Geology of South Africa

The geology of the country is the base for a large mining sector that extracts gold, diamonds, iron and coal from world-class deposits.

[2] In Neoproterozoic times, much of South Africa stabilized into the large Kalahari Craton that came to form part of the supercontinent Rodinia.

[2] Since the Mesozoic the tectonics of South Africa have been shaped by an initial phase of rifting[4] and then by episodic epeirogenic movements.

[6] The uplift of these margins is tentatively related to far-field compressional stresses that has warped the region as a giant anticline-like lithosphere fold.

[5] Limited erosion means that many of the major relief features of South Africa have existed since the Late Cretaceous.

The western and southern extents of the Supergroup have been folded into a series of longitudinal mountain ranges, by the collision of the Falkland Plateau into what would later become South Africa.

The supergroup consists of a sequence of units, mostly of nonmarine origin, deposited between the Late Carboniferous and Early Jurassic, a period of about 120 million years.

Table Mountain
This map shows the outlines of the southern African nations of Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Kaapvaal Craton's outline is superimposed on the countries.
The magenta -colored area shows the present-day extent of the Kaapvaal Craton.
An approximate SW-NE geological cross section through South Africa, with the Cape Peninsula (with Table Mountain ) on the far left, and north-eastern KwaZulu-Natal on the right. Diagrammatic and only roughly to scale to scale. The difference in both composition and structure of the Cape Fold Mountains and the Central Plateau surrounded by the Great Escarpment , in particular the Drakensberg , can clearly be seen.
Marion Island