A History of Swaziland: Natural Resources

The biggest natural resources for Swaziland are asbestos, coal, clay, cassiterite, hydropower, forests, some gold and diamond, quarry stone, talc.

Mining has been a part of Swaziland’s history since people first settled the area. Swaziland is home to the oldest know mine site, the Lion Cavern, located at the Ngwenya Iron Mine northwest of Mbabane. It is shown that the mine was used to collect hematite, specularite ochres for cosmetic and ritual use. The mine late became an Iron mine, but was shut down in 1977. (1)


Ngwenya Mine and Lion cavern, the oldest know mine in the world. (http://www.thekingdomofswaziland.com/pages/attractions/the_attraction.asp?AttractionsID=10)

Most of the mines in Swaziland have declined in production or shut down. Asbestos mines, coal mines, and the few diamond mines have all closed down.

Asbestos mining was once the dominant mining revenue, was located at the Bulembu Mine. (2) The Bulembu Mine, originally named Havelock Mine, extracted and sold white asbestos between 1939 and 2001.(3)

Diamond mining took place from one kimberlite pipe, a volcanic rock, at Dvokolwako, operated by both Swaziland and South Africa, and produced about 70,000 carats worth of diamonds by the shutdown in 1996. (4)

Quarry stone, brick clay, anthracite coal, pyrophyllite (talc), sand and gravel are still being mined today, as well as small scale gold mining, which is unreported. Forest resources are one of the largest resources in use in Swaziland, which is due in part to the 1,290,000 acres of forests. (5) Most wood production goes to the Usutu pulp mill, which exports unbleached wood pulp. (6)

Swaziland’s biggest external trade is with South Africa, using mostly land routes, due to the fact that Swaziland is almost entirely surrounded by South Africa. Swaziland also trades with Europe, North America, and the Far East using the ports of Maputo in Mozambique and Durban in South Africa (7). These ports are accessed by railways and roadways (8).

However, problems have occurred with this trade; due to geographic location, poor infrastructure in Swaziland, high cost from inefficiencies at the border crossing, administrative delays, and political instability of the neighboring countries (9)