The Tati Goldfields are a mineral-rich band in

Botswana Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label=Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahar ...

and

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...

in southern Africa. The band runs approximately long by wide, and crosses the

Tati River The Tati River is a river in northeast Botswana, a tributary of the Shashe River, which in turn is a tributary of the Limpopo River. The river flows through Francistown, where it is joined by the Ntshe (or Inchwe) River from the left. History A ...

. It is the southernmost of the gold-bearing bands in the Archaen greenstone (

schist Schist ( ) is a medium-grained metamorphic rock showing pronounced schistosity. This means that the rock is composed of mineral grains easily seen with a low-power hand lens, oriented in such a way that the rock is easily split into thin flakes o ...

) belts of Zimbabwe. It is estimated that between 1866 and 1963 over 200,000 ounces of gold were produced from mines in the Tati Goldfields.

History

The area along the Tati River was pit mined by the

Bakalanga The Kalanga or Bakalanga are a southern Bantu ethnic group mainly inhabiting Matebeleland in Zimbabwe, northeastern Botswana and Limpopo Province in South Africa. They are historically related to the Nambya, Karanga, Bapedi and Venda. Curre ...

before the arrival of Europeans. It may have been one of the sources of wealth for the

Great Zimbabwe Great Zimbabwe is a medieval city in the south-eastern hills of Zimbabwe near Lake Mutirikwi and the town of Masvingo. It is thought to have been the capital of a great kingdom during the country's Late Iron Age about which little is known. Con ...

empire (c. 1200 to 1450). In 1866

Karl Mauch Karl Gottlieb Mauch (7 May 1837 – 4 April 1875) was a German explorer and geographer of Africa. He reported on the archaeological ruins of Great Zimbabwe in 1871 during his search for the biblical land of Ophir. Exploration and Great Zimbabwe ...

discovered the Tati goldfield, making it the first one discovered by Europeans in southern Africa. This led to the first South African gold rush.

Geology

The gold mineralization occurs in quartz veins, intruded into the volcano-sedimentary rocks of the Tati greenstone belt. Other economic minerals occur including nickel and copper. The major formation is the Selkirk Formation which is up to 1000 meters thick. The Selkirk is composed mostly of redeposited

dacite Dacite () is a volcanic rock formed by rapid solidification of lava that is high in silica and low in alkali metal oxides. It has a fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic texture and is intermediate in composition between andesite and rhyolite. ...

and

rhyolite Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals (phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained groundmass. The mineral ...

, with some darker volcanics, and minor

quartzite Quartzite is a hard, non- foliated metamorphic rock which was originally pure quartz sandstone.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Edition, Stephen Marshak, p 182 Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tect ...

s and quartzitic

History

Geology

See also

Notes and references

Further reading