Blyvooruitzicht () is a gold mine and

gold-mining Gold mining is the extraction of gold resources by mining. Historically, mining gold from alluvial deposits used manual separation processes, such as gold panning. However, with the expansion of gold mining to ores that are not on the surface, ...

village in

Gauteng Gauteng ( ) is one of the nine provinces of South Africa. The name in Sotho-Tswana languages means 'place of gold'. Situated on the Highveld, Gauteng is the smallest province by land area in South Africa. Although Gauteng accounts for only ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

. It is situated about 5 km south of the centre of

Carletonville Carletonville is a town in Gauteng and the seat of the Merafong City Local Municipality in the West Rand District Municipality in Gauteng, South Africa, just north of the richest gold-mining area in the world. At 3,749 m, Western Deep Levels hold ...

and 80 km westwards from

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...

History of the village

The name of the village is of Dutch origin meaning "happy prospect". The farm Blyvooruitzicht was first farmed by Pieter Daniël Roux and the main road through the current village is named after him. Established in 1937, Blyvooruitzicht village was built to house the workers of the Blyvooruitzicht Gold Mine which was the first to mine the gold of the West Wits line. In the late 60's and early 70's it boasted having the highest earnings per capita in the world.

History of the mine

Production started in 1942 under the ownership of Rand Mines. Later ownership passed to DRD (in 1997), then Village Main Reef and more recently Blyvoor Gold.

Sinkholes

During the night of 3 August 1964, a sinkhole in the former mining village township of Westdene, Blyvooruitzight, buried the entire Oosthuizen family and their domestic worker, alive. Situated some 5½km south of Carletonville, as one of four village townships at the Blyvooruitzight Gold Mine, Westdene, was consequently abandoned. The subsequent housing shortage was quickly normalised by extending the Southdene village township situated some 400 meters south of the sinkhole, with pre-fabricated asbestos housing. Unknown at the time, asbestos was since proclaimed and banned as a health hazard, but the houses are still occupied today. An ancient sinkhole southwest of the village called the Hutgrot Cave was the shelter of the

Batswana The Tswana ( tn, Batswana, singular ''Motswana'') are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group native to Southern Africa. The Tswana language is a principal member of the Sotho-Tswana language group. Ethnic Tswana made up approximately 85% of the popu ...

tribes during the

Mzilikazi Mzilikazi Moselekatse, Khumalo ( 1790 – 9 September 1868) was a Southern African king who founded the Mthwakazi Kingdom now known as Matebeleland, in Zimbabwe. His name means "the great river of blood". He was born the son of Mashobane kaMange ...

raids.

Places of interest

The Villagers

Blyvoor mine and village was the setting for a SABC TV soap opera filmed in the 1970s called "The Villagers (TV Series 1976)".

Isidingo

The highest point in the village is a hill called "Isidingo", which is where the mine manager's house was built. The current soap opera "

Isidingo ''Isidingo'' is a South African soap opera, with dialogue mostly in English and isiXhosa. The series premiered on SABC 3 in July 1998 and was broadcast evenings on SABC 3 from Monday to Friday at 19:00. Until 2001 it was titled ''Isidingo: The ...

" derives its name from it.

Mining Operations

Gold

Blyvooruitzicht Gold Mining Company Limited (Blyvoor), has underground and surface operations and is situated on the north-western edge of the

Witwatersrand The Witwatersrand () (locally the Rand or, less commonly, the Reef) is a , north-facing scarp in South Africa. It consists of a hard, erosion-resistant quartzite metamorphic rock, over which several north-flowing rivers form waterfalls, which ...

Basin. Established in 1937, it was the first mine on the West Wits line. Production started here in 1942. Blyvoor has two main gold-bearing horizons: the Carbon Leader Reef (CLR), which is one of the principal ore bodies of the Carletonville goldfield; and the Middelvlei Reef, which is some 75 metres above the CLR horizon. At present mining is concentrated on No 5 shaft.

Uranium

A pilot uranium extraction plant was put in operation at Blyvooruitzicht in October 1949 and by 1953 uranium production was done at large scale.

Tailings In mining, tailings are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. Tailings are different to overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overlie ...

from the slime dams created by gold mining operations were later reprocessed for both gold and uranium extraction.

References

External links

Blyvooruitzicht Golf Club

Blyvoor Gold Pty Limited (Blyvoor)
{{West Rand District Municipality Populated places in the Merafong City Local Municipality Uranium mines in South Africa Gold mines in South Africa Mining communities in South Africa Economy of Gauteng