the , written in 2007 by G. Deissmann and Rainer Barthel from BS Associates, a South African subsidiary of the German company Brenk Systemplanung, for the South African nuclear regulatory authority National Nuclear Regulator Witwatersrand Basin, South Africa .
  8. ↑ Farmers silently suffer the legacy of polluted mining , CANE - Coalition Against Nuclear Energy South Africa, September 10th 2007
  9. ↑ Prof. Elize S van Eeden, AB De Villiers, Dr. LE Stoch, Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education: Mines, people and sinkholes - an analysis of the Carletonville Area in South Africa as case study regarding the national politics of secrecy , lecture at the 19th Int. Historical Science Congress, Oslo 2000
  10. ↑ Mining giant plans to grow roses for export , Engineering News, August 23, 2002