Historic Overview of the Witwatersrand Goldfields.: J.R.F. HANDLEY. Pp. 224. Handley, Howick. Available from the Geological Society of South Africa. ISBN 0-620-32127-X. 2004. Price, within SA: R250.00 standard; outside SA, US$40.00.

Abstract

The significance of the Witwatersrand goldfields, both for the world economy (by providing more than one-third of all gold ever available to central banks) and for South Africa (by having provided hundreds of thousands of employment opportunities directly in the mines and several times more in ancillary and supported industries), cannot be emphasized enough. With more than 100 years of mining Witwatersrand gold behind us, and still about 40 percent of known global gold reserves waiting to be unearthed, there are compelling reasons for being interested in the history of this true giant among ore deposits. For most mining camps in the world, their history has been written in one form or another, but often this is only of interest to the local community. The truly global significance of the Witwatersrand, and the fact that there is hardly any statistic related to gold mining in which the Witwatersrand goldfields do not occupy a number one position, should cause anyone involved with gold mining and marketing, world economics, or the development of southern Africa to have an interest in the history of this remarkable and unparalleled gold province in one of the oldest and best preserved continental crustal blocks, the Kaapvaal craton. Surprisingly, the literature available so far on the topic …