Southern Africa and the Highveld

Much of Southern Africa consists of a broad interior plateau, bounded on nearly every side by the Great Escarpment, a dramatic rim where the land drops steeply toward the coastal lowlands. In South Africa, this plateau is conventionally divided by elevation into the Highveld, the interior grassland tableland at roughly 1,200 to 1,800 meters that includes Johannesburg, at about 1,753 meters one of the highest large cities in the world; the Middleveld, at intermediate elevations; and the Lowveld, the lower-lying savanna in the country's northeast that includes Kruger National Park. Johannesburg's location is no accident: it grew directly out of the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand reef in 1886, one of the richest gold deposits ever found, which has historically produced roughly 40 percent of all gold ever mined and turned a stretch of open highveld grassland into South Africa's largest metropolitan area within a few decades.