This southeastern part of the Republic of South Africa(1) comprises about 170 thousands square kilometers. An escarpment separates most of the province from a part of the nation's interior plateau. That smaller piece of this area drops down to the Orange(2) River, which marks the north center boundary. The Orange's most notable local tributary is the Kraal.
The escarpment's peaks reach just above 3,000 meters on the Lesotho border in the Drakensberg mountains. A spur of that chain, the Witberge, separates the Orange and Kraal valleys. Other ranges are the Stormberge, the Bamboesberg and the eastern end of the Sneeubergs, none of which reach 3,000 meters.
The fall from the escarpment to the coast is by no means regular. There are other ranges that set off river valleys--narrow ones like that northeast of the Winterberge, high ones like the one surrounded by the escarpment, the Winterberge and the Tandjesberg, and broad, low ones like the Great Karoo, whose eastern end is within the province. The Great Karoo is bounded south by the eastern Kougaberge and other ranges. South of them are the eastern end of the Outeniekwaberge.
The most important river systems other than the Orange are, from west to east, the Gamtoos, the Sandags, the Groot-Vis(3), the Groot(4)-Kei and the Umzimvubu.
Six and a half million people live here (2004). More than eight in ten of them speak Xhosa(5), and less than one in ten, Afrikaans. No other group is as much as one in 20. Most are Protestant Christians, often adhering to churches, like African Zionist ones, that encourage syncretism with pre-Christian ways. The older ways, still practiced exclusively by a minority, center on the importance of ancestral spirits, on diviners (sangoma), on evil witches and on male circumcision at puberty.
There is only one city with over a million residents: Port Elizabeth.
Speakers of Khoe preceded the Bantu speakers and left a profound influence on Xhosa, starting in the 18th century when the groups merged their social structues. The Bantu speakers arrived by the 9th century, when ancestors to the Xhosa, speakers of languages in the Nguni group, are apparent.
Afrikaans evolved from Dutch and other local and foreign languages as the descendents of the Dutch spread into this region starting in the 18th century.
Christianity arrived with the Europeans, and has adopted locally since.
northeast
southeast and south
west and northwest
north
(1) Afrika in Afrikaans.
(2) Oranje in Afrikaans.
(3) Great Fish in English.
(4) 'Groot' is 'Great' in English.
(5) Also called Isixhosa.