Contact Sol Plaatje Municipality
Phone: 053 830 6272
Location: Kimberley, Northern Cape
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Sol Plaatje Local Municipality is part of Frances Baard District Municipality.

MDB code: NC091

Description: The Sol Plaatje Local Municipality is a Category B municipality located in the Frances Baard District in the Northern Cape Province. It is bordered by Dikgatlong in the north, the Pixley ka Seme District in the south and west, and the Free State Province in the east. It is one of the four municipalities that make up the district, accounting for a quarter of its geographical area. It includes the diamond mining city of Kimberley.
 Sol Plaatje Municipality is named after Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje, who was a South African intellectual, journalist, linguist, politician, translator and writer. Solomon Plaatje was born just outside Boshof, formerly the Orange Free State (now Free State Province).

Area: 3 145km²

Cities/Towns: Kimberley, Ritchie

Main Economic Sectors: Community services (33%), finance (24%), trade (14%), mining (8%)

Get in touch with us:

Sol Plaatje Municipality
121 Bultfontein Road
Tel: 053 830 6272
Tel: 053 830 6271/6272/6779

Web: www.solplaatje.org.za

THE CITY OF DIAMONDS

The mention the name Kimberley is likely to evoke images of diamonds, wealth and the world-famous Big Hole.
We welcome you to the City of Kimberley, the Seat of Government for the Northern Cape Province, which is also the biggest province in South Africa. Our city is legendary for the Big Hole, where diamonds were discovered and produced.

Diamonds were discovered on a farm Bultfontein in 1870 causing a diamond rush that established the city to what it is today.

Kimberley is not only rich in the Diamond heritage that causes it to sparkle but also rich in being the City of First!

Did you know?

1871 - THE FIRST Private Postal Delivery Service.

1877 - THE FIRST professional training of nurses.

1875 - THE FIRST drive-in bar.

1882 - THE FIRST city in the Southern Hemisphere to install electric street lighting on 2nd September 1882. The electric lights of Kimberley came on before those of London.

1883 - THE FIRST Stock Exchange in South Africa.

1889 - THE FIRST hotel with electricity.

1911 - THE FIRST public flight in the first South African built aircraft.

1913 - THE FIRST airplane accident.

1913 - THE FIRST airplane purchased by the South African Government.

1913 - THE FIRST ten pilots in the South Africa Defence Force.

1928 - THE FIRST diamond cutting factory.

1931 - THE FIRST night landing by a pilot.

1932 - THE FIRST municipal rest house in Africa.

1940 - THE FIRST female municipal traffic wardens.

1954 - THE FIRST state school for physically disabled.

1967 - THE FIRST nationwide direct dialling telephones.

1983 - THE FIRST elected black town council: Galeshewe in South Africa. (30/11/1983).


Kimberley contributed immensely to the South African economy as the first hub of industrialisation. The compound labour system regulating labour on mines in South Africa, was initiated through the migrant labour system at the time of the diamond rush in Kimberley in the 1880s. In 1873, Kimberley was the second largest town in South Africa with an estimated population of 40 000.


Around 1994 post the apartheid era, the Kimberley City Council was renamed Sol Plaatje Municipality, appropriately so, after the intellectual, journalist, linguist, politician, translator and writer Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje. As an activist and politician, he spent much of his life in the struggle for the enfranchisement and liberation of African people.