Formed some three billion years ago, when magma buried deep beneath the earth's surface cooled and then eroded, Matobo is one of the world's geological oddities: a vast field of granite domes, oval-shaped extrusions known as whalebacks, and blocks of broken granite called castle kopjes.
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Kopjes, grey and bald in the hot sun, dot the countryside. Mopane trees, drought tolerant and sturdy, are found throughout the province.
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Other ruins include Khami Ruins, Zimbabwe, Dhlo-Dhlo and Naletale. The Matobo Hills are an area of granite kopjes and wooded valleys commencing some 35 kilometres south of Bulawayo, southern Zimbabwe. The Hills were formed over 2000 million years ago with granite being forced to the surface, this has eroded to produce smooth "whaleback dwalas" and broken kopjes, strewn with boulders and interspersed with thickets of vegetation. Mzilikazi, founder of the Ndebele nation, gave the area its name, meaning 'Bald Heads'.
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The Matobo Hills are an area of granite kopjes and wooded valleys commencing some south of Bulawayo in southern Zimbabwe. The Hills were formed over 2,000 million years ago with granite being forced to the surface, then being eroded to produce smooth "whaleback dwalas" and broken kopjes, strewn with boulders and interspersed with thickets of vegetation. Mzilikazi, founder of the Ndebele nation, gave the area its name, meaning 'Bald Heads'. They have become a tourist attraction due to their ancient shapes and local wildlife.
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The Matobo National Park forms the core of the Matobo or Matopos Hills, an area of granite kopjes and wooded valleys commencing some south of Bulawayo, southern Zimbabwe. The hills were formed over 2 billion years ago with granite being forced to the surface, this has eroded to produce smooth "whaleback dwalas" and broken kopjes, strewn with boulders and interspersed with thickets of vegetation. Matopo/Matobo is a corruption of a Venda word, "matombo" which means stones in Tshivenda. It was named by the ancestors of Kalanga and Venda people who are the original natives of the land.
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It is the only member of the genus to occur in Africa, where it has an extensive but easterly range, from northern South Africa to Sudan, Ethiopia and on to Yemen in the Arabian Peninsula. They are found on rocky slopes and kopjes, riparian floodplains, or along forest margins.
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Beyers detached Commandant Badenhorst to attack the camp from the west. De la Rey would capture several kopjes in the Moot to the south. If all went well, Clements' brigade would be trapped and destroyed. In the event, Badenhorst's column blundered into the British picket lines in the pre-dawn darkness.
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The landscape in southern Zimbabwe is relatively flat, interspersed with rounded granite mountains. Known as kopjes (Dutch: little heads), they are often quite smooth. Msasa trees dominate the savannah landscape, with the occasional baobab tree. The weather is hot and dry throughout the year, except during the summer when the rains come.
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At Ladysmith, the Boers used rocks to build defensive sangars, but the ground at Magersfontein was sandy and less rocky.Knight et al, p. 47 De la Rey recommended, contrary to common practice, that they should entrench themselves forward of the line of kopjes,Hill or ridge. rather than on the facing slopes.
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The cat café Kopjes opened in Amsterdam in April 2015. In Groningen Kattencafé Op z'n Kop opened in February 2016 and cat café Poeslief opened in October 2016. The cat café Miespoes opened in Den Bosch in 2016, as did cat café Katdeau in Hengelo. In August 2016 kattencafé Ditjes & Katjes opened in The Hague.
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The black mongoose also occurs in isolated granite kopjes of this region, and is a known predator of these agamas. The mongooses are most successful during early mornings on cold days when the agamas are less mobile. Other predators include hornbills and rock kestrels. Up to 30% of the adult agamas may have broken tails.
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Carrington was able to concentrate his forces on Mashonaland and the rebels retreated into granite kopjes. With no central command to oppose him, Carrington was able to bring Maxim guns against each stronghold in turn, until resistance ended. Nehanda Nyakasikana and Kaguvi Gumboreshumba were captured and executed in 1898, but Mukwati was never captured and died in Mutoko.
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The mountain fig (Ficus glumosa) is an Afrotropical fig shrub or tree, growing up to 20 m tall. It is found over a range of altitudes and broken terrain types, including kopjes, outcrops, escarpments and lava flows, or in woodlands. It is for the greater part absent from the tropical rainforest zone, or the dry interior regions of Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.
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The town is situated 63 km north-east of Kroonstad, 48 km west of Heilbron and 42 km south-south-east of Parys. It was laid out as a township in 1910 and became a municipality in 1926. Formerly Kopjes, meaning 'hills', the name is derived from that of the farm on which it was laid out, Honingkopjes, Dutch for 'honey hills'.
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The dam was built in a gorge that the Mwenezi River makes when passing through the mountains close to the bucolic village of Magomana. The area is dominated by mountains and kopjes. It is an arch dam with a gross head that stands at 25 m in height. The water level in the dam reached the spillway crest for the first in 1996.
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An East African species, M. tornieri is native to southern Kenya and northern and eastern Tanzania, and an introduced population may also occur in Zimbabwe. The species has also been reported in Zambia.Chansa & Wagner (2006). It is found on hillsides with rocky outcrops (known as kopjes) in arid thorn scrub and savanna, from 100 to 6,000 feet (30 to 1800 metres) above sea level.
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15 pounder field gun at a camp near Boshof, 1900 De Villebois-Mareuil's force lay on two small hills (or Kopjes) - the foreign volunteers on one and the Boers on the other.Bennett pp. 10-04 By 3pm the British force were setting up positions around the hills. A bombardment by four 15 pounder guns then commenced, along with suppressing fire by a Maxim machine gun.
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The Boer force at Belmont was led by Orange Free State Commandant Jacobus Prinsloo, who had arrived there with 1,500 men on the 20 November to reinforce an original force of 500 men under T. Van der Merwe. After Methuen began the march, Prinsloo posted detachments on the kopjes about the railway line. Prinsloo's force was joined by 800 men under Koos de la Rey on the day of the battle.
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Evans, p 132 After losing about 100 casualties, Captain Yatman surrendered at about 7:00 am. Reinforcements climbing the mountain lost heavily when Beyers' men suddenly poured fire into them. That morning it was too hazy to flash a message to Broadwood, so Clements was entirely on his own. Meanwhile, De la Rey and Smuts had managed to capture all the kopjes in the Moot except one, Yeomanry Hill (Hartebeestfontein).
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Kopje (pronounced "copy") in the Matobo Hills, home to the highest density of Verreaux's eagle. Verreaux's eagle has specific habitat requirements and is rare outside of its particular habitat type. It lives in kopjes, which are dry, rocky environments in anything from rocky hills to high mountains amongst cliffs, gorges and inselbergs often surrounded by savanna, thornbush and sub-desert. It is often found in dry areas with less than of average annual rainfall.
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Tswapong Hills A jumble of hematite and granite blocks and kopjes forms the Lepokole Hills, a western prolongation of the Matobo Hills in Zimbabwe. They are located 15 km north of Bobonong. The last of the San in eastern Botswana lived in the hills and left more of their rock paintings in the caves and rocks. Stone Age tools and ancient pottery scattered around the hills are evidence of even earlier occupation.
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The Angolan slender mongoose is endemic to southern Africa, its range including southwestern Angola and northwestern Namibia. The animals in Namibia are dark brown or black, while those in Angola are mostly the pale morph. Where the two types abut, in the vicinity of the Cunene River, there are no intermediate colour forms. The natural habitat of this mongoose is kopjes, rocky outcrops and areas with large granite boulders, and the woodlands and slopes surrounding these features.
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Yet > they cannot boil it all, for – first, fuel is very scarce; that which is > supplied weekly would not cook a meal a day…and they have to search the > already bare kopjes for a supply. There is hardly a bit to be had. Second, > they have no extra utensil to hold the water when boiled. I propose, > therefore, to give each tent a pail or crock, and get a proclamation issued > that all drinking water must be boiled.
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No bedstead > or mattress was procurable. Fuel was scarce and had to be collected from the > green bushes on the opes of the kopjes (small hills) by the people > themselves. The rations were extremely meagre and when, as I frequently > experienced, the actual quantity dispensed fell short of the amount > prescribed, it simply meant famine. Lizzie van Zyl, visited by Emily Hobhouse in the Bloemfontein concentration camp What most distressed Hobhouse was the sufferings of the undernourished children.
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The stone dormouse is endemic to southwestern Africa where its range includes mountainous parts of Namibia and South Africa, with records from a single location in Angola, mostly at altitudes above and up to at least . Its typical habitat is in rocky outcrops and in kopjes (rocky, elevated areas on an otherwise flat plain) where it lives in crevices. It mostly inhabits Karoo or Karoo transition areas, though the specimens found in Angola were found in evergreen woodland on a mountain summit.
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Botha deployed the Middelburg and Johannesburg commandos, with a contingent from the Orange Free State, at Robinson's Drift, upstream from Colenso; the Ermelo commando at the Bridle Drift upstream from Colenso; the Zoutpansberg commando and the Swaziland police at the Punt Drift at the end of a loop in the river east of the Bridle Drift, the Heidelberg, Vryheid and Krugersdorp commandos in a range of low kopjes and the river bank at Colenso itself, and the Wakkerstroom and Standerton commandos on Hlangwane.
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The Mwanza flat-headed rock agama (Agama mwanzae) or the Spider-Man agama, because of its coloration, is a lizard reptile in the family Agamidae, found in Tanzania, Rwanda, and Kenya. It lives in semideserts and can often be seen in the heat of the day basking on rocks or kopjes. The male's head, neck, and shoulders are bright red or violet, while the body is dark blue. The female is mostly brown and is difficult to distinguish from female agamas of other species.
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In the Matobo Hills, the average number of nests built per pair is 1.4. Eagles nesting in the Karoo have much larger territories, though are subject to persecution and habitat change, more so than many other populations. In the Matobos, the species is near the breeding population capacity level with almost unlimited nests that are rather unevenly distributed among available jumbles of rocky kopjes. In Kenya, nests are more scattered and Verreaux's eagle sometimes do not breed even where the habitat seems appropriate and there are good numbers of rock hyrax.
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The rock dormouse is endemic to southern Africa. Its range extends through southern Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, central Mozambique, eastern Botswana, northeastern South Africa and northwestern Eswatini, mostly at altitudes above . Its typical habitat is in rocky outcrops, in kopjes (rocky, elevated areas on an otherwise flat plain), krantzes (steep rock faces) and piles of boulders, sometimes in association with the yellow-spotted rock hyrax and the rock hyrax. It has been found in scrubby thickets in a dried up stream bed in Mozambique, and in caves in South Africa.
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In the rocky areas of East Africa and Congo, spotted hyenas use caves as dens, while those in the Serengeti use kopjes as resting areas in daylight hours. Dens have large bare patches around their entrances, where hyenas move or lie down on. Because of their size, adult hyenas are incapable of using the full extent of their burrows, as most tunnels are dug by cubs or smaller animals. The structure of the den, consisting of small underground channels, is likely an effective anti-predator device which protects cubs from predation during the absence of the mother.
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The region is characterised by high, isolated inselbergs and kopjes (the Afrikaans term for rocky outcrops), made up of dramatic blood red granites, rich in feldspars and sandstone. The easternmost part of the park covers the Naukluft Mountains. More moisture comes in as a fog off the Atlantic Ocean than falls as rain, with the average 106 millimeters of rainfall per year concentrated in the months of February and April. The winds that bring in the fog are also responsible for creating the park's towering sand dunes, whose burnt orange color is a sign of their age.
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The dam was built by International Construction Zimbabwe (ICZ), a division of the southern African construction giant Murray and Roberts, and was completed in 1988. The dam is located in the Mwenwezi River Valley in the middle section of the river. The area is flat and dry and semi-arid with countless dome-shaped mountains and kopjes in which troops of baboons roam at will. When it was built, a number of villages where displaced and forced to relocate by the government to distant places like the area between Ngundu and Chiredzi (District), where they suddenly found themselves labelled illegal settlers by local officials.
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On 17 September 2011, the zoo opened its African Safari exhibit, a multi-species replica of the Serengeti ecosystem, showcasing zebras, rhinos, and giraffes interacting as they would in the wild. Cheetahs are also on display, but not in the area where the other animals are. The exhibit includes Queensland bottle trees reflecting the native African baobab tree and mock kopjes as seen in southern Africa. Construction of an artificial island (to represent the island of Madagascar), began in 2006, which will accommodate African animals such as tortoises, lemurs and other species not yet represented, will be completed during stage two of the zoo's Africa exhibit.
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The name Tsanzaguru is derived from the Rozvi meaning of a big, rocky and tall hill from which the Rozvi were known to have wanted to build to the moon from there. They are said to have wanted to bring the moon to the King's Zunde Ramambo as a gift. It is from this background that all Chiefs countrywide have their badges designed in a circular form resembling the circular dream moon that the Rozvi wanted to bring their King.oral narratives from the Makoni Chieftainship in research by Dunmore Kusano on food security 2009 Typically noticeable in the surrounding region are the kopjes, msasa trees, occasional tobacco farms and the sometimes densely crowded rural resettlement villages.
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Pachypodium habitats consist of isolated, specialized, micro-environmental niches, generally xeric, rocky, frost-free areas within parts of western Madagascar and southern Africa. Pachypodium species are often indifferent to the regional ecological, biotic zone of vegetation, a fact which explains some of Pachypodium morphology and architecture. The large scale vegetation zones are in some cases irrelevant to the micro-environments of Pachypodium, in the sense that the xeric niches may be embedded in larger mesic biomes. Most Pachypodium are rupicolous species occur on rocky outcrops, steep hills, and on inselbergs or kopjes, land or rocky masses which have resisted erosion and stand isolated in level or gently sloping terrain, sometimes above a forest canopy.
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The Boer generals were not unduly concerned by the news that the British had taken the kop. They knew that their artillery on Tabanyama could be brought to bear on the British position and that rifle fire could be brought to bear from parts of the kop not yet occupied by the British. However, the Boer generals also knew that sniping and artillery alone would not be sufficient to dislodge the British – and the Boer position was desperately vulnerable. If the British immediately established positions on Conical Hill and Aloe Knoll (the two unoccupied kopjes on the kop itself) they could bring their artillery to bear on Tabanyama, threatening the key Boer positions there.
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A new reef of some value was found and it reopened. This was to be a cycle repeated often, and the first good gold was exported in 1898.Taken from "The Gold Mines of the World", By J.H. Curle 1902 It was to be the first mine to turn out good quality gold bearing quartz north of the Crocodile River, just outside Gwanda. Whilst there the giraffes used to break Stanley's wires,refer to 'The Bookman 1920' and incidentally injure their own necks in the process, and the lions used to chew up his fowls, and when chance offered, his native workers as well. But Stanley finally succeeded in putting up important telephone lines, which were still (in 1920) working, and his bright arc lamps frightened away the Matabele rebels from the mine, whose fires, in a range of kopjes a bare five miles away, had formerly been the only illumination allowed on that stretch of veld.
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