Johannesburg Johannesburg were destroyed and their people driven away during the wars emanating from Zululand during the late 18th and early 19th centuries (the mfecane or difaqane wars), and as a result, an offshoot of the Zulu kingdom, the Ndebele (often referred to as the Matabele, the name given them by the local Sotho–Tswana), set up a kingdom to the northwest of Johannesburg around modern-day Rustenburg. The main Witwatersrand gold reef was discovered in June 1884 on the farm Vogelstruisfontein by Jan Gerritse Bantjes that triggered the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the founding of Johannesburg in 1886. The discovery of gold
H. Basil S. Cooke H. Basil S. Cooke Herbert Basil Sutton Cooke (17 October 1915 – 3 May 2018) was a South African-Canadian geologist and palaeontologist, and Emeritus Professor at Dalhousie University. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, he was educated at King Edward VII School before earning a B.A. (1936) and M.A. (1940) at Cambridge University, and M.Sc. (1940) and D.Sc. (1947) at the University of the Witwatersrand. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa in 1948 for his contributions to Quaternary geology. He is known for his studies of fossil pigs and other even-toed ungulates of Africa. A