Everyday practical information for South Africa

The plug, which is a genuine problem

• South Africa's standard socket is type M, three large round pins in a triangle, used almost nowhere else in the world.
• Type N is being rolled out in new buildings, and many places also have type C sockets for European two-pin plugs.
• Buy a South African adapter at the airport on arrival if you did not bring one. Do not assume your universal adapter covers type M, because many do not.
• 230 V, 50 Hz, so European and British appliances work fine on voltage.

Language

• Eleven official languages, plus South African Sign Language. English is the shared language of business, signage and tourism and is spoken almost everywhere.
• Afrikaans dominates in the Western and Northern Cape, Zulu in KwaZulu-Natal, Xhosa in the Eastern Cape and Sotho and Tswana inland.
• "Robot" means traffic light, "just now" means later, "now now" means sooner than that, and "shame" is an expression of sympathy or affection.
• A braai is not a barbecue and saying so out loud is a small act of aggression.

Hours and the calendar

• Shops typically open 09:00 to 17:00 or 18:00, with malls to 19:00 or 20:00. Sunday hours are shorter.
• Restaurants stop serving around 21:00 or 22:00 outside the big city centres.
• Twelve public holidays, including Human Rights Day (21 March), Freedom Day (27 April), Youth Day (16 June) and Heritage Day (24 September), which everyone calls National Braai Day.
• December to mid-January is the national holiday. The coast is packed, prices peak, and Johannesburg empties.
• Seasons are inverted. Cape Town's summer is December to March and dry; the Kruger summer is wet and green with harder game viewing.

Money-adjacent habits

• Petrol stations are attended and take cards. Tip the attendant.
• Car guards are everywhere, informal, and mostly harmless. ZAR 5 to ZAR 10 on leaving.
• Bargaining is normal at craft markets, not in shops.

Small things

• Distances in kilometres, speed in km/h, and the open-road limit is 120.
• Drinking in public is illegal in most municipalities.
• The drink-drive limit is 0.05%, and enforcement is real.
• Load shedding apps such as EskomSePush are still worth installing even in a quiet year, because municipal outages happen independently of Eskom.