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]
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.
Tributaries
British troops crossing the river during the Second Boer War
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]
Spelling
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:
Isaacs (1836) used a number of different spellings in his book, Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa,[7] including Ootergale and Ootoogale.
C.R. Maclean (John Ross), writing in the Nautical Magazine in 1853, used the spelling Zootagoola[8]
George French Angas, a nineteenth-century artist, used the name Tugala on the captions to his sketches.[9]
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.
^C.R. Maclean (February 1853). "Loss of the Brig Mary at Natal with Early Recollections of that Settlement - Two". The Nautical Magazine. pp. 74–80. Reproduced in Stephen Gray, ed. (1992). The Natal Papers of John Ross. ISBN978-0-869-80851-1.