South Africa, situated at the southern tip of the African continent, boasts a coastline stretching over 2,850 kilometers (1,770 miles). This extensive coastline spans from the Namibian border on the Atlantic (western) coast, southward around the continent's tip, and northeast to the Mozambique border on the Indian (eastern) coast.
Southern Africa, the southernmost region of the African continent, comprises the countries of Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The island nation of Madagascar is excluded because of its distinct language and cultural heritage.
Although much of the country is classified as semi-arid, it has considerable variation in climate as well as topography. The total land area is 1,220,813 km2 (471,359 sq mi).
The region is generally drained eastward toward the Indian Ocean, a pattern exemplified by the largest rivers, the Zambezi and Limpopo. The only major river flowing into the Atlantic Ocean is the Orange, which drains parts of South Africa, Lesotho, and Namibia.
Southern African climates are seasonal, ranging from arid to semiarid and from temperate to tropical. The seasonality is an important control on plant growth and a regulator of river flows. Droughts are common in much of the region.
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This article covers the history of the region from the prehistoric period to the end of the colonial period in the 20th century. Coverage of the region’s physical and human geography can be found in the article Africa. For discussion of the physical and human geography of individual countries in the region and of their postcolonial history, see Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Topography of South Africa
Major Geographical Regions
Like much of the African continent south of the Sahara, South Africa's landscape is dominated by a high Central Plateau surrounded by coastal lowlands.The interior of Southern Africa consists of a series of undulating plateaus that cover most of South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana and extend into central Angola. Contiguous with this are uplands in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Coastal mountains and escarpments, flanking the high ground, are found in northern Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Angola, and along the Mozambique-Zimbabwe border. Coastal plains abut the Indian Ocean in Mozambique and the Atlantic in Angola and Namibia.
Important geographical regions in South Africa. The thick line traces the course of the Great Escarpment which edges the central plateau. The eastern portion of this line, coloured red, is known as the Drakensberg. The Escarpment rises to its highest point, at over 3,000 m, where the Drakensberg forms the border between KwaZulu-Natal and Lesotho.
None of the regions indicated on the map have sharp well-defined borders, except where the Escarpment, or a range of mountains forms a clear dividing line between two regions.
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Map of South Africa showing major geographical regions
The Great Escarpment
This plateau is rimmed by the Great Escarpment which extends northwards to about 10° south of the Equator (i.e. In South Africa the plateau is at its highest in the east where its edge varies in altitude between 2,000 m and 3,300 m.
Forming the boundary between these two areas is the Great Escarpment, the most prominent and continuous relief feature of the country.
This edge of the plateau, as the land drops sharply to the coastal plain, forms a very high, steep escarpment known as the Drakensberg Mountains.
The southern and western extents of the escarpment are not so high as Drakensberg, but also are known by a wide variety of local names, all termed "mountains" (or "berge" in Afrikaans), in spite of being parts of an escarpment whose top is the central plateau, such as Groenberg Mountain.
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The portion of the Great Escarpment that could be designated a "mountain" is where it forms the international border between KwaZulu-Natal and Lesotho.
Panorama of the Giant's Castle region of the Drakensberg, the highest section of the Great Escarpment.
The Central Plateau
Inland from the escarpment lies the interior plateau, which is the southern continuation of the great African plateau stretching north to the Sahara Desert. The plateau is characterised by wide plains with an average height of 1 200 m above sea level.
The central plateau (apart from the Lesotho Highlands) forms a largely flat, tilted surface which, as indicated above, is highest in the east, sloping gently downwards to the west (at about 1,000 m above sea level). The downward slope to the south is less pronounced (the southern and south-western edges of the plateau are at about 1600 to 1900 m above sea level).
The plateau also slopes downwards, northwards from about the 25° 30' S line of latitude, into a 150‑million-year-old failed rift valley which cuts into the central plateau and locally obliterates the Great Escarpment,[3][4] forming what is today known as the Limpopo Lowveld at less than 500 m above sea level.
The rivers which drain the plateau therefore run west, ultimately, via the Orange River, into the Atlantic Ocean.
The Lesotho Highlands
The Lesotho Highlands form a localized high spot on the Central Plateau. This is because it is capped by a 1,400 m thick layer of erosion resistant lava[2] which welled up and spread across most of Southern Africa when it was still part of Gondwana.[3] Most of this lava has eroded away together with a layer of Karoo sedimentary rocks several kilometres thick on top of which the lava was poured out 182 million years ago.
Only a small patch of this lava remains and covers much of Lesotho. It has been deeply eroded by the tributaries of the Orange River which drain these highlands towards the south-west (i.e. away from the Escarpment).
Coastal Plain
Between the Great Escarpment and the coast lies an area which varies in width from 80 km to 240 km in the east and south, and 60 km to 80 km in the west.
The low-lying coastal zone is narrow for much of that distance, soon giving way to a mountainous escarpment (Great Escarpment) that separates the coast from the high inland plateau.
The coastal plain, which varies in width from about 60 km in the north-west to over 250 km in the north-east, generally slopes gently downwards from the foot of the escarpment to the coast.
Numerous relatively small rivers drain the area, being more numerous in the KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Midlands regions, where they arise on the well watered slopes of the high escarpment, than elsewhere.
Cape Fold Mountains
In the south and south-west the coastal plain contains a series of mountain ranges that run parallel to the coastline. These are the Cape Fold Mountains, whose rocks were laid down 510 - 350 million years ago, and were then crumpled into a series of parallel folds by the collision of the Falkland Plateau into the south of what was to become Africa when it was part of Gondwana.
These series of parallel folds are in the form of an "L", with the western section running north-south, and the eastern section running east-west, for a total length of about 800 km. The right angle of the "L" occurs in the south-western corner of the country, just inland from the Cape Peninsula and Cape Town.
These folds lie along the coastline in the south and are not much more than 100 km wide in total along most of their length.
The floors of the long valleys between the parallel mountains ranges consist of fertile soils composed of weathered mudstones belonging to the Bokkeveld Group of the Cape Supergroup,[3] as opposed to the nutrient-poor, sandy soils on the quartzitic sandstone mountains, on either side of the valleys.
However, the rainfall is, in general, low, bordering on the semiarid (or frankly semiarid in, for instance, the Little Karoo). Agriculture, which includes viniculture and fruit-growing, therefore depends on irrigation from rivers with sources in the mountains, which are frequently covered in snow during winter.
In the southwest, running parallel to the coastline, the mountains of the Cape Fold Belt form a series of ranges that run in the form of an "L" by a series running north-south, and another set running east-west, with the junction between the two at the Cape Peninsula.
The north-south ranges, paralleling the Atlantic coastline, include the Cederberg and the Groot Winterhoek and have peaks close to 2,000 metres high. The east-west ranges, paralleling the southern coastline, include the Swartberg and the Langeberg with peaks exceeding 2,200 metres.
The mountains of the Cape Fold Belt form the southern and western boundaries of the Great Karoo.
Karoo Regions
The Cape Fold Mountains are separated from the Great Escarpment by an approximately 100-150 km wide plain known as the Lower Karoo (not to be confused with the "Little Karoo") at an altitude of about 600-800 m above sea level.
The western section of South Africa on the inland side of the Cape Fold Mountains is dominated by the Great Karoo, a semi-desert region that is divided by the Great Escarpment into the Upper Karoo (at an elevation of 1,100-1,600 m) and the Lower Karoo (at an elevation of 600-800 m).
The Little Karoo is separated from the Great Karoo by the Swartberg mountain range. It lies in a 290 km long, narrow (40-60 km wide) valley in of the Cape Fold Mountains, with the Swartberg range to the north and the Langeberg-Outeniqua range to the south. It is as arid as the Great Karoo, except along the foothills of the Swartberg, which are well-watered by streams that cascade down the mountains.
Regional Variations
The Central Plateau is divided into several distinctly different regions (though with very vague boundaries), largely as a result of the rainfall distribution across South Africa: wet in the east and increasingly drier and more arid in the west.
Highveld
The wettest and most fertile portion of the Central Plate is the Highveld, which occupies the central eastern portion of the Plateau. It is generally between 1,500 - 2,100 m above sea level, highest on the edge of the Escarpment to the east (the Mpumalanga Drakensberg), and sloping downwards to the south and west. Its southern boundary is often taken to be the Orange River, from where the continuation of the plateau is known as the Great Karoo, except for a small strip just south of Lesotho which is often included in the Highveld.
To the west the Highveld fades into the dry savannah of Griqualand West, beyond which lies the Kalahari desert. This boundary is very vague.
The Highveld therefore encompasses the entire Free State, and an adjoining strip of the Provinces to the north of it. It receives between 400 and 1200 mm of rain annually, and is largely a flat grassland plain. Much of the area is devoted to commercial farming, but it also contains South Africa's largest conurbation in Gauteng Province, the centre of the gold mining industry. The land is generally flat or gently undulating.
Highveld in winter in Gauteng Province north of Johannesburg
Lowveld
The South African portion of the coastal strip between the Limpopo and Mpumalanga Drakensberg and the ocean, together with the Limpopo River valley, is called the Lowveld.[5] These lowlands, below about 500 m (1,640 ft) altitude, form South Africa's northern border with Botswana and Zimbabwe, where a 180‑million-year-old failed rift valley cuts into Southern Africa's central plateau and locally obliterates the Great Escarpment.
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The Limpopo and Save rivers run from the central African highlands via the Lowveld into the Indian Ocean to the east.
The Limpopo Lowveld extends southwards, east of the Drakensberg escarpment through Mpumalanga Province and ultimately into eastern Eswatini.
The Lowveld used to be known as "fever country" because malaria, carried by mosquitoes, was endemic to almost the entire area.
The Lowveld is known for its high concentration of big game, including the larger animals, like African elephants, rhino, African buffalo, the big cats (lions, leopards, and cheetahs), the plains zebra, and a wide variety of antelope, while the slow-flowing streams and wetlands of the Lowveld are a haven for the hippos and crocodiles. The bird life is also astoundingly abundant and varied.
Map of the Bushveld biome in northeastern South Africa
Bushveld
The Lowveld partly overlaps with a dry savanna ecoregion known as the Bushveld, a basin characterized by open grasslands with scattered trees and bushes. Elevation varies between 600 metres and about 900 metres above sea level.
The Bushveld is one of the largest and best known layered igneous mineral complexes in the world. The northern edge of the Bushveld, where the plains rise to a series of high plateaus and low mountain ranges, form the southern edge of the Lowveld and the Limpopo River Valley in Northern Province. These mountains include the Waterberg, and the Soutpansberg Range.
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