Standard Bank Ferreira Mine Stope

In the 1980s when Standard Bank was preparing the foundations for its new headquarters in the Johannesburg city centre, builders uncovered the entrance to a long-forgotten mine stope that dates back to the city's very earliest gold-mining days. During the completion of the building the mine stope was preserved and it is now open daily to visitors. The stope is named for Ignatius Phillip Ferreira, a farmer, soldier and prospector who left his hometown of Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape to join the Gauteng gold rush in 1886. He founded one of the area's very first mining camps in July 1886, and just three months later struck gold.

Constitution Hill Human Rights Precinct

Constitution Hill represents South Africa’s dark past and its bright post-apartheid future. Johannesburg’s most notorious historic prisons (all of them now museums) sit side by side with the home of the Constitutional Court, a symbol of South Africa’s triumphant democracy. The site is located on the ridge between two city neighbourhoods, Hillbrow and Braamfontein, overlooking central Johannesburg.... Historical background Before Constitutional Hill opened its doors as a museum in 2004, the precinct housed a collection of notorious prisons which included the Old Fort, a high-security prison built in the 1890s to house prisoners of war during the Anglo-Boer Wars (1899-1902), the Number Four prison block, a so-called “Native Prison”, and the Women’s Gaol. During the apartheid era the prison complex became a detention centre for political dissidents, striking mineworkers, those deemed “anti-establishment” and those who simply violated the inhuman pass laws of the time. Many ordinary and famous people were incarcerated here during its years as a prison including former president Nelson Mandela and passive resistance leader Mahatma Gandhi, who were both imprisoned for their pro-democracy activism.