Ottoshoop
Encyclopedia
Ottoshoop is a hamlet in the North West Province of South Africa
, situated between the towns of Mafikeng
and Zeerust. Residents serve the scanty needs of a few locals, underwater divers and railway users. During the town's boom years from 1879 to 1880, Ottoshoop was, however, the commercial capital of South Africa. This spirit of the town still lives on in today's commercial capital of Africa – Johannesburg
. Before the Europeans' arrival in mid-1800, the area was populated by the baRalong tribe, who built extensive walls to steer game into traps.
in the 1830s along the Malmani River to act as a 'hopo' or animal trap.
Mosega was general Mzilikazi's military headquarters during the battle of Mosega on 17 January 1837.
Gopane (Mabotsa) was David Livingston's first mission station 1834–1846. There is a stone monument and ruins
.
Malmani Farmhouse was owned by formed lawyer, farmer and amateur historian Jan Gaspard Gubbens (1877–1935) who named the farm after the original seTswana name of the area, "Melemani", which means "place of much water". The farmhouse contains the Gubbins Africana collection, parts of which formed the basis for the Africana collection at the University of Witwatersrand.
Malmani Store Ruins was where the men who arrived from Pitsane and (then named) Mafeking gathered before setting off on the ill-fated Jameson Raid
, a prelude to the Anglo Boer War in which the disenfranchised English mining magnates, including Cecil John Rhodes
tried to overthrow the government of the Transvaal Republic under President Paul Kruger.
Old Water Mill, The oldest water mill from the Old Transvaal is restored and in working condition.
Stinkhoutboom farm was where a young Irish ship-jumper-turned-farmer, M.J. Kelly, discovered gold in 1879. Kelly's discovery led to the first gold fields in South Africa, which President Paul Kruger visited under the guidance of the local magistrate, a Mr Otto. Otto reportedly said he hoped the gold fields would turn Melemani into a large town, upon which President Kruger was said to answer: "good, then we shall call it Ottoshoop".
Such was the gold fever at the time and so many were the punters hoping to strike it rich that Ottoshoop had seven flourishing honky-tonk hotels on Commissioner, its main street. To house all the miners, shopkeepers and their families, magistrate Otto commissioned surveyor Gilfallen to plan a proper town. They chose as street names for the centre of town Commissioner-, Myn-, Pretorius-, Market- and Church street, with Commissioner street being the route to Johannesburg. All the plots were sold within a few months.
Then irony struck: in this dry, arid scrub-land that borders the Kalahari desert, Otto's hope literally drowned in water. As the original seTswana name hinted, the town sat on top of what some old-timers describe as an underground river that is 25 kilometres wide in parts. During the summer rain season, the water level rose to fill every the mine shaft and pit with water faster than it could be pumped with the biggest pumps money could buy – then and now.
Otto's hope lives on as Johannesburg
President Kruger's whimsey to name a town after magistrate Otto still lives on in the vibrant city of Johannesburg. When news reached the flooded community of gold diggers in Ottoshoop that prospectors were literally hacking gold nuggets out of the rocks on newly found gold reefs in Barberton
's Sheba Mine and on the Witwatersrand, Ottoshoop emptied almost overnight as the miners strapped their corrugated hotels and tent-dwellings onto ox-wagons and trekked down Commercial Street to start Johannesburg and expand Barberton.
As more and more prospectors arrived, a vast tented city burgeoned along the main reef of the Witwatersrand. Rising levels of crime and disease called for a town to be built quickly, and the pragmatic government decided to dust off Gilfallen's plans for Ottoshoop's to use as the blueprint for Johannesburg. They decreed only one small change to the plans: with no love lost between the taciturn President Kruger's government and the immigrants, the President instructed that the town's blocks must be made shorter in order to create more street-corner shops, which could be taxed.*T. V. Bulpin
T.V. Bulpin Storm Over The Transvaal (1955)
Ottoshoop is the last town to restock before camping at the Wondergat, a large dolomite sinkhole that forms the deepest natural hole in southern Africa. Dive schools used it to train advanced scuba diving as well as instructors and technical divers. Veteran drivers boast that you haven't dived until you've dived at Wondergat and punt it as South Africa's best inland dive site. The sinkhole has never been dry in the local tribe's oral history.
Digging for bottles
The rubbish tip created by what is claimed to have been 100,000 miners has left a legacy of rare glass bottles which is still mined by locals in Ottoshoop. Bottle mining enjoyed its hey-day in the 1980s but as a rare bottle fetches several hundred US dollars on Ebay, a few Ottoshoop residents still experience a glimmer of the gold fever that spurred so many people into digging for treasure from 1879 to 1945.
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, situated between the towns of Mafikeng
Mafikeng
Mahikeng – formerly legally, but still commonly known as Mafikeng – is the capital city of the North-West Province of South Africa. It is best known internationally for the Siege of Mafeking, the most famous engagement of the Second Boer War.Located on South Africa's border with Botswana, it is ...
and Zeerust. Residents serve the scanty needs of a few locals, underwater divers and railway users. During the town's boom years from 1879 to 1880, Ottoshoop was, however, the commercial capital of South Africa. This spirit of the town still lives on in today's commercial capital of Africa – Johannesburg
Johannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
. Before the Europeans' arrival in mid-1800, the area was populated by the baRalong tribe, who built extensive walls to steer game into traps.
Historic places
Mzilikazi's Wall is a stone wall measuring some 1000 metres which was built by renegade Zulu general MzilikaziMzilikazi
Mzilikazi , also sometimes called Mosilikatze, was a Southern African king who founded the Matabele kingdom , Matabeleland, in what became Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe. He was born the son of Matshobana near Mkuze, Zululand and died at Ingama, Matabeleland...
in the 1830s along the Malmani River to act as a 'hopo' or animal trap.
Mosega was general Mzilikazi's military headquarters during the battle of Mosega on 17 January 1837.
Gopane (Mabotsa) was David Livingston's first mission station 1834–1846. There is a stone monument and ruins
Ruins
Ruins are the remains of human-made architecture: structures that were once complete, as time went by, have fallen into a state of partial or complete disrepair, due to lack of maintenance or deliberate acts of destruction...
.
Malmani Farmhouse was owned by formed lawyer, farmer and amateur historian Jan Gaspard Gubbens (1877–1935) who named the farm after the original seTswana name of the area, "Melemani", which means "place of much water". The farmhouse contains the Gubbins Africana collection, parts of which formed the basis for the Africana collection at the University of Witwatersrand.
Malmani Store Ruins was where the men who arrived from Pitsane and (then named) Mafeking gathered before setting off on the ill-fated Jameson Raid
Jameson Raid
The Jameson Raid was a botched raid on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic carried out by a British colonial statesman Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen over the New Year weekend of 1895–96...
, a prelude to the Anglo Boer War in which the disenfranchised English mining magnates, including Cecil John Rhodes
Cecil John Rhodes
Cecil John Rhodes PC, DCL was an English-born South African businessman, mining magnate, and politician. He was the founder of the diamond company De Beers, which today markets 40% of the world's rough diamonds and at one time marketed 90%...
tried to overthrow the government of the Transvaal Republic under President Paul Kruger.
Old Water Mill, The oldest water mill from the Old Transvaal is restored and in working condition.
Stinkhoutboom farm was where a young Irish ship-jumper-turned-farmer, M.J. Kelly, discovered gold in 1879. Kelly's discovery led to the first gold fields in South Africa, which President Paul Kruger visited under the guidance of the local magistrate, a Mr Otto. Otto reportedly said he hoped the gold fields would turn Melemani into a large town, upon which President Kruger was said to answer: "good, then we shall call it Ottoshoop".
Boom years
Word of Kelly's find spread and soon thousands of immigrants arrived through the veld, some pushing their wheelbarrows for more than 1,400 km through the untamed African veld from Cape Town, Ottoshoop then proceeded to play host to the biggest claim-staking race in South Africa's mining history. Legends differ, but some have it that more than 100,000 men lined up in the flat, arid scrubland that characterizes this part of the North West province, each clutching a sharpened plank with a number painted on it with which to stake his personal little el Dorado, or claim.Such was the gold fever at the time and so many were the punters hoping to strike it rich that Ottoshoop had seven flourishing honky-tonk hotels on Commissioner, its main street. To house all the miners, shopkeepers and their families, magistrate Otto commissioned surveyor Gilfallen to plan a proper town. They chose as street names for the centre of town Commissioner-, Myn-, Pretorius-, Market- and Church street, with Commissioner street being the route to Johannesburg. All the plots were sold within a few months.
Then irony struck: in this dry, arid scrub-land that borders the Kalahari desert, Otto's hope literally drowned in water. As the original seTswana name hinted, the town sat on top of what some old-timers describe as an underground river that is 25 kilometres wide in parts. During the summer rain season, the water level rose to fill every the mine shaft and pit with water faster than it could be pumped with the biggest pumps money could buy – then and now.
Otto's hope lives on as Johannesburg
President Kruger's whimsey to name a town after magistrate Otto still lives on in the vibrant city of Johannesburg. When news reached the flooded community of gold diggers in Ottoshoop that prospectors were literally hacking gold nuggets out of the rocks on newly found gold reefs in Barberton
Barberton, Mpumalanga
Barberton is a town in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa, which has its origin in the 1880s gold rush in the region. It is situated in the De Kaap Valley and is fringed by the Mkhonjwa Mountains...
's Sheba Mine and on the Witwatersrand, Ottoshoop emptied almost overnight as the miners strapped their corrugated hotels and tent-dwellings onto ox-wagons and trekked down Commercial Street to start Johannesburg and expand Barberton.
As more and more prospectors arrived, a vast tented city burgeoned along the main reef of the Witwatersrand. Rising levels of crime and disease called for a town to be built quickly, and the pragmatic government decided to dust off Gilfallen's plans for Ottoshoop's to use as the blueprint for Johannesburg. They decreed only one small change to the plans: with no love lost between the taciturn President Kruger's government and the immigrants, the President instructed that the town's blocks must be made shorter in order to create more street-corner shops, which could be taxed.*T. V. Bulpin
T. V. Bulpin
Thomas Victor Bulpin was a South African writer.He was a man of enormous talent and intellect, and a prolific writer. During his lifetime, he produced 29 books and over 2000 booklets, pamphlets, newspapers and magazine features, and travel videos, becoming the Doyen of African travel writers and a...
T.V. Bulpin Storm Over The Transvaal (1955)
Modern activities
Wondergat for top dive trainingOttoshoop is the last town to restock before camping at the Wondergat, a large dolomite sinkhole that forms the deepest natural hole in southern Africa. Dive schools used it to train advanced scuba diving as well as instructors and technical divers. Veteran drivers boast that you haven't dived until you've dived at Wondergat and punt it as South Africa's best inland dive site. The sinkhole has never been dry in the local tribe's oral history.
Digging for bottles
The rubbish tip created by what is claimed to have been 100,000 miners has left a legacy of rare glass bottles which is still mined by locals in Ottoshoop. Bottle mining enjoyed its hey-day in the 1980s but as a rare bottle fetches several hundred US dollars on Ebay, a few Ottoshoop residents still experience a glimmer of the gold fever that spurred so many people into digging for treasure from 1879 to 1945.
External links
- Wondergat
- North West Tourism http://www.tourismnorthwest.co.za/central/wondergat.html
- Ngaka Modiri Molema District Municipality Ngaka Modiri Molema District Municipality