Saltor, Kempton Park

It is always very interesting to explore and understand human development. It is often easy to forget that before there were settlements the land was wild and free. Kempton Park, on Johannesburg’s East Rand, has a wonderfully current history preceding the success of the city as an industrial powerhouse and residential haven.

Before to the Voortrekker’s Great Trek of the 1830's, the region that Kempton Park now occupies was inhabited only by hunters and nomad cattle farmers. With the arrival of the Voortrekkers one can begin to trace the first signs of settlement and land administration and development. After the annexation of Natal in the early eighteen forties, the Transvaal area (in which the current Gauteng province is situated) became a scene of great arguments until the late eighteen fifties when the Z.A.R. was created under an official constitution. Title deeds were given to the settlers so as to legalise their occupation of land.