Pretoria

The valley was settled by Voortrekkers in the 1840s, and the town was laid out in 1855 by Marthinus Pretorius, who named it for his father Andries Pretorius, a commander at the battle at Blood River. It became the capital of the South African Republic in 1860: a small, dusty place of single-storey houses around a church square, whose president, Paul Kruger, lived in a modest house on Church Street and received callers on its verandah.

The gold of the Witwatersrand, found in 1886 a short ride to the south, made the republic rich and brought the conflict that destroyed it. British forces occupied Pretoria in 1900, and the war was ended by the Treaty of Vereeniging, signed in 1902 in Melrose House in the city. Reconstruction followed quickly: when the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910 Pretoria became its administrative capital, and Herbert Baker's Union Buildings were completed on the ridge above the town in 1913.

The twentieth century made it the seat of the apartheid state's civil service and security apparatus, and of the trials, including the Rivonia trial's sentencing in 1964, that sent Nelson Mandela to prison. The Voortrekker Monument, opened in 1949, gave Afrikaner nationalism its central shrine. On 10 May 1994 Mandela was inaugurated as president at the Union Buildings, and the city became the capital of a democratic state. The surrounding municipalities were later merged into the City of Tshwane, whose name has been the subject of a long public argument over whether the city itself should be renamed.

Pretoria is a city of institutions: the civil service, the courts, the Reserve Bank, three universities and the scientific councils that fill its eastern suburbs. That gives it a formal, settled character quite unlike Johannesburg's, with an established Afrikaans middle class alongside a large Black professional and student population and one of the biggest diplomatic communities in Africa.

Its monuments carry the country's arguments in stone. The Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park face each other across a valley, one built for Afrikaner nationalism and the other for the dead of all the country's conflicts, and a road now links them. Statues, street names and the question of the city's name are debated in the same spirit. The State Theatre in the centre and the university's music and drama departments anchor the performing arts, and choral singing is strong in both Afrikaans and African church traditions.

Sport is followed closely, above all rugby at Loftus Versfeld, with football and cricket also well supported. The jacarandas — the first two planted in 1888 and now numbering some 70,000 — are the city's emblem, and their flowering in October is what gives Pretoria its nickname, the Jacaranda City.

About 2.8 million people live in the City of Tshwane, the metropolitan municipality that covers Pretoria and the towns and townships around it; the city proper is a much smaller share of that. Soshanguve, Mamelodi, Atteridgeville and Hammanskraal hold a large part of the population, while the eastern suburbs and Centurion are wealthier and greener, and Sunnyside and the centre are dense with flats.

Government is the city's business. National departments, foreign missions, parastatals, the military and the courts employ tens of thousands, alongside the University of Pretoria, the science and research councils and a large retail and services sector. Many residents commute to Johannesburg, and the Gautrain and the N1 carry that traffic each morning.

The rhythm is office-based and suburban: school runs, a working day that starts early, long weekend lunches and braais in gardens, and shopping centres as the common meeting places. Municipal problems dominate local politics — water outages, potholes, billing disputes and repeated changes of council control — and electricity supply, which imposed rotating blackouts for years, eased in 2024 and 2025 without vanishing as a worry. The jacaranda weeks in October are the city's annual moment of shared pleasure.

Pretoria's cooking leans Afrikaans. Braaivleis is the social institution: boerewors, a coiled beef sausage spiced with coriander, lamb chops and sosaties, skewers of marinated meat, grilled over coals in gardens and at rugby car parks, with pap, the stiff maize porridge, and the tomato-and-onion relish sous or chakalaka. Biltong and droëwors — air-dried, spiced beef and sausage — are sold by the bagful in butcheries, and milk tart, koeksisters and rusks for dunking in coffee finish the day.

Township and street cooking is the city's other staple. The kota, a hollowed quarter-loaf packed with chips, polony, cheese, atchar and sausage, is sold across Mamelodi and Atteridgeville and in the centre, shisa nyama grills fill on Sunday afternoons, and magwinya, fried dough balls, are breakfast for many. Marabastad, the old trading quarter, keeps Indian and East African restaurants, spice shops and samoosa counters.

Wider tastes come from the diplomatic and student population: Portuguese peri-peri chicken, Greek, Ethiopian, Chinese and Lebanese restaurants in the eastern suburbs and Hatfield, and a strong café and craft-beer scene. Weekend farmers markets on smallholdings around the city sell farm cheeses, cured meats, olives and preserves, and Cape wine and rooibos tea are on every table.