Climate is a first-order control on land surface processes and thus the geomorphological evolution of regionalscale landscapes. These geomorphic changes also then influence other landscape properties including its soils, slope processes, ecosystems, environmental resources and geohazards, through the concept of cascading Earth systems. A key research question is therefore to understand the sensitivity of any landscape sediment and geomorphic system to present and future climate, termed its geomorphological sensitivity. This study examines this topic with respect to the morphodynamics and evolution of inselbergs and seasonally-variable semiarid river systems in southern Africa. These landforms are found within the same large-scale desert and semiarid climatic region and are therefore, presumably, affected by the same climatic boundary conditions. However, they may not necessarily show the same geomorphological sensitivity to these climatic conditions. The analysis presented in this study is based a review of previous literature and new field observations of these landforms and their associated sediment systems from sites across southern Africa. Results show that, even under the same regional climate regime, different geomorphic elements respond in different ways, or at different rates, to climate forcing. Such variations in geomorphological sensitivity can result in the preservation of relict (palimpsest) features in the landscape, characterised by distinctive spatial and temporal patterns of geomorphic change separated by (spatial and temporal) periods of quiescence. This approach to understanding landscape processes and responses to forcing has implications for prediction of future geomorphic and Earth system changes under anthropogenic global warming, and evaluating changes in environmental resources and hazard risk.