Karoo Hoogland Local Municipality 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 council
Karoo plain with Mississippi-like rivers depositing mud from an immense range of mountains to the south. Ancient reptiles and amphibians prospered in the wet forests, and their remains have made the Karoo famous amongst palaeontologists. The first of these Karoo fossils was discovered in 1838 by Scots-born Andrew Geddes Bain at a road cutting near Fort Beaufort. He sent his specimens to the British Museum, where fellow Scotsman Robert Broom recognised the Karoo fossils' mammal-like characteristics in 1897. After the Beaufort period, Southern Africa (still part of Gondwana) became an arid sand desert with only ephemeral rivers and pans. These sands