The Pietersburg Greenstone Belt occurs near the northern margin of the “low-grade” granite-greenstone terrain of the Kaapvaal Craton. To the north lies the “high-grade” granite-greenstone terrain which constitutes the Southern Marginal Zone of the Limpopo Belt. The original relationship between the two terrains has been overprinted by the effects of the Limpopo Orogeny and are therefore not known. A better understanding of the tectonic evolution of the Pietersburg Greenstone Belt may help to clarify this relationship. The rocks of the southwestern part of the Pietersburg Greenstone Belt have been mapped in considerable detail. The rocks can be subdivided into two sequences. The first comprises a sequence of massive to pillowed metabasalts, metagabbros and metaperidotites, as well as BIF, fine-grained mafic tuffs and sediments. The sequence was subjected to extensive hydrothermal metamorphism at low pressures and variable temperatures in the greenschist to amphibolite facies. This suggests an oceanic-like environment. The second sequence, known as the Uitkyk Formation, comprises a sequence of terrestrial clastics, which overlie the first sequence with a profound unconformity. Sedimentology indicates that the Uitkyk Formation formed in a prograding alluvial fan or braided alluvial plain. The Uitkyk sediments were deformed and infiltrated by fluids that precipitated quartz-tourmaline (±gold) and siderite soon after deposition. Age relationships, bedding/cleavage relationships and younging directions indicate that both the sediments and simatic rocks were involved in a phase of thrust-related deformation (D 2) that resulted in south over north stratigraphic repetition under generally low-grade conditions of metamorphism. Post-D 2 granites date this thrusting at pre 2.69 Ga. D 2 was probably diachronous, and at surface, the deformation was accompanied by syntectonic terrestrial sedimentation and placer gold deposition. The tectonic environment was probably one of an intermontane accretionary or terrestrial foreland basin. Within this tectonic environment, the basement and cover became tectonically stacked across evolving shear zones. Combined field and microstructural relationships within a major fault zone have revealed a complex history of progressive D 2 deformation, metamorphism, mineralisation and associated sedimentary processes. The zone represents a deformed syn-sedimentary duplex that was carried piggy-back above an allochthonous thrust sheet of simatic rocks. At the deepest levels this fault, and other shear zones, were intruded by syntectonic granitoids. This late-Archaean, northward-verging D 2 thrust-stack model for the greenstone belt, with the syntectonic granites intruding the thrusts from beneath the greenstone belt, is in good accord with the recent geophysical observations. The age of cover sedimentation is older than ∼2.69 Ga but younger than 2.98 Ga in age; this supports suggestions that these deposits are age equivalent of the upper, gold-bearing sediments of the Witwatersrand basin; and that the northwards-thrusting in both basins may be of the same age and related to the same regional tectonic forces. The simatic rocks of the Pietersburg Greenstone Belt may have been part of a more extensive allochthonous simatic terrain, which includes the “similar” greenstone remnants of the Southern Marginal Zone of the Limpopo belt. Such a terrain must have been disrupted and metamorphosed during the northward-directed imbrication and tectonic burial recorded in the Pietersburg Belt, prior to the climax of the Limpopo Orogeny. The latter subsequently severely disrupted the Pietersburg Greenstone Belt during Ventersdorp times (2.6–2.7 Ga).