Potchefstroom, town in South Africa, in North-West Province, 115 km (71 mi) southwest of Johannesburg. The town is located on the railway and the national road that link Johannesburg and Cape Town. Potchefstroom is a significant religious and educational center. Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (founded in 1869) grew out of a theological college established by the Dutch Reformed Church. With an agricultural college and experimental farm (1939), Potchefstroom serves as the area's principal center of agricultural research. Crop growing, livestock raising, and dairying are important economic activities in the surrounding region, which has much irrigated farmland. A large military camp near the town was used as a training center in World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945). Historic buildings in Potchefstroom include the residence of M. W. Pretorius, who in 1857 was elected the first president of the Transvaal (then called the South African Republic).
Potchefstroom was founded in 1838 by the Voortrekker leader Andries Potgieter. It was the first town in the Transvaal to achieve municipal status, and the site of the first school in the Transvaal. It was also the first capital of the Transvaal, but was displaced by Pretoria in 1855. British troops held the town during a conflict with the Afrikaners in 1880 and 1881 and again during the Boer War (1899-1902). As a result of the continuing effects of apartheid, the South African government's former policy of strict racial segregation, most of the inhabitants of Potchefstroom are white or Coloured (of mixed race); blacks live primarily in the neighboring township of Ikageng. Population 46,538 (1991).
