By Florence Modikwe

I know I am late, but I also need to say this: HAPPY SPRING everyone!! (more…)

South Africa has nine provinces: the Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, the Northern Cape, North West and the Western Cape. (Image: Mary Alexander)

South Africa occupies the southernmost tip of Africa. The country’s long coastline stretches across 2 500kms from the desert border with Namibia on the Atlantic coast southwards around the tip of Africa and then north to the border with subtropical Mozambique on the Indian Ocean.

The coastal zone is quite narrow for much of that distance, but gives way to a mountainous escarpment that separates it from the high inland plateau. In some places - notably the province of KwaZulu-Natal in the east - a greater distance separates the coast from the escarpment.

While the country is classified as semi-arid, it has considerable variation in climate as well as topography.

The great inland Karoo plateau - where sparsely populated scrubland gives rise to rocky hills and mountains - is extremely dry, and gets more so as it shades in the north-west towards the Kalahari desert. Exceptionally hot in summer, the area can be icy in winter. (more…)

Even with 11 official languages - the second-largest number in the world after India - South Africans still manage to communicate pretty well. Most of us speak English, but it’s a good idea to learn the local slang , which is sometimes a mix of several languages. Our robots are nothing like R2D2, just now doesn’t mean immediately, and babbelas is not a shampoo.

South African slang has a unique flavour, borrowing freely from Afrikaans , a language similar to Dutch and Flemish - as well as from the country’s many African languages, colonial-era Malay and Portuguese immigrants, and the ancient tongues of the country’s deep-indigenous San Bushman and Khoe-khoe communities.

Note: In many words derived from Afrikaans, the letter “g” is pronounced in the same way as the “ch” in the Scottish “loch” or the German “achtung” - a kind of growl at the back of the throat. In the pronunciation guides below, the spelling for this sound is given as “gh”.

Springbok rugby supporter

A supporter of the South African national rugby team, the Springboks. Other words you’ll need to know are Bafana Bafana, the country’s soccer team, and the Proteas, the national cricket team. (Image: South African Tourism)

A / B / C / D / E / F / G / H / I / J / K / L / M / N / O / P / R / S / T / U / V / W

A
abba - Carry a child secured to one’s back with a blanket. From the Khoi-San.

amasi (pronounced um-ah-see) - A popular drink of thick sour milk. From the isiZulu. An alternative name is maas.

apartheid (ap-art-hate) - Literally “apart-ness” in Afrikaans, apartheid was the policy of racial separation, and the resulting oppression of the black majority, implemented by the National Party from 1948 to 1990.

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Margate on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast offers warm sunshine throughout the year. (Image: South African Tourism )

Lying as it does in a subtropical region, South Africa is famous for its sunshine. However, it’s a relatively dry country, with an average annual rainfall of about 464mm, compared to a world average of about 860mm.

The Western Cape gets most of its rainfall in winter and the rest of the country is generally a summer-rainfall region.

Summer rains often bring huge thunderstorms, with lightening that has provided many an astute cameraman with exceptional pictures.

Temperatures in South Africa tend to be lower than in other countries at similar latitudes - such as Australia - mainly due to its greater elevation above sea level.

On the interior plateau the altitude - Johannesburg lies at 1 694 metres - keeps the average summer temperatures below 30 degrees Celsius. In winter, for the same reason, night-time temperatures can drop to freezing point, and lower in some places. Visitors who arrive in spring or autumn should bring “layers” of clothing to keep off the chill during the night and early mornings, and take off the weaters/jumpers during the day when the sun beams down. (more…)

South Africa is a “rainbow nation” of over 47-million people of diverse origins, cultures, languages and beliefs.

Africans are in the majority at 37.7-million, making up 79.5% of the total population. The white population is estimated at 4.4-million (9.2%), the coloured population at 4.2-million (8.9%) and the Indian and Asian population at 1.2-million (2.5%). (more…)

A young leopard in South Africa’s massive Kruger National Park. (Image: South African Tourism)

It’s the experience of a lifetime: South Africa is a huge, beautiful country, offering the friendliest people, glorious weather, spectacular scenery, a wealth of ancient and modern culture, big wildlife and vast wilderness, and award-winning hotels and restaurants. Not to mention the wide, green and sunny golf courses

The animals alone are reason enough to visit, and there are many. One of the world’s first wildlife conservation areas was South Africa’s Kruger Park, more than a century old and roughly the size of Wales. Today it is just one part of a broad conservation area reaching across national borders into neighbouring Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

The Kruger Park is divided into six eco-systems: Baobab sandveld, Mopane scrub, Lebombo knobthorn-marula bushveld, mixed acacia thicket, Combretum-silver clusterleaf woodland on granite and riverine forest. Altogether it has 1,982 species of plants. All the Big Five game animals are found at Kruger National Park, which has more species of mammals than any other African Game Reserve (at 147 species). There are webcams set up to observe the wild life. (more…)

At the southern tip of Africa two great oceans meet - the Atlantic and the Indian - warm weather lasts most of the year, and big game roams just beyond the city lights. Humanity began here: Traces of our ancestors are still evident in fossilised footprints 80 000 years old, and in the world’s oldest rock paintings. (more…)

South Africa’s Soccer Spectacle

An artist’s impression of the stunning King Senzangakhona Stadium, which is to be specially built for the 2010 World Cup, with a walkway connecting it to the Durban beachfront.

South Africa is set to be home to all the glory and drama of the biggest soccer tournament in the world and there isn’t a citizen who isn’t excited by the propsect. Don’t know where South Africa is? Don’t know how to get here? Want to find out more about the host cities and their stadiums? Scared of being eaten by lions? Want to know what the beer is like? Our answers to frequently asked questions about the soccer tournament will set your mind at ease :

South Africa: Where’s that?

We’re on the southern tip of Africa (that lozenge-shaped continent east of America, south of Europe and west of China), where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. We have nine provinces: Gauteng, the smallest and most densely populated, adjoins Limpopo, North West and Mpumalanga in the north; the Northern Cape, the largest province with the smallest population, is in the west; the Free State is in the middle of the country; and the coastal provinces of KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape lie to the south.

Well, what’s the place like?

Believe it or not, we have cities. Big cities. With tarred roads - highways, even. And skyscrapers. And electric lights. And traffic jams. South Africa is the powerhouse of Africa; the most advanced, broad-based economy on the continent, with infrastructure to match any first-world country. (more…)