Ventersdorp

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}}Template:Main other Ventersdorp is a town of about 4,200 people in Dr Kenneth Kaunda District Municipality, North West Province, South Africa. It was the seat of the defunct Ventersdorp Local Municipality until 2016.

Ventersdorp is centrally located, making it easier to access more prominent urban towns such as Klerksdorp, Lichtenburg, Potchefstroom and Rustenburg. The township (or Location) of Tshing houses most of the town's blacks and coloureds. Tshing has a diamond mine nearby that was owned by a town councillor in the early 1990s.Template:Citation needed Tshing Location has one high school: Thuto Boswa High School. The smaller township Toevlug has Coloured residents, some of whom have attend the former whites-only Afrikaans High School after the end of Apartheid since 1995.Template:Citation needed

History

The town grew around a Dutch Reformed Church that was established in 1866.<ref name=Routes.co.za>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Tourism North-West">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> It was named after Johannes Venter who owned the farm Roodepoort and the land the church was built on.<ref name="Routes.co.za"/><ref name="Dict01">Template:Cite book</ref> It was proclaimed as a town in June 1887.<ref name=Dict01/> The Mill on the town was built by Richrd Carew Wilson in 1866

Racial tensions

Template:Further Afrikaner nationalist and white supremacist<ref name="guardianTerreblancheObit"/> Eugène Terre'Blanche was born in Ventersdorp<ref name="guardianTerreblancheObit"> {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and the town is the base of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), the far-right white separatist political organisation and former paramilitary group that Terre'Blanche founded. The town was the site of the 1991 "Battle of Ventersdorp" in which lethal clashes occurred between members of the apartheid government security forces and the AWB ahead of a scheduled appearance by then State President F. W. de Klerk.

See also

• Battle of Ventersdorp

External sources

• The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wife, a Nick Broomfield film (1991)
• His Big White Self, a Nick Broomfield film (2006)