Looking out across the Makgadikgadi Pan, once a massive lake created by an uplift in the land surface
JAMES GIFFORD
It is now widely accepted that the continents that populate our planet are in constant motion, slowly drifting across its surface. Some 300 million years ago Africa was near the southern pole, part of Gondwanaland, and glacial conditions prevailed. As it moved north and warmed, the ice cover and glaciers melted to form swamps, lagoons and rivers and the exotic vegetation of those times accumulated to form our massive coal deposits of today. Gradual drying over millions of years, and slow but continual movement north, turned swamps to mudstone to shale and in the depressed centre of the sub-continent vast quantities of sand collected, forming over time great depths of sandstone.
Around 180 million years ago Gondwana began to break up and massive sheets of basalt covered the land. Remains of this outpouring can be seen in South Africa’s magnificent Drakensberg Mountains and Victoria Falls, the rapids at Commissioner Kop in Kazungula and, further upstream along the Zambezi, the wonderful horseshoe Ngonye Falls at Sioma in western Zambia.