Jo’burg…

Johannesburg (or “Jo’burg” as it is known) is South Africa’s largest city, where I did live. Nevertheless the Parliament is in the official capital city - Pretoria. But life is in Jo’burg.

The name of the city is obvious. There is not dispute that it was so called after a man named Johann. The only problem is that Johann was a common Dutch name in the late nineteenth century. When gold was discovered in mid-1886, the state sent two men, Rissik and Christiaan Johannes Joubert to investigate the area and choose a site on which a town could be built among gold seekers. Did both decide that name because Johann was a name they had in common?

But there is also a third claimant, veldkornet Johannes Meyer, the first government official in the area, who attempted to bring order with a system to peg out mine claims. An early digger John Burrows said that "everybody at that time was under the impression that the suggestion to name the town after Johannes Meyer had been carried out."

Anyway, this modern metropolis has many positives to offer. Certainly it is the most important urban centre for business and economy all around southern hemisphere. It is a very important place for diversity and richness of mineral deposits, including coal, iron, copper, gold, platinum. May be in some of them it is the most principal business site in the planet.

It is also a human complete mix of all world cultures and razes. You can meet there all languages and types: African, European, Indian, Chinese… Museum of Africa gives an unflinching look at this country’s history. Rests of golden mines –machines and hills of rests of no useful stones – remain just today in the very heart of the city, remembering the origin history to their inhabitants.