Country That Has Three Capitals
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Twice a year, something odd happens in South Africa. Government ministers pack their suitcases, civil servants load boxes of files, and a small army of drivers, secretaries and advisers leaves one capital city and travels to another capital city — in the same country. Nobody is changing jobs. Nobody is going on holiday. The government is simply commuting, because in South Africa, the government does not live in one place.
South Africa is the only country on Earth with three capital cities. Pretoria runs the country, Cape Town makes the laws, and Bloemfontein judges the arguments. Three cities, three jobs, one government — and one very long road between them. Buckle up, because the best way to understand this strange system is to visit all three, one stop at a time.
Stop one: Pretoria, the city that runs the country
Our first stop is Pretoria, in the north of the country. This is the administrative, or executive, capital — the working office of the nation.
The president of South Africa works here, in the Union Buildings, a grand sandstone complex that sits on a hill above the city, fronted by wide terraced gardens. The cabinet ministers have their offices in Pretoria. So do the big government departments that handle money, health, education, defence and everything else a state must do every day. Foreign embassies cluster here too, which is why ambassadors from around the world call Pretoria home.
Pretoria is famous for its jacaranda trees, which cover the streets in purple blossom in spring. It is a formal, buttoned-up city of officials and paperwork, only a short drive from Johannesburg, the country’s biggest and richest city. If South Africa were a company, Pretoria would be the head office where the boss sits and the daily decisions get signed.
But there is a catch. When the president wants a new law passed, the law cannot be made in Pretoria. For that, everyone has to travel — a very long way.
Stop two: Cape Town, the city that makes the laws
Roughly 1,400 kilometres south-west of Pretoria, down at the tip of the continent beneath the flat top of Table Mountain, sits Cape Town. This is the legislative capital, the home of Parliament.
Parliament has two houses, the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces, and both meet in Cape Town. When Parliament is in session, the city’s guesthouses, hotels and rental flats fill up with members of parliament, ministers, advisers and officials who have flown down from Pretoria. Ministers keep homes and offices in both cities. Planes shuttle back and forth. It is probably the most expensive commute in world politics, and it has been happening, in one form or another, for more than a hundred years.
Cape Town is the oldest city in South Africa and one of its most beautiful, wrapped around a harbour where the Atlantic Ocean meets the mountain. It feels a world away from Pretoria — sea air instead of dry highland wind, tourists with cameras instead of officials with briefcases. Yet for several months of the year, this holiday-postcard city is where the laws of the whole nation are debated and passed.
When the session ends, the suitcases come out again, and the government flies home to Pretoria. Two stops down, one to go.
Stop three: Bloemfontein, the city that judges
Our final stop is Bloemfontein, roughly in the middle of the country, in the province called the Free State. Its name means “fountain of flowers” in Afrikaans, and it is a calm, spacious city — a fitting temperament, you might say, for the judicial capital.
Bloemfontein is home to the Supreme Court of Appeal, the court that hears appeals from lower courts across the country on most legal matters. Judges here weigh the arguments that Pretoria’s laws and Cape Town’s debates eventually produce when people disagree about what the law means.
Now, an honest twist, because this is where many quiz books quietly go out of date. The Supreme Court of Appeal is not quite the highest court in the land any more. South Africa’s top court today is the Constitutional Court, which rules on constitutional matters and stands above all others — and it does not sit in Bloemfontein. It sits in Johannesburg, on a site called Constitution Hill. Johannesburg is the country’s largest city and its economic engine, but it is not a capital of any kind. So the judicial capital keeps its historic title, while the single most powerful court works in a city that holds no capital title at all. South Africa, you may be noticing, does not like simple answers.
Why three capitals? A deal struck in 1910
To understand the suitcase government, roll back to the beginning of the twentieth century. The land that is now South Africa was divided into four separate British colonies: the Cape Colony, Natal, the Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony. They had deep rivalries. The British colonies and the former Boer republics had recently fought the bitter South African War, which ended in 1902, and trust between them was paper thin.
Leaders wanted to join the four colonies into one new country, the Union of South Africa. Delegates met at a national convention in 1908 and 1909 to write the rules. Most questions could be settled, but one argument nearly broke the whole project: where should the capital be? Every colony wanted the honour — and the jobs, money and prestige that came with it — for its own city.
The answer, written into the South Africa Act of 1909, was a classic compromise: share it. Britannica’s account of the Act puts it plainly — Pretoria became the administrative capital, Cape Town the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein the judicial capital. Each of the three big colonies received one branch of government. Nobody won everything, so everybody could sign.
And the fourth colony? Natal’s capital, Pietermaritzburg, received no branch of government at all. It was given compensation instead — a consolation prize for missing out. The compensation is well documented; you will often read that the deal also made the city a home for the national archives, though accounts differ on the exact details. The Union itself was born on 31 May 1910, with Louis Botha as its first prime minister, and the three-capital arrangement simply never went away. The colonies became provinces, the Union later became the modern Republic of South Africa, and the government kept its three homes.
I find something rather human in that. The system was never designed because it was efficient. It was designed because it was the only deal everyone would accept — and sometimes, keeping a country together matters more than tidy organisation charts.
The argument that never ends: should Parliament move?
Every few years, South Africans have the same debate: is this not madness? Running two seats of government more than a thousand kilometres apart means duplicated offices, extra homes for officials, endless flights and a small fortune in travel. When Parliament sits in Cape Town, the executive, based in Pretoria, effectively has to move up and down the country.
Politicians have repeatedly proposed shifting Parliament to Pretoria to end the split. The ruling African National Congress first suggested the move back in the 1990s, and former president Jacob Zuma argued publicly that keeping two capitals was hugely expensive and that relocation would save money. The numbers, though, cut both ways. A costing published in 2016 estimated that building a new home for Parliament in Pretoria would cost around R7 billion, even if it then saved the country perhaps R500 million to R750 million a year. A later analysis pointed out that moving would uproot about 1,400 parliamentary staff and their families and would damage Cape Town’s economy, which benefits greatly from the parliamentary seasons.
The argument flared up again in January 2022, when a serious fire gutted parts of the parliamentary buildings in Cape Town, including the National Assembly chamber. If the building had to be rebuilt anyway, some asked, why not rebuild it in Pretoria? Committees have supported the idea, parties have campaigned on it, and studies have been commissioned. And yet, at the time of writing, Parliament still sits in Cape Town, ministers still pack their suitcases, and the great commute continues — exactly as it has since 1910.
One country, many voices
South Africa’s talent for sharing things around does not stop at capitals. The country famously has 12 official languages — more than almost any nation on Earth. For many years there were 11, including English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa. Then, in 2023, South African Sign Language was added as the twelfth, a change made to recognise the rights of deaf South Africans. A country that speaks in twelve official tongues perhaps finds nothing strange about a government that works in three official cities.
So next time a quiz asks you for the capital of South Africa, smile. The honest answer is not one city. It is a road trip: Pretoria to run things, Cape Town to make the laws, Bloemfontein to judge them — and Johannesburg, the giant with no title, quietly holding the highest court of all.
Questions people ask
Which is the real capital of South Africa? All three are real, and each has a different job. Pretoria is the administrative (executive) capital, Cape Town is the legislative capital where Parliament sits, and Bloemfontein is the judicial capital, home of the Supreme Court of Appeal. No single city is the capital for everything.
Why does South Africa have three capitals instead of one? It was a compromise made when the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910. The four colonies joining the union could not agree on one capital city, so the branches of government were shared: administration to Pretoria, Parliament to Cape Town, and the top appeal court to Bloemfontein.
Is Johannesburg a capital of South Africa? No. Johannesburg is the largest city and the economic centre of the country, but it is not one of the three capitals. It does host the Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa, which sits on Constitution Hill.
Do government officials really travel between the capitals? Yes. When Parliament is in session in Cape Town, ministers, civil servants and diplomats travel from Pretoria, more than 1,000 kilometres away, and many keep offices and accommodation in both cities. This annual movement has continued since the arrangement began.
Will Parliament ever move to Pretoria? It has been proposed many times since the 1990s, supported by committees and studied more than once. Supporters point to the cost of running two seats of government; opponents point to the huge cost of building a new Parliament and the harm to Cape Town. So far, no government has actually made the move.
