Cultural institutions

The South African National Gallery, home to 19th–20th-century African art and 16th–20th-century European art, and the District Six Museum, which honours an interracial bohemian enclave that was destroyed by government decrees during the apartheid era, are in Cape Town. Robben Island (designated a UNSECO World Heritage site in 1999), north of Cape Town in Table Bay, was once the site of an infamous prison and is now home to a museum. The National Museum at Bloemfontein contains institutes for such areas as herpetology, ornithology, mammalogy, arachnology, paleontology, archaeology, and local history. The African Art Centre in Durban exhibits work by local artists. The National Library of South Africa, the national reference and preservation repository formed in 1999 by the merger of the South African Library and the State Library, has campuses in Cape Town and Pretoria. The Nelson Mandela National Museum, honouring the life and work of Mandela, comprises three sites centred in or around Mandela’s home village in Qunu, Eastern Cape. The museum opened on Feb. 11, 2000—10 years from the day that Mandela was released from prison. A museum dedicated to the history of apartheid opened in Johannesburg in 2001. Monuments to important South African historical figures—from both the colonial era as well as the antiapartheid struggle—can be found throughout the country.

Sports and recreation

South Africans avidly participate in sports and outdoor recreational activities. The country’s national parks provide opportunities not only to view wildlife but also to pursue activities such as rock climbing and hiking. As with most other aspects of South African life, however, sports and recreational activities developed differently for whites and Blacks. Whites played football (soccer), rugby, and cricket and enjoyed sports in world-class facilities, while Blacks were restricted to such sports as football, boxing, and, secondarily, athletics (track and field); moreover, their facilities were poorly maintained and ill-equipped.

White South African athletes collected more than 50 Olympic medals from 1908 to 1960, but the country was suspended from the Olympic Games in 1964–92 because of its apartheid policies. During the transition from apartheid to democracy (1990–94), South Africa was readmitted to the Olympics, and a small, racially mixed Olympic team competed in the 1992 Summer Games. At the 1996 Summer Games, swimmer Penelope Heyns became the first South African Olympic gold medallist in the postapartheid era, and marathon runner Josia Thugwane earned the distinction of becoming the first Black South African to claim a gold medal.

Other postapartheid sports teams have also done well. South Africa’s rugby team, the Springboks, won the Rugby World Cup in 1995, 2007, 2019, and 2023. The 1995 victory was particularly poignant, as the country’s first Black president, Nelson Mandela, and the captain of the predominantly white rugby team, François Pienaar, used the tournament as an opportunity to build support for the team among South Africans of all colours, providing them with a common goal to rally around as a step toward healing the racial divisions left by apartheid. When South Africa’s national football team, affectionately nicknamed Bafana Bafana (Zulu for "The Boys"), returned to international competition, it won the 1996 African Cup of Nations at home, was runner-up to Egypt at the same competition in 1998, and qualified for its first World Cup finals in 1998. South Africa hosted the 2010 World Cup, the first time that an African country has been selected to do so.

Media and publishing

The white-oriented press in contemporary South Africa, which has a long tradition of free expression for whites, found itself under increasing political and legal constraints from the 1950s onward and was subjected to heavy censorship in the 1980s. Legislation was passed in late 1993 and promulgated in 1994 to better ensure fairness in the press. Historically, the strongest elements of the press have been distinct English- and Afrikaans-language publishers, such as Argus and Perskor. Black readership has expanded greatly, though some papers aimed at that market, such as The World, were banned during the apartheid period, while individual journalists were banned, detained, and threatened. During the 1980s a new independent press emerged, represented by newspapers such as New Nation and Weekly Mail. Vrye Weekblad, the first Afrikaans-language antiapartheid newspaper, closed in 1994. With South Africa’s reemergence in the world economy, foreign media interests began to take a greater interest in the local market; the largest daily newspaper group in the country was taken over by an international concern.

Television, introduced in the mid-1970s, and radio constitute important forces in South African society. Until the lifting of emergency media restrictions in February 1990, the government tightly controlled both and used them to communicate its own views and to counter perceived threats to the apartheid system. Most electronic media remain publicly owned, but the pattern of management and public participation in their control changed decisively after 1994 from all white- and male-dominated management to a more representative mix under the new government. A number of privately owned radio stations have been set up in major urban markets since the mid-1990s, and independent television productions have become more common. Increasingly, programming is aimed at the many linguistic and cultural groups in the country.

The digital revolution has markedly affected South Africa. Most major publications have an online presence, as do a rapidly growing number of companies and governmental agencies.