FROM WAY BACK TO NELSON MANDELA’S PRESIDENCY

Back in the mid-19th century, the beautiful area around Suikerbosrand and Blesbokspruit was already a popular gathering place for traders and transport riders travelling between Pretoria, Potchefstroom, Bloemfontein and Durban (called Port Natal in those days).

German trader Heinrich Ueckermann saw the potential and in 1860 built a trading post on the banks of the spring on Langlaagte farm. It became so busy that Ueckermann and the owners of the farm applied for permission to establish a town. On 28 March 1866, Heidelberg was proclaimed and named after the university town in Germany where Ueckermann had studied.

During the First Anglo-Boer War (1880–1881), Heidelberg was the capital of the South African Republic. It was also here that the triumvirate of Paul Kruger, Piet Joubert and MW Pretorius received news of the victory at Majuba, which signified the end of the war. The peace accord was signed in Heidelberg on 21 March 1881.

• Trading post • Capital

Following the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand, the town grew even more and once had no fewer than 18 hotels. Afrikaans poet AG Visser was the medical doctor here from 1916 until his death in 1929, and one of his patients, poet and author Eugène Marais, was the town lawyer. They became good friends, and Visser helped Marais to tackle his morphine addiction.

• From Verwoerd and the AWB…

In 1958, HF Verwoerd was the National Party candidate for Heidelberg and he won the election. Seven young men established the Afrikanerweerstandsbeweging (AWB) in a garage in Heidelberg in 1973. One of them was the late Eugène Terre’Blanche.

• …to Mandela

On 29 November 1996, Heidelberg bestowed honorary citizenship on former president Nelson Mandela, who said at the ceremony, “For close on 200 years, the region was a theatre of struggles for freedom and independence.”