Soon other working poor, Coloureds, Indians and Africans also settled there. Soon, the area was known either Brickfields or Veldschoendorp. The result was that many landless Dutch-speaking burghers (citizens) of the ZAR settled on the property and started making bricks. The government decided that more money was to be made from issuing brick maker's licences at five shillings per month. There were large quantities of clay, suitable for brickmaking, along the stream. In October 1887, the government of the South African Republic (ZAR) bought the south-eastern portion of the farm Braamfontein.

They were of many races and nationalities. Within a decade of the discovery of gold in Johannesburg, 100,000 people flocked to this part of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek in search of riches. The fledgling town of Johannesburg was laid out on a triangular wedge of 'uitvalgrond' (area excluded when the farms were surveyed) named Randjeslaagte, situated between the farms Doornfontein to the east, Braamfontein to the west and Turffontein to the south. George Harrison and George Walker are today credited as the men who discovered an outcrop of the Main Reef of gold on the farm Langlaagte in February 1886. Formerly a separate municipality, it is now incorporated in the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, and one of the suburbs of Johannesburg.

Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for South Western Townships.

Soweto ( / s ə ˈ w ɛ t oʊ, - ˈ w eɪ t-, - ˈ w iː t-/) is a township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south.

What township am i in right now