Mountain · South Africa
Mafadi
Mafadi reaches 3 446 m on the watershed between South Africa and Lesotho and is the highest ground anyone can stand on in South Africa. From the Lesotho side it looks like a gentle grassy hill.
Picture credit: Nicolaas92 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Mafadi?
Mafadi is part of the Drakensberg.
You will find it in: South Africa.
Summit: 29.202° S, 29.357° E
The story behind it
The Drakensberg escarpment is a wall: on one side the high grassland of Lesotho, on the other a drop of well over a thousand metres into KwaZulu-Natal. Mafadi sits right on that rim, which is why the border between the two countries runs across its top and keeps weaving back and forth along the ridge. It is a broad shoulder rather than a pointed peak, and its prominence is only about 138 m, because the ground barely dips before rising again to Makheka in Lesotho, 7.5 km away. For that reason some lists call Mafadi a subsidiary summit of Makheka and hand the title of South Africa's highest mountain to Champagne Castle instead. Sources also disagree about the height: many give 3 446 m while others round it to 3 450 m, and even the name is argued over, since an older Sotho name, Ntheledi, means roughly "it makes me slip". Walkers usually start at Injisuthi Camp and take several days, scrambling up Corner Pass or Judges Pass to reach the rim. In 2015 the trail runners Ryan Sandes and Ryno Griesel went up in 5 hours and 47 minutes.
Find it on the globe
Mafadi is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How high is Mafadi?
About 3 446 m, the highest point in South Africa. It is still lower than Thabana Ntlenyana in Lesotho, at 3 482 m the highest peak in southern Africa, and some sources round Mafadi up to 3 450 m.
Where is Mafadi?
On the Drakensberg escarpment, exactly on the border between South Africa and Lesotho, inside the uKhahlamba/Drakensberg Park in the province of KwaZulu-Natal.
Why do some people say Mafadi is not really a mountain?
Because a summit is often only counted as its own mountain if the land drops far enough around it. Mafadi drops only about 138 m before the ridge climbs again to Makheka, so strict lists treat it as a shoulder of that Lesotho peak.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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