Vereeniging and its citizens, and the town has a sports organisation unique in South Africa ... the Amateur Sports Union, a body with a membership of 3,500 residents representing the 15 affiliated sporting organisations in the town. Mayor Dick Fourie has been the Union's chairman since its founding in 1932.
  The town which had begun as a colliery village, today has a rateable value of R76-million although the value of property in the 93 square mile municipal area is over R96-million. The buoyancy of the local economy and the skill of the town's administration is revealed in the total of the Town Council's municipal assets which now stand at nearly R26 million, a figure which exceeds the town's liabilities by nearly R12 million.
  By far the greater part of Vereeniging's 34,288 white residents are employed in industry ... in which most of the town's 48,573 Bantu residents are also engaged, along with many of Vereeniging's 1,356 Coloured people. The majority

of the town's Indian population of 1,205 people are in commerce or allied pursuits.
  The steelworks and foundries, the machine and fabrication shops of Vereeniging ... massed in the industrial areas of Peacehaven and on the northern bank of the Vaal, and at Duncanville and Powerville ... produce today iron and steel, machinery and metal fabrications on a scale which converted a colliery town into a major centre of the nation's steel and engineering industries in the space of 75 years.
  In the town's coat of arms two hands are clasped ... one Boer, one Briton. It is a symbolism of an ideal which took long to consummate; but in time the blending of two peoples into one nation was achieved. That bond is sometimes obscured in the arena of politics but seldom these days out of it. There is a unity of purpose in which both Afrikaans and English speaking South Africans work "through peace to industry": Per Pacem ad Industriam - the motto emblazoned on Vereeniging's coat-of-arms.