Kathu is a small mining town situated along the N14 National Route and on the banks of the Ga-Mogara River in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa.
Kathu is famously known as the iron ore capital of the Northern Cape Province. For its existence, the town heavily relies on the Sishen iron mine owned by Kumba Iron Ore, a subsidiary of mining giant Anglo American.
Kathu was founded in the late 1960s or early 1970s and is located between Upington and Vryburg, with about a 2-hour drive to each. Kimberley is a 3-hour drive away, while Kuruman is only 20 minutes away.
Kathu is also located approximately 20 km from the small dying town of Dingleton and 53.1 km north-east of Olifantshoek. The new suburb of Siyathemba is located a mere 25 km away on the outskirts of Kathu.
Kathu town falls within the Gamagara Local Municipality and the John Taolo Gaetsewe District Municipality. The town is the main town and administrative centre/seat of the Gamagara Local Municipality.
The name Kathu means “town under the trees”, after the Camel Thorn forest it is situated in. The phrase “the town under the trees” was coined by an engineer working in the town in the early 1990s as part of a tourist marketing drive, together with the accompanying graphic. It was intended to be a marketing slogan. The meaning of the word “Kathu” has anecdotically been attributed to a porridge brewed by the local population from the powder found in the pods of the Camel Thorn trees.
The R325 and R380 Regional Routes end in Kathu, where they intersect with the N14 national highway at separate junctions.
Mining
Kathu town, the accompanying industrial area of Sishen, and the nearby suburb of Siyathemba came into being because of iron ore mining activity by Kumba Iron Ore in the Kalahari. The town is home to one of the five largest open-cast iron ore mining operations in the world.
The primary drilling and ‘load and haul’ mining equipment used by the mine include giant ore trucks that bear about 260 tons of ore with each load. Mining shovels used to load these trucks can weigh in excess of 800 tons, and drilling equipment includes drills that can drill up to 400 mm holes for blasting purposes.
Some of the world’s longest ore trains travel through harsh territory on the Sishen-Saldanha railway to offload their cargo at Saldanha Bay.