Ventersdorp, North West

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Ventersdorp is a town situated in North West Province of South Africa.

The town grew around a Dutch Reformed Church that was established in 1866. The town was named after Johannes Venter who owned the land the church was built on.

The town's population is just 2,000 while the nearby township of Tshing has a population of around 15,000.

1 AWB Legacy
2 Racial Segregation
3 Changes
4 External Sources

[edit] AWB Legacy

White supremacist Eugène Terre'Blanche was born in Ventersdrop. The town is the base of Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB). Many of the AWB's major figures live in Ventersdorp, including Terre'Blanche's former driver JP Meyer. Eugene Terre'Blanche's security firm was rented out to the town council for a long time as an almost private police force. In 2000 the new black Mayor of Ventersdorp terminated this contract. Shortly thereafter he disappeared, and his car was found in a nearby field. The Mayor's cousin was found guilty of his murder, but some people, particularly black people, believed that Terre'Blanche had ordered the murder and that the AWB had fixed the trial.

[edit] Racial Segregation

The township of Tshing houses most of the town's blacks and coloureds. The township's secondary school of 1,000 pupils is still 100% black without a single white teacher.

The Ventersdorp High School has changed quite dramatically, with non-white students attending since 1995. These students are mostly Afrikaans speaking coloured residents of the smaller township Toevlug.

The Tshing township has a diamond mine nearby: a town councillor owned it in the early 1990s.

[edit] Changes

Despite the legacy of Apartheid and the scar the AWB has left on the town, there has been some big changes in the past 13 years. Although the beliefs of some residents have not kept pace with changes in the country, black people now have freedom to move around the town and surrounding areas. However, for cultural, and quite possibly economic, reasons most choose to remain in the township.

Ventersdorp has frequently been cited as "the laughing stock of South Africa", and despite still being a rural Boer town in many ways, it's singing to the tune of the ANC government more and more.