THE MAGALIESBERG

The Magaliesberg is a very old mountain range. Two and a half to two billion years old. About half the age of the Earth itself. One hundred times older than Mount Everest and seventeen times older than Table Mountain!

What happened is that a large piece of the Earth’s crust, 140 km long broke loose and tilted toward the North. In this picture taken from the top of Voortrekker Monument one can see the oldest tilt in the foreground, the green little hills across the motorway. The second tilt lies just behind the Pretoria city bowl, these are the Daspoort Rand and Meintjieskop on which the Union Building are built. The distant range at the back are the Magaliesberg Mountains that lie beyond the Moot (the Moat) area separating Pretoria from the Pretoria North area.

This picture from Wikipedia shows the Magaliesberg tilt very well. 

The northern part of the tilt plunged deep into the Earth’s mantel and magna filled a lake 140 km long and about 100 km wide. The tick layer of molten magna was at about 1,600 degrees and cooled down slowly. Different minerals solidify at different temperatures. As a result the platinum group of metals solidified in a reef, the Merensky Reef at what is now about 500m below the surface. Behind the Magalies lies 80 percent of the World’s known platinum resources, of which 60 percent of the World production is mined. With the platinum lies 70 percent of the World’s know chrome resources, fro which 50 percent of the World’s production comes. This is smelted in large chrome smelters to produce stainless steel for export to mainly Germany, China and Japan.

With this lies 95 percent of the World’s known vanadium, that is use in the hardening of aluminium fuselages’ in modern aircraft and spacecraft!

Truly, the Magalies produces South Africa’s new gold!