Cape Fold Belt

Map of the Western Cape, showing the main Cape Fold Mountain ranges. The Cape Fold belt is not part of the Great Escarpment shown in blue: the Roggeveld, Nuweveld and Sneeuberg "mountains". They are geographically and geologically distinct from the Cape Fold Mountains. The remaining named mountain ranges, to the south and southwest of the Escarpment, are all part of the Cape Fold Belt, which extends to the east as far as Port Elizabeth, about 150 km beyond the right-hand edge of the map.
A map of South Africa showing the central plateau edged by the Great Escarpment and its relationship to the Cape Fold Mountains in the south. The portion of the Great Escarpment shown in red is known as the Drakensberg.

The Cape Fold Belt is a fold and thrust belt of late Paleozoic age, which affected the sequence of sedimentary rock layers of the Cape Supergroup in the southwestern corner of South Africa.[1] It was originally continuous with the Ventana Mountains near Bahía Blanca in Argentina, the Pensacola Mountains (East Antarctica), the Ellsworth Mountains (West Antarctica) and the Hunter-Bowen orogeny in eastern Australia. The rocks involved are generally sandstones and shales, with the shales (Bokkeveld Group) persisting in the valley floors while the erosion resistant sandstones (of the Peninsula Formation) form the parallel ranges, the Cape Fold Mountains, which reach a maximum height of 2325 m at Seweweekspoortpiek ('Seven Weeks Defile Peak' in Afrikaans).

The Cape Fold Mountains form a series of parallel ranges that run along the south-western and southern coastlines of South Africa for 850 km from the Cederberg 200 km to the north of the Cape Peninsula, and then along the south coast as far as Port Elizabeth, 650 km to the east (see the two maps one above the other on the right).

  1. ^ Shone R.W. & Booth P.W.K. (2005). "The Cape Basin, South Africa: A review". Journal of African Earth Sciences. 43 (1–3): 196–210. doi:10.1016/j.jafrearsci.2005.07.013.