This is South Africa [antikvár]

South African Profile " he association of a people with the land they live in Is always difficult to understand. This is particularly so In countries where national Issues and the minutiae of local affairs create an infinite web of allegiances and affiliations. At this point in its history. South Africa is even nnore connplex than most as it totters rather uncertainly towards the new century. It would be a brave person, and probably a fairly stupid one, who would venture a tight definition and declare with confidence that This Is South Africa'. Even an introductory essay such as this will, inevitably, run a gauntlet of criticism for bias, omission, oversimplification and prejudice. For how can one tell the story of South Africa completely and to the satisfaction of all In the space of a few thousand words? Quite simply one cannot, and the text and captions for this book make no pretence at doing so. All that is offered Is a series of glimpses, some more personal, others more broadly based, that will give the casual reader, particularly the newcomer or tourist, a few pointers to this endlessly fascinating and, even with its warts well and truly exposed - as they are almost daily in the local and International media - very lovely land of endless opportunity and potential. The Shaping of the Land South Africa Is a very big country. Even Its subdivisions into provinces and so-called independent states are sizeable, although some, like the famed 'casino kingdom' of Bophuthatswana, are no more than disconnected islands scattered In the greater South African sea, the legacy of ill-conceived political experiment. The land, 1,2 million square kilometres In extent, sprawls from the Limpopo River In the north to the southern extremity of Cape Agulhas, where Africa peters out rather unimpressively in a jumble of low, windswept sand dunes and shallow reefs. South Africa's western shores are scoured by the cold waters of the Benguela Current driving up from the Antarctic, its eastern areas by the warm waters of the Agulhas Current sweeping down from its birthplace in the tropical Indian Ocean. Even though one would expect a fair variety of landscapes In a country as large as South Africa, it is difficult to comprehend just how much physical diversity there is. Reduced to simple terms, however, three major features determine the shape and the form of the land: a coastal plain that fringes the entire subcontinent; a vast inland plateau and, separating the two, an irregular chain of rugged mountains which, here and there, rather begrudglngly allows road and rail access between the coast and the interior. In the east, and forming a great, virtually continuous escarpment running down from the north-eastern Transvaal, across the northern limits of Natal and then on into the eastern Cape, Is the mighty Drakensberg range. In Natal, where the Ouathlamba - the Zulu name for the mountains (the word means 'barrier of spears') - soar to heights of more than 3 000 metres, this alpine wilderness is at its most spectacular. In winter thick snow can blanket the peaks, and often the lower slopes as well, briefly softening the rough face of Africa. But for most of the year the crags are bare and challenging, inviting legions of climbers and hikers. In the western and southern Cape the mountain ranges are no less dramatic, but were borne of very different forces. More than 500 million years ago, when the continents were wrenching themselves free of the single land mass known as Pangaea, the heaving and buckling earth threw up a range that would have dwarfed the Himalayas, and, although now a fraction of their former height, the legacy of the unimaginable forces that created them can be seen in the contorted rock strata of what are collectively