Nigel is a small

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

mining town in

Gauteng Gauteng ( , ; Sotho-Tswana languages, Sotho-Tswana for 'place of gold'; or ) is one of the nine provinces of South Africa. Situated on the Highveld, Gauteng is the smallest province by land area in South Africa. Although Gauteng accounts f ...

Province,

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

, south-east of

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alon ...

. The town is at the south-eastern edge of the

City of Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality The City of Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (; ; ; ) is a metropolitan municipality that forms the local government of the East Rand region of Gauteng, a large suburban region east of Johannesburg. ''Ekurhuleni'' means "place of peace" in Xi ...

and the

East Rand The East Rand is a major urban area located in the Gauteng province of South Africa. It is the urban eastern part of Witwatersrand that is functionally merged with the Johannesburg conurbation. The region extends from Alberton in the west to ...

Background

A farmer, shopkeeper and prospector, Petrus Johannes Marais, having read Sir

Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European literature, European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'' (18 ...

's '' The Fortunes of Nigel'' at the time (see Nigel), formed the Nigel Gold Mining Company after the discovery of gold on the farm Varkensfontein in 1886. The town, which grew around the mine, still bears names derived from Scott's book and its characters with the suburb of ''Glenvarloch'' and its streets derived from that source. Today the town is focused primarily on mining and also has various heavy industries. The town became known as the setting of the popular Afrikaans-sitcom ''Vetkoekpaleis'', a sitcom that revolves around the daily lives of staff members of the Vetkoekpaleis (a Vetkoek-themed fast-food restaurant). Nigel's municipal government became part of the much larger

following the creation of new local government structures in 2000, along with most of rest of the

. On 1 August 2010, a fire at the Pieter Wessels old age home led to the deaths of 22 people. Dennis Hardman, Olympic shooter for Zimbabwe, was born in Nigel in 1943.Olympedia: Dennis Hardman
/ref>

References

External links

Nigel Business Directory
East Rand Populated places in Ekurhuleni Mining communities in South Africa {{Gauteng-geo-stub