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
History of Johannesburg of Gauteng. The region surrounding Johannesburg was originally inhabited by San people. They were hunter-gatherers who used stone tools. There is evidence that they lived there up to ten centuries ago. By the 13th century, groups of Bantu-speaking people started moving southwards from central Africa and encroached on the indigenous San population. Stone-walled ruins of Sotho–Tswana towns and villages are scattered around the parts of the former Transvaal in which Johannesburg is situated. Many of these sites contain the ruins of Sotho–Tswana mines and iron smelting furnaces, suggesting that the area was being exploited for its mineral wealth before the