Vrededorp is a

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area. They are oftentimes where most of a metropolitan areas jobs are located with some being predominantly residential. They can either be denser or less densely populated ...

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 ...

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. It is located in Region F of the

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

. Vrededorp is situated on the North-Western side of Johannesburg and is 1,764 m (5,788 ft) above sea level. The adjacent suburb of

Pageview In web analytics and Website governance, website management, a pageview or page view, abbreviated in business to PV and occasionally called page impression, is a request to load a single HTML file (web page) of an Internet site. On the World Wide ...

, along with the part of Vrededorp populated by non-whites, south of 11th Street, were commonly and onomatopoeically known as "Fietas" after the Men's Outfitters that traded from 14th street in Vrededorp - hence "Fitters" and "Fittas" or, as commonly spelled, "Fietas". The then well-known 14th street was the area's business lane where everybody from across Johannesburg met to snatch up bargains. Most shopkeepers stayed in apartments on top of their shops. Vrededorp is sometimes incorrectly regarded as being synonymous with Fietas, however, the bulk of Vrededorp (unlike Pageview) was always a white area, and not a part of Fietas.

History

Vrededorp ("Village of Peace"), was named as such in 1895 because of the decision taken to give poor people squatter rights in the area. The idea was that these rights could later be transferred to the heirs of the people that were granted initial squatter rights. After the

Anglo Boer War The Second Boer War (, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, Transvaal War, Anglo–Boer War, or South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer republics (the South African Republic and ...

(11 Oct 1899- 31 May 1902), the

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did away with the arrangement. On 19 February 1896 Vrededorp,

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, Fordsburg and the Malay Location (later renamed Pageview) were flattened as a result of a huge explosion caused by a locomotive that reversed into two railway trucks that contained 1955 tons of unstable dynamite. This explosion is commonly known as the " Great Dynamite Explosion". The area was never truly multiracial, as whites lived north of 11th Street, while Coloureds, Malays, and Indians lived in the area south of that street, and in adjacent Pageview, which together constituted ''Fietas''. The

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

Government declared Vrededorp and Pageview as a white area in 1962. Subsequently, the area was cleared of non-whites by the 1970s. Many homes were

bulldozed A bulldozer or dozer (also called a crawler) is a large tractor equipped with a metal blade at the front for pushing material (soil, sand, snow, rubble, or rock) during construction work. It travels most commonly on continuous tracks, though s ...

, and housing for white people was built on some of the land, with large parts remaining undeveloped. Some buildings, such as the '23rd Street Mosque', remain. To date no land claims were settled in the area. Due to the uncertainty around the land claims the suburb is in a state of gross neglect. The settling of land claims is complicated further by the number of claims lodged. The problem is that there are more claims than there are properties in the area.

References

External links

A history of FietasFest celebrates all that is FietasHistory and Founding of LenasiaGeneral Information about VrededorpFietas and its muralFietas Streets gets an upgrade - 2009Vrededorp Early historyJohannesburg Timeline 1800-1991
{{City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, selected=regb Johannesburg Region F af:Fietas