Theme Week South Africa – Ladysmith

20 June 2017 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  7 minutes

Town Hall © Janek Szymanowski/cc-by-sa-3.0

Town Hall © Janek Szymanowski/cc-by-sa-3.0

Ladysmith is a town in the Uthukela District of KwaZulu-Natal. It is 230 kilometres (140 mi) north-west of Durban and 365 kilometres (227 mi) south of Johannesburg. Important industries in the area include food processing, textile and tyre production. Tyres are produced by Sumitomo Rubber South Africa in the nearby town of Steadville. Ladysmith is the seat for both the Alfred Duma Local Municipality and the Uthukela District Municipality. In 1900, the unincorporated town of Oyster Harbour (est. circa 1898) on the east coast of Vancouver Island in Canada was renamed Ladysmith by James Dunsmuir, in honour of the British lifting the siege of Ladysmith in South Africa (28 February 1900) during the Second Boer War. Ladysmith is located on the banks of the Klip River (“stone river”), with the central business district and a large part of the residential areas located within the flood basin of the river. It is on the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains, about 26 km from the Van Reenen pass.   read more…

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