Rustenburg. Home for the next two days, venue for England's opening World Cup match against the United States this evening and a name which, in Afrikaans, means 'City of Rest'.

Well I don't know about that given the presence of more than 5,000 England supporters, but it's certainly a fair bit different to Johannesburg. Maybe think Leamington Spa in comparison to London.

With a population of less than 400,000, Rustenburg is one of South Africa's smallest host cities and there's little of the hectic excitement that currently accompanies life in the country's capital.

In fact, driving out of Jo'Burg yesterday morning, it felt as though I was heading in the wrong direction.

Car after car was passing me, with South African flags flying from the window, drivers of every colour sporting the yellow of 'Bafana Bafana' and horns honking at regular intervals. Meanwhile, heading north to the Magaliesberg mountains, I struggled to pass a lorry transporting chickens.

I overtook eventually, and barely encountered another vehicle travelling my way until I found myself stuck again, this time behind a lorry transporting goats. Clearly, animals were the only things unaware of yesterday's events at Soccer City.

The low speeds at least enabled me to have a good look at the surroundings, and after a couple of days in Johannesburg, a sprawling metropolis which can be rightly be grouped with the likes of London, New York and Tokyo as a 'World city', I suddenly felt as though I had been transported to something approximating the 'real' Africa.

Mountains towered above me, the veld grassland stretched as far as the eye could see and the cries of animals replaced the sound of humans. Admittedly that was just the goats complaining about being in a wagon, but why let that spoil the atmosphere?

Rustenburg itself feels like something of an old-fashioned frontier town, and that's probably because, for a large part of its history, it was.

It was established in the 1850s to support the surrounding farming communities, but grew exponentially in the second half of the last century after platinum was discovered in the surrounding hills. The two largest platinum mines in the world can be found within half-an-hour's drive of Rustenburg, and the emergence of a host of support industries has fuelled the city's growth.

** All of which brings us to the Bafokeng. The Bafokeng are an ancient tribe descending from the Sotho-Tswana people who migrated to present-day South Africa from Egypt and Sudan more than a thousand years ago.

They settled close to Rustenburg and enjoyed a fairly unremarkable existence until the 1920s, when a geologist, Hans Merensky, discovered arguably the world's greatest ore body in the valley nearby.

In the following 70 years, the South African Government and a host of multinational companies attempted to dispossess the Royal Bafokeng Nation (RBN) of their land rights.

The same thing happened to a number of other indigenous communities, and almost without exception, the power of the Government held sway.

Not, though, in Rustenburg. The RBN were steadfast in their refusal to sign over their land and, as a result, all mining companies have to pay royalties in exchange for the right to mine on RBN land.

Consequently, the RBN is now one the richest tribes in the world. Comprising around 160,000 people, it owns the Royal Bafokeng Stadium, in which England will play tonight, receives royalties of around $63m from platinum mining and is the joint owner of Impala Mining Co, South Africa's second biggest platinum company. Needless to say, it is the most powerful economic and political force in this part of South Africa.

  • One of the pleasures of the South African World Cup build-up has been the way in which the country has embraced all of the competing nations.

When I was in Beijing for the Olympics in 2008, it was almost as if the rest of the world was absent, so intense was the Chinese focus on domestic success and home-bred medal winners.

South Africans are passionate supporters of 'Bafana Bafana', but flags from every nation flutter in the streets, and it is not unusual to see cars sporting the colours of South Africa in one window and the strip of a different team in the other.

The result is an atmosphere that feels like a festival of football, and even if the hosts struggle to progress from their group, the rest of the tournament seems certain to be a success given the level of domestic interest in the likes of Spain, Brazil, Portugal, Italy and yes, even England.

  • South Africa's chances of reaching the knock-out phase would have increased markedly had they held on to their lead in yesterday's opening match, a game I watched in the media centre at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium while waiting for England's players to begin their training session.

Actually, to be more precise, I watched the final 75 minutes in the media centre. With security ahead of England's meeting with the US incredibly tight, I underestimated how long it would take me to get into the ground.

So, while the rest of the world was settling down to watch the opening kick of the tournament, I was opening the boot of my hire car while a sniffer dog smelled the area around my crotch. Ah, the glamour of covering a World Cup tournament.

  • The Royal Bafokeng Stadium doesn't look like a typical African football ground if anything, it is reminiscent of some of the open bowl-shaped stadiums that tended to characterise Europe's Eastern bloc.

Three sides are open to the elements but, thankfully, South Africa's winter is not the same as England's. It might be a bit nippy by the time things kick off tonight, and it will certainly be dark, but it is extremely unlikely that England's travelling support will get wet.