Geography of South Africa
occupies the southern tip of Africa, its coastline stretching more than from the desert border with Namibia on the Atlantic coast southwards around the tip of Africa and then northeast to the border with Mozambique on the Indian coast. The low-lying coastal zone is narrow for much of that distance, soon giving way to a mountainous escarpment that separates the coast from the high inland plateau. In some places, notably the province of KwaZulu-Natal in the east, a greater distance separates the coast from the escarpment. 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. It has the 23rd largest Exclusive Economic Zone of.
The South African central plateau contains only two major rivers: the Limpopo, and the Orange which runs with a variable flow across the central landscape from east to west, emptying into the Atlantic Ocean at the Namibian border.
The eastern and southern coastal regions are drained by numerous shorter rivers. There are very few coastal rivers along the arid west coast north of 31°30′S.
In such a dry country, dams and irrigation are extremely important: the largest dam is the Gariep on the Orange River.
Topographical divisions
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. This plateau is rimmed by the Great Escarpment which extends northwards to about 10° south of the EquatorGreat Escarpment
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. 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", in spite of being parts of an escarpment whose top is the central plateau, such as Groenberg Mountain. From the coastal plain the escarpment does, however, look like a range of mountains, hence the names.File:GiantsCastlePanoramaSmall.jpg|right|thumb|900px|Panorama of the Giant's Castle region of the Drakensberg, the highest section of the Great Escarpment. Here the Escarpment is capped by a 1,400 m layer of erosion-resistant lava, which once covered most of Southern Africa 182 million years ago. Only a small remnant of this lava layer remains on the plateau, covering only part of Lesotho, and accounting for the Great Escarpment's great height on the Lesotho/KwaZulu-Natal border.
The portion of the Great Escarpment that could be designated a "mountain" is where it forms the international border between KwaZulu-Natal and Lesotho. 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 which welled up and spread across most of Southern Africa when it was still part of Gondwana. 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. This gives this high region its very rugged, mountainous appearance.
Central plateau
The central plateau forms a largely flat, tilted surface which, as indicated above, is highest in the east, sloping gently downwards to the west. The downward slope to the south is less pronounced. 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, 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. North of the Witwatersrand, where the land starts to slope down towards the north, the drainage is into the Limpopo River and from there into the Indian Ocean.Coastal plain
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. In the west there are very few such rivers because of the aridity of the region.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. In the west they are separated from the coast by a pronounced coastal plain.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, 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. 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. The Little Karoo is famous for its ostrich farming, initially, in the late 1800s, for their feathers, but today includes ostrich leather and ostrich meat, which is very lean and particularly tasty.
The Cape Fold Mountains are separated from the Great Escarpment by an approximately 100–150 km wide plain known as the Lower Karoo at an altitude of about 600–800 m above sea level. Geologically and geographically the Cape Fold Mountains and the Great Escarpment are quite different and independent entities.
Coastline
South Africa's coastline is remarkably smooth, with very few natural harbours. The reason is that Southern Africa has been continuously uplifted for the past 180 million years, and especially so during the past 20 million years. The present coastline was therefore once part of the underwater continental shelf, which contains very few deep ravines or gorges. In contrast, a subsiding coastline, like Norway's, tends to become deeply indented where the sea has flooded old river gorges and glacial valleys.Regional divisions
Highveld
The Central Plateau is divided into several distinctly different regions, largely as a result of the rainfall distribution across South Africa: wet in the east and increasingly drier and more arid in the west. 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, 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. But there are also important coal mines on the Highveld which are associated with South Africa's major electricity generating power stations.The land is generally flat or gently undulating. Only a few rocky ridges protrude from this flatness: the Vredefort Dome, the Witwatersrand Ridge and the Magaliesberg just north of Pretoria, from where the Highveld gives way to the Bushveld to the north.
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. These lowlands, below about 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. 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. This southern limb of the Lowveld is bounded by South Africa's border with Mozambique to the east, and the north-eastern part of the Drakensberg to the west. This region is generally hotter and less intensely cultivated than the Highveld.The Lowveld used to be known as "fever country" because malaria, carried by mosquitoes, was endemic to almost the entire area. Before the middle of the 20th century, the Lowveld was also home to the tsetse fly, which transmits sleeping sickness to humans and nagana to animals, especially the horses of the travelers trying to reach the Highveld and Witwatersrand Gold Fields from Maputo.
The Lowveld is known for its high concentration of big game, including the larger animals, like African elephants, rhino, African buffalo, the big cats, 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. This wildlife is particularly concentrated in the Kruger National Park located in the eastern Lowveld areas of Mpumalanga and Limpopo Provinces, along almost the entire border with Mozambique. But many private game farms and game reserves can also be found elsewhere in the Lowveld.