50 Fun Facts About Southern Africa

Which country, an enclave inside South Africa, has the highest lowest point of any nation on Earth?

Lesotho has no ground lower than 1,400 metres, so it is the only country lying entirely above 1,000 metres. Only Vatican City and San Marino are likewise surrounded by a single neighbour.

Which waterfall on the Zambezi, known locally as 'The Smoke That Thunders', did David Livingstone name in 1855?

Victoria Falls forms the world's largest sheet of falling water, 1,708 metres wide and 108 metres high. Its spray rises more than 400 metres and can be seen from up to 50 km away.

Which South African leader spent 18 of his 27 prison years on Robben Island before becoming president in 1994?

Nelson Mandela was sent to Robben Island in 1964 and later moved to Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland. A billion people worldwide watched his inauguration on television.

Which country's flag is the only national flag to show a modern firearm, an AK-47 crossed with a hoe?

Mozambique gave the rifle the meaning of defence, set beside a hoe for production and an open book for education. Calls to remove the gun have been made since 1990.

Which landmark overlooking Cape Town has carried visitors to its summit plateau by cableway since 1929?

Table Mountain's flat summit is often hidden by a cloud nicknamed the tablecloth, which forms when a south-easterly wind pushes moist air up its slopes.

Which vast sandy region covering much of Botswana has a name said to come from a Tswana word for 'the great thirst'?

The Kalahari is strictly a semi-arid sandy savanna rather than a true desert. It spreads across 900,000 square kilometres of Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.

Which antelope, known for stiff-legged leaps called pronking, is the emblem of South Africa's rugby team?

The springbok can leap 2 metres into the air while pronking, a word that comes from a term meaning to show off. It is also South Africa's national animal.

Which plastic horn, about 65 cm long, became the deafening sound of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa?

The vuvuzela reaches 120 decibels at one metre, the threshold of pain. Its single droning note sits around the B flat below middle C.

Which British author was born in Bloemfontein in 1892 and bitten there by a baboon spider as a child?

J. R. R. Tolkien left for England with his mother at the age of three. Some link the bite to the giant spiders in his stories, though he said he had no memory of it.

Which country is named after a ruined medieval city whose 11-metre stone walls were built without mortar?

Zimbabwe borrowed the name of a Shona royal capital that flourished from the 13th century. The word is usually read as 'houses of stones'.

Which southern African country changed its official name in 2018, partly to avoid confusion with Switzerland?

Eswatini means 'land of the Swazis', and King Mswati III announced the change to mark 50 years of independence. The kingdom is Africa's last absolute monarchy.

Which vast wetland in Botswana is fed by a river that fans out inland and never reaches the sea?

The Okavango Delta loses about 96 to 98 per cent of its water to evaporation, plants and the ground. In 2014 it became the 1000th site on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Which game reserve, first protected in 1898 to control hunting, became South Africa's first national park in 1926?

Kruger National Park covers 19,623 square kilometres of South Africa's north-east, with rivers as natural boundaries to its north and south.

Which Indian independence leader lived in South Africa for 21 years and was thrown off a train at Pietermaritzburg?

Mahatma Gandhi arrived in 1893 as a young lawyer hired for a single lawsuit. He was ejected for refusing to leave a first-class carriage, and his years there shaped his politics.

Which Johannesburg-born comedian titled his memoir Born a Crime because his parents' relationship was then illegal?

Trevor Noah was born in 1984 to a mother classified as Black and a father classified as White under apartheid law. He hosted The Daily Show from 2015 to 2022.

Which metal, found on the Witwatersrand in 1886, turned farmland into Johannesburg, now South Africa's largest city?

Gold earned Johannesburg its nickname, the City of Gold. Unusually for a major city, it was not built on a river or a harbour.

Which South African churchman won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize and popularised the term 'Rainbow Nation'?

Desmond Tutu had been nominated in each of the three years before he won. After 1994 he chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into abuses by both sides.

Which small pack-living mammal of southern Africa always keeps a sentry on lookout for predators?

The meerkat is a mongoose that is immune to scorpion venom. Adults teach their pups to eat scorpions by first removing the stinger.

Which animal joins the lion, leopard, elephant and rhinoceros in the Big Five, a term coined by big-game hunters?

The buffalo earned its place on a list of the five most difficult animals to hunt on foot. Its broad horns made it a popular trophy.

Which world first did surgeon Christiaan Barnard perform at Cape Town's Groote Schuur Hospital in December 1967?

The human heart transplant gave grocer Louis Washkansky the heart of an accident victim. He woke and talked with his wife, but died of pneumonia 18 days later.

Which African country shares its name with a lake that holds more species of fish than any other lake?

Malawi borders a lake with at least 700 species of cichlid alone. David Livingstone, who reached it in 1859, nicknamed it the Lake of Stars after the lanterns of its night fishermen.

Which actress from Benoni became the first South African to win an acting Oscar, for the 2003 film Monster?

Charlize Theron grew up on her parents' farm near Johannesburg. Her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos also won her the Silver Bear.

Which technology billionaire was born in Pretoria in 1971 and left South Africa for Canada in 1989?

Elon Musk had a claim to Canadian citizenship through his mother, who was born in Saskatchewan. On arrival he worked odd jobs, including at a farm and a lumber mill.

Which language, descended from 17th-century Dutch dialects, is widely spoken in both South Africa and Namibia?

Afrikaans was once dismissed as 'kitchen Dutch', and South Africa recognised it as a distinct language only in 1925.

Which thick-trunked 'upside-down tree' of the African savanna can store up to 120,000 litres of water?

The baobab can also live for well over two thousand years: one tree was about 2,450 years old when it died in 2011.

Which seabird, nicknamed the jackass for its donkey-like bray, has a mainland colony at Boulders Beach near Cape Town?

The African penguin settled Boulders Beach only in the 1980s. Almost all of its other breeding sites are islands, 24 of them strung from Namibia to Algoa Bay.

Which air-dried, cured meat snack from southern Africa is prepared with vinegar, coriander and other spices?

Biltong differs from jerky because it is never cooked: the meat hangs to dry in the air, traditionally for a fortnight in winter, when the cold slows spoilage.

Which caffeine-free herbal tea is farmed only in the Cederberg region of South Africa's Western Cape?

Rooibos means 'red bush', a name South Africa has protected by law since 2013. In Britain it is often called redbush tea.

Which Zulu king, famed for the short stabbing spear called the iklwa, was assassinated by his half-brothers in 1828?

Shaka is credited with introducing the iklwa, though he probably did not invent it. One of his killers, Dingane, then took the Zulu throne.

Which South African institution sits in Cape Town, even though the president and cabinet are based in Pretoria?

Parliament has met in Cape Town since a compromise gave South Africa three capitals, with the appeal court in Bloemfontein. Ministers and diplomats shuttle between cities when it is in session.

Which city, the capital of Namibia, grew up around a hot spring long known to local pastoral tribes?

Windhoek is also Namibia's largest city, and its altitude keeps temperatures mild throughout the year.

Which southern African capital kept the name Salisbury until 1982, two years after independence from Britain?

Harare takes its name from the village of a Shona chief whose nickname meant 'he who does not sleep'. The older name honoured a British prime minister.

Which mountain range, known in Zulu as uKhahlamba, contains Tugela Falls and the source of the Orange River?

The Drakensberg owes its Zulu name, 'barrier of up-pointed spears', to its jagged pinnacles. Early Dutch settlers called the same peaks the Dragons' Mountains.

Which headland is the true southern tip of Africa and the official dividing point of the Atlantic and Indian oceans?

Cape Agulhas means 'Cape of Needles': Portuguese navigators noticed that around 1500 their compass needles pointed to true north there. Its coast is littered with wrecks.

Which Portuguese navigator became the first European to round the southern tip of Africa, in February 1488?

Bartolomeu Dias is said to have named the Cape of Storms, which his king renamed the Cape of Good Hope. He died in a storm off that same cape in 1500.

Which British mining magnate founded De Beers in 1888 and later served as prime minister of the Cape Colony?

Cecil Rhodes also dreamed of a Cape to Cairo railway through British territory. His will set up the Oxford scholarship that bears his name, one of the oldest graduate scholarships in the world.

Which European power ruled Namibia as a colony from 1884 until South African troops captured it in 1915?

Germany called the territory South West Africa. After the First World War a League of Nations mandate made South Africa responsible for running it.

Which Johannesburg township drew world attention in 1976, when students rose against a new school language rule?

Soweto is a syllabic abbreviation of South Western Townships. It also has the only street in the world where two Nobel Prize winners once lived.

Which stretch of Namibia's Atlantic shore did Portuguese sailors once call 'The Gates of Hell'?

The Skeleton Coast was named for the whale and seal bones that once littered its beaches. Dense fog from the cold Benguela current has since added hundreds of wrecked ships.

Which country includes Cabinda, an oil-rich exclave cut off from the rest by a strip of the DR Congo?

Angola's Cabinda province lies beside some of the largest offshore oil fields in the world. Exploration there began in 1954, under Portuguese rule.

Which 1879 battle, fought on the day of a solar eclipse, saw a Zulu army overrun a British invasion camp?

Isandlwana was the British Army's worst defeat against an indigenous force with far inferior weapons. It wrecked the first British invasion of Zululand.

Which first president of Botswana was earlier exiled by Britain over his marriage to an Englishwoman, Ruth Williams?

Seretse Khama's story was told in the 2016 film A United Kingdom. South Africa's apartheid government had opposed a mixed-race couple ruling just across its northern border.

Which national park in northern Namibia is named after a vast salt pan whose name means 'Great White Place'?

Etosha has been protected since 1907, when it was proclaimed a game reserve. The pan alone covers 23 per cent of the park's 22,270 square kilometres.

Which plant of the Namib desert grows only two leaves in a lifetime that can last two thousand years?

Welwitschia never sheds its two leaves: they keep growing from a woody crown and fray into ribbons with age. One local name translates as 'two leaves; can't die'.

Which 'living fossil' fish, thought extinct for 66 million years, was caught off South Africa's east coast in 1938?

The coelacanth is the best-known 'Lazarus taxon', a line that vanishes from the fossil record only to reappear much later. Its body plan is about 400 million years old.

Which reservoir on the Zambezi, filled between 1958 and 1963, is the world's largest man-made lake by volume?

Kariba holds four times as much water as the reservoir behind China's Three Gorges Dam. Its sheer mass is believed to have set off more than 20 sizeable earthquakes.

Which ghost town in the Namib, built on diamond wealth after 1908, now has houses knee-deep in sand?

Kolmanskop once boasted a ballroom, a casino, a theatre and an ice factory. It began when a railway worker picked up a single diamond.

Which South African animal, striped mainly on its front half, was the first extinct creature to have its DNA analysed?

The quagga was a subspecies of the plains zebra, hunted out in the wild by 1878. The last one died in Amsterdam in 1883, and only two were ever photographed alive.

Which first president of Zambia governed from independence in 1964 until he lost multi-party elections in 1991?

Kenneth Kaunda, known simply as KK, built his rule around an ideology he called Zambian Humanism. He lived to the age of 97.

Which semi-nomadic people of northern Namibia are famous for coating their skin and hair with red ochre paste?

The Himba mix butterfat and ochre into a paste called otjize. It protects against the dry heat and insect bites, and keeps skin clean where water for washing is scarce.