page_title: Geography of South Africa
section_title: Bushmanland
hierarchical_section_title: Geography of South Africa / Regional divisions / Bushmanland
caption_attribution_description: English: Typical Bushmanland landscape, Northern Cape Province, South Africa.
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: Bushmanland is an arid area inland from Namaqualand (see below). Its northern boundary is the Orange River beyond which lies Namibia. In the south it grades into the north-western part of the Great Karoo. To the west lies Griqualand West. It is probably the most inhospitable area in South Africa, because of its aridity, infertile soil and highly saline groundwater. Together with the Kalahari Desert to the north-east, its rainfall is the most highly variable (in percentage deviation from the annual average), and its temperature range the greatest (difference between the average temperature in January and in July) in South Africa. Its wildlife however, both fauna and flora, though sparse, is full of interest. Although the veld is too arid to bloom like that of the West Coast of Namaqualand, even when there is some spring rain, what does appear is highly unusual and often hauntingly beautiful.
  A highly productive base metal mine on the Aggeneys Farm close to the N14 highway between Uppington and Springbok exploits an ore rich in zinc, lead, copper, and silver since 1977. Close by, to the east, is Ghaamsberg which has very large zinc deposits, but the ore is low-grade and, therefore, at present, unprofitable to large scale mining.
  Vaalputs, a nuclear waste repository, has been sited between Bushmanland and the north-west of the Great Karoo, and acts as a de facto nature reserve.
caption: Typical Bushmanland landscape, emphasising its aridity and overall peneplain flatness. The hills in the background are formed by dolerite-like, erosion-resistant intrusions or dykes of unknown, but probably very ancient, age which have partially withstood the erosion of the rest of Bushmanland over the past 150 million ago.
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