South Africa has played a vital role in world events and is famous for its stunning wildlife and natural beauty 🌍. Also called the Rainbow Nation, the country of South Africa is home to a diverse mix of people from various cultures 👥.
Moreover, this country has a history colored by its struggle to move past its racially-charged past.
As one of the largest economies on the continent of Africa, there are many other interesting facts about South Africa that you may wish to explore. So, in this article, let us discuss some interesting facts about South Africa.
Facts About South Africa Discover The Hidden Wonder of Earth
Area and population of South Africa
South Africa covers an estimated area of 1.22 million square kilometers. Also, the population of this country is almost 59 million, which makes the country the most populous in the entire Southern Hemisphere 🌍.
Also, South Africa has approximately 2800 km of coastline; however, water makes up just 0.38% of the area of this country 💧.
South Africa has three different capital cities.
The country doesn’t have any official capital city. Their constitution only places Parliament in the city of Cape Town, and this could be moved just with an Act of Parliament. Unofficially, the three capitals of the nation each have the seat of one of the government’s three branches.
For example, Cape Town has a Parliament, which makes it an essential core of South Africa’s legislative branch. At the same time, the Supreme Court of Appeal is located in Bloemfontein 💼, which makes it the seat of the judicial branch of South Africa 🏛️.
Most of South Africa is an extensive plateau.
Also known as the Central Plateau, this formation has an average altitude of 1 to 2.1 km above sea level. The highest points of the Central Plateau lie to the East ⛰️, sloping down to the west and north. To the west and south, the slopes of the Central Plateau grow sheerer noticeably.
Mount Mafadi is the tallest mountain in South Africa.
Standing about 3.45 km high, the famous Mount Mafadi stands right on the border between South Africa and Lesotho.
Despite being celebrated as the tallest mountain in South Africa, Mount Mafadi isn’t, in fact, the tallest mountain in the region. Instead, that honor goes to the famous Thabana Ntlenyana in Lesotho, towering at 3.48 km high 🏔️.
Here, you will see a country within a country.
Another fascinating fact about South Africa is that the entire Kingdom of Lesotho, an entirely different country from South Africa, is surrounded by South Africa. In other words, Lesotho is located just in the country’s center.
The country heavily draws from the apartheid legacy.
In the language of Afrikaans, Apartheid can be translated into apartheid, a racial system introduced in South Africa in 1948 🤝🚫.
Diving the society of the country along racial lines, the design of apartheid granted all economic, political, and also social power in the nation to the white minority ⚪.
Thus, the black majority found themselves at the bottom of the social pyramid, forbidden from living, owning land, or working outside so-called tribal homelands. They even lost their citizenship and, with it, their freedom and rights under the law.
The ANC, or African National Congress, led the fight against apartheid.
Formed in the year 1912 by John Langalibalele Dube, the famous ANC political party aimed to unite Africans to stand up for their freedom and rights. After apartheid came into force in 1948, the ANC opposed the white supremacist system.
First of all, the ANC took non-violent paths to fight apartheid, but it changed after the Sharpeville Massacre of the year 1960.
This incident claimed 69 black lives and injured hundreds more because of the police who opened fire on a non-violent protest 💔. Later, the government of South Africa banned the ANC, forcing it to become guerilla warfare.
Nelson Mandela: A famous leader that led the
Nelson Mandela hailed from the Thembu royal family. Later, he earned his law degree at Fort Hare University and Witwatersrand University. In 1943, he became a notable leader for anti-colonial and also black nationalism, rising to result in the ANC covering the 1950s.
After banning the ANC, Mandela helped found the Spear of Africa or Umkhonto we Sizwe to fight against apartheid. Captured in 1962, Mandela then spent 27 years in prison before regaining his freedom in 1990 ✊.
South Africa has a varied climate.
A significant portion of South Africa enjoys a temperate climate, with the nation having an average of 464 mm of rain annually 🌧️. The government has a patch of desert to the west, where South Africa borders Namibia.
Also, the southern part of the country enjoys Mediterranean weather, with mild winters and hot summers. Snow falls on the higher mountains 🏔️ of South Africa in winter, creating snow thick enough to allow skiing.
The Great Escarpment surrounds the plateau of South Africa.
Some cliffs falling from the heights of South Africa’s plateau go well past South Africa’s borders. It extends north through Zimbabwe and Mozambique in the East before going past the Zambezi River to stop in Eastern Zambia.
Meanwhile, to the west, the Great Escarpment even approaches further north, into Namibia and Angola.
A lot of animals live in South Africa.
Another fantastic fact about South Africa is its diverse wildlife. Blue wildebeests, African leopards, South African cheetahs, lions 🦁, and South African white rhinos 🦏 are its distinct species throughout the nation. Some reside only in South Africa, like the riverine rabbit, a critically endangered animal.
A coastal belt is situated outside the Great Escarpment.
The belt is dry and hot to the northeast but grows wet and cool to the East. The Cape Fold mountains dominate the landscape to the southwest and south, separating the great escarpment from the sea 🌊.
Moreover, they extend into the coastal belt to the western part of the Great Escarpment, though flat lowland makes up most of the coastal belt here 🏖️.
Plantlife in the country features a rich diversity of species.
Almost 22,000 species of plants live in the country, accounting for nearly 9% of all plant species on Earth. Especially on the plateau, grasses comprise a huge portion of South Africa’s plant life.
This area also thrives with acacia trees 🌱, small shrubs, and baobab trees. Towards the Western Cape, flowering evergreens grow with almost 9000 different species. Among all these other plants, about 130 species of the Protea genus are native to the country of South Africa.
The country also has a rich fungal ecosystem.
With 200,000 species of fungus, the country has more fungal species 🍄 than plant species. Even so, the existing ecological program of South Africa does not include fungal species among its list of protected life forms.
Water availability is a significant concern in South Africa.
The country has a few rivers, all of which have tiny amounts of water 💧. All of South Africa’s water forms combined only reach a sixth of the total volume of the Nile River. While South Africa receives enough rain every year, and most of it gets wasted in the annual floods.
This has led the country to develop large dams to concentrate as much water as possible and eventually reduce waste. The government even considers large-scale ocean water 🌊 destinations to fight future water shortages.
The country has a small agricultural sector.
Just 10% of the nation’s labor pool work in the agricultural sector, which is a natural consequence of the semi-arid conditions of the country. However, just 13.5% of the nation’s land can support crops, meaning a mere 3% produce high yields 🌾.
Moreover, South Africa still produces almost 19.3 million tons of sugarcane annually as the main crop grown in the country.
South Africa has almost 11 official languages.
Most official languages of South Africa belong to the native people of the country 🗣️, with Zulu as the most commonly spoken. Other official native languages include Pedi, Xhosa, Southern Sotho, Tswana, and Swazi.
Although Afrikaans derives from Dutch, English is the only officially-recognized European language in South Africa.
Mining makes up a significant part of the economy of South Africa.
The rich natural resources of South Africa became the original incentive for the nation’s colonization. About 77% of all the world’s platinum comes from the country of South Africa, as well as 45% of the world’s supply of chromium.
Some other exported raw materials of the country include 38% of the world’s vanadium and 39% of the world’s palladium 💰.
Moreover, South Africa is Earth’s third-largest exporter of coal. Although the colonizers found it as the first natural resource of the country, only 1% of the world’s supply comes from South Africa.
South Africa has its version of the beer.
Drinking beer had an important place in the societies of the natives of South Africa 🍻. Occasions like weddings had beer as the traditional drink and were offered as a special gift for specific events.
Later, Europeans studying possible solutions to malnutrition found this native beer as one potential solution. The local grains used to make this beer give it more vitamins than other varieties of beer, making it helpful in fighting malnutrition 🍺.
Cape Malay and Cape Dutch are two distinctive features of the cuisine of South Africa.
Both of these result from an exciting mix of influences, including European cuisine and the cooking styles that the slaves of Asia brought with them from the East. Cape Malay includes spicy curries 🍽️, including a wide variety of fish dishes, while Cape Dutch cuisine extensively uses spices, like allspice and nutmeg.
Some other popular dishes in South Africa are Bunny chow, bobotie, etc.
So, South Africa is a unique country with its exciting culture, rich history, diverse wildlife, beautiful landscape, delicious cuisine, etc 🦁.
At the end of this article, we learned 20 interesting facts from which we can get a clear picture of this nation, South Africa. You can see our website if you want to know some additional points.
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