FEATURE Cities
outcrops of Witkoppen , Lonehill and Norscot Koppies . About 10,000 years ago ancestors of the San people settled . Then , around four centuries ago , Bantu-speaking communities of the iron-age inhabited the rocky ridges of the area becoming Sandton ’ s first industrialists , with an economy based principally on agriculture and metalwork .
The first settlers moved to Sandton after Britain annexed Natal in 1843 . Every original Voortrekker male settler who came to the South African Republic ( later Transvaal , now Gauteng ), was entitled to a farm of his own . Sandfontein was the farm area around Sandton . The Esterhuysen ’ s were a well-known Voortrekker family who lived on the farm Sandfontein , close to where Sandown High School is today , on the corner of Grayston and Rivonia drives .
A wave of urbanisation in the 1930s was driven by widespread poverty in South Africa as the world suffered one of its worst economic depressions . Many people abandoned rural lifestyles for opportunities in the industrial Witwatersrand .
The ‘ Southern Suburbs ’ of Sandton were laid out quite early in the century and by the thirties they were well established as ‘ gentleman estate ’ areas with most of the properties being one morgen or larger . At this stage they formed the ‘ northern ’ suburbs of Johannesburg and in some cases extended beyond the boundaries of the city . The rural ‘ horsey ’ lifestyle of Sandton led to the area being dubbed the ‘ Mink and Manure Belt ’ and it was considered a desirable address .
During the 1940s and 50s Sandton became increasingly residential and wanted independence from the government ’ s Peri-Urban areas Health Board , which had control over services such as water . The local population regarded themselves as an entity separate from Johannesburg . The first moves by Sandton to achieve independence from Johannesburg go back to the early sixties . When it was eventually promulgated as a municipality in 1969 , its name formed from a combination of the names Sandtfontein , Bryanston and Sandown .
The first few years of Sandton ’ s existence were dominated by the question of whether Sandton should remain a quite semi-rural dormitory town or be a more balanced entity with significant business and higher density residential components . Bristow reports that it split the town council apart .
In 1956 the Peri-Urban board had bought some large tract of land for municipal purposes – one of these being the 11 ha site in Sandown where the Civic Centre now stands . Of this , 3.4 ha was sold to the Transvaal Provincial Administration for the building of Sandown Primary School and in 1965 the land directly south of the Civic Centre area was allocated extensive retail and flat rights – the land then belonged to Mr Bob Edmunds , the chairman of Standard Bank , and was sold to property developers Rapp and Maister – now Liberty Properties – in 1968 .
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