The Navachab gold deposit is located in the Pan-African Damara Orogen and hosted by greenschist-amphibolite facies calc-silicates, marbles and volcaniclastic rocks. The rocks have been intruded by granite, pegmatite and aplitic dykes and have also been deformed into a series of alternating dome and basin-like structures.
Navachab Gold Mine is a classical carbonate-hosted replacement skarn deposit with strata bound style of mineralised rock. Gold mineralisation at Navachab Gold Mine occurs in:
- A steeply inclined to sub-vertical, shallow north north-east (NNE)-plunging, lens-shaped ore body confined to the Massif Central (MC) unit (interlayered calc-silicates and marbles) in the basal parts of marbles of the Okawayo Formation; and
- Sets of shallow north-west (NW) to north-east (NE) dipping mineralised sheeted quartzsulphide-gold veins that are developed both in the hanging wall (marbles of the Okawayo Formation (MDM) and biotite schist of the Oberwasser Formation (US), as well as in the footwall (biotite schist of the Spes Bona Formation (LS) of the MC unit.
The veins have recently comprised much of the ore mined at Navachab Gold Mine. According to Katharina Wulff, Nick M. Steven, Kim A.A. Hein, Judith A. Kinnaird, 2017, within “the veins, quartz, pyrrhotite and chalcopyrite are the most common minerals. Microscopically, minor amounts of clinopyroxene (often replaced by secondary actinolite and calcite) as well as sphalerite, ar ........