South Africa

Why South Africa works

South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost country in Africa, made up of nine provinces and bounded to the south by 2,798 kilometres of coastline along the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean, to the north by Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, and to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini; the country also entirely encloses Lesotho. Covering 1,221,037 square kilometres, South Africa has a population of more than 63 million, making it the sixth-most populous country in Africa and 24th in the world. Pretoria serves as the administrative capital, Cape Town as the legislative capital and seat of Parliament, and Bloemfontein as the judicial capital, while Johannesburg is the country's largest and most populous city, followed by Cape Town and Durban.

Archaeological evidence places hominid species in South Africa as far back as 2.5 million years ago, with modern humans in the region for more than 100,000 years; the earliest known peoples were the Khoisan, joined from about 2,000 to 1,000 years ago by Bantu-speaking peoples migrating from west and central Africa, whose settlement in the north gave rise to the Kingdom of Mapungubwe. The country's interior forms a large, mostly flat plateau at an elevation of between 1,000 and 2,100 metres, highest in the east and sloping gently toward the west and north, ringed by the Great Escarpment, whose highest stretch, the Drakensberg, includes Mafadi, South Africa's highest peak at 3,450 metres above sea level.

The extreme southwest of the country has a climate similar to the Mediterranean, with wet winters and hot, dry summers, hosting the fynbos biome of shrubland and thicket and producing much of South Africa's wine in an area known for winds strong enough to have made rounding the nearby Cape of Good Hope treacherous for sailors, causing numerous shipwrecks. Further east along the south coast, rainfall spreads more evenly through the year, producing a greener landscape, while annual rainfall increases toward the subtropical Lowveld and the coast near Mozambique; South Africa's overall temperate character comes from its position between two oceans, its Southern Hemisphere latitude, and rising elevation toward the north and interior.

South Africa is one of Africa's leading tourist destinations, with the sector contributing about 5.8 percent of GDP and supporting around 1.8 million jobs, more than 10 percent of national employment; in 2024 the country welcomed approximately 8.9 million international visitors, and in 2025 The Daily Telegraph ranked it the highest-rated destination in Africa and the Indian Ocean region. Its natural attractions include Kruger National Park, one of the continent's largest and most visited game reserves; Table Mountain, one of the New7Wonders of Nature; the Garden Route; the Drakensberg mountain range; the Blyde River Canyon; and the beaches of the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

Safari tourism remains one of South Africa's principal draws, supported by a wide network of national parks, private game reserves, and marine protected areas alongside the country's major cities, which together attract millions of visitors each year in their own right. Cape Town, in particular, combines Table Mountain and its surrounding coastline with the winelands of the nearby Cape, giving the southwestern corner of the country a concentration of landscape, wine, and wildlife tourism that runs from the Cape of Good Hope through the Garden Route toward the Drakensberg further east.

• South Africa — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

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