Located about 90 kilometres south of Windhoek and 45 kilometres southwest of Rehoboth, the Klein Aub Copper Mine was one of central Namibia’s most productive small-scale underground copper operations of the twentieth century.
The mine lies within the Rehoboth Basement Inlier, a sequence of folded metamorphic rocks forming the southern continuation of the Matchless Amphibolite Belt.
The deposit was first documented in 1920 by prospectors from the South West Africa Company, following reports of green copper-stained rocks by local Nama farmers who grazed livestock on the surrounding farms.
Archival correspondence from the early 1920s, preserved in the National Archives of Namibia, attributes the first physical discovery to H. F. Kohrs, a prospector contracted by the company, who collected the initial samples near an outcrop known locally as “Klein Aub se Koppie.”
Early geological mapping by W. F. Söhnge and the Geological Survey of South West Africa in the 1930s identified several mineralised veins and gossans on Farm Klein Aub.
These findings were later confirmed by government geologist G. L. Reeves, who noted the presence of malachite and azurite at the surface.
Systematic underground exploration began in 1958, when the South West Africa Company Ltd, and later South West Minerals (Pty) Ltd, sank the first production shaft to a depth of 180 metres.
The operation was developed as a conventional underground copper mine with two primary levels and a ventilation incline.
By 1966, the mine was producing high-grade copper-silver ore averaging between 2% and 3% copper and up to 60 grams per tonne of silver. Ore was trucked to Tsumeb for smelting by Tsumeb Corporation Ltd (TCL), which also supplied technical services and geological supervision.
Between 1966 and 1987, the mine produced approximately 55,000 tonnes of contained copper from over 2 million tonnes of ore, according to the Geological Survey of Namibia production records (1989).
The mineralisation at Klein Aub is stratabound, hosted in dolomitic marble and quartzite of the Rehoboth Metamorphic Complex, with ore consisting mainly of chalcopyrite, bornite, and chalcocite. The deposit occurs along a faulted contact zone trending northeast–southwest and dipping steeply northwest. Minor cobalt and gold have also been reported in association with the sulphides.
The mine was closed in 1987, following depletion of ore reserves and a sharp fall in copper prices to below US$1,000 per tonne. TCL’s withdrawal from regional smelting also contributed to the closure. After abandonment, shafts were sealed and the site was left under care and maintenance.
In the early 2000s, Namibian Copper Mines (Pty) Ltd undertook site rehabilitation, constructed a small processing plant for metallurgical testing, and sampled tailings for copper reprocessing.
Since 2018, small Namibian exploration firms — including Schneider Resources (Pty) Ltd and Maroelaboom Mining (Pty) Ltd — have held exclusive prospecting licences (EPLs) over the Klein Aub area, re-evaluating remnant ore zones, waste dumps, and tailings for low-cost recovery.
As of 2025, the Klein Aub Copper Mine remains inactive, but new airborne magnetic surveys and historical drill re-analysis confirm several unmined parallel lodes extending along strike to the northeast.
The site still retains its headframe foundations and waste-rock piles as visible reminders of its industrial past.
Klein Aub stands as the southernmost link in Namibia’s inland copper belt — a forgotten chapter connecting the early Nama prospectors and German-era traders to the post-war mining boom that helped establish Windhoek’s central highlands as one of southern Africa’s enduring copper provinces
