Karoo Hoogland Local Municipality election. Karoo Hoogland Local Municipality Karoo Hoogland is an administrative area in the Namakwa District of Northern Cape in South Africa. Hoogland an Afrikaans word meaning "highland" and Karoo is a Khoi word meaning "hard" or "dry". The name reflects the area which has dry, arid and desert-like conditions. The municipality incorporates the towns of Williston, Fraserburg and Sutherland. Although the towns are separated by more than 100 km by road, they share many administrative tasks. Karoo Hoogland elected the first (and so far only) mayor from COPE, Jan Julies, in 2011, as a COPE-DA coalition took control of the
Karoo sills (see below), creating multiple flat-topped hills, or Karoo Koppies, which are iconic of the Great Karoo. The vegetation of the Upper is similar to the Lower Karoo, so few people make a distinction between the two. The main highway (the N1) and railway line from Cape Town to the north enter the Lower Karoo from the Hex River Valley just before Touws River and follow a course about 50 km south of the Great Escarpment up to Beaufort West. Thereafter, they gradually ascend the Great Escarpment along a broad valley to Three Sisters on the Central Plateau and the