What Are Minerals?
A Mineral is a natural substance with distinctive chemical and physical properties, composition, and atomic structure. The definition of an economic mineral is broader and includes minerals, metals, rocks, and hydrocarbons (solid and liquid) that are extracted from the earth by mining, quarrying, and pumping.
In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid substance with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form
The geological definition of mineral normally excludes compounds that occur only in living organisms. However, some minerals are often biogenic (such as calcite) or organic compounds in the sense of chemistry (such as mellite). Moreover, living organisms often synthesize inorganic minerals (such as hydroxylapatite) that also occur in rocks.
The concept of mineral is distinct from rock, which is any bulk solid geologic material that is relatively homogeneous at a large enough scale. A rock may consist of one type of mineral or may be an aggregate of two or more different types of minerals, spatially segregated into distinct phases.
Some natural solid substances without a definite crystalline structure, such as opal or obsidian, are more properly called mineraloids. If a chemical compound occurs naturally with different crystal structures, each structure is considered a different mineral species. Thus, for example, quartz and stishovite are two different minerals consisting of the same compound, silicon dioxide.
How Many Minerals In South Africa?
South Africa has the world’s largest resources of platinum group metals (87,7% of world total), manganese (80%), chromium (72,4%), gold (29,7%), alumino-silicates and accounts for over 40% of global production of ferrochromium, platinum group metals, and vanadium. The country also contains reserves of iron ore, platinum, manganese, chromium, copper, uranium, silver, beryllium, and titanium.
Who Owns The Minerals In South Africa?
The State
Mineral rights as regulated by the MA were discarded. The ownership of minerals that vested in the landowner was abolished. Section 3(1) of the MPRDA now proclaims: “Mineral and petroleum resources are the common heritage of all the people of South Africa and the State is the custodian thereof.”