Wits Rural Facility

The Wits Rural Facility (WRF) is a unique rural campus of the University of the Witwatersrand, established in 1989 with a grant from the Anglo-DeBeers Chairman’s Fund. The purpose was to create a base from which Wits could bring academic resources to bear on development challenges created by the Apartheid homeland system. The facility continues to support a wide range of research, student training and community engagement in a rural setting. WRF is situated in the far north-east of South Africa, in the central Lowveld of Limpopo Province, close to the Kruger National Park and the border with Mpumalanga Province. Infrastructure includes a variety of visitor accommodation, seminar and conference facilities, a restaurant, staff housing, offices, and laboratory space. These facilities are situated on a 350-hectare bushveld estate owned by Wits University. It is flanked by commercial private game reserves and the rural communities of Bushbuckridge local municipality (a former Apartheid homeland region) of Ehlanzeni District.