Nestled in the sun-drenched Kalahari’s vast, ancient landscape, unsurpassed beauty and splendour with misty horizons on a bush-covered, featureless plain off the beaten track in the Northern Cape province, lies the gateway of a mysterious and intriguing small town called Hotazel filled with historical charms. The name Hotazel comes from the legend of a time after World War 1 where land surveyors called it “hot as hell” during a drinking session due to the extreme heat and Kalahari humidity. A ubiquitous “man with the cleft stick” arrived in Hotazel to determine where the underground water lay, but instead he found manganese deposits. Shortly afterwards a farm was marked out and set up and in the 1950’s Hotazel was registered as a town, and the first miners moved in to start mining the manganese. Today Hotazel serves manganese mines 147km north of Postmasburg, 46km north-west of Kuruman and it’s also home to the Mamatwan open-quarry manganese ore mine and sinter plant, and the Wessels underground manganese ore mine and railway terminus.