South Africa

The country calling code for South Africa is +27. Country calling codes identify the destination country when placing an international call. The international access prefix used to leave your originating country varies by telephone network. On mobile phones, the + symbol is generally used instead. After the country code, dial the local South Africa number, dropping any leading zero used for domestic dialling.

South Africa is assigned ZA as its ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code and ZAF as its alpha-3 code. Alpha-2 codes are the two-letter codes used in web addresses, currency pairs and shipping forms. Alpha-3 codes are the three-letter codes used in banking, aviation and international standards work. The internet country code top-level domain for South Africa is .za. ISO country codes are standardized identifiers, but they can change when countries or territories undergo changes in international status or classification.

The official currency of South Africa is the South African rand, with the ISO 4217 code ZAR and the symbol R. Prices, salaries and official accounts inside South Africa are quoted in ZAR. Exchange rates move daily, so check a live rate before converting rather than relying on a figure you saw last week.

The primary time zone for South Africa is +02:00, currently UTC+02:00. The clock reads from your own device, so it follows daylight saving rather than showing a fixed offset.

The capital of South Africa is Pretoria. South Africa sits in Africa, specifically the Southern Africa subregion. Its approximate centre point is -29.00000000, 24.00000000. Traffic in South Africa drives on the left. Languages recorded for South Africa: Afrikaans, English, Southern Ndebele, Southern Sotho, Swati, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu.

South Africa shares a land border with 6 countries: Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. Land borders are not the same as nearest countries: a country across a narrow strait can be closer than one you share a fence with. The nearby page ranks countries by straight-line distance instead.