The attractive city of Benoni is situated beside the N12 Highway. This pleasant environment is home to many parks, lakes, nature sanctuaries and first class sporting facilities. The commercial centre of Benoni is renowned for its Lakeside Mall, Charlize Theron, the Bunny Park and the Benoni Lane of Fame.

Benoni is a Hebrew word of biblical origin. Johan Rissik who was the surveyor-general in the days of Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic, had great difficulty in surveying a very irregularly-shaped piece of land. He recalled the passage in Genesis telling how Rachel had died after bearing her son Benjamin 'and he was named Benoni, Son of my Sorrow'. Johan decided it was appropriate to call this odd-shaped farm Benoni. During the 1910 elections and the mining strikes of the early 1900s, the wild behaviour of Benonians gave the town such a bad reputation that people seriously suggested its name be changed! Our city's motto is a Latin phrase, Auspicium Melioris Aevi, which means "a pledge for better times. Benoni achieved city status in October 1992.

Fabulous wealth was contained in the reefs around the farm Benoni, and by the early 1900s it was surrounded by seven of the richest gold mines in the world. The gold-bearing Witwatersrand rocks, consisting of quartzites, conglomerates and shales, show at the surface largely along the bottom of the valley in which our line of lakes lies, and it was here that our first mines were worked at very shallow levels along inclined shafts.

The New Modderfontein Mine showed a profit of over R4 million in 1926 - a vast amount in those days. This mine was unique in the area, in that it also produced diamonds. Benoni's last mines closed down in 1964.