Annexe 2 - The land and the geographical environment

Summary

This annexe is provided primarily for readers who are not familiar with South Africa. Its purpose is to provide a very brief resumé of the main geographical and environmental features of the country, with particular reference to those that influenced its economic history with respect to the settlement and migration of people, the pattern of farming, and the development of mining. Nature could scarcely have been more generous in endowing South Africa with minerals, or more niggardly in providing water for the land. It was only the good fortune of the mines that enabled the country to overcome the misfortunes of the farms.

The land area and the geological legacy

Modern South Africa is in large part a political rather than a geographical construct. The area of the Union from its formation in 1910 was approximately 472,000 square miles (302,000,000 acres). This is big by European standards, almost as large as the territories of Great Britain, France, and Germany combined, but small by comparison with the 3,000,000 square miles of Australia and the even larger area of Canada. With a population in 1911 of almost 6,000,000, South Africa had an overall density of less than thirteen persons a square mile, but this covered a wide range: from large, sparsely settled regions in the western half of the country with fewer than one person to the square mile to the more settled areas to the east with densities of over seventy-five to the square mile.