The Soutpansberg (formerly Zoutpansberg), meaning "Salt Pan Mountain" in

Afrikaans Afrikaans is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and also Argentina where there is a group in Sarmiento, Chubut, Sarmiento that speaks the Pat ...

, is a range of mountains in far northern

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. It is located in Vhembe District,

Limpopo Limpopo () is the northernmost Provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa. It is named after the Limpopo River, which forms the province's western and northern borders. The term Limpopo is derived from Rivombo (Livombo/Lebombo), a ...

. It is named for the salt pan (, or "place of salt") located at its western end. The mountain range reaches the opposite extremity in the Matikwa Nature Reserve, some due east. The range as a whole had no

Venda Venda ( ), officially the Republic of Venda (; ), was a Bantustan in northern South Africa. It was fairly close to the South African border with Zimbabwe to the north, while, to the south and east, it shared a long border with another black hom ...

name, as it was instead known by its sub-ranges which include Dzanani, Songozwi and others. The Soutpansberg forms part of the 'Vhembe Biosphere Reserve', which was designated as a

biosphere reserve A nature reserve (also known as a wildlife refuge, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserve or bioreserve, natural or nature preserve, or nature conservation area) is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, funga, or features of geologic ...

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...

in 2009. The latter reserve also includes the Blouberg Range,

Kruger National Park Kruger National Park () is a national park in South Africa covering an area of in the provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga in the country's northeast. It extends from north to south and from east to west. The administrative headquarters are i ...

and the Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape.

Geography

The mountain is intersected by two defiles, the Waterpoort in the west, containing the Sand River (Polokwane) and a railway line, and Wyllie's Poort, which allows the N1 road traffic to pass from Louis Trichardt to

Musina Musina (), also known as Messina, is the northernmost town in the Limpopo province of South Africa. It is located near the confluence of the Limpopo River with the Sand River and the border to Zimbabwe with a population of between 20,000 and 4 ...

. Lajuma is the highest peak at . The Nzhelele River and its tributary the Mutamba, the

Nwanedi River The Nwanedi River is a watercourse in Limpopo Province, South Africa. It is a tributary of the Limpopo River flowing east of the Nzhelele, joining the right bank of the Limpopo 58 km east of Musina at the South Africa/Zimbabwe border. Cours ...

and its tributary the Luphephe River, as well as the Levubu River and its main tributaries, the Mutshindudi and Mutale Rivers, and the Letaba River rise in the slopes of the Soutpansberg Mountains. The Brak River, a tributary of the Sand River, flows diagonally at the western end of the Soutpansberg, separating it from the Blouberg further west.

History

First Europeans

The first white person to reach, and name, the mountain was Coenraad de Buys, a colonist who fled from Graaff Reinet after a failed rebellion in 1795. He settled near the mountain in 1820 and was the patriarch of a half-caste clan, the "Buysvolk" or Buys People, who are still to be found at Buysdorp. De Buys was followed by

voortrekker The Great Trek (, ) was a northward migration of Dutch-speaking settlers who travelled by wagon trains from the Cape Colony into the interior of modern South Africa from 1836 onwards, seeking to live beyond the Cape's British colonial adminis ...

Louis Tregardt who sojourned at the salt pan from May to August 1836. In November 1836 Tregardt moved camp to the vicinity of the later Schoemansdal and Louis Trichardt town, where he stayed until June 1837. From June to August 1837 Tregardt's party camped at the Doorn River, on the current Doorn River farm, whereafter they departed for good to find a trading route to the sea.

Early settlement

Eleven years later, in 1848, a settlement named Zoutpansbergdorp was established at the site of an earlier Tregardt camp. It was founded by Jan Valentyn Botha, who led a faction of

Andries Potgieter Andries Hendrik Potgieter, known as Hendrik Potgieter (19 December 1792 – 16 December 1852) was a Voortrekker leader. He served as the first head of state of Potchefstroom from 1840 and 1845 and also as the first head of state of Zoutpansbe ...

's trek. Potgieter died at Zoutpansbergdorp in 1852, and his son shortly afterwards. In 1855 the town's de facto leader was

Stephanus Schoeman Stephanus Schoeman (14 March 1810 – 19 June 1890) was President of the South African Republic from 6 December 1860 until 17 April 1862. His red hair, fiery temperament and vehement disputes with other Boer leaders earned him th ...

who named the growing, though disorderly reed-hut settlement Schoemansdal, after himself. Augmented by renegades, the town was a successful ivory trading centre by 1855, when its population numbered 200.

hunters supplied the Voortrekkers with ivory, and were in return supplied with fire arms. Relations between the Voortrekkers and Venda soured due to taxation, cattle rustling and lax control over the supply of fire arms. Total discord broke out in 1866, when the voortrekkers intervened in a Venda succession dispute, and one claimant, Makhado, attacked an outlying voortrekker settlement. Despite the arrival of a relief commando, the Venda's mountain strongholds could not be taken. The voortrekkers abandoned the town on 15 July 1867 and established

Pietersburg Polokwane (, meaning "Sanctuary" in Northern SothoPolokwane - The Heart of the Limpopo Provin ...

. An open-air museum was established to recreate the modest settlement.

First town

In October 1898 the

Boer Boers ( ; ; ) are the descendants of the proto Afrikaans-speaking Free Burghers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. From 1652 to 1795, the Dutch East India Company controlled the Dutch ...

e returned to regain control over the territory. General

Piet Joubert Petrus Jacobus Joubert (20 January 1831 – 28 March 1900), better known as Piet Joubert (''Slim Piet'', Smart Pete), was a South African politician who served as the commandant–general of the South African Republic from 1880 to 1900. He als ...

's commando occupied a strategic position over the Doorn River in preparation. In November, Mphefu's kraal suffered a three-pronged attack and his royal village was torched. Mphefu's clan fled across the

Limpopo River The Limpopo River () rises in South Africa and flows generally eastward through Mozambique to the Indian Ocean. The term Limpopo is derived from Rivombo (Livombo/Lebombo), a group of Tsonga settlers led by Hosi Rivombo who settled in the mou ...

to Zimbabwe. The farms Rietvlei and Bergvliet were set aside in 1898 for a new town, and Trichardtsdorp was proclaimed the next year, named in honour of Louis Tregardt. Today the town commemorates his full name, Louis Trichardt.

Ecology

Plant diversity

Approximately 2,500 to 3,000 vascular plant taxa, comprising 1,066 genera and 240 families are known to occur in the mountain. A species list from plots done at the Mutshidudi catchment area revealed 109 plant families, 397 genera and 619 species. 24 plant species are endemic to the mountain, and an additional 33 to the Vhembe Biosphere Reserve. 594 species of tree are native to the mountain or its direct vicinity. The Soutpansberg's immense floristic diversity can be attributed to several distinct floristic elements acting on it, namely Tropical, Moçambique coastal,

Lowveld Veld ( or , Afrikaans and Dutch: ''veld'', field), also spelled veldt, is a type of wide-open, rural landscape in Southern Africa. Particularly, it is a flat area covered in grass or low scrub, especially in the countries of South Africa, ...

Afromontane The Afromontane regions are subregions of the Afrotropical realm, one of the Earth's eight biogeographic realms, covering the plant and animal species found in the mountains of Africa and the southern Arabian Peninsula. The Afromontane regions o ...

Bushveld The Bushveld (from Afrikaans: ''bosveld'', Afrikaans: ''bos'' 'bush' and ) is a Tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands, sub-tropical woodland ecoregion of Southern Africa. The ecoregion straddles the Tropic of Capricorn ...

, Waterberg, Kalahari and Limpopo Valley. Approximately 10% of Soutpansberg plants can be considered succulent, and 32% of the endemic flora can be regarded as succulents. Of the mountain's endemic flora, the

Asclepiadaceae The Asclepiadoideae are a subfamily of plants in the family Apocynaceae. Formerly, it was treated as a separate family under the name Asclepiadaceae, e.g. by APG II, and known as the milkweed family. They form a group of perennial herbs, twinin ...

with 5 genera and 6 species displays a high generic diversity. ''

Aloe ''Aloe'' (; also written ''Aloë'') is a genus containing over 650 species of flowering plant, flowering succulent plant, succulent plants.WFO (2022): Aloe L. Published on the Internet;http://www.worldfloraonline.org/taxon/wfo-4000001341. Acc ...

'' presents the highest species diversity among native genera with 5 endemic species, and the monotypic '' Zoutpansbergia'' is the only endemic genus. The floral endemics include '' Encephalartos hirsutus'', '' Duvalia procumbens'', '' Euphorbia rowlandii'', '' E. aeruginosa'', '' E. zoutpansbergensis'', '' Ceratotheca saxicola'', '' Stapelia clavicorona'', '' Tylophora coddii'', '' Huernia nouhuysii'', '' Aloe angelica'', '' A. petrophila'', '' A. soutpansbergensis'', '' A. vossii'', '' Combretum vendae'', '' Blepharis spinipes'', '' Mystacidium braybonae'', '' Justicia montis-salinarum'', ''

Khadia borealis ''Khadia'' is a genus of plants in the family Aizoaceae. Some species under this genus include: * ''Khadia acutipetala'' * ''Khadia alticola'' * ''Khadia beswickii'' (L.Bolus) N.E.Br. * ''Khadia borealis'' * ''Khadia carolinensis'' * ''Khadia m ...

'', '' Orbeanthus conjunctus'', '' Streptocarpus parviflorus'' subsp. ''soutpansbergensis'', '' Searsia magalismontana'' subsp. ''coddii'', '' Vangueria soutpansbergensis'' and '' Pavetta tschikonderi''. The tropical floristic element, which reaches its southern distribution within the Soutpansberg, accounts for the species '' Brackenridgea zanguebarica'', '' Millettia stuhlmannii'', '' Oxytenanthera abyssinica'', '' Trilepisium madagascariense'', '' Brachystegia utilis''-'' torrei'' (assimilated into a dominant '' B. spiciformis'' genome) and '' Syzygium masukuense''. These species are not associated with the central Zimbabwean Miombo floristic element, but rather with the

Eastern Highlands :''"Eastern Highlands" also refers to Eastern Highlands Province in Papua New Guinea, and part of the Great Dividing Range, Australia.'' The Eastern Highlands, also known as the Manica Highlands, is a mountain range on the border of Zimbabwe ...

floristic element, and particularly its foothills.

Reptile diversity

A total of at least 116 reptile species have been recorded in the Soutpansberg. This biodiversity is remarkably high for such a small area and makes up 36% of the total number of reptile species that have been recorded in South Africa. This is roughly the same number of species (119) that occur in the

. The diversity is high compared to biodiversity hotspots of the world and the species diversity per unit area is higher than that of most of these hotspots. The Soutpansberg rock lizard, Soutpansberg worm lizard, Soutpansberg dwarf gecko and the Soutpansberg flat lizard are all endemic and named after this range.

Invertebrates

The Soutpansberg is known for a high level of

endemism Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

of its

invertebrate Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate s ...

fauna.

Conservation

In today’s world, natural areas are under a lot of pressure from human activity. Exploitation of natural resources, human encroachment due to expanding developments, poaching and general pollution – these all affect the Soutpansberg in some way. At the moment the mountains are a World Heritage Site and they form part of the newly proclaimed Vhembe Biosphere reserve.

Gallery

Organisms endemic to the Soutpansberg File:Searsia magalismontana subsp coddii, loof en vrugte, b, Walter Sisulu NBT.jpg, ''Searsia magalismontana'' subsp. ''coddii'' File:Vhembelacerta rupicola.jpg, Soutpansberg rock lizard, ''Vhembelacerta rupicola'' File:Platysaurus relictus1.JPG, A male Soutpansberg flat lizard, ''Platysaurus relictus'' File:Soutpansberg Wormlizard (Chirindia langi subsp. occidentalis).JPG, The endemic Soutpansberg worm lizard, ''Chirindia langi'' subsp. ''occidentalis'' File:Lygodactylus ocellatus soutpansbergensis.jpg, ''Lygodactylus ocellatus soutpansbergensis'', a gecko endemic to the Soutpansberg File:Hadogenes soutpansbergensis scbc.jpg, ''Hadogenes soutpansbergensis'', a scorpion endemic to the Soutpansberg File:Opistophthalmus lawrencei soutpansberg.jpg, ''Opistophthalmus lawrencei'', a scorpion endemic to the Soutpansberg File:Soutpansberg Dung Beetle (Scarabaeus schulzeae).jpg, Soutpansberg dung beetle, ''Scarabaeus schulzeae'', a Soutpansberg endemic

Notes

External links

The SoutpansbergGame & Nature Reserves in Soutpansberg, Limpopo
{{Authority control Mountain ranges of Limpopo