Reivilo, North West

Reivilo is a town situated 100km southwest of Vryburg on the Ghaap Plateau in North West Province of South Africa. Lead and Zinc mining take place in the district.

The town was established in 1918 and named after Rev AJ Olivier ("Olivier" reversed is "Reivilo").

Reivilo is a traditional farming communinity. The main farming business is cattle, and this is dictated by the geology of the area, because there is not enough soil for agriculture. Bedrock comes right to surface, the bedrock being an ancient and hard dolomite, with extraordinary stromatolitic features, representing life forms more than 2 billion years old. There was a successful cheese factory in Reivilo for many years. In the very early 1980s Shell South Africa Pty Ltd (the oil company) developed a lead and zinc mine very near Reivilo called Pering. It operated successfully for about 18 years and then closed down. Shell mined about 18 million tonnes of ore, containing perhaps 750,000 tonnes of zinc and lead metal from the Pering Mine in that time. The mine is now closed. At the present time there is no mining taking place anywhere near Reivilo.