Steynsrus is a small farming town in the Free State province of

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

that was founded in 1910 and named after the last president of the

Orange Free State The Orange Free State ( nl, Oranje Vrijstaat; af, Oranje-Vrystaat;) was an independent Boer sovereign republic under British suzerainty in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century, which ceased to exist after it was defeat ...

Martinus Theunis Steyn Martinus (or Marthinus) Theunis Steyn (; 2 October 1857 – 28 November 1916) was a South African lawyer, politician, and statesman. He was the sixth and last president of the independent republic the Orange Free State from 1896 to 1902. Earl ...

. It is included under Moqhaka Local Municipality, the tier of municipal government in South Africa, and administered from

Kroonstad Kroonstad (Afrikaans directly translated "Crown City") is the third largest city in the Free State (after Bloemfontein and Welkom) and lies two hours' drive on the N1 from Gauteng. Maokeng is an area within Kroonstad, and is occasionally used ...

Location

Steynsrus is located on the R76 and R720 road between

and

Senekal Senekal is a town situated on the banks of the Sand River in the eastern part of the Free State province of South Africa. It was named after Commandant FP Senekal. It is the second largest town in Setsoto Municipality after Ficksburg, the lar ...

, roughly 50 km from either; the distance, as with most towns in the Free State, that could be ridden in a day on horseback. A fine sandstone

Dutch Reformed Church The Dutch Reformed Church (, abbreviated NHK) was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the original denomination of the Dutch Royal Family and ...

, built in 1928, dominates the town and is its most notable architectural feature, sitting at the main axis, Van Reebeck and Haasbroek Streets.

Economy

Apart from government services, agriculture is the main employer in this area and many residents commute every day to work on the surrounding farms.

Demographics

While in 2001 Steynsrus had a population of 1,192, Matlwangtlwang had a population of 6,441. Both Steynsrus and Matlwangtlwang had a majority of females in the population.

Ethnic groups

According to the 2001 census there were 847

white South African White South Africans generally refers to South Africans of European descent. In linguistic, cultural, and historical terms, they are generally divided into the Afrikaans-speaking descendants of the Dutch East India Company's original settler ...

s living in the town of Steynsrus (71.1%), almost all of Afrikaner background. The town also housed 18 (1.5%) shop owners who were South African citizens of Indian origin. Under apartheid Indians were banned from living in the Free State—even requiring a pass to travel through it—and those in Steynsrus are therefore relatively more recent residents. Steynsrus town also has a large (and growing) black minority, which in 2001 stood at 324 (27.2%). Of Matlwangtlwang's 6,441 inhabitants, 6,408 were classified as black in the 2001 census. 92.5% of them spoke Southern Sotho, with the next largest language being Zulu at 3.6%.

Language

Almost all the people in Matlwangtlwang speak seSotho. In the actual town of Steynsrus the majority (70.8%) of residents speak

Afrikaans Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gra ...

while most of the black minority speak seSotho. A few whites, as well as most of the Asian population, say English is their mother tongue.

References

{{Authority control Populated places in the Moqhaka Local Municipality Populated places established in 1910