Ofcolaco

Last updated
Ofcolaco
South Africa Limpopo location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Ofcolaco
South Africa adm location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Ofcolaco
Coordinates: 24°04′49″S30°23′42″E / 24.0802°S 30.395°E / -24.0802; 30.395 Coordinates: 24°04′49″S30°23′42″E / 24.0802°S 30.395°E / -24.0802; 30.395
Country South Africa
Province Limpopo
District Mopani
Municipality Maruleng
Time zone UTC+2 (SAST)
Postal code (street)
0854
PO box
0854

Ofcolaco is a tiny village situated in the Limpopo province of South Africa that was named after the Officers Colonial Land Company and formed by demobilised British army officers after the First World War.

Limpopo The northernmost province of South Africa

Limpopo is the northernmost province of South Africa. It is named after the Limpopo River, which forms the province's western and northern borders. The name "Limpopo" has its etymological origin in the Northern Sotho language word diphororo tša meetse, meaning "strong gushing waterfalls". The capital is Polokwane.

South Africa Republic in the southernmost part of Africa

South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by 2,798 kilometres (1,739 mi) of coastline of Southern Africa stretching along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; and to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini (Swaziland); and it surrounds the enclaved country of Lesotho. South Africa is the largest country in Southern Africa and the 25th-largest country in the world by land area and, with over 57 million people, is the world's 24th-most populous nation. It is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere. About 80 percent of South Africans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different African languages, nine of which have official status. The remaining population consists of Africa's largest communities of European (White), Asian (Indian), and multiracial (Coloured) ancestry.

United Kingdom Country in Europe

The United Kingdom (UK), officially the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres (93,600 sq mi), the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world. It is also the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017.

Settlement 43 km south-east of Tzaneen. Named after the Officers’ Colonial Land Company which purchased ground for settlement along the Selati River in 1920. These retired officers managed to make a reasonable living by cultivating citrus and subtropical fruit. [1]

Tzaneen Place in Limpopo, South Africa

Tzaneen is a large tropical garden town situated in the Mopani District Municipality of the Limpopo province in South Africa. It is situated in a lush, high rainfall fertile region with tropical and subtropical agriculture taking place in a 20,000 km2 region. It is Limpopo's second largest town after Polokwane.

The shared facilities of the original Ofcolaco are long gone. Descendants of the original officers still live in the district and are proud of their heritage. The current Ofcolaco is basically a roadside service centre with a fueling station, farm equipment suppliers, liquor store, groceries store and a local market.

Related Research Articles

Boer descendants of Dutch-speaking settlers in Southern Africa

Boer is the Dutch and Afrikaans noun for "farmer". In South African contexts, "Boers" refers to the descendants of the then Dutch-speaking settlers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 18th and much of the 19th century. From 1652 to 1795 the Dutch East India Company controlled this area, but the United Kingdom incorporated it into the British Empire in 1806.

Portuguese Mozambique 1498-1975 Portuguese possession in East Africa

Portuguese Mozambique or Portuguese East Africa are the common terms by which Mozambique is designated when referring to the historic period when it was a Portuguese overseas territory. Portuguese Mozambique constituted a string of Portuguese colonies and later a single Portuguese overseas province along the south-east African coast, which now forms the Republic of Mozambique.

The written history of the Cape Colony in what is now South Africa began when Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias became the first modern European to round the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. In 1497, Vasco da Gama sailed along the whole coast of South Africa on his way to India, landed at St Helena Bay for 8 days, and made a detailed description of the area. The Portuguese, attracted by the riches of Asia, made no permanent settlement at the Cape Colony. However, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) settled the area as a location where vessels could restock water and provisions.

Northern Rhodesia protectorate in south central Africa in 1924–1964

Northern Rhodesia was a protectorate in south central Africa, formed in 1911 by amalgamating the two earlier protectorates of Barotziland-North-Western Rhodesia and North-Eastern Rhodesia. It was initially administered, as were the two earlier protectorates, by the British South Africa Company (BSAC), a chartered company on behalf of the British Government. From 1924 it was administered by the British Government as a protectorate under similar conditions to other British-administered protectorates, and the special provisions required when it was administered by BSAC were terminated.

Virginia Peninsula

The Virginia Peninsula is a peninsula in southeast Virginia, USA, bounded by the York River, James River, Hampton Roads and Chesapeake Bay. It is sometimes known as the Lower Peninsula to distinguish it from two other peninsulas to the north, the Middle Peninsula and the Northern Neck.

Schutztruppe

Schutztruppe was the official name of the colonial troops in the African territories of the German colonial empire from the late 19th century to 1918. Similar to other colonial armies, the Schutztruppen consisted of volunteer European commissioned and non-commissioned officers, medical and veterinary officers. Most enlisted ranks were generally recruited locally.

Richard Bourke British Army general and colonial administrator

General Sir Richard Bourke, KCB, was an Irish-born British Army officer who served as Governor of New South Wales from 1831 to 1837. As a lifelong Whig (Liberal), he encouraged the emancipation of convicts and helped bring forward the ending of penal transportation to Australia. In this, he faced strong opposition from the military/conservative establishment and its press. He approved a new settlement on the Yarra River, and named it Melbourne, in honour of the incumbent British prime minister, Lord Melbourne.

German colonial empire

The German colonial empire constituted the overseas colonies, dependencies and territories of Imperial Germany. Unified in the early 1870's, the chancellor of this time period was Otto von Bismarck. Short-lived attempts of colonization by individual German states had occurred in preceding centuries, but crucial colonial efforts only began in 1884 with the Scramble for Africa. Claiming much of the left-over colonies in the Scramble for Africa, Germany managed to build the third largest colonial empire after the British and French, at the time. Germany lost control when World War I began in 1914 and its colonies were seized by its enemies in the first weeks of the war. However some military units held out for a while longer: German South West Africa surrendered in 1915, Kamerun in 1916 and German East Africa at the end of the war, the defenders of which having been engaged in a guerrilla war with British and colonial forces, as well as the Portuguese. Germany's colonial empire was officially confiscated with the Treaty of Versailles after Germany's defeat in the war and the various units became League of Nations mandates under the supervision of one of the victorious powers. The German Colonial empire officially existed until 1919. Plans to regain their lost colonial possessions persisted through WW2, some people at the time suspecting that was the goal of the Third Reich all along. Despite not being around for a very long time, Germanys colonial ventures changed the places and people they came into contact with. The Germans participated in medicinal and scientific research in Africa, as well as attempting to build up an infrastructure there. However, they also shed a lot of African blood and killed many to make these things possible.

The British South Africa Company was established following the amalgamation of Cecil Rhodes' Central Search Association and the London-based Exploring Company Ltd which had originally competed to exploit the expected mineral wealth of Mashonaland but united because of common economic interests and to secure British government backing. The company received a Royal Charter in 1889 modelled on that of the British East India Company. Its first directors included the Duke of Abercorn, Rhodes himself and the South African financier Alfred Beit. Rhodes hoped BSAC would promote colonisation and economic exploitation across much of south-central Africa, as part of the "Scramble for Africa". However, his main focus was south of the Zambezi, in Mashonaland and the coastal areas to its east, from which he believed the Portuguese could be removed by payment or force, and in the Transvaal, which he hoped would return to British control.

Atlanta Bread Company

Atlanta Bread Company is a privately owned bakery cafe chain established in the United States in 1993. By 1995, the owners began franchising and expanding across the country.

Dutch Empire overseas territories controlled by the Dutch Republic and, later, the modern Netherlands from the 17th century to the mid-1950s

The Dutch colonial empire comprised the overseas territories and trading posts controlled and administered by Dutch chartered companies and subsequently by the Dutch Republic (1581–1795), and by the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands after 1815. It was initially a trade-based system which derived most of its influence from merchant enterprise and from Dutch control of international maritime shipping routes through strategically placed outposts, rather than from expansive territorial ventures. With a few notable exceptions, the majority of the Dutch colonial empire's overseas holdings consisted of coastal forts, factories, and port settlements with varying degrees of incorporation of their hinterlands and surrounding regions. Dutch chartered companies often dictated that their possessions be kept as confined as possible in order to avoid unnecessary expense, and while some such as the Dutch Cape Colony and Dutch East Indies expanded anyway, others remained undeveloped, isolated trading centres dependent on an indigenous host-nation. This reflected the primary purpose of the Dutch colonial empire: commercial exchange as opposed to sovereignty over homogeneous landmasses.

East Africa Protectorate

East Africa Protectorate was an area in the African Great Lakes occupying roughly the same terrain as present-day Kenya from the Indian Ocean inland to the border with Uganda in the west. Although part of the dominions of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, it was controlled by Britain in the late 19th century; it grew out of British commercial interests in the area in the 1880s and remained a protectorate until 1920 when it became the colony of Kenya, save for an independent country 16-kilometre-wide (10 mi) coastal strip that became the Kenya protectorate.

White people in Kenya or White Kenyans, are those born in or resident in Kenya who descend from Europeans and/or identify themselves as white. There is currently a minor but relatively prominent white community in Kenya, mainly descended from British, but also to a lesser extent Italian and Greek, migrants dating from the colonial period.

Maltahöhe Village in Hardap Region, Namibia

Maltahöhe is a village in southern central Namibia close to the Swartrand escarpment, about 110 km west of Mariental in the Hardap Region. It has about 6,000 inhabitants and owns about 17,000 hectares of land. Maltahöhe has two suburbs, the Andreville location and the Blikkiesdorp informal settlement which has neither sewerage nor electricity supply. It is served by Maltahöhe Railway Station.

The Khoikhoi–Dutch Wars were a series of conflicts that took place in the last half of the 17th century in what was known then as the Cape of Good Hope, in the area of present-day Cape Town, South Africa, between Dutch settlers who came from the Netherlands and the local African people, the indigenous Khoikhoi, who had lived in that part of the world for millennia.

Dutch Cape Colony Dutch colony in Southern Africa, 1652–1795 and 1802–1806

The Cape Colony was a Dutch East India Company colony in Southern Africa, centered on the Cape of Good Hope, whence it derived its name. The original colony and its successive states that the colony was incorporated into occupied much of modern South Africa. Between 1652 and 1691 a Commandment, and between 1691 and 1795 a Governorate of the Dutch East India Company. Jan van Riebeeck established the colony as a re-supply and layover port for vessels of the Dutch East India Company trading with Asia. The Cape came under Dutch rule from 1652 to 1795 and again from 1803 to 1806. Much to the dismay of the shareholders of the Dutch East India Company, who focused primarily on making profits from the Asian trade, the colony rapidly expanded into a settler colony in the years after its founding.

Slavery in South Africa

Slavery in South Africa existed until the abolition of slavery in 1834.

Upingtonia

Upingtonia, or the Republic of Upingtonia, was a short-lived Boer republic in the area of present-day Namibia. Declared on 20 October 1885, in 1886 it changed its name to Lijdensrust. In 1887 it was merged into German South-West Africa.

Merikins

The Merikins or Merikens were African-American Marines of the War of 1812 – former African slaves who fought for the British against the USA in the Corps of Colonial Marines and then, after post-war service in Bermuda, were established as a community in the south of Trinidad and Tobago in 1815–16. They were settled in an area populated by French-speaking Catholics and retained cohesion as an English-speaking, Baptist community. It is sometimes said that the term "Merikins" derived from the local patois, but as many Americans have long been in the habit of dropping the initial 'A' it seems more likely that the new settlers brought that pronunciation with them from the United States. Some of the Company villages and land grants established back then still exist in Trinidad today.

References

  1. "Dictionary of Southern African Place Names (Public Domain)". Human Science Research Council. p. 346.