Bezuidenhout Valley is a suburb of

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, 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. According to Demo ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

. The area lies to the east of the

Johannesburg CBD The Central Business District, commonly called Johannesburg CBD, is one of the main business centres of Johannesburg, South Africa. It is the densest collection of skyscrapers in Africa, however, due to white flight and urban blight, many of the b ...

and is surrounded by the suburbs of

Kensington Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West End of London, West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up b ...

to the south and

Observatory An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysical, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed. His ...

to the north. It is located in Region E of the

City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality The City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality is a metropolitan municipality that manages the local governance of Johannesburg, South Africa. It is divided into several branches and departments in order to expedite services for the city. Z ...

. It is

colloquially Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the style (sociolinguistics), linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom norm ...

known as the Bez Valley.

History

The suburb is situated on part of an old

Witwatersrand The Witwatersrand () (locally the Rand or, less commonly, the Reef) is a , north-facing scarp in South Africa. It consists of a hard, erosion-resistant quartzite metamorphic rock, over which several north-flowing rivers form waterfalls, which ...

farm called ''Doornfontein''. The farm ''Doornfontein'' was purchased in 1861 from B.P. Viljoen by Frederik Jacobus Bezuidenhout. Parts of the farm were sold from 1902 and the suburb stands from 1906. In March 1949, Willem Bezuidenhout sold the remaining land of 133ha to the Johannesburg City Council for use as a park and to be called Bezuidenhout Park.

References

Johannesburg Region F {{Johannesburg-stub