SA claims vast new territory

If successful, we would be the biggest country in Africa

SAY goodbye to the South Africa you know.

A long-awaited claim to vast tracts of territory, due to be heard next year by a UN commission, means South Africa could soon be the largest country on the continent.

But do not expect more veld and baobab trees — the “new” South Africa will be mostly underwater. The claim, which is likely to get UN endorsement, will extend South Africa’s marine territory way beyond the wide, gently sloping area called the continental shelf that sits between the coast and the deep ocean floor.

The new territory will come with rights to extract natural resources from the sea bed, including minerals, gas and oil deposits. It will also give South Africa sovereignty over a range of curious new plant and animal species, and the country will gain huge undersea mountain ranges, broader and higher than the Drakensberg, as well as volcanoes.

The underwater landscape around the Prince Edward Islands is considered the most dramatic in the world — deep canyons and underwater peaks that outstrip the Himalayas.

South Africa has submitted two claims — one for the shelf area extending from the mainland and the other for the shelf around its two tiny subantarctic islands, Marion and Prince Edward.

The total area being claimed is more than 1.9 million km², which will more than double South Africa’s marine territory — which is about 1.5 million km² at present.

The combined area will catapult South Africa from ninth to first place on the list of Africa’s largest countries, ahead of Sudan at 2.5-million km².

Some 17 countries have already had their claims endorsed by the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.

South Africa’s claim for the seabed around its shores appears to be next on the UN’s list — claim number 31 — and could be heard in a matter of months.

Its second submission, for the land around the Prince Edward Islands, has been submitted jointly with France, which owns the Crozet Islands, which are about 1 000km east of the tiny South African isles.

The Prince Edward Islands are more than 1 700km away, and one of them — Marion — is an active volcano.

The total area being claimed at the UN is more than 1.9 million km²

South Africa was the second African country to submit an application — after Ghana — to the UN, and had the most complex submission on the subcontinent, partly owing to the vast area it has laid claim to.

The offshore claims coincide with major advances in underwater surveying technology that allows marine scientists a view of a previously invisible world. South Africa’s Council for Geoscience is busy with several survey projects along the South African coast, including a survey of the Cape Peninsula that has produced highresolution 3D images of several shipwrecks.

Scientists hope that a successful claim will prompt the government to commission a detailed survey of the entire continental shelf — a task that would take years.

To date, only small sections of the shelf have been surveyed, mostly by mining companies looking for diamonds, oil and gas. Fishing companies have also surveyed many underwater ridges and volcanic seamounts — raised “mountains” of volcanic rock — that attract fish popular among commercial fishermen.

Michael MacHutchon, a scientist who works with the Council for Geoscience’s marine unit, said the council had submitted a proposal to the Department of Science and Technology to map the entire continental shelf around South Africa. The costs of the study were prohibitive, though.

“It would be an absolutely mammoth undertaking,” MacHutchon said. “Our seas are violent for large parts of the year, bearing the brunt of many Antarctic storms, and vessel hire is incredibly expensive. It is something, however, all marine scientists feel needs to be done, but it will have to be a national programme that all the stakeholders buy into,” he said.