Ga-Rankuwa

Ga-Rankuwa is a large settlement located about 37 km north-west of Pretoria. Provincially it is in Gauteng province, but it used to fall in Bophuthatswana during the apartheid years, and under the North West province until the early 2000s.

==History== The area around Ga-Rankuwa had been settled by Tswana people since at least the 17th century. Some of these communities were absorbed into the mthwakazi kingdom by the invading Ndebele (or Matabele) under Mzilikazi in the early 19th century. When the Boers defeated and drove away the Matebele and claimed ownership of the land of that kingdom, they divided the area into farms and distributed the land among themselves, including the land of many Bakwena-Tswana villages that still existed there. In 1860 thirty families who were an extension of the Bakwena people of Betanie got together and through a combination of selling some of their cattle and from savings from wages accrues from labouring put together one hundred and fifty Pounds towards three hundred Pounds that was used to purchase the Farm Hebron from the Traansvaal Republic Government. This farm at the time extended to an area that consist half of the present Ga-Rankuwa. The balance one Hundred and Fifty Pounds was forwarded by the Berlin Mission Lutheran Church. The other half of Ga Rankuwa consist of land that was similarly purchased by The Bakgatla Ba Mmakau. The Bakwena people through the Bakwena chief, Mamogale, and several German Lutheran missionaries and other missionaries such as those of the Methodist church, began collecting cattle and money from Tswana in the area who were indentured to Boers to buy back land that had been taken away from them. Despite many obstacles, Chief Mamogale and the missionaries bought back several farms, and Ga-Rankuwa was one of these farms, and with these lands, Chief Mamogale was able to establish a chiefdom that came to be called the Bakwena Ba Magopa. Oral testimony and written records suggest that the local Veldkornet, Paul Kruger, who would become president of the Transvaal Republic or South African Republic, helped chief Mamogale and the missionaries acquire these lands. They also purchased land near Brits, where Chief Mamogale established his "capital" in the village of Bethanie. Chief Mamogale's descendants continued to be recognized as the chiefs of the Bakwena Ba Magopa and having jurisdiction over Ga-Rankuwa. Chief Mamogale's lands were included in the "Scheduled Native Areas", or "Reserves" under the 1913 Natives Land Act that divided South Africa into white areas and "Native" areas. For several decades of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these villages engaged in farming and raising livestock, and compared to Africans on white farms they were relatively affluent. In the 1960s, under apartheid, the "Reserves" or "Native Areas" came to be called "homelands," and Ga-Rankuwa was included into the homeland of Bophuthatswana.