The North West is a province of South Africa, with Mafikeng as its capital and 3 669 349 residents. The North West Province was created in 1994 from sections of the former Transvaal Province, part of the old Cape Province and most of the former bantustan of Bophuthatswana.
The North West Province covers an area of 116,320 km2 and borders on the Molopo River and the Ramatlabama River, the border between South Africa and Botswana, in the north, the Northern Cape in the west, the Free State in the south, Gauteng to the east and the Limpopo Province in the northeast.
Some of the other important towns in the North West Province include Potchefstroom, Kleksdorp, Rustenburg, Brits, Marikana, Ga-Rankuwa, Mabopane, Orkney, Stilfontein, Lichtenburg, Vryburg, Schweizer-Reneke and Wolmaransstad.
The people of the North West Province speak mainly Setswana (65.36 percent), Afrikaans (7.51 percent), isiXhosa (5.85 percent), Sesotho (5.70 percent), Xitsonga (4.71 percent), Sepedi (4.18 percent), isiZulu (2.52 percent), isiNdebele (1.34 percent) and English (1.16 percent).
