Germiston is a town within the Witwatersrand urban complex in Gauteng province in South Africa. It lies just east of Johannesburg in the great gold field of the Witwatersrand. Germiston is an important airline and railroad center, and the city has one of the world’s largest gold refineries. Manufactured products include explosives, cement, chemicals, machinery, and food products. A large thermoelectric generating plant lies at nearby Germiston Lake.
In the mid-1990’s, after the end of South Africa’s racial segregation system called apartheid, Germiston was expanded to include the black African township of Katlehong and other nearby communities. In 2001, Germiston and the towns of Alberton, Benoni, Boksburg, Brakpan, Edenvale, Kempton Park, Nigel, Springs, and Tembisa, along with the surrounding areas, were merged to form the Ekurhuleni metropolitan municipality. Ekurhuleni, also called East Rand, has a population of 4,066,691.
