| Arcturus | |
|---|---|
| Village | |
  Arcturus | |
| Coordinates: 17°47′S31°19′E / 17.783°S 31.317°E Coordinates: 17°47′S31°19′E / 17.783°S 31.317°E | |
| Country | Zimbabwe |
| Province | Mashonaland East |
| Elevation | 1,385 m (4,544 ft) |
| Population (1982) | |
| • Total | 3,300 |
| estimated | |
| Time zone | CAT (UTC+2) |
Arcturus is a village in the province of Mashonaland East, Zimbabwe. It is located about 32 km east of Harare. According to the 1982 Population Census, the village had a population of 3,300 and the surrounding rural area has a population of approximately 20,000. The village grew up around and is named after the nearby Arcturus Mine. A number of other small mines also operate in the area. The surrounding area is otherwise principally agricultural, producing a wide variety of crops. [1]
Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in southern Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique. The capital and largest city is Harare. A country of roughly 16 million people, Zimbabwe has 16 official languages, with English, Shona, and Ndebele the most commonly used.
Harare is the capital and most populous city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of 960.6 km2 (371 mi2) and an estimated population of 1,606,000 in 2009, with 2,800,000 in its metropolitan area in 2006. Situated in north-eastern Zimbabwe in the country's Mashonaland region, Harare is a metropolitan province, which also incorporates the municipalities of Chitungwiza and Epworth. The city sits on a plateau at an elevation of 1,483 metres above sea level and its climate falls into the subtropical highland category.
The mine, which was one of the leading and oldest gold producers in Zimbabwe, was established in 1891 and started operations in 1907. It is situated on the southern end of the greenstone belt near Harare and originally comprised three individual mines named Arcturus, Slate and Planet, with separate shafts which were later linked together underground to create a single complex. It closed down in 1924 but was reopened in 1945 under a new owner. [2] It is linked to the Harare–Mutare railway line, 16 km away, by a narrow gauge railway line constructed in 1920. [1] To date, it has produced 1.2 million ounces of gold. [3]
Gold is a chemical element with symbol Au and atomic number 79, making it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. In its purest form, it is a bright, slightly reddish yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal and a group 11 element. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements and is solid under standard conditions. Gold often occurs in free elemental (native) form, as nuggets or grains, in rocks, in veins, and in alluvial deposits. It occurs in a solid solution series with the native element silver and also naturally alloyed with copper and palladium. Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, often with tellurium.
Mutare is the fourth largest city in Zimbabwe, with an urban population of approximately 188,243 and rural population of approximately 260,567. It is the capital of Manicaland province.
The ounce is a unit of mass, weight, or volume used in most British derived customary systems of measurement. The common avoirdupois ounce is 1⁄16 of a common avoirdupois pound; this is the United States customary and British imperial ounce. It is primarily used in the United States to measure packaged foods and food portions, postal items, areal density of fabric and paper, boxing gloves, and so on; but sometimes also elsewhere in the Anglosphere.
29 workers were killed in the mine in a dynamite explosion on 17 January 1913. [2] On 31 January 1978 the mine was the scene of a serious environmental accident when a dam containing liquefied gold tailings overflowed, causing a breach 55 m wide. It resulted in over 30,000 tons of tailings flooding the surrounding area, damaging a nearby village and killing one child and injuring another. A public waterway was blocked and adjoining pasture was contaminated. [4]
Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents and stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, and patented in 1867. It rapidly gained wide-scale use as a more powerful alternative to black powder.
Tailings, also called mine dumps, culm dumps, slimes, tails, refuse, leach residue or slickens, terra-cone (terrikon), are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. Tailings are distinct from overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overlies an ore or mineral body and is displaced during mining without being processed.
The mine consists of four distinct operations called Venus, Gladstone, Ceylon and Viceroy. It has suffered badly from Zimbabwe's economic problems and a decline in worldwide demand for gold. As a result, it has been placed in care and maintenance twice in the early 21st century, first between 2009–13 and secondly since early 2016 following a $7 million loss in 2015. Antiquated equipment has meant that it has been unable to operate at full capacity. Its owner, Metallon Gold Corporation, has said that it is considering selling off the mine. [5]
