Nigel, Gauteng

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Nigel is a small gold mining town in Gauteng Province, South Africa. The town is on the edge of the area known as the East Rand, the industrial engine room of Johannesburg.

A prospector, reading Sir Walter Scott's The Fortunes of Nigel at the time, discovered gold on the farm Varkensfontein in 1886 and immediately formed the Nigel Gold Mining Company. The town which grew around the mine still bears names derived from Scott's book.

Today the town is focussed primarily on mining and also has various heavy industries.

An alternative theory of the origins of Nigel's name is that the name is commonly found in Britain as a variant of 'Niall'.

Nigel's municipal government became part of the much larger Ekhuruleni municipality following the creation of new local government structures in 2000, along with most of the East Rand.

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