Jobs in Vredenburg

The town was first established in 1875 as a Dutch Reformed Church congregation for the people living in the surrounding areas. Not to be confused with the Vredenburg based in Limpopo, a dispute arose about the use of the town’s freshwater spring. When the matter was settled, a sense of peace fell upon the town’s residents – leading to the name, Vredenburg.

Glassdoor advises that the companies and agencies currently hiring in Vredenburg, and the surrounding towns of Saldanha, Langebaan, Velddrif, and Paternoster, include Fidelity Services Group, Curro Holdings Ltd, Absolute Pets, Optivet, FirstRand, Hospitality Jobs Africa, Rola Recruitment, TB HIV Care, Boxer Superstores, and Sea Harvest.

While the average salary in Vredenburg is just R163k per annum, significantly more can be earned as a bookkeeper, retail store manager, diesel mechanic, or civil engineer.

Popular employers, according to recruitment experts Payscale, include the likes of the retail giant Massmart, or the integrated producer of titanium dioxide Tronox.

A search on the highly regarded job portal Executive Placements, brings up:
• sales and marketing job opportunities, such as a procurement officer, retail team leader or retail assistant, or a corporate sales representative;
• travel and tourism jobs such as a front of house receptionist at a guest house or hotel, a restaurant manager, or spa therapist;
or
• if you act fast, it is possible to snap up a technical job, such as that of an automotive apprentice, forklift or reach truck driver, process technologist, electrician, or diesel fitter.

The Saldanha Bay Municipality website describes Vredenburg as a “relaxed mix of business and pleasure”. It features a Dutch Reformed Church which Stephanie Marthinus describes on her travel blog as “a beautiful masterpiece of a church. And, of course, I whipped out my camera to snap as many angles I could get. This Dutch Reformed church is nothing but spectacular to stare at.”

This commercial hub for the surrounding farming community offers everything from shopping and movies, to eating out – and its setting is great, with fynbos all around, wheat fields, and sheep or dairy farms to spy, with their requisite livestock, as you whizz past in the car.

Located just 90min from Cape Town, if you’re up (at some stage) for a big day out, Vredenburg itself boasts all the facilities of the West Coast Mall – dozens of shops, restaurants and coffee shops, and speciality stores selling everything from craft materials to sporting equipment; plus you can play golf, train at the gym, take up classic or other forms of dancing, and occupy the kids with paintball, all of which is offered in the town itself to upbeat residents.

Nearby attractions of a more cultural or natural variety include the West Coast Fossil Park, the West Coast National Park, and a wide variety of neighbouring beaches that are both unspoilt and really beautiful in a sparse, West Coast kind of way.

The Nature Reserve website advises that this area is well-known for its spring flowers, pelagic birding, marine species, and small (cute!) mammals.

For those making a study of nature for professional or personal reasons, a visit to the area is likely to elicit sightings of more than just a few of the following:
• common eland;
• red hartebeest;
• steenbok;
• common duiker;
• Cape grysbok;
• four-striped grass mouse;
• yellow mongoose;
• bat-eared fox;
• small grey mongoose;

• caracals, honey badgers, and black-backed jackals
• Cape fur seals;
• a variety or dolphins (dusky, common, bottlenose, and haviside);
• about 26 percent of Palearctic waders in the Western Cape and thousands of other birds species besides; and
• vegetation that forms part of the Cape Floral Kingdom, including yellow daisy-bush, proteas, and milkbush – in such a rich diversity that they have been split into an impressive range of 36 different botanical communities.

Schools4sa offers a list of seven schools that parents new to the area can make their applications to. Another reputable website, InfoisInfo, offers an alternative list for education-focused parents to peruse. A top option, when an academically focused child from the area reaches high-school level, remains Hopefield High School – for its small classes, highly ranked teachers, strong leadership focus, affordable school fees, and a 100 percent matric pass rate over most recent years.

Those who settle in the West Coast Mall area, will have their options cut out for them in choosing the best and/or most appealing sports or fitness clubs to join.

Options include:

• the Vredenburg Rugby Club;
• the Langebaan Country Club;
• the Vredenburg Tennis Club;
• the water-sports orientated Velddrif Laaiplek;
• Saldahna Bay’s SEADOG Commercial Diving School;
• the Langebaan Yacht Club;
  and
  • Langebaan’s Acemax Riding School.

Make your selection according to affordability and the extent to which the club accommodates the whole family, as you’ll all be hanging out at one or more of these venues for many weekends and/or evenings going forward.

Three notable individuals who were born in, or have lived for at least part of their lives in Vredenburg, include:

• South African writer, Christiaan Bakkes (59);
• South African rugby union player, Stedman Gans (27);
• South African cricketer, Lizaad Williams (31).

Read up on them on Google, to see their claims to fame, and reasons to say “Hi” when you see them out and about in Vredenburg.

According to BusinessTech, “the phenomenon of semigration, where individuals and families relocate within South Africa to regions with better lifestyles or business opportunities”, has seen the West Coast becoming a prime area for settlement.

Just compare the average price of a home in Vredenburg in 2014, which was R520k, to that of R837k in 2024 – an impressive 61 percent increase!

According to the same article, “Younger families are drawn to more affordable towns such as Saldanha, Vredenburg, and Malmesbury,” as they offer more reasonably priced properties – versus the wealthier buyers and retirees who tend to be drawn to a more luxurious market in the area around Langebaan, or perhaps Yzerfontein.

Notably, Lightstone Property reported that over 3 500 homeowners from Gauteng, and almost 900 from KZN, were seen to relocate to the Western Cape in recent times. This has underscored the province’s appeal in terms of “lifestyle advantages, relative affordability, and growing infrastructure”, which continues to make this coastal area a sought-after destination for both buyers and investors alike.

If you’re part of a family relocating to Vredenburg on the West Coast, and have a chronically ill adult or child among your party, checking out the available regional medical facilities is likely to rank with extreme importance.

The good news is that three Mediclinic hospitals, i.e. those located in Milnerton, Stellenbosch, and Panorama, have been judged in the top 20 when it comes to the calibre of care offered within South African hospitals, for at least three years in a row.

While these facilities are a bit of a drive from Vredenburg, they’re not an insignificant drive when an emergency strikes. More locally, be sure to check out the medical practitioners at Life West Coast Private Hospital Vredenburg, together with Vredenburg Provincial Hospital. These offerings to the surrounding farming and commercial community mean that a big drive, when an emergency strikes, may not in fact be a necessity after all.

According to the East Afternoon blog, the place in Vredenburg that you most should not miss is in fact a lowly farmstall, the Weskus Spens Padstal.

Situated a minute or three before the railway bridge, between the Saldanha Bay and Vredenburg turn off, this “padstal” (farmstall in English), can be spotted pretty easily because of its ship’s forecastle signposting.

Weskus Spens Padstal, the “spens” meaning pantry, of course, is owned and run by an individual by the name of Annemarie Thom; and is home not just of the best farm bread on the West Coast, but is also known for the respite it offers hungry travellers – with its “freshly baked pies, melktert (milktart) and koeksisters (fried dough plaits, soaked on honey), all of which are served alongside strong coffee (moerkoffie) in traditional enamel mugs.