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Stuff from Johannesburg

YesPlay Pro20 Super 8s Get Underway

Johannesburg: The YesPlay Pro20 Cup Super 8s have been confirmed and exciting matchups lie in wait, with eight teams vying for a place in the final four.

The eight teams each come into the new stage of the competition carrying the points from their round robin matches against the other three to have qualified from their pool, meaning they will only take on the other four from the opposite pool.

DP World Lions have had a near perfect campaign so far having finished top of Pool B and will be up first in the Super 8s with a clash against World Sports Betting Eastern Storm at the DP World Wanderers stadium on Wednesday evening.

Lions lost only once in the pools against North West Dragons, while their match against Dafabet Warriors was abandoned.

On the other hand, Eastern Storm qualified at the last minute with a crucial bonus point win over CSA High Performance on Sunday.

Garden Route Badgers are one of only two Division 2 sides still alive in the competition and will get their Super 8s campaign underway on Thursday afternoon when they host Momentum Multiply Titans in Oudtshoorn.

Titans impressed in Pool A with six wins from seven played to finish at the top with 28 points, while Badgers qualified after the Dragons’ clash against Northern Cape Heat was abandoned in Potchefstroom.

They will be in action again on Saturday against Easterns, in a match where each team will want to show muscle against a fellow Division 2 side.

On the same day the Dafabet St. George’s Park in Gqeberha will host Warriors against YesPlay Cobras to close out the month of October in the competition.

Both sides finished third in their respective pools with Warriors winning four of their seven matches and collecting 22 points in Pool B.

Cobras had a bit more success with six victories in Pool A, finishing on 26 points for their efforts.

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The Geological Miracle of the Witwatersrand

The very existence of Johannesburg is a geological fluke. Unlike most major global cities, Johannesburg was not built near a river, a coast, or a natural harbor. It sits 1,753 meters above sea level on a rocky ridge called the Witwatersrand (Ridge of White Waters). This ridge is the edge of the world’s largest known gold deposit, formed over 2 billion years ago when an ancient inland sea began to evaporate, leaving behind layers of gold-bearing conglomerate.

When George Harrison, an Australian prospector, stumbled upon an outcrop of gold on the farm Langlaagte in 1886, he triggered a “gold rush” that changed the course of African history. Within a decade, a dusty collection of tents and wagons transformed into a permanent city of brick and mortar. The “Main Reef” proved so vast that it eventually produced nearly 40% of all the gold ever mined in human history. This geological wealth dictated the city’s layout: the mining belt runs east-to-west across the city’s center, creating a physical divide between the wealthy northern suburbs and the industrial, working-class south. Today, while most mines within the city limits have closed due to the extreme depth and cost of extraction (some mines reached over 3.9 kilometers underground), the physical legacy remains in the form of “mine dumps”—massive yellow-white hills of crushed rock and sand that define the Joburg skyline.