About the town » Krugersdorp, West Rand District Municipality, Gauteng, South Africa

Krugersdorp (Afrikaans for Kruger's town) is a mining city with between 378,821 and 408,065 inhabitants in the West Rand of the Gauteng province of South Africa. Krugersdorp was founded in 1887 by Marthinus Pretorius and named after Paul Kruger. Apart from gold, manganese, iron, asbestos and lime are also mined in the area. Krugersdorp is the site of the December 1880 gathering at which more than 6,000 men vowed to fight for the Transvaal's independence. When gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand, a need arose for a major town in the west of the reef. The government bought part of the farm Paardekraal and named the new town after the Transvaal President Paul Kruger. The British built a concentration camp here during the Second Boer War to house Boer women and children. In 1952 the West Rand Consolidated Mine was the first in the world to extract uranium as a byproduct of the gold refining process. Krugersdorp no longer has a separate municipal government, and the municipality has become part of and is the seat of the Mogale City municipality, along with surrounding towns. Despite a proposal to change the name of the city to Mogale City, this has not been confirmed and the town is currently still called Krugersdorp.