Country Fact File: The facts and figures

• Capital: Pretoria
• Population: 57.78 million (2018)
• Currency: Rand
• Time Zone: GMT + 2.00
• International dialing code: +27
• Languages: 11 official languages (English is one!)

The interesting stuff

Read

• Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
• The Bang Bang Club by Greg Marinovich and Jaoao Silva
• Rainbow Diary by John Malathronas

Watch

• Goodbye Bafana (2007)
• Tsotsi (2005)
• Catch a Fire (2006)

Do

• The Bloukrans Bungee, the world’s highest bungee jump
• Spot the Big Five on safari
• Sample Cape Town’s night life
• Visit the Zulu battlefields
• Trek in the Drakensburg mountains

Eat

• Biltong
• Cost of a beer? $1.50 (12 South African Rand) approx.

Did you know?

• There are more species of plants on Table Mountain than there are in the entire United Kingdom.
• South Africa voluntarily abandoned its nuclear weapons program in the 1990s, and is the only country in the world to have done so.
• The Vredefort Dome, near Parys, is the oldest meteor scar in the world.
• The world’s largest diamond, the Cullinan Diamond, was found in South Africa in 1905. It was cut in to smaller diamonds, many of which now form part of the British crown jewels.

Useful links:

• Lonely Planet
• District Six
• Southafrica.net