Why South Africa has three capitals

Four colonies, one country

South Africa became a single country on 31 May 1910, eight years to the day after the Treaty of Vereeniging ended the war between the British and the Boers.^[5] It joined four colonies: the Cape and Natal, which had long been British, and the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, the two Boer republics Britain had conquered in the war.^[5][3]

Each had its own capital. Cape Town had been the capital of the British Cape, Pretoria of the Transvaal and Bloemfontein of the Orange Free State.^[3]

Splitting the difference

The terms of union were worked out at a National Convention that met between October 1908 and May 1909. Rather than hand the capital to one city, it shared out the branches of government: “to keep most people happy”, Cape Town got Parliament, Pretoria the administration and Bloemfontein the courts.^[4]

The British Parliament wrote the deal into the South Africa Act, which became law on 20 September 1909. Section 18 made Pretoria “the seat of Government of the Union”, section 23 made Cape Town “the seat of the Legislature”, and section 109 said the new Appellate Division “shall sit in Bloemfontein”.^[1] Natal, the fourth colony, got none of the three.^[1]

Pretoria built itself a seat to match. The Union Buildings, designed by Herbert Baker, had their cornerstone laid on 26 November 1910 and were finished in October 1913.^[4]

Why it has lasted

When apartheid ended in 1994, there were proposals to bring everything together in Pretoria, or even to build a new capital from scratch, as Brazil had done with Brasília. They went nowhere: too many people had a stake in the arrangement as it was, and the cost of moving looked enormous.^[3]

The 1996 Constitution names only one of the three. Section 42(6) says “the seat of Parliament is Cape Town”, but lets an Act of Parliament move it elsewhere.^[2] President Jacob Zuma argued for moving Parliament to Pretoria to save money.^[3]

The question came up again after a fire gutted Parliament’s buildings in Cape Town on 2 January 2022, destroying the National Assembly chamber. The Economic Freedom Fighters suggested moving Parliament to Pretoria, then backed down, and the 400 members of the National Assembly moved into a hall in Cape Town built for 170 while the chamber is rebuilt.^[6]

A fourth city

The most important court isn’t in any of the three.^[3] The Constitutional Court first opened on 14 February 1995 and, after a decade in temporary quarters, moved into its own building on Constitution Hill in Johannesburg on 21 March 2004.^[7] Bloemfontein keeps the Supreme Court of Appeal, the court just below it.^[3]