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Tuesday, January 21, 2014

EffYou nation, please welcome South Africa

We have a visitor from South Africa, which means, of course, that I have to give you a little education on South Africa. From Wikipedia, we learn this:
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of Africa. It has 2,798 kilometres (1,739 mi) of coastline that stretches along the South Atlantic and Indian oceans.[7][8][9] To the north lie the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe; to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland; and within it lies Lesotho, an enclave surrounded by South African territory.[10] South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area, and with close to 53 million people, is the world's 24th-most populous nation.
One of the oddities about South Africa is the lack of a genuine capital city, apparently:
South Africa has no legally defined capital city. The fourth chapter of the Constitution of South Africa, states that "The seat of Parliament is Cape Town, but an Act of Parliament enacted in accordance with section 76(1) and (5) may determine that the seat of Parliament is elsewhere."[75] The country's three branches of government are split over different cities. Cape Town, as the seat of Parliament, is the legislative capital; Pretoria, as the seat of the President and Cabinet, is the administrative capital; and Bloemfontein, as the seat of the Supreme Court of Appeal, is the judicial capital, while the Constitutional Court of South Africa sits in Johannesburg. Most foreign embassies are located in Pretoria.
South Africa by all accounts is a beautiful country. It is one of the places I hope to visit one day. In the meantime, welcome, and to our South African visitors (there actually were two) we send forth a hearty EffYou.

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