Witwatersrand gold rush and the founding of Johannesburg

In 1886 the prospector George Harrison found the main gold reef on the farm Langlaagte, and the Boer government opened the fields. A mining camp became Johannesburg, built on the largest gold deposits ever found and on the labour of migrant African miners housed in compounds. Clashes between the Boer republic and British mining interests led to the Anglo-Boer War of 1899.