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The Boers first crossed the Orange River in 1836
and found an enormous rolling plain teeming with game. Today this plain is
covered with thousands of hectares of agricultural fields, quiet villages
nestling in green valleys, rivers meandering through magnificent sandstone cliffs
and mountains soaring high.
The capital of the Free State and the judicial
capital of South Africa is the prosperous commercial and industrial city
of Bloemfontein. Mangawung, the Tswana name for Bloemfontein means "place
of the cheetahs" - a reminder of the once prolific wilderness in the area before
agriculture took over.
The Central Free State is often referred to as the "Golden Country".
Fields of corn and sunflowers cover the landscape and one third of the
country's gold is produced in this region. |
