- Official name of the country: South Africa

 - Capitals: Pretoria (political); Cape Town (parliamentary); Bloemfontein (judicial) and Johannesburg (commercial centre).

 - Type of government: Constitutional republic.

 - Population: About 64 million people, of which about 49% are male and 51% are female. More than 28% of the population is under 15 years of age, about 66% are between 15 and 64 years of age and nearly 6% are over 65 years of age. The population growth rate is 1.07.

 - Area: 1,219,090 km (land: 1,214,470 km, water: 4,620 km).

 - Climate: Subtropical and temperate.

 - Natural resources: Gold, chromium, antimony (chemical element), coal, iron ore, manganese, nickel, phosphate, tin, uranium, diamonds, platinum, copper, vanadium (a type of metal), salt, natural gas.

 - Neighbors: Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) and Lesotho (which is completely inside South Africa).

 - Major cities by population: Johannesburg over 5.5 million, Cape Town over 4.7 million, Durban over 3.1 million, Soweto nearly 1.7 million and Pretoria 1.6 million.

 - Religion: Christian 79.8%, other beliefs including no religion 17%, Muslim 1.5%, Hindu 1.2%, African traditional religions 0.3%, Jewish 0.2%.

 - Racial groups: Black African 81.5%, Coloured 8%, White 8%, Indian/Asian 2.5%.

 - Official languages: South Africa has 12 official languages including English, Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans.