Lessons from the past
Barberton
is not
down and out
The Barberton Greenstone Belt of South Africa has been mined extensively for
close to 150 years, but there is still a lot of gold to be found, writes Leon Louw.
H
discovery of lode gold deposits in quartz vein
systems in the Barberton Mountainland.
Carl Anhaeusser’s paper, Archean gold
mineralisation in the Barberton Mountainlan
(1986), explains that this discovery led
to the development of the De Kaap-
Barberton goldfields between 1874 and
1884. Anhaeusser notes that the “initial
discoveries were eclipsed by Edwin Bray’s
fabulously rich ‘Golden Quarry’ discovery
adjacent to the Sheba Fault, close to
present-day Sheba mine”. This deposit made
Barberton famous worldwide and led to one
of South Africa’s most colourful gold rushes.
Anhaeusser writes that the town of
Barberton was founded in 1884 following
numerous gold discoveries in the mountains
northeast of the town, including
the currently operating
Sheba-Fairview,
New Consort
and Lily
istorically, mining companies
working in the Barberton
Greenstone Belt were only
interested in deposits of at least
10g per tonne or higher. Often sample results
yielding less than 5‒10g per tonne were
ignored. In other words, there is potentially
a lot of metal in the ground. Mining in the
Barberton area dates back to the 1870s, when
prospectors started venturing into the
Lowveld region and discovered
alluvial deposits in the
Jamestown Schist
Belt, followed by the
[34] MINING MIRROR AUGUST 2019
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