South African Scenery

Looking mainly at the years following the British victory in the second Boer War, from 1902 to 1930, Foster examines the influence of painting, writing, architecture, and photography on the construction of a shared, romanticized landscape subjectivity that was perceived as inseparable from “being South African”, and thus helped forge the imagined community of white South Africa.

This volume provides a textbook and reference work on the physical and biotic landscapes of Southern Africa. It examines the links between these environments and the ways in which they have been, are and will likely be subject to change. It covers the geomorphology, soils, vegetation and land use across a range of landscapes, including mountains, coasts, savannah, drylands and wetlands, and identifies the impacts of current and potential climate change and other factors on these environments. The geographical focus is on the region defined by Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland. Illustrated throughout in full colour, the book will serve as a reference volume for researchers and environmental professionals internationally, as well as a textbook for senior undergraduate and graduate-level students of geography, ecology and environmental studies in Southern Africa.

This book presents a beautifully illustrated overview of the most prominent landscapes of South Africa and the distinctive landforms associated with them. It describes the processes, origins and the environmental significance of those landscapes, including their relationships to human activity of the past and present. The sites described in this book include, amongst others, the Blyde River Canyon, Augrabies Falls, Kruger National Park, Kalahari desert landscapes, the Great Escarpment, Sterkfontein caves and karst system, Table Mountain, Cape winelands, coastal dunes, rocky coasts, Boer War battlefield sites, and Vredefort impact structure. Landscapes and Landforms of South Africa provides a new perspective on South Africa’s scenic landscapes by considering their diversity, long and short term histories, and importance for geoconservation and geotourism. This book will be relevant to those interested in the geology, physical geography and history of South Africa, climate change and landscape tourism.

Private wildlife conservation is booming business in South Africa! Nick Steele stood at the cradle of this development in the politically turbulent 1970s and 1980s, by stimulating farmers in Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal) to pool resources in order to restore wilderness landscapes, but at the same time improve their security situation in cooperative conservancy structures. His involvement in Operation Rhino in the 1960s and subsequent networks to save the rhino from extinction, brought him into controversial military (oriented) networks around the Western world. The author’s unique access to his private diaries paints a personal picture of this controversial conservationist.