South Africa's Geography

South Africa occupies the southern tip of Africa, its long coasline stretching more than 2500km from the desert border with Namibia on the Atlantic coas, southwards around the tip of Afrcia, then north to the border with subtropical Mozambique on the Indian Ocean.

Size and provinces

South Africa is a medium-sized country, with a total land area of slightly more than 1.2-million square kilometres, making it roughly the same size as Niger, Angola, Mali and Colombia.

It is one-eighth the size of the US, twice the size of France and over three times the size of Germany. South Africa measures some 1 600km from north to south, and roughly the same from east to west.

he country has nine provinces, which vary considerably in size. The smallest is tiny and crowded Gauteng, a highly urbanised region, and the largest the vast, arid and empty Northern Cape, which takes up almost a third of South Africa's total land area.

Cities

South Africa has three capitals: Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Pretoria. The Western Cape city of Cape Town, where the country's Parliament is found, is the legislative capital. In the Free State, Bloemfontein is the judicial capital, and home to the Supreme Court of Appeal. In Gauteng province, Pretoria, where the Union Buildings and a large proportion of the civil service are found, is the administrative capital, and the ultimate capital of the country.

The largest and most important city is Johannesburg, the economic heartland of the country. Other important centres include Durban and Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal, and Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape.

Climate and topography

Although the country is classified as semi-arid, it has considerable variation in climate as well as topography.

The great inland Karoo plateau, where rocky hills and mountains rise from sparsely populated scrubland, is very dry, and gets more so as it shades in the north-west towards the Kalahari desert. Extremely hot in summer, it can be icy in winter.

Habitat types: South Africa has seven major terrestrial biomes, or habitat types - broad ecological life zones with distinct environmental conditions and related sets of plant and animal life.