10 Things You Did not know about Polokwane

Polokwane was one of the host cities for the 2010 FIFA World Cup (which was held in South Africa earlier this year).

Polokwane is not a little town (contrary to popular belief), its actually one of the biggest cities in South Africa nowadays.

There’s quite a lot to this city in the Heart of the Limpopo province of our country.

Here are 10 things that you might not have know about Polokwane:

  1. Polokwane was originally known as Pietersburg (a town founded in 1886). In 1900 the town of Pietersburg was the capital of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State provinces of South Africa for a short while.
  2. Pietersburg gained city status in 1992.
  3. The name Polokwane (meaning “Place of Safety”) was adopted in 2003.
  4. Today Polokwane is the biggest city North of Pretoria in South Africa with a population of over 500,000.
  5. Polokwane boasts the first gold crushing plant in South Africa (located at the Eersteling Monuments).
  6. The game reserve which is situated 5 km South of the city, is one of the largest municipal owned game reserves in the country.
  7. Polokwane is situated about 200 km from the Beit Bridge border post (the gateway to Zimbabwe) and about 260 km North of Pretoria.
  8. The Peter Mokaba Stadium in the city was built for the 2010 FIFA World Cup and has a seating capacity of about 30,000 (at a cost of R1.24 billion).
  9. 3 famous sportsmen were born in Polokwane, John Smit (the current Springbok rugby captain), Victor Matfield (Springbok rugby player and captain of the Bulls rugby team) and Retief Goosen (South African golfer).
  10. Polokwane was recently voted as the “Healthiest Place to Live in for Males” by a well known international Magazine.

We hope you have found these facts interesting. If you live in Polokwane and you have another interesting fact to share with our readers, please comment on this post.

Feel free to check out the following posts on the Junk Mail blog. You might find them interesting

Henno Kruger

Digital Marketing Campaign Coordinator at Junk Mail Publishing.

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1 Response

  1. Jessica says:

    Great article! Think it’s time for a 2.0 list!

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