South Africa

South Africa is at the very bottom of Africa.

One ocean is on its west side. Another ocean is on its east side. It has high, flat land and tall mountains. People there speak many languages.

South Africa is the country at the southern tip of Africa. Its coast is washed by the Atlantic Ocean to the southwest and the Indian Ocean to the southeast. Inside, most of the land is a high, wide plateau, and a long wall of mountains called the Great Escarpment separates it from the narrow lands by the sea.

About 63.5 million people lived in South Africa in 2026. The country has 12 official languages, and it has three capital cities, each with a different job: Pretoria, Cape Town and Bloemfontein.

South Africa covers about 1,221,000 square kilometers at the southern end of the continent. Britannica describes a plateau that covers the largest part of the country, made almost entirely of very old Karoo System rock formed between about 320 and 200 million years ago, and separated from the lower lands around it by the Great Escarpment. The plateau is highest in the east, above 2,400 m in the Lesotho region, and falls to about 600 m in the sandy Kalahari in the west.

Statistics South Africa estimated the mid-2026 population at about 63.5 million, with Gauteng the most populous province (more than 16.2 million). Twelve languages are official under the 1996 constitution (since amended). Three cities serve as capitals: Pretoria (executive), Cape Town (legislative) and Bloemfontein (judicial).

Cape Town sits between a mountain and the sea.

The mountain has a flat top, like a table. Johannesburg is a big city with tall buildings. Long ago, people dug for gold there.

Cape Town, the site of the first European settlement in South Africa, began in 1652 as a stop where Dutch ships could take on fresh supplies. Its houses spread over the slopes of Table Mountain, a mountain with a flat top, and along the bay.

Johannesburg, the largest urban area, was founded in 1886 after gold was found under the ground. It sits in Gauteng, whose name is a Sotho word meaning "Place of Gold." Durban is a port on the Indian Ocean. Near Johannesburg, caves in the Cradle of Humankind hold fossils of very early human relatives.

Cape Town, the legislative capital, is called the country's "mother city" because it was the site of the first European settlement: in 1652 the Dutch East India Company set up a refreshment station for its ships on Table Bay. Table Mountain (1,086 m) owes its flat top to nearly horizontal sandstone layers exposed by erosion; its "Tablecloth" cloud forms quickly when the wind is from the southeast.

Johannesburg, founded in 1886 after the discovery of gold, stands at 1,740 to 1,810 m on the Witwatersrand, a string of low ridges whose gold-bearing reef once supplied more than 40 percent of the world's yearly gold; the municipality had 4,803,262 people in 2022. Durban is a major industrial port. The fossil caves of Sterkfontein, Swartkrans and Kromdraai (World Heritage, 1999), later extended to Taung and Makapan, hold hominin fossils, and Robben Island, a prison for political prisoners in the late 20th century, was inscribed the same year.

South Africa has tall mountains called the Drakensberg.

A river falls down their cliffs in a long waterfall. Much of the country is dry. Many flowers grow near Cape Town.

The Drakensberg, the main mountain range of southern Africa, stretches about 1,125 kilometers and rises to more than 3,400 meters. There the Tugela River tumbles down a series of waterfalls that drop 948 meters in all.

Most of South Africa is fairly dry, and rain falls less and less from east to west: the coast of KwaZulu-Natal gets more than 1,000 millimeters a year, but Alexander Bay on the west coast gets less than 50. The southwestern Cape has a special kind of shrubland called fynbos and is home to many of the country's 20,000 kinds of flowering plants.

The Great Escarpment, known in part as uKhahlamba ("Barrier of Spears") and the Drakensberg, is the longest continuous landform in the country. The country's highest point is Mafadi, on the border between KwaZulu-Natal and Lesotho: the national survey maps give 3,446 m or 3,450 m, and a GPS survey by the Mountain Club of South Africa in 2002 measured 3,451 m (Britannica names Njesuthi, 3,408 m, instead). The range rises to more than 3,475 m, with its highest stretch in eastern and southern Lesotho. The Tugela falls from the Mont-aux-Sources plateau in a series of cascades totaling 948 m, and the Orange River and its tributaries drain about 852,000 km² to the Atlantic.

The country is generally semiarid: more than one-fifth receives under 200 mm of rain a year, almost half 200 to 600 mm, and only about 6 percent more than 1,000 mm. The cold Benguela Current cools the west coast and adds to the dryness of the west, while the warm Agulhas and Mozambique currents keep the east and southeast coasts warmer. Temperatures generally fall from east to west: Durban averages 21 °C and Port Nolloth, at a similar latitude on the west coast, 14 °C. The Cape Floral Region, inscribed by UNESCO in 2004, is one of the world's great centers of land biodiversity, its fynbos adapted to a Mediterranean climate and periodic fires.

Lions, elephants and zebras live in South Africa.

Big rhinos and hippos live there too. Most of the big animals live in parks. Hundreds of kinds of birds fly there.

South Africa has more than 200 kinds of mammals, including lions, leopards, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippos, baboons, zebras and many kinds of antelope. Today most of the large animals live in wildlife reserves.

Kruger National Park, the largest park, is about 320 kilometers long. Elephants, lions, leopards, cheetahs, buffalo, rhinos, zebras, wildebeests and impalas live there. On the coast of KwaZulu-Natal, a protected wetland is home to Nile crocodiles and many hippos, and more than 800 kinds of birds live in the country.

Britannica counts more than 200 mammal species, from lions, elephants, rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses to mongooses and caracals, and more than 800 bird species, including the bearded vulture, bald ibis and black eagle. Animal numbers fell greatly as white settlement spread in the 18th and 19th centuries, and large mammals now live mainly in reserves.

Kruger National Park, 19,485 km² and about 320 km long, was established in part in 1898; in 2002 it joined parks in Mozambique and Zimbabwe to form the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park. Mountain Zebra National Park shelters the endangered mountain zebra and Bontebok National Park the endangered bontebok. Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park in KwaZulu-Natal, inscribed in 1999 and now part of the iSimangaliso World Heritage Site, protects Nile crocodiles and a large hippo population, and UNESCO adds nesting sea turtles and many waterbirds, and the Drakensberg park harbors the endangered Cape and bearded vultures. Black rhinoceroses, giraffes and pangolins are specially protected and cannot be hunted.

More than 63 million people live in South Africa.

They speak many languages, such as Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans and English. Many families enjoy a barbecue called a braai. Corn porridge is a common food.

About 63.5 million people lived in South Africa in 2026, and about two out of three live in towns and cities. People speak many languages. The 12 official languages include Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, English, Sotho, Tswana and South African Sign Language.

Food comes from many traditions. Maize (corn) porridge, called mealie pap, is an important staple. Dutch and English settlers brought bobotie, a pie of spiced minced meat, and the Indian community added samosas. Many South Africans enjoy a braai, or barbecue. Music mixes African traditions with jazz and choir singing.

Stats SA estimated about 63.5 million people in mid-2026; just over a quarter were younger than 15, and life expectancy at birth was about 65.5 years for men and 71 years for women. Britannica notes that urban areas hold about two-thirds of the population and that more than nine-tenths live in the eastern half and the southern coastal regions. Bantu-speaking Africans entered the area from the north roughly 1,800 years ago, and their descendants are more than three-fourths of the population; the Nguni languages (Zulu, Xhosa, Swati, Ndebele) are the largest group, followed by Sotho-Tswana. Other South Africans descend from the Khoekhoe and San, from European settlers who began arriving in the mid-17th century, and from Indian indentured workers brought to Natal from the 1850s.

Twelve languages are official, and English increasingly dominates official and business life. Most South Africans are Christians, many in independent African churches; Hinduism, Islam and Judaism are also practiced. Foods include mealie pap, umngqusho (dried corn with sugar beans), bobotie, samosas and the braai. Freedom Day, April 27, marks the first majority elections in 1994.