Phalaborwa

With a population of about 120,000, it is Limpopo's fourth largest town.  It's in the Mopani region of Limpopo in an area previously called the Valley of the Olifants.  It's situated on the Selati River which runs into the nearby Oliphants River.

This is the Lowveld and the climate is subtropical. Winters are very mild and frost-free - it has the highest winter temperatures in South Africa.  High summer temperatures are experienced between November and February, varying from 20° to 35° C with occasional heavy rain. 

The average annual rainfall is ±450mm.  The rainy season runs from September to April. Winter has little or no rain.

Neighbouring attractions are the Blyde River Canyon, the Rondavels, God's Window, Bourke Luck’s Potholes, Tzaneen and Hoedspruit.

A Thousand Years Ago
No written records exist of the very early history of the Phalaborwa district. It has been left to the archaeologists and the geologists to reconstruct the past as best they can. On one point there is complete agreement among the geologists, and this is that Phalaborwa was once an area of intense volcanic activity.

It is estimated that some 2 000 million years ago a great volcano blew a hole in the earth's granite crust here, and that this was followed by later eruptions. A distinguished scientist' explains what is believed to have happened: "It seems as if in ages long past, in fact in remote pre-Cambrian times, a volcano existed in this area", he writes. "Somehow the stock of this volcano became filled with carbonate rock. Just how this happened nobody is clear, but everybody agrees that it did happen.

During this carbonate deposition . . . there were also deposited certain sulphide minerals containing copper, considerable apatite and magnetite2 ..." And, he might have added, mica, zirconium oxide (represented by the mineral known as baddeleyite), and small quantities of thorium. All these deposits are the result of the upthrust of the various volcanic eruptions. Together they form what geologists call a "pipe", not unlike the vertical volcanic pipes in which diamonds are found in other parts of the country.

The pipe in this case is an enormous one, its outcrop having an almost elliptical area of about 20 square kilometres. Within this area lies the vast mixed bag of metals and minerals which is described as the Phalaborwa Igneous Complex—and undoubtedly "complex" is the right word. "Igneous" means simply, that the rock to which this adjective is applied, was originally molten and became inserted into the country rock and then solidified. Of the deposits within the area of what was once the throat of the volcano, some 95 percent is pyroxenite, a term applied to a rock that consists largely of "pyroxenes". Pyroxenes, in their turn, are crystalline silicates that contain two metallic oxides. In this case the pyroxenite contains some 7% of phosphate. The pyroxenite deposit is enormous. Near the centre of it, however, at the site of what was once Loole Kop, there is an "inner circle" of a vastly different rock that has been named "Foskorite", an adaptation from the name of the company that was formed to develop the phosphate deposit. It was originally christened "Phoscorite" by the geologists who identified it, but later changed to its present name to match the short title of the company that first mined it. The foskorite constitutes only three percent of the total area of the deposit, but is richer in phosphate, and in other minerals, than the main body of pyroxenite. Within it, and surrounded by it, is the core of the entire deposit, a pipe of carbonatite which contains copper and iron. This forms two percent of the total deposit.

Thus, if you were looking down on the remains of this ancient volcano, you would in theory be looking at the cross-section of something that resembles a gigantic sugarstick, first a thick outer layer of pyroxenite, then a comparatively thin inner layer of foskorite, and finally the small central core of the whole complex—the carbonatite. These two central deposits, the foskorite and the carbonatite, which were thrust up by volcanic action and outcropped at Loole Kop, lie at the heart of the immense deposit of pyroxenite.

At this point the magnetite outcropped, with the result that the early Iron Age men found here all the iron ore they wanted, without having to do more than collect the loose ore on the slopes of the hill. They established their furnaces nearby and it was thus that Loole Kop became the centre of the iron industry. They had no use for the phosphate. Apart from this primitive mining operation, the vast area of mineralised rock lay there undisturbed through all the millions of years during which plant life evolved on the surface of the Earth, and Man rose to his feet and began to walk and use his hands for the purposes for which God had given them to him.

The first small scratch in the area came when South African Phosphates began its brief career in 1930, as a supplier of fertilizer in the form of crushed phosphate rock, extracted from the pyroxenite deposit.
Later this company's claims were taken over by another company that called itself the Palabora Phosphate and Vermiculite Company, (the officially approved spelling "Phalaborwa" had not been settled at that time, and most people wrote the name as they pronounced it). After this, a renowned prospector of the old school, Carter S. Cleveland, who had worked in the district for many years fossicking for corundum and anything else he could find, came across a golden-yellow deposit that was completely outside his experience.

It looked like mica, which was common enough in the district, but it had qualities that he had not observed in the mica deposits he had found. He and his associates pegged a number of claims. They called the mineral they had found "rotten mica".

Then one day Dr Hans Merensky came to Phalaborwa with the thought in his mind, so he said, that he might buy a farm there and breed cattle. It so happened that the grand old man of the district was one Max Otto Ruh, originally an immigrant from Germany, who had first worked in the German settlement at Magoebas Kloof and then acquired a farm at Phalaborwa.

The South African Phosphate Company's claims and its crushing plant were close to his house, and when the company closed down he became the manager and caretaker of its property. He told Merensky about the "rotten mica" and said that Cleveland thought it might be a substance called "vermiculite".

But nobody in the district knew "the place where the Bushmen were conquered/enslaved/slaughtered". But further research into the dialect of the baPhalaborwa turned up an alternative translation which is ". . . {the place that is) better than the South". The explanation of this weird phrase is that the tribe, driven from their traditional home in what is now Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia), crossed the Limpopo and made their way into the vast, largely uninhabited territory that today is South Africa. They journeyed as far as Bushbuck Ridge and settled there. But they were metal workers and could find no iron ore in their new home. So they sent out their scouts and prospectors and these wizards eventually found the ores they wanted on Loole Kop, among the syenite hills not far from the banks of the Selati River.

So Phalaborwa is really the phrase of a prospector, a man of few words meaning "it's better here than in the South because we found iron ore". And "better than the South" has become the accepted translation of this esoteric word that reminds American visitors of the title of a patent medicine.

The oral traditions of the baPhalaborwa say that their forefathers came from Bokhalaka (the present Zimbabwe) under the leadership of a chief called Malatshi, and to this day the tribe has an alternative name, the baMalatshi. It is uncertain when the migration from Bokhalaka began, but early Portuguese records are said to show that during the 17th century the tribes of the so-called "Monomotapa empire" were driven southwards by waves of Rozwi invaders from the north, and it may have been at this time that the baPhalaborwa arrived at their new home.

There they routed the Shokane, a tribe so primitive that they are reputed not to have known the use of fire. They then settled at Scalene, which is only some three kilometres from the present town of Phalaborwa, and about four kilometres from Loole Kop, and here they began the smelting of iron and the manufacture of hoes, axes, spearheads and arrowheads.

The kraal of the chiefs of the tribe was built on the slopes of the koppie Sealene, and this is a place much revered by all baPhalaborwa. Over the centuries 25 chiefs and sub-chiefs were buried on this koppie. The present chief still regularly conducts the traditional ceremonies of appeasement of the ancestral spirits here. It is still the belief of the baPhalaborwa that a "commoner" (i.e. someone who is not a member of the chief's family) who climbs Sealene will become lame.

This koppie, and the neighbouring koppie of Kgopolwe, have been declared national historical monuments by the National Monuments Council, and will be preserved for all time. The koppies, with some 38 morgen of ground, which is in the mining area controlled by Foskor, were presented to the nation by the Corporation. Two types of primitive smelting furnaces have been identified at Phalaborwa. One type, used for the smelting of iron ore, was constructed in the form of a vertical cylinder, approximately 75 centimetres high, with a diameter of some 50 centimetres. This had blow-pipe openings at ground level that allowed three bellows to be used simultaneously to produce great heat. The second type of furnace was used for the smelting of copper. This was made in the shape of a beehive with a small opening at the top and only one opening for bellows.

This type of furnace is rare and only a few examples survive. The paucity of copper furnaces and copper objects suggests that there was not much copper smelting at Phalaborwa. This was probably because the copper was more difficult to obtain than the iron. However, there was a peculiar form of"currency" in the district hundreds of years ago. An object, called a "lirale" (plural "marale"), was used almost as coinage is in modern times. It was a copper rod about 45 centimetres long and about 12 millimetres in diameter, with a projection at one end that made it look rather like a sawn-off golf club. The information available about these copper rods, other than that they were, and are valuable, is extremely vague. Some researchers have formed the theory that they were not made by the baPhalaborwa at all, but by another tribe who obtained the copper from Phalaborwa. However, the old men of the tribe maintain that their forebears made these castings. They are greatly prized and are not obtainable today at any price. The present chief of the tribe does not even possess one.

If proof were needed that the Phalaborwa tribesmen were dedicated iron workers, it must surely lie in the fact that they chose to settle in this area. The presence of the tsetse fly meant that they could not keep cattle, normally the most prized possession of the Blacks. On top of this were other drawbacks,— malaria, black-water fever and bilharzia were rife, and the annual rainfall, at an average of 450 mm a year, was so low that they grew crops with difficulty.

Yet, despite the deterrents and the hardships they faced, they declared that Phalaborwa was "better than the South". That suggests that the smelting and working of iron was their main occupation—and a profitable one.

A question to which the archaeologists have not yet found an answer, is the unsolved mystery of who were the first inhabitants of the district. In 1965 Dr N. J. van der Merwe, then Associate Professor of the Department of Anthropology in the University of Binghamton, New York, conducted excavations at Phalaborwa.

While he was there, blasting operations revealed ancient workings, including a narrow six metre shaft, a relic of early mining operations.

At the bottom of this shaft were found deposits of charcoal. These were subjected to the now well-known radio-carbon tests that can establish the age of organic specimens. The tests that Dr van der Merwe made, showed that the tree from which the charcoal came, died roughly 1 200 years ago. Assuming that 50 to 100 years elapsed between the death of the tree and the burning of the wood, this gives a date of about AD 860.

The shaft must have been sunk more than 1 000 years ago, which means that it could not possibly have been the work of the baPhalaborwa. One lot of evidence seems to show that the tribe did not reach the district until they were driven out of Bokhalaka some 300 years ago.

This of course is 800 years later than the date of those charcoal fragments. Obviously there is room for more research here. It does seem likely, however, that the baPhalaborwa have lived in the district for well over 300 years.

And what of the white men? When did they first come to this part of the world?
The answer is that they tended to avoid it because the tsetse fly, and what amounted to the certainty that they would contract malaria, had given the Lowveld an evil reputation. Also, there had been skirmishes with some of the tribes. In 1721, the Dutch East India Company established an outpost. Fort Lijdzaamheid, at Delagoa Bay, and sent expeditions into the hinterland in search of gold.

In 1725, a well-armed expedition led by Francois De Kuiper, who was the second in command of the station, made its way into the Transvaal on a march that took them through part of what is today the Kruger National Park. They crossed the Crocodile River in July, 1725, and penetrated almost as far as the Sabie River. The whole area was populated by Blacks most of whom had probably never seen white men before, and were far from friendly. De Kuiper performed a service to the cartographers who were to follow him, by collecting and recording the names of the chiefs through whose territories he marched, and also the names of the rivers.

Finally, however, the Dutch explorers were attacked by Blacks and forced to retreat to the Lebombo Mountains. Though explorers and hunters from Mozambique probably found their way across the Limpopo from time to time, more than one hundred years were to elapse before the next expedition visited the district.

Then, in 1836, came the Voortrekkers searching for a route to the coast. The van Rensburg trek met disaster on the west bank of the Limpopo, only 80 kilometres east of Phalaborwa, where every member of the party was killed in the course of a savage attack by tribesmen.

Louis Trichardt and Hendrik Potgieter made their way to the Portuguese coast after a fruitless search for the van Rensburg party. The Lowveld below Kowyn's Pass became the great hunting ground of the men of the old Republic. They trekked here in the winter with their stock and returned to their farms on the Highveld with wagons laden with biltong and antelope hides.

In 1890 came rumours of the discovery of gold on the banks of the Selati River near Leydsdorp. This started a rush to the "Selati River Gold Field" where Karl Mauch, the most optimistic geologist of the 19th century, had prophesied gold would be found. The quantity of gold recovered in this region would not have been of much use to a modern mining company.

Nevertheless it proved enough to launch one of the great railway scandals of the day. The Baron Oppenheim and his brother floated the Selati Railway Company, in Brussels of all places, to build a railway line from Komatipoort to the "new Transvaal gold field" on the Selati River. It should be added that the line between the Portuguese border and Komatipoort had been opened on July 1 st, 1891, though the first train from Delagoa Bay did not reach Pretoria until October, 1894.

The Oppenheim brothers and their shareholders did not wait to find out how the new gold field was prospering. They went ahead and laid 80 kilometres of track from Komatipoort to the point where Skukusa camp now stands in the Kruger Park. The next step was to build a bridge across the Sabie River. But that was the end of the line and of the company, which crashed owing its creditors R800 000. When one adds up the expenditure on this 80 kilometre line, it comes out as one of the most expensive railways ever built.

After the company had gone bankrupt, the line lay idle for 18 years, with stacks of material and implements rusting beside the track, and a locomotive standing in the sheds at Komatipoort. It became Stevenson-Hamilton's private line when he first took up his appointment as Chief Ranger of the Sabie Game Reserve. If he wanted to get to Komatipoort he mounted a trolley, and propelled by manpower, made a leisurely joureney through the wild country he was shaping into a reserve. In Komatipoort he caught the train to Pretoria, or to where he wanted to go.

This was the only use to which the Selati line was ever put until 1912 when the South African Railways took it over and extended it, first to Tzaneen, and later to Soekmekaar, one of the most picturesque routes in South Africa, since it takes you through the big game country. A railway made a great difference to an area that had always been regarded as "the back of beyond".

But the greatest achievement was accomplished by the renowned Dr Siegfried Annecke, pioneer of mosquito control. Dr Annecke set out to put an end to malaria in the Lowveld, and by heroic measures and sheer determination he won the battle. Spreading out from Tzaneen, there is now a beautiful and fertile area where anybody can live and work, without fear of the disease that was once the curse of the Lowveld.

The men who knew the Phalaborwa district best in the early days were the hunters and the prospectors, who were tough, fearless men. They had to be for they never knew when they might walk into a herd of buffalo or meet a lion. In later years, when the elephants began to return to what was still called "the game reserve" they were a considerable source of worry to the lonely men who camped there from time to time.

Any prospector who worked in the district before the fence went up on the boundaries of the park, will tell you that the sight of a man digging a prospecting pit arouses an elephant's curiosity. He has to know what's going on, even if it means coming right into the camp for a close-up view of the proceedings. Cleveland was perhaps the best-known of all the prospectors. Cleveland Kop is named after him, and there is a Cleveland Place in Phalaborwa.

Then there was Valentine, the corundum specialist, who made a number of important finds. Another well-known character in the district was a former British soldier named Scammell, who found and mined a deposit of copper-bearing ore. Some 80 years ago he owned and operated the Guide copper mine, quite close to where Phalaborwa township is today. Apart from these men, whose names are still remembered in the district, there is not one free-lance mining man who has not been there at one time or another. And the professional geologists, whether they were asked to go there or not, have all paid Phalaborwa the compliment of visiting it—sometimes half a dozen times—just to see what has turned up since they were last there.

I treasure a remark one of them made to me, "I could have made a fortune at Phalaborwa if only I'd had Rl 500 000 and five years to decide what I was going to mine!"

Information & photos from "Phalaborwa, a mining success story". By: A.P. Cartwright

The Lowveld: This is the most easternly section of the CLBR with and altitude of less than 650 m.a.s.l. In this area, with its Mopani woodland and sour bushveld, there is a ahost of birds not found anywhere else on the route. Special birds like Arnot’s Chat. White-breasted Cuckooshrike, Thick-billed Cuckoo and Stierling’s Wren-Warbler can be found here. More common species like Greater Blue-eared Starling, Woodland Kingfisher and White-crested Helmet-Shrike will also only be found in this area of the CLBR. The Proximity to the larger conservation areas of the lowveld also makes this area good for the larger birds like raptors and storks. White-headed and Hooded Vulture and Bateleur Eagle are examples of the birds that you should continuously be scanning the sky for. The riverine areas along the Letaba River act as a conduit, drawing birds like White-backed Night-Heron, saddle-billed Stork and African Openbill into the area.