I grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. Jozi is a colloquial term for Johannesburg and Soweto together. I am a Mining Engineer by profession and I have mined gold 3100m below surface – underground in the bowels of the deepest mines on the planet. Geologically, the Witwatersrand gold deposit, discovered and mined since 1886 is still the largest single deposit of gold in the world. What I didn’t appreciate back in the mid-1980’s was just what an impact this massive deposit had on the socio-political and economic landscape of Southern Africa today. Other key drivers, both African and European, shaped today’s Southern Africa, but it will take some time to tie these strands together and that will take plenty of blog time. Well then, let’s try to unfold it – at least as best I understand it.
Jozi owes its existence to a remarkable deposit of gold laid down between 2,8 billion (with a ‘B’) and 2,2 billion years ago.
