Page 26 - Bulletin 14 2010

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The Hout Bay Manganese Mine

Few visitors driving through Hout Bay on the way to Chapman’s Peak Drive will have failed
to notice in the sea below the road a curious concrete and steel jetty - usually the resting place

of a number of cormorants drying themselves in the sun!

This marks the most immediately visible remnant of one of the Cape’s most remarkable early

mining ventures, the Hout Bay manganese mine. Although the dense forests surrounding Hout
Bay – hence its name – had been noted by Jan Van Riebeeck in the 1650s, and the settlement

there had grown slowly but steadily, it is astonishing that a further two centuries were to
elapse until, in 1873, we find the first written account of the existence in the mountains above

Hout Bay of the valuable metal manganese:

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“On the 19 November [1873] I went to inspect another manganese mine in
the vicinity of Hout Bay. Leaving our horses beyond the block-house in
charge of a herd, we ascended the Noordhoek mountain by a very precipitous
route, and after an hour’s stiff climb reached a rough track formed by a winter
torrent, along which we stumbled over several specimens of the ore; these had
been washed down no great distance. Guided by Capt. E., I came to the most
promising spot which he had discovered. There were certainly some very
good specimens of manganese; but much of it was largely associated with
sandstone, and unless surface blasting reveals a considerably larger supply
than is promised on the surface, the cost of extracting the ore will be
considerable. It certainly has the advantage of being less than two miles from
a port; but otherwise it will bear no comparison with the mine in Du Toit’s
Kloof. It is probable that a large quantity of manganese will be found in the
vicinity of Hout Bay and Noordhoek; but whether it will pay to extract the ore
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and send it home is at present problematical.”

It was not long before news of the deposit entered the public domain for the following year a
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sample of ore from the Hout Bay deposit was displayed in the city - although a few months
later it was pronounced as being of “a very inferior character”! 31

A number of accounts of the Hout Bay manganese deposits state that in 1880 a company was

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formed in Cape Town to exploit the Hout Bay manganese deposits, but no firm evidence of
this venture has thus far come to light.