Secunda, Mpumalanga

Secunda is a town built amidst the coalfields of the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. It was named for being the second extraction refinery producing oil from coal, after Sasolburg, some 140km to the west.HistoryEarly historyDuring 1974 Sasol Townships Limited, a subsidiary company of Sasol Limited, was instructed to establish and develop Secunda. After the site for the Sasol complex had been identified, it had to be decided whether or not to combine the existing towns of Evander and Trichardt. The huge burden that extensions of this nature would have had on the financial and administrative resources of the established communities as well as the tempo at which such development should proceed was decisive and resulted in the decision to develop Trichardt and Secunda to be one town, named Secunda. Evander however stayed a separate town. On 28 June 1976, the first town area was proclaimed. 1976 saw the first resident of Secunda moving in. Mr Lool Odendaal moved into Tuyshuys, the original house of the farm Goede Hoop, on which Secunda was built.One of the many refineries at the respective plants was the target of two attempted bombings by the African National Congress. The first, unsuccessful bombing occurred in 1980, and the second, partly successful bombing a few years later. Patrick Chamusso was wrongly accused of the first attempt, and as a result of his arrest and torture he became an ANC activist and was instrumental in carrying out the second as part of the ANC's campaign of attacks on South African industrial facilities. This episode is recounted in the film Catch a Fire, released in 2006.