History
More or less in 1905 the then-owner of a farm close to Pretoria where the township of Eersterust now resides, divided a portion of his property into plots to sell. The township was develop for Coloureds to stay there, but the plots were mainly bought by Black People (Van der Walt,1966).
The details of the initial developments are not known. According to Van der Walt (1966) the living conditions was bad during the 1930s, there was no sanitation, illnesses were common and a lot of children died then. At that time Eersterust was no more than just a squatters settlement: the house were mainly made of sink and mud and a lot more of those structure were built on the same premises. Crime skyrocketed then.
A portion of the farm (Derdepoort no.469) in Pretoria was proclaimed a Coloured area in 1958. The area was once again divided into plots after the previous owners were expropriated from the area. After the non-coloureds were relocated to another area the houses were destroyed and new ones were built. The first housing scheme consisting of 200 houses was completed during February 1962 and consisted of six economical residences. At that point in time arrangements were made to move Coloureds that were staying somewhere else in Pretoria, such as Lady Selborne, Eastwood, Claremont, Booysens and the so-called Kaapse lokasie, into Eersterust.
In 1979 there was a total of 17,000 people living in Eersterust.
Further development took place, and a total of 1207 sub-economical houses, 956 economical houses, and more or less 86 private houses were built in Eersterust.
Read more about this topic: Eersterust
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