On 28 May 2019, the President of the Republic of South Africa, the Honourable Cyril Ramaphosa, announced the merger between the Departments of Mineral Resources and of Energy (now known as the DMRE). Subsequently, and in line with Parliamentary requirements, parliamentarians were appointed to serve on various Parliamentary Portfolio Committees (PPC). The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources and Energy embarked on an oversight visit to all DMRE entities in view of introducing its members to these entities and their various functions.

The Council for Geoscience reports an earthquake occurrence in the Far West Rand gold mine area on 29 June 2018 at 03:17 South African Standard Time. The earthquake registered a preliminary 3.1 on the local magnitude scale as determined with seismograph stations of the South African Seismograph Network. 

For media enquiries please contact Mr Ian Saunders on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Tel: 012 841 1456

The CGS has donated geological maps and their explanations to the University of the Witwatersrand to the value of R141 000. Professor Gillian Drennan (Dean of Faculty) and Professor Roger Gibson (head of school) accepted the map donations on behalf of the School of Geoscience at the University of the Witwatersrand.

The Council for Geoscience (CGS) joins the geoscience community in mourning the passing of Professor Marian Tredoux, Associate Professor of the Department of Geology at the University of the Free State. Prof. Tredoux was a devoted geoscientist who had an exceptional career spanning over 30 years. The geological community recently bestowed the highest honour of naming a mineral after her. The mineral, which contains nickel, antimony and oxygen, was named “tredouxite” in acknowledgement of her immense contribution to the body of knowledge in the field of the geosciences. The CGS joins the geoscience community in expressing its heartfelt condolences to Prof. Tredoux’s family, her students, the university, her colleagues and the geoscience community at large. Prof. Tredoux’s passion and dedication to her work will be sorely missed by those whose lives she impacted.

For further information, please contact Mahlatse Mononela: telephone: +27(0)12 841 1225; email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The community ofKwaMachi, near Harding in the South Coast of KwaZuluNatal has in recent times claimed to have found gold in the area. The Council for Geoscience (CGS) being the custodian of all geoscientific information in the land, was then tasked by the Minister of Mineral Resources Hon. Gwede Mantashe to investigate the veracity of the purported gold. In June 2018, the CGS conducted investigations in the Harding quarry where the aggregate was mined to maintain local roads and where the local community claimed to have found a gold deposit. In the first investigation, rock samples were collected from the quarry andanalysed at the MINTEK Laboratory in Johannesburg. The 150 m by 150 m quarry was used primarily as a source of aggregates for improving the condition of the local roads. Although the first set of results showed that the quarry did not contain gold, the CGS decided to conduct further investigations.

The Council for Geoscience (CGS) welcomes the nomination as an award finalist for the Vision 2030 Awards, which will be held on the 21 June 2018, at Emperors Palace Johannesburg. The CGS will be competing against a selected group of peer institutions for the Science & Technology Award category. The finalists will be evaluated by a panel of expert judges who will painstakingly assess the extent to which the institutions advance the science knowledge base to tackle the societal challenges.

The Council for Geoscience, as the national custodian of all geoscience data in South Africa, has embarked on the development of an updated and digitally interactive geological map of South Africa. This map takes advantage of fundamental geological data that has been collected over a period spanning more than a century and is presented on a scale of 1:1 000 000 scalable to a resolution of 1:250 000. Several previous inconsistencies were noted and have been resolved using advanced technological intervention and/or targeted field work.