Cape Fold Belt, Mountain range in Western Cape, South Africa.

The Cape Fold Belt is a 1,300 km fold-and-thrust mountain belt along the western and southern coasts of Western Cape, South Africa. Its parallel ranges are built of erosion-resistant quartzitic sandstones of the Peninsula Formation, with softer Bokkeveld shales in the valley floors. The belt runs from the Cederberg, about 200 km north of Cape Town, east to Port Elizabeth; Seweweekspoortpiek reaches 2,325 m.

The Cape Fold Belt began as an 8-km-thick layer of sediment, the Cape Supergroup, laid down in a rift valley south of Gondwana from about 510 million years ago. The rift closed from 330 million years ago as subduction drove the Falkland Plateau back against Africa, folding the layers during the Carboniferous and early Permian. Uplift about 180 million years ago, and again 20 million years ago, exposed the harder sandstones as parallel ranges.

The name "Cape Fold Belt" comes from the folding of Cape Supergroup strata into parallel ranges along the Cape coast. The hard Peninsula Formation sandstones form the ridgelines, while softer Bokkeveld shales underlie the valley floors between them. The fynbos shrubland on the ranges shares many plant species with Australia, a legacy of Gondwana.

The belt runs about 850 km from the Cederberg, roughly 200 km north of Cape Town, east along the south coast to Port Elizabeth. Annual rainfall is 500–600 mm, rising to about 1,000 mm on windward slopes; small rivers shrink in summer and turn into torrents in winter. Snow lies on the summits.

The belt was once continuous with the Ventana Mountains near Bahía Blanca in Argentina, the Pensacola and Ellsworth Mountains in Antarctica, and the Hunter–Bowen orogeny in eastern Australia. Table Mountain is a syncline: it formed the bottom of a fold valley, while the anticline between it and the Hottentots-Holland Mountains has been eroded into the Cape Flats.