Sasolburg is a large industrial city within the

Metsimaholo Local Municipality Metsimaholo Local Municipality is an administrative area in the Fezile Dabi District of the Free State in South Africa. "Metsimaholo" means "big water" in Sesotho. Main places The 2001 census divided the municipality into the following main pl ...

in the far north of the Free State province of South Africa. Sasolburg is further sub-divided into three areas: Sasolburg proper, Vaalpark (a more affluent cluster of suburbs located about 5 km north of the Sasolburg CBD) and Zamdela (a

township A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Ca ...

). Most

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...

residents of Sasolburg 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 ...

as a first language, while most black people speak

Sesotho Sotho () or Sesotho () or Southern Sotho is a Southern Bantu language of the Sotho–Tswana ("S.30") group, spoken primarily by the Basotho in Lesotho, where it is the national and official language; South Africa (particularly the Free Sta ...

as a

first language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...

. The

Sasol Sasol Limited is an integrated energy and chemical company based in Sandton, South Africa. The company was formed in 1950 in Sasolburg, South Africa and built on processes that were first developed by German chemists and engineers in the early ...

corporation has sponsored infrastructural developments in Sasolburg, such as an Olympic size swimming pool.

History

The town was established in 1954 to provide housing and other facilities for

employees. The initial installation (Sasol 1) was a pilot plant to refine oil from coal, due to the lack of petroleum reserves. The coal reserves of the country were and still are extensive. The political developments of the late 1960s and early 1970s (specifically the trade embargoes against the

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

government) made the operation of the pilot plant a priority to the government. Plans were made for a production plant to be built in the

Eastern Transvaal Mpumalanga () is a province of South Africa. The name means "East", or literally "The Place Where the Sun Rises" in the Swazi, Xhosa, Ndebele and Zulu languages. Mpumalanga lies in eastern South Africa, bordering Eswatini and Mozambique. It ...

to produce approximately 25% of the national fuel requirements. The new town of Secunda was built to house the construction and operations staff of what became known as SASOL 2 and SASOL 3 (

Secunda CTL Secunda CTL is a synthetic fuel plant owned by Sasol at Secunda, Mpumalanga in South Africa. It uses coal liquefaction to produce petroleum-like synthetic crude oil from coal. The process used by Sasol is based on the Fischer–Tropsch process. ...

). Sasol One was one of the first places to be designated as a National Key Point under the National Key Points Act, which legislation protected areas so designated from "loss, damage, disruption or immobilisation (that) may prejudice the Republic".

Bombing

On 2 June 1980, Sasolburg was attacked by Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the

African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a Social democracy, social-democratic political party in Republic of South Africa, South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when ...

's (ANC) military wing. They bombed two strategically important SASOL (oil-from-coal) plants and an oil refinery. This event was depicted in the 2006 film

Catch a Fire ''Catch a Fire'' is the fifth studio album by the reggae band The Wailers (aka Bob Marley and the Wailers), released in April 1973. It was their first album released by Island Records. After finishing a UK tour with Johnny Nash, they had star ...

Kader Asmal Abdul Kader Asmal (8 October 1934 – 22 June 2011) was a South African politician. He was a professor of human rights at the University of the Western Cape, chairman of the council of the University of the North and vice-president of the A ...

, founder of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement, claimed in his memoirs, ''Politics in my Blood'', that the ANC had recruited volunteers from the

Provisional Irish Republican Army The Irish Republican Army (IRA; ), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reun ...

(IRA) to do reconnaissance on the refinery. The attack proved to be largely ineffectual in terms of sabotaging the manufacturing processes of the Sasol plant. However the propaganda impact of the attack was significant: the South African government presented the event as the result of a foreign, communist onslaught against South Africa, and not a domestic reaction to the country's racial policies. Police Minister

Louis le Grange Louis le Grange (16 August 1928 – 25 October 1991) was a lawyer, a South African politician and a member of the National Party. Early life Le Grange was born to Elizabeth Raats and Johannes Jacobus Le Grange in Ladybrand in the Orange Fr ...

claimed that the then-exiled

Joe Slovo Joe Slovo (born Yossel Mashel Slovo; 23 May 1926 – 6 January 1995) was a South African politician, and an opponent of the apartheid system. A Marxist-Leninist, he was a long-time leader and theorist in the South African Communist Pa ...

, of the banned

South African Communist Party The South African Communist Party (SACP) is a communist party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), tactically dissolved itself in 1950 in the face of being declared illegal by the governing Na ...

, was a key figure. Newspapers that supported the ruling National Party claimed that, in fact,

Muammar Qaddafi Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, . Due to the lack of standardization of transcribing written and regionally pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi's name has been romanized in various ways. A 1986 column by ''The Straight Dope'' lists 32 spellin ...

had masterminded the sabotage, and that Russians had been training terrorists in

Libya Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya bo ...

October 1987 strike

On 1 October 1987, Sasol 1's management called in police and vigilantes to break up a workers’ strike resulting from a wage dispute. Over the following weeks, 77 workers died, and the 2 400 jobs were retrenched without their due compensation. The ex-workers took SASOL to court as result and, in 1989, the

Labour Court A labor court (or labour court or industrial tribunal) is a governmental judiciary body which rules on labor or employment-related matters and disputes. In a number of countries, labor cases are often taken to separate national labor high courts. O ...

ruled in favour of the ex-workers; however, as of 2014, they have yet to receive compensation. SASOL still denies responsibility and, as a result of the refinery's designation as a National Key Point, the actions taken against workers remain secret until today.

Demarcation riots

In January 2013, residents of Sasolburg's Zamdela township rioted in response to a demarcation proposal to incorporate Sasolburg into the neighbouring

Parys Parys (pronounced ) is a town situated on the banks of the Vaal River in the Free State province of South Africa. The name of the town is the Afrikaans translation of Paris. The name was given by a German surveyor named Schilbach who had partic ...

's Ngwathe municipality, believing that the merge would result in poorer service delivery and increased corruption. Police were unable to stop the violence, which involved assault, vandalism, and plundering, as they were outnumbered.

Geography

Sasolburg is at a high altitude with a fairly dry climate and large seasonal temperature variation. It is situated on the banks of the

Vaal River The Vaal River ( ; Khoemana: ) is the largest tributary of the Orange River in South Africa. The river has its source near Breyten in Mpumalanga province, east of Johannesburg and about north of Ermelo and only about from the Indian Ocean. ...

, which separates the Free State from the former

Transvaal Province The Province of the Transvaal ( af, Provinsie van Transvaal), commonly referred to as the Transvaal (; ), was a province of South Africa from 1910 until 1994, when a new constitution subdivided it following the end of apartheid. The name "Trans ...

, and is not far from the

Vaal Dam The Vaal Dam in South Africa was constructed in 1938 and lies 77 km south of OR Tambo International Airport. The lake behind the dam wall has a surface area of about and is 47 meters deep. The Vaal Dam lies on the Vaal River, which is one ...

where excellent

windsurfing Windsurfing is a wind propelled water sport that is a combination of sailing and surfing. It is also referred to as "sailboarding" and "boardsailing", and emerged in the late 1960s from the aerospace and surf culture of California. Windsurfing ga ...

spots can be found.

Government

Sasolburg is the seat of both the

Fezile Dabi District Municipality Fezile Dabi District Municipality, formerly known as Northern Free State District Municipality, is one of the 5 districts of Free State province of South Africa. The seat of Northern Free State is Sasolburg. The majority of its 460 289 people spe ...

and the

of the northern Free State.

References

External links

Official siteVaal Triangle InfoFighting for scraps in the Republic of Sasol(burg)
Stephen Sparks, ''Mail & Guardian'', 21 January 2013 {{Authority control 1954 establishments in South Africa Populated places in the Metsimaholo Local Municipality Populated places established in 1954