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Ixopo is a town situated on a tributary of the Mkhomazi River in the midlands of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and forms part of an important sugar farming, and forestry area. Ixopo was surveyed in 1878 and was initially called Stuartstown. Its name is derived from the Zulu onomatopoeia, eXobo, describing the sound made as cattle squelch through mud (The 'X' sound in Zulu is pronounced as a lateral click).
Ixopo is most famously described by Alan Paton in the opening lines of Cry, The Beloved Country: "There is a lovely road which runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it."
The town houses two schools including a high school with a large proportion of boarding pupils who live in surrounding villages (such as Bulwer, Underburg, Creighton) which are too small too to justify the erection and staffing of a high school.
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