Sasolburg is situated at Latitude -26.8167 and Longitude 27.8167 in the northernmost corner of the Free State Province, 7 km from the southern banks of the Vaal River, 1500m above sea level. Sasolburg forms part of the Vaal Triangle, the area between Vanderbijlpark, Vereeniging and Sasolburg.
The urban growth in the Vaal Triangle area, formed by the city of Vereeniging and the towns of Vanderbijlpark and Sasolburg, stems from the discovery of coal in the late 1870's, by George William Stow. The coal deposits and the close proximity of water caused the Vaal Triangle area to become a major industrial region in South Africa.
The ever-growing water needs of Johannesburg led to a number of water development schemes being implemented in the Vaal Triangle area in the early 1900's. These included the impoundment of water in the Vaal River Barrage Reservoir and the construction of the Vaal Dam. The local Vereeniging and Zuikerbosch purification and pumping works supply water not only to Johannesburg, but a major part of Pretoria.
The Vaal Dam and Vaal River provide extensive water recreation facilities for local residents, South African tourists, as well as international tourists. A superb range of accommodation, entertainment and services are available in the area.
Sasolburg is home to numerous petrochemical industries which includes the South African Coal, Oil and Gas Corporation (SASOL) facility that extracts oil from coal, the biggest one of the only two viable coal-derived oil refineries in the world. In fact, the town of Sasolburg came into being as a service town to the SASOL plant in the 1950s and housed SASOL workers at the chemical works of the refinery. The initial installation was built by the USA Kellogg Corporation, was a pilot plant to refine oil from the vast coal reserves in South Africa, to overcome the lack of natural oil deposits. This lead to many South African Motorists going, "Dude, there's corn flakes in my tank!" (Joke)
Since the establishment of SASOL, the town has grown from strength to strength, and is today considered the chemical hub of South Africa. Duh! Sasolburg obviously got its name from the SASOL plant. The vast coal mining operations in the Sasolburg area lead to the petroleum refining, coal power plants and various chemical-manufacturing industries. Before the change of vehicle registrations in the Free State, "OIL" was the official registration for Sasolburg! Is this an oil town or what?!
Apartheid Sasolburg
The politics and trade embargoes against the South African apartheid government in the late 1960s and early 1970s made this pilot oil-from-coal plant a priority. Plans were made for a production plant to be built in the Eastern Transvaal to produce approximately 25% of the national oil requirements. The new town of Secunda was built to house the construction and operations staff of what became known as SASOL 2.
Sasolburg was the subject of a significant terrorist attack in 1980, by Umkhonto we Sizwe, the African National Congress (ANC)'s military wing. The attack was more valuable as "armed propaganda" than strategic economic impact. The Sasolburg attack contributed to cementing the ANC's position as the leading liberation movement in South Africa.
Sasolburg The Town
Sasolburg falls under the administration of the Metsimaholo Municipality (Metsimaholo means "big waters" or "lots of water" in Sesotho), which includes the towns of Sasolburg, Zamdela, Deneysville and Oranjeville as well as the surrounding rural areas, and the Northern Free State District Municipality. Sasolburg has won the Administrator's Trophy for the Most Beautiful Large Town in the Free State several times. The Sasolburg Tourism Bureau is in the Northern Free State District Municipality Building in John Voster Street in Sasolburg, and can be contacted at telephone number 016-976-0765, or fax number 016-973-3903.
According to the 2001 Statistics South Africa Census, Sasolburg is home to 157 190 residents. The Sasolburg Morning Market is a monthly affair, and the Sasolburg Bulletin is a local newspaper that is distributed in Vaalpark, Kragbron, Clydesdale and Sasolburg.
The Sasol Library in Sasolburg is an important technical library with specialised, technical information sources and about 75 000 publications including research reports, standards, patents, books, journals and selected journal articles. Almost 7 000 of the 30 000 SASOL employees are regular users of the library. The Sasol Library is part of FRELICO, an initiative to make the Free State library collections available to all the academic communities in the Free State through electronic means and information technology. (Fwew! I almost thought it was another rebel movement!)
Keep an eye out for the permanent speed traps in the Sasolburg area! These are located in the 80km zone on the way from Vereenining to Sasolburg/Parys, just after the Vaalpark turnoff underneath the bridge, the 60km zone entering Sasolburg from Vaalpark/Vanderbijlpark underneath the R59 bridge or going out to the industries from Sasolburg, and very often in the 80km zone on the road from Vereeniging to Parys after the second Sasolburg turnoff, in the dip.
The weather in the Vaal Triangle is typical of the inland areas of South Africa with beautiful warm to hot sunny days in spring and summer, and dry, crisp cold winter mornings (frost in June and July). Sasolburg is blessed with an average rainfall of about 650mm annually. It is a summer rainfall area (October to April) which experiences an average summer maximum temperature of 27 degrees Celsius and 15 degrees minimum, and an average winter maximum of 18 degrees and a 2 degree minimum.
Environmental Awareness
The town of Sasolburg is a leading town in the Free State in regards to environmental awareness, mainly because of the real danger of industrial pollution. Sasolburg is exceptional in its wealth of trees. Some 72 000 trees have been planted in Sasolburg, and the town boasts almost 12 000 oak trees, including 26 different oak variants.
Sasolburg has wide streets and attractive pedestrian park strips. The 6Ha Highveld Garden in President Brand Road in Sasolburg was established to preserve the natural vegetation of the highveld region and houses a variety of indigenous Highveld plants. A bird sanctuary lies behind the Highveld Garden, where up to 70 different species of highveld birds can be viewed. In the Vaalpark wetland, beautiful and quite rare Swallow-tailed Bee-eaters have been spotted.
The green belts, which connect the business, residential and recreational areas of Sasolburg, are functional as well as decorative. Apparently there are more trees and shrubs in Sasolburg than residents, but I haven't counted them myself. The Riemland Eco Route is a one-day hiking train that also winds through a 370Ha game park near Sasolburg.
The Sasolburg industrial park is the primary employer in the area, but the unemployment rate in the area is estimated to be as high as 65%. Stacks from one facility seamlessly seem to blend in with stacks from other facilities, and at times, a brown haze hangs in the skies above Sasolburg. Chemical flaring is supposed to be an emergency measure only, to release excess pressure from gases, but long flames above high exhaust stacks often light up the Sasolburg skies. Despite calm winds, flying clouds of dust, from coal and whatnot, are common.
Sasolburg Pollution
For many Sasolburg residents, complaining about pollution is like biting the hand that feeds them. This vulnerability has apparently created a cloud of silence on the impact of industrial pollution on local health. Many residents of Sasolburg suffer from respiratory illnesses, eye problems and even cancer, for which excessive air pollution in the Sasolburg area is suspected.
Children from primary schools at Sasolburg have been compared with primary school kids from Parys, Heilbron and Frankfort, the neighbouring rural towns with negligible air pollution levels. No significant differences were found in the incidence of respiratory illness, but there was a significant difference in the forced expiratory volume for the boys in the two groups. Researchers also observed a trend for all lung functions to be slightly worse in Sasolburg kids. No, the smoking habits of families had no effect on those findings.
Environmentalists from around the world keep a close eye on Sasolburg. The Sasolburg Environmental Committee, for instance, joined forces with other national and international civil society groups to halt the development of a hazardous waste incinerator in Sasolburg. The Peacock Bay Environmental Services (PBES, he-he! PuBES) Ltd., a South African company, proposed to build and operate a commercial rotary kiln thermal oxidation treatment facility for stockpiled hazardous waste in Sasolburg. Had this incinerator been developed, it would have been the largest hazardous waste incinerator in Southern Africa.
So, a whole lot of "green people" wrote letters and signed petitions, which were sent to good old President Thabo Mbeki himself. The proposal was rejected in October 2002; a month after the South African Government ratified the Stockholm Convention, which calls for the elimination of dioxins, one of the main by-products of the incineration process.
A community based air pollution monitoring system has been implemented to track industrial pollution in Sasolburg. This pollution monitoring system is based on the Bucket Brigade system, first introduced to the Sasolburg Community by groundWork in May 2000. Since then groundWork and SASOL has taken joint samples in Sasolburg and have confirmed that scientific integrity of the Bucket Brigade system.
Sasolburg Chemical Industry
The Sasolburg chemicals complex in the northern Free State Province of South Africa houses large polymers and solvents businesses.
These businesses operate ethylene cracking and separation plants, producing caustic soda, chlorine, calcium and sodium cyanide solutions at Sasolburg. The solvents businesses produce methanol, methyl iso-butyl ketone (MIBK) and aromatics, from naphtha hydrogenation and platformate distillation processes. Raw carbo-tar is also produced, based on Sasol's coal gasification process, and some Sasolburg plants are engaged in tar distillation and blending, to produce wood preservatives and coal tar fuels. Sasolburg is also home to various nitro plants. An ammonia plant derives syngas from coal gasification and a nitric acid plant is linked to a downstream facility, which produces low-density ammonium nitrate for manufacturing explosives. Hydrogen-rich pipeline gas is produced at Sasolburg, and supplied mainly to the Gauteng area.
Synthetic waxes are manufactured at a dedicated facility in Sasolburg. In fact, SASOL is setting out to make Sasolburg the wax capital of the world. Sasol Wax became a wholly owned subsidiary of SASOL when the company bought out the shares of its eight-year joint venture partner, wax manufacturer Schumann, of Germany. The company is now known as Sasol Wax International and has its head office in Hamburg, Germany.
Its local division, Sasol Wax South Africa, has been manufacturing wax products in Sasolburg for the past fifty years, from coal-derived syngas as feedstock. The syngas is produced through Sasol's low-temperature Fischer-Tropsch (FT) technology, which allows SASOL to manufacture a range of fuels and chemicals from coal. Syngas would be replaced with natural-gas-derived syngas when natural gas from the in Mozambique gas fields is piped to Sasolburg.
The production capacity of the Sasolburg wax plant amounts to 200 000 tons of wax per year, of which 70 000 tons are hard waxes, 50 000 tons medium waxes, 30 000 tons waxy oils and 50 000 t liquid paraffins. This wax is used in furniture and shoe polish, cleaning aids, candles, hot-melt adhesives, textile and polymer processing, fertiliser coatings, fire-lighters, rope and cable, petroleum jelly, non-food packaging, explosives, matches and anti-caking agents.
Sasol Wax cosmetics are marketed internationally under the registered name Cirebelle, which includes wax-beads used in exfoliating skin preparations, such as skin cleanser and shower gel. Sasol Wax developed personal-protection products that are used in the fight against malaria. Topical application formulations with insecticides and insect-repellent candles are marketed under the Healthwax and ZeeGo brands. The company also developed an alternative to traditional paraffin-based anticorrosive coatings, used to protect vehicles that are exported abroad from rust, on the long sea journeys. The wax-based product is environment-friendly, and can be removed with hot water, instead of solvents that are used for removing the flammable paraffin-based coating that was widely used.
The community is also being involved in making Sasolburg a wax capital, through the Sasolburg Wax, Arts and Music (WAM!) festival. WAM, in August, attracts artists from around the world, and provides the local community with a unique opportunity to showcase their talents and earn extra income. The Sasolburg Wax, Arts and Music festival was implemented to create a strong connection between Sasolburg and wax, as it encourages artists to explore the creative possibilities of wax in art forms such as sculpting.
Sasolburg Activities
Sasolburg has an athletic stadium of high standards and an excellent theatre in the Ettienne Rousseau Theatre. Gallery 88 is an art gallery, which offer regular exhibitions of the best in South African art. President Cinema is another primary entertainment facility in Sasolburg.
The SASOL Marathon in Sasolburg is run in February of each year, and is presented by SASOL and the Sasolburg Athletic Club. This race is quite popular with runners from Gauteng, because it doesn't take them long to travel the 70km to get there, while easy parking and excellent water points make the Sasolburg marathon worth the effort. Many runners make a weekend of it, with Parys and the Vaal River close by.
Regional activities also include water sports, river cruises, powerboat racing, picnicking, camping and angling.
