Capricorn splits this region’s subtropical and temperate halves
Southern Africa, Africa’s southernmost region, lacks one agreed border yet often includes Angola through South Africa and island states in UN, SADC, or physical-geography lists. The Tropic of Capricorn runs through its middle, dividing subtropical from temperate halves, while the Zambezi and Victoria Falls dominate the hydrology.
The narrowest definition names just five countries, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa, which also make up the Southern African Customs Union formed in 1969. Naturalists often use everything south of the Cunene and Zambezi rivers, a line that awkwardly slices Mozambique in two, while the development bloc SADC, founded in 1980, sometimes pulls in Congo, Tanzania and the Seychelles. Madagascar is frequently left out on cultural grounds because of its distinct language and heritage.
Mineral wealth sets the region apart. It holds the world's largest reserves of platinum-group metals, chromium, vanadium and cobalt, plus gold, uranium and diamonds. A belt of deposits runs from Angola's northwestern oilfields through the diamond country of Huambo and the Copperbelt, then south along Zimbabwe's Great Dyke into the Bushveld and the Witwatersrand. Yet inequality, crime and poverty persist, and Eswatini, Lesotho, Botswana, South Africa and Namibia have the highest HIV rates on Earth.
Altitude cools the Highveld, Lesotho and much of Zambia and Zimbabwe, while the low Zambezi and Limpopo valleys are hot and dry. Most of the region gets its rain from December to February, but the Western Cape, with its Mediterranean climate and fynbos, peaks from June to August. The Namib is the driest place, and projections suggest the region will become hotter and drier.
A 2019 study using 260 CT scans proposed that our species emerged 260,000 to 350,000 years back as groups in East and South Africa merged. Mapungubwe, between the Shashe and Limpopo from about 1075, was one of the earliest states, followed by the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, whose capital at Great Zimbabwe is the largest precolonial stone structure in the region. Later the Zulu Kingdom rose under Shaka, clashed with Boer settlers at Blood River in 1838, and fell in the Anglo-Zulu War.
Source: Southern Africa
