{"id":644291,"date":"2026-04-30T14:59:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T12:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=644291"},"modified":"2026-04-30T15:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T13:03:07","slug":"the-small-northern-cape-town-with-south-africas-best-salaries-and-a-rare-type-of-solar-power-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/energy\/644291-the-small-northern-cape-town-with-south-africas-best-salaries-and-a-rare-type-of-solar-power-plant.html","title":{"rendered":"The small Northern Cape town with South Africa’s best salaries and a rare type of solar power plant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Northern Cape town of Kathu might be far removed from the country’s major metros, but it falls under a municipality with the highest average income in the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Located about 200km along the N14 to the northeast of Upington, Kathu is a relatively young town in South Africa’s least populous province, which has several settlements dating back centuries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its formation began only in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as a result of iron ore mining in the Kalahari Desert, which hosts one of the five largest open-cast mines in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kathu, meaning “town under the trees,” emerged as the settlement’s name in the early 1990s, a reference to its abundance of Camel Thorn trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An engineer coined the name as part of a tourism marketing campaign. It is also believed to have been used for a porridge that its local population brewed from powder found in Camel Thorn pods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kathu’s Camel Thorn forest is one of only two in the world, the other being between Mariental and Rehoboth in Namibia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kathu’s economy and population have grown substantially, primarily due to activity at the Sishen mine operated by Anglo American’s Kumba Iron Ore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mine is a key global supplier of high-grade iron ore, essential in the production of low-emission steel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A mining operation of this scale required a substantial workforce of skilled engineers, technicians, and experienced managers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Residents in the town who spoke to Mail & Guardian<\/a> in 2019 said many mining bosses bought large swathes of property and built upmarket homes in the town. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the South African Revenue Service (Sars), the average taxable income among residents of its governing Gamagara Local Municipality was R508,901 per year, or R42,408 a month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is higher than the average taxable income in the country’s economic hubs of Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as smaller, wealthy towns like Stellenbosch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Statistics South Africa, Kathu had a population of 11,510 people in 2011. While more recent official population counts are considered unreliable, it is expected to grow to 83,000 by 2050. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Major renewable power project<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Anglo American’s Sishen Iron Ore mine Complex<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Among the recent substantial developments supporting the town’s growth is the Kathu Solar Park, one of only six concentrated solar power (CSP) plants in South Africa and 150 worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Located about 10km north of Kathu, the facility entered commercial operation in 2019, three years after construction began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most solar power plants in the world use photovoltaic (PV) panels to convert sunlight into electrical current.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CSPs capture the sun’s heat and transfer it to a heat exchanger, which boils water and creates steam that turns a turbine to produce power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One advantage of CSPs over PV plants is that they typically feature an integrated energy storage system, which can supply electricity when the sun is not shining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kathu CSP uses parabolic trough technology to capture heat from the sun, which is transferred to molten salt for both immediate output and long-term energy storage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These plants feature parallel rows of curved reflectors or mirrors, aligned to track the sun as it moves from east to west.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mirrors concentrate heat onto a central receiver pipe containing a heat-preserving fluid, which travels through a network of pipes to the steam generator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kathu Solar Park can generate up to 100MW of power and has 4.5 hours of thermal energy storage capacity, allowing it to continue supplying power when the sun is down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are four other parabolic trough CSPs in South Africa: the Kaxu and Xina Solar One plants near Pofadder, Ilanga CSP near Upington, and Bokpoort near Groblershoop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other two CSPs \u2014 Redstone and Khi Solar One \u2014 have mirrors arranged in a circle that direct heat to central towers that hold the transfer liquid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kathu<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Kathu Solar Park<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to data from the South African Revenue Service, residents of Kathu’s governing municipality had the highest average salary in the country in 2025. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":644369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27995],"tags":[75352,104910,104903,28781,104909,41714,35248,4922],"class_list":["post-644291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-concentrated-solar-power-csp","tag-gamagara-local-municipality","tag-kathu","tag-kathu-solar-park","tag-kumba-iron-ore","tag-mining","tag-northern-cape","tag-solar-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644291"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644291"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":644456,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644291\/revisions\/644456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}