10 Surprising Facts About South Africa

We're now about to explore the beautiful and love-filled country of South Africa. And yes, we finally added this country to our 10 facts series, and I'm very excited to share 10 surprising and interesting facts about South Africa with you. Hey guys, welcome to another episode of FTD Facts. My name is Leroy Kenton, and now before I jump into the facts, I want to know, when you think about South Africa, what first comes to mind? You know, for me, right away I think of food, then I think of the music, and then the phrase motherland comes to mind, but that's just me. Let me hear from you. Alright guys, enough chit-chat, let's just jump into the facts right now. So starting at number 10, when asking someone to name the capital of South Africa, you know, most people would be like, you know, it's obvious, Johannesburg, right? Although it is the largest and the financially the most important city in South Africa, the answer is actually completely wrong. South Africa has three official capital cities. Pretoria, that's the administrative district, and then Bloemfontein, that's the judicial district, and then Cape Town is the legislative capital of South Africa. The country of South Africa is quite a multi-ethnic and multicultural country, with one of the most diverse cultures and languages in the world. There are 11 officially recognized languages in the constitution of South Africa, and those are English, Afrikaans, Ndibli, Pedi, Sotu, Xhosa, Siswati, Siwonga, Setswana, and Zulu or Isizulu. Only one of those languages I know how to speak is English, so yeah, let me know down below how you think I did on that pronunciation. Anyways, the most spoken language is Zulu, followed by Xhosa, and those are also the two largest tribes in the country. However, English is considered to be the main language and is widely spoken throughout the country by most people. There's no other country in the world that has this much official languages, so South Africa definitely takes this one big time. South Africa is a treasure trove for archaeologists and paleontologists, as it has produced some of the world's oldest and most valuable fossils to this date. About a fifth of the world's gold comes from the mines in South Africa, by the way. South Africa is the only country in the world to have two Nobel Peace Prize winners who have houses on the exact same street. The street in question is Vilacazzi, and that's in Soweto in Johannesburg, and the Nobel Peace Prize winners were Nelson Mandela as well as Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Now another interesting fact is that the first ever heart transplant was carried out in South Africa at the Groote Troost Hospital in Cape Town. Now the surgeon Christian Bernard performed the operation in 1967. The operation was considered to be successful, even though the patient did sadly pass away 18 days later from double pneumonia, but his body had not rejected the heart. So where else in the world can you share a warm and sunny beach with a colony of penguins? Like seriously though, South Africa. There are various colonies of African penguins, also known as the jackass penguin. They can be found along the western coast of South Africa, and the most famous place to visit these birds is in Boulders Beach, and that's located south of Cape Town. With over 6 million trees, Johannesburg is considered to have the largest man-made forest in the entire world. Since the area of Johannesburg was originally a grassland, all of the trees were planted to provide wood for the growing mine industry in the 19th century. However, there have been many discussions on whether Johannesburg can officially claim this title, and if the trees in the city can be considered to be a forest or not. Urban myth or not, the city can definitely claim the title for being one of the most wooded cities in the entire world. To show you the importance of South Africa, South Africa accounts for almost 25% of the GDP of the entire African continent, with an economy more than twice the size of the second biggest, which is in Algeria. But things are changing rapidly all across Africa. There's quite a bit of nations now that are really on the rise financially. Now South Africa is also the first African country to host the FIFA World Cup, and that happened in 2010. Yeah, that was one of my favourite World Cups ever. On top of that, it's only the second country in the world to have hosted the cricket, rugby, union, and football World Cups after England. And the last thing I want to share about South Africa is the country is the first, and up till today, the only country to have built nuclear weapons, and then to voluntarily dismantle its nuclear weapons program. There's no other country in history that has done that. And that's a testament to the kind of people that South Africans are. So guys, I hope you enjoyed this journey into South Africa. This country is filled with some great stories and people, and although the country has seen some dark moments throughout its history, the people continue to press forward with a bright smile, and that's very inspiring to see. So that wraps up this episode. If you want to check out another one like this, definitely click the annotation right beside my head. It'll take you to it. My social media links are also below in the video description section, so you can follow me on Instagram or whatever, just shoot me a message and I'll get back to you as quickly as possible. And if you haven't done so already, hit that subscribe button and ring that bell to Alright guys, I'll see you next time.