South Africa
This page was generated on 20 September 2026 at 12:27 UTC. The bundled facts on it were retrieved between 13 July 2026 and 8 August 2026. Aletheia's source record for emergency numbers records no retrieval date, so it is not covered by that range.
This page is being built. Everything below is a block that is in place and empty. Each one says which kind of empty it is, because those are different facts: nobody has looked yet is not the same claim as we looked and there was nothing, and this page will never let one stand in for the other.
Country outlines on Aletheia come from Natural Earth's 1:10-million public-domain boundary set, made by volunteer cartographers and supported by NACIS. Where a border is disputed, the line drawn is one cartographic convention among the competing claims — not a settled fact, and not Aletheia taking a side. Disputes we can source are listed rather than hidden inside the outline.
South Africa is filled. The 7 other countries reaching this view are drawn in a dimmer tone — dimmed, not hidden. Unpainted ground is where no boundary in this dataset falls: open water, or land none of them claims.
Nothing is hatched because no disputed area in this source overlaps South Africa. That is not a finding that none exists — the source says plainly that its list is not exhaustive.
2 parts of South Africa in this source are smaller than a pixel at this scale and are not drawn. Nothing larger than that is missing, and they have not been enlarged to make them visible.
Boundaries: Natural Earth (public domain), 1:10m. Disputed areas: Natural Earth (public domain). Equirectangular projection, standard parallel 34.5°S — distances and areas away from that parallel are stretched. View: 12.0°E–42.5°E, 49.2°S–19.9°S.
Disputed areas
none listedNo disputed area in this source overlaps South Africa. That is not a finding that none exists — the source says plainly that its list is not exhaustive.
News sources
1 source from South Africain Aletheia’s registry. Coverage here is thin.
- Daily Maverick
sources not yet assessed
Official alerts
An official alerting source is connected for South Africa: SAWS (ZA).
This says a source is connected — not whether any warning is in force right now. Open Alerts for that.
National legislature
Wikidata P856 · link checked and reachable
Local time
One time zone.
The current time needs JavaScript, so it is not shown here rather than shown wrong.
Conditions at the capital
Right now in Bloemfontein
21°C / 70°FOvercastwind 5 km/h / 3 mph
Checked 12 minutes ago
Right now in Cape Town
29°C / 84°FClearwind 10 km/h / 6 mph
Checked 12 minutes ago
Conditions at each capital, not across the country.
Weather from Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0)
Bloemfontein, 2026-09-20Sunrise 6:07 AM · sunset 6:10 PM12h 03m of daylightWaxing gibbous, 65% lit
Cape Town, 2026-09-20Sunrise 6:38 AM · sunset 6:41 PM12h 03m of daylightWaxing gibbous, 65% lit
Pretoria, 2026-09-20Sunrise 5:59 AM · sunset 6:02 PM12h 03m of daylightWaxing gibbous, 65% lit
At a glance
- ISO code
- ZAFuncited
- Driving side
- leftcited
- Mains voltage
- 230 Vcited
- Capitals
- Cape Town — legislaturePretoria — executive branchBloemfontein — judiciarycited
- Official languages
- cited
12 official languages
Afrikaans, English, Northern Sotho, Sesotho, South African Sign Language, Southern Ndebele, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu
- Plug types
- Type C (Europlug), Type D (BS 546), Type M (BS 546), Type N (IEC 60906-1)cited · letters are the IEC classification
- Official website
- gov.za ↗We could not reach this from our checker. Many government sites refuse automated requests, so this is not a report that the site is down.From the source's "official website" statement, kept here because the site is a government portal. We have not tested whether it loads.cited
Population and economy
Population
Population of South Africa: the UN's 2025 estimate is 64,747,319 people. The page shows that figure carried forward at about 1.4 more a minute. It is a projection, not a count, and the figure shown changes as time passes.
Not a count. This is the UN's 2025 estimate carried forward at the rate implied by the two most recent published years — arithmetic, not a measurement. Nobody counts a country continuously, and the true figure right now is unknown.
Where this number comes from
- Base figure
- 64,747,319 people
- For the year
- 2025 — a mid-year estimate, so it describes 1 July 2025
- Compared with
- 64,007,187 people in 2024
- Rate applied
- about 1.4 more a minute (740,624 a year)
- How that rate was found
- The difference between the 2024 and 2025 estimates, divided by the time between them. It is our arithmetic on two published figures — the source does not publish this rate.
- Carried forward
- 0 days beyond the base figure's date
- Source
- UN World Population Prospects and national statistical offices, compiled by the World Bank · source updated 2026-07-13
- The source's own definition
- The values shown are midyear estimates.
THIS NUMBER IS NOT A MEASUREMENT, AND ITS MOVEMENT IS NOT NEWS. No country counts its population continuously. A census is periodic, and every figure between censuses — including the estimate this starts from — is a projection. What you are watching is that projection's trend applied to the clock on your phone. It moves because time passes, not because anyone was born or died. Treat the digits beyond the first few as arithmetic rather than knowledge: the trend is real, the precision is not.
- Population
- 64,747,3192025
- GDP
- 427,184,325,9972025
- GDP per capita
- 6,5982025
- Life expectancy at birth
- 66.3 years2024
- Exports
- 31.4%2025
- Imports
- 29.5%2025
Compiled by the World Bank from: World Population Prospects, United Nations (UN), uri: https://population.un.org/wpp/, publisher: UN Population Division · source updated 2026-07-13 · each figure is dated because the most recent value was chosen by us, not by the source
In this country's own words
Inspiring new ways
the state's official mottovia Wikidata (CC0) Also recorded in Latin and Welsh.
- Founded
- 1910
- National anthem
- national anthem of Mzansi
Everything in this section is quoted, with its source. Aletheia does not write about a country's history, culture or religion in its own words — where there is nothing to quote, there is no section.
World Heritage Sites
12 World Heritage Sitesshow all
- iSimangaliso Wetland Park · inscribed 1999 · shared with Mozambique
- Cradle of Humankind · inscribed 1999
- Robben Island · inscribed 1999
- Maloti-Drakensberg Park · inscribed 2000 · shared with Lesotho
- Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape · inscribed 2003
- Cape Floristic Kingdom · inscribed 2004
- Vredefort crater · inscribed 2005
- Richtersveld · inscribed 2007
- Khomani Cultural Landscape · inscribed 2017
- Makhonjwa Mountains · inscribed 2018
- Human Rights, Liberation and Reconciliation: Nelson Mandela Legacy Sites · inscribed 2024
- The Emergence of Modern Humans: The Pleistocene occupation sites of South Africa · inscribed 2024
Register from Wikidata (CC0) · in inscription order · links go to UNESCO
Emergency numbers
- 112listed as: fire department
- 112listed as: emergency medical services
- 112listed as: police
Shown in numerical order, which is not an order of priority.
Listed by the source, mostly from ITU-T E.129. We have not dialled these numbers, and where a service is named it is the source's description rather than ours.
Explore this country
Regions
First-level regions as GeoNames lists them, shown alphabetically · each page computes daylight at the region’s own coordinates
Currency
ZAR
News coverage here is counted from Aletheia’s bundled source registry plus the sources the Host had admitted as of 2026-09-14. A source admitted since that date has not reached this page yet, so this is a floor rather than a total.