Page 22 - 100 years of Anglo American

Patients at the Ernest Oppenheimer
Hospital play wheelchair netball in 1956

Sir Ernest Oppenheimer (third from left) at the official opening of the Welkom train
Oppenheimer Park Golf Club in Welkom station on June 7 1948

s the money for his drilling
and prospecting ran out, Allan
Roberts sat in a hotel in WELKOM
Odendaalsrus one night in
1935, still convinced that a
A significant amount of gold
would be discovered there. City of gold
Roberts, who founded the Wit Extension
Company with three other men, sank his
first borehole in 1933.
But Roberts probably needed a much
bigger drink 11 years later, when one of the S’thembile Cele revisits the history of the town
boreholes he sank was drilled a further 122m that Ernest Oppenheimer built 70 years ago
deeper. In 1946, that borehole, known as
Geduld 697, yielded one of the richest gold
ore bodies in the world, according to a
history of the town compiled by Welkom
estate agency Barbour & Thorne.
In 1947, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer and Anglo
American approached the administrators of
the then farming town of Odendaalsrus to
tell them that a large town was going to be
established there. When they didn’t believe it
and resisted development, Anglo American
bought a farm called Welkom from the De
Kok family, and set about establishing a new
town to meet the needs of the new mines.
Oppenheimer tasked urban planner
William Backhouse to design Welkom, with
the brief that it should be a modern town
that residents could be proud of, and where A well-known landmark in Welkom – the historic clock tower and the town hall, which
they could enjoy a modern lifestyle. So houses the Ernest Oppenheimer Theatre
Backhouse gave Welkom wide streets and
plenty of traffic circles to prevent congestion, Ernest Oppenheimer Civic Centre Complex. Now, with the closure of many mines in the
according to Barbour & Thorne. Other structures bearing Oppenheimer’s area, Welkom is a shadow of its former self.
In its heyday, Welkom produced 21% of the name include a theatre, hospital, golf course Roberts, however, is remembered in
world’s gold. It was proclaimed a city in 1967, and Ernest Oppenheimer Park, the first Allanridge, a town 35km away, which bears his
an occasion celebrated by the opening of the residential suburb for black mine workers. name.
22 ANGLO AMERICAN 100 YEARS