South Africa Geography & Climate

South Africa's structure is a raised interior plateau — the Highveld, mostly above 1,500 metres — separated from a narrow coastal belt by the Great Escarpment, which reaches its highest and most dramatic in the Drakensberg at over 3,400 metres.

That altitude is why Johannesburg has a temperate climate at the latitude of Brisbane, and why the interior is cold at night year-round.

The Western Cape has a Mediterranean climate found nowhere else in sub-Saharan Africa, and with it the fynbos — a floral kingdom of some 9,000 species, most found nowhere else, and the smallest and most diverse of the world's six.

The cold Benguela current runs up the Atlantic side and the warm Agulhas down the Indian, which is why Cape Town's Atlantic beaches are bracing and Durban's are warm.

Kruger, in the northeast lowveld, covers nearly 20,000 square kilometres — about the size of Wales.

Despite the latitude, most of South Africa is temperate rather than tropical, because the interior sits high. Johannesburg averages a comfortable 26°C in summer and has cold, dry, sunny winters with night frost.

The Western Cape is Mediterranean and runs on the opposite cycle to the rest of the country: winter rainfall, May to August, and dry summers. Everywhere else has summer rain, often as dramatic afternoon thunderstorms on the Highveld.

The lowveld around Kruger is subtropical: hot wet summers and warm dry winters, which is what makes winter the game-viewing season.

The Cape summer southeaster — locally the Cape Doctor — blows hard enough to close the Table Mountain cableway for days at a time.