page_title: Geography of South Africa
section_title: Topographical divisions
hierarchical_section_title: Geography of South Africa / Topographical divisions
caption_attribution_description: English: The Southern African Central Plateau surrounded by the Great Escarpment. The position of the Cape Fold Mountains in relationship to the Escarpment is indicated along the south coast.
context_page_description: South Africa occupies the southern tip of Africa, its coastline stretching more than 2,850 kilometres 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 Ocean. 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 most 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. It has the 23rd largest Exclusive Economic Zone of 1,535,538 km².
  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.
context_section_description: 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 Equator (i.e. into Angola in the west, and the Muchinga Escarpment in Zambia in the east.)
caption: The Southern African Central Plateau edged by the Great Escarpment.
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