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The region surrounding Johannesburg was originally inhabited by San hunter-gatherers who used stone tools. The farm where gold was first discovered in 1886 The City Hall is also located on Rissik Street. Joubert had a park in the city named after him, and Rissik has his name for one of the main streets in the city where the historically important albeit dilapidated Rissik Street Post Office is located. Johannes Rissik and Johannes Joubert were members of a delegation sent to England to obtain mining rights for the area. Precise records for the choice of name were lost. Johannes Meyer, the first government official in the area is another possibility. Another was Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger (better known as Paul Kruger), president of the South African Republic (ZAR) from 1883 to 1900. Among them is the principal clerk attached to the office of the surveyor-general Hendrik Dercksen, Christiaan Johannes Joubert, who was a member of the Volksraad and was Republic's chief of mining. There were quite a number of people with the name "Johannes" who were involved in the early history of the city. 2.4 Redevelopment of industrial heritageĬontroversy surrounds the origin of the name.
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2.2 Rapid growth, Jameson Raid and the Second Boer War.Land area of the municipal city (1,645 km 2 or 635 sq mi) is large in comparison with those of other major cities, resulting in a moderate population density of 2,364 per square kilometre (6,120/sq mi). In the same year, the population of Johannesburg's urban agglomeration was put at 8,000,000. In 2019, the population of the city of Johannesburg was 5,635,127, making it the most populous city in South Africa.
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The metropolis is an alpha global city as listed by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. It was one of the host cities of the official tournament of the 2010 FIFA World Cup – and it hosted the final. These areas were designated as non-white areas in accordance with the segregationist policies of the South African government known as apartheid. Lenasia is predominantly populated by English-speaking South Africans of Indian descent. Soweto, although eventually incorporated into Johannesburg, had been separated as a residential area for blacks only (no whites allowed), who were not permitted to live in other White designated suburbs of Johannesburg. Originally an acronym for "South-Western Townships", Soweto originated as a collection of settlements on the outskirts of Johannesburg, populated mostly by native African workers from the gold mining industry. A separate city from the late 1970s until 1994, Soweto is now part of Johannesburg. Due to the extremely large gold deposit found along the Witwatersrand, within ten years, the population had grown to 100,000 inhabitants.
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The city was established in 1886 following the discovery of gold on what had been a farm. The city is located in the mineral-rich Witwatersrand range of hills and is the centre of large-scale gold and diamond trade. Most of the major South African companies and banks have their head offices in Johannesburg. Johannesburg is the seat of the Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa. It is the provincial capital and largest city of Gauteng, which is the wealthiest province in South Africa. According to Demographia, the Johannesburg- Pretoria urban area (combined because of strong transport links that make commuting feasible) is the 26th-largest in the world, with 14,167,000 inhabitants. Johannesburg ( / dʒ oʊ ˈ h æ n ɪ s b ɜːr ɡ/ joh- HAN-iss-burg, US also /- ˈ h ɑː n-/ - HAHN-, Afrikaans: Zulu and Xhosa: eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or " The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world.
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