South Africa facts

Full country name: The Republic of South Africa (RSA)


Area: 1, 219, 090 square km – 3 times the area of Sweden and slightly less than twice the size of Texas.


Population: about 48.8 million


Capitals: Pretoria (administrative), Bloemfontein (juridical) and Cape Town (legislative)


Languages: Include Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Pedi and English – in all 11 languages.


Government: Republic.


Fun facts: You can go ostrich riding in South Africa. You
 can also take one of the world’s highest bungee jumps – 216 metres. Outside the Cape there are approximately 8,000 Great White Sharks. 

Cape Town is a city of approximately 3.5 million inhabitants. It is situated on the coast at the foot of a 1,000-metre high mountain – Table Mountain. Outside Cape Town is Robben Island, the prison where Nelson Mandela spent so many years in a cell just six square meters in size. The prison is now a museum which people visit daily by boat. 

70 kilometres south of the city is the Cape of Good Hope, which was given its name by sailors on their way to India. They believed that if you made it round the Cape there was good hope that you would make it to India. 

Wildlife in South Africa is spectacular. You can see lions, leopards, baboons, penguins, whales, sharks and also rare plants and trees. The antelope is the national symbol of the country. 

The apartheid system was introduced in South Africa in 1948. Blacks and coloured people (mostly Asians and Indians) were forced to sit in ‘black’ or ‘coloured’ seats on buses and trains. Blacks were forced to move out of white-only areas and live in the so-called shanty towns which grew up outside Cape Town and the other cities. Outside Johannesburg or Jo’berg, the largest city in South Africa, is the black township of Soweto. Exactly how many people live in the Johannesburg area is not known, as there are many people squatting there. 

The apartheid system finally came to...