Katana VentraIP

Tugela River

The Tugela River (Zulu: Thukela; Afrikaans: Tugelarivier) is the largest river in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. With a total length of 560 km (350 mi), and a drop of 1370 metres in the lower 480 km,[1] it is one of the most important rivers of the country.[2]

For other uses, see Tugela (disambiguation).

Tugela
Thukela

Thukela

 

560 km (350 mi)

29,100 km2 (11,200 sq mi)

 

The river originates in Mont-aux-Sources of the Drakensberg Mountains at an elevation of 3282 metres[3] and plunges in five distinct free-leaping falls 947 metres down the Tugela Falls. The Mont-aux-Sources is also the origin of tributaries of two other major South African rivers, the Orange and the Caledon River. From the Drakensberg range, the Tugela follows a 560 km (350 mi) route through the KwaZulu-Natal midlands before flowing into the Indian Ocean.[4] The total catchment area is approximately 29,100 km2 (11,200 sq mi).[4] Land uses in the catchment are mainly rural subsistence farming and commercial forestry.

Ecology[edit]

The scaly yellowfish (Labeobarbus natalensis) is found in the Tugela River System. It is a common endemic fish in KwaZulu-Natal Province and it is found in different habitats between the Drakensberg foothills and the coastal lowlands, including rivers such as the Umkomazi.[6]

(1836) used a number of different spellings in his book, Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa,[7] including Ootergale and Ootoogale.

Isaacs

(John Ross), writing in the Nautical Magazine in 1853, used the spelling Zootagoola[8]

C.R. Maclean

a nineteenth-century artist, used the name Tugala on the captions to his sketches.[9]

George French Angas

The spelling Tugela was used for most of the twentieth century; it is an Anglicised version of the Zulu name Thukela. Nineteenth-century writers adopted a variety of spellings including:


Some of the variations can be accounted for by the early European writers being unaware that Zulu grammar uses prefixes, often a "i-" or a "u-", to denote the noun class of a noun.

List of rivers in South Africa