Talk:List of cities in South Africa

There are some interesting ommissions and inclusions on this list - I don't think the concept of a 'city' is used consistently here. Anyone know the official SA definition?


 * I don't think cities are defined exist in the South African system of government. We have provinces, and under these are municipalities, 6 of which belong to the class "metropolitan municipalities", roughly corresponding to most people's concept of a city. I don't think towns are recognised as discrete entities, either. If you look at the census 2001 information, for example, it's all arranged according to province, district and municipality. It's a difficult question, and one that will need more research. -198.54.202.242 16:35, 11 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I think this page, started before categories appeared in wikipedia, should be scrapped in favour of a Category. Wizzy&hellip; &#9742;   13:06, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

None of the South Africa-related pages appear to link to this one. This page is also strange - all of the cities are listed with a name which isn't recognized by the article on it (e.g., Port Elizabeth is supposedly called 'Nelson Mandela Metropole', but Port Elizabeth doesn't mention this!). So, if some South African had some free time it would be nice if he or she could: Nyh 13:10, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * 1) Verify the information on this page
 * 2) Explain the official definition of city (why other cities aren't listed here, and why different cities are merged here)
 * 3) Go to the articles on the cities listed here, and mention their supposedly new names. Perhaps even add redirects for these names.
 * 4) Perhaps after listing the 9 "official" (?) cities, one should also list other towns which have a Wikipedia entry. See for example, Pietersburg and Messina.

omg, there are way nearly 400 hundered cities in South Africa, who come up with 9? 41.241.125.55 (talk) 11:29, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Cities and Municipalities making the distinction
The matter of Cities in South Africa is generally done badly and the slant taken is normally a politically motivated thing. Subsequently I think it makes more sense to distinguish between "Cities in South Africa" and the Municipalities. Subsequently names such as Nelson Mandela Metropolitan should not appear in a list of cities but rather in a list of Municipalities. I am currently constructing an article on [South African Municipalities]. It is probably a good idea to include the name of the municipality serving each city in any list. This page does not give any accurate understanding of what is infact happening, which is as follows:
 * In 2000, the Municipal Demarcation Board which determined the boundaries of the new municipalities announced that the South African municipalities were reduced to 284 municipalities which have in turn been divided into 6 metropolitan municipalities, 47 district municipalities and 231 local municipalities (http://sagns.dac.gov.za/)
 * These replace over 1300 municipal structures
 * Places still retain there old name unless changed, this is especially true with regard to post
 * The position that the former entities remain towns and cities is suggested by several government documents etc ... including this comment:
 * There are, however several municipalities whose names are not new but are the names of seats or towns where administrative duties for these municipalities are executed. (http://sagns.dac.gov.za)

My suggestion would therefore be to compose a list looking something like this: Cape Town (Cape Town Unicity Metropolitan Council) Port Elizabeth (Nelson Mandela Metropole) East London (Buffalo City) Durban (Ethekwini) Pietermaritzburg (Msunduzi) Bloemfontein (Mangaung) Johannesburg (Joburg Metropolitan Council) Pretoria (Tshwane)

With all of the cities listed. Several Municipalities will be double listed (for example Buffalo City would be listed for both Bisho and East London)

Furthermore "There are officially nine cities in South Africa (members of the South African cities network). These are:" is bluntly misleading and should be changed. The South African cities network is a non-governmental organisation and has no authority on the matter. Unfortunately at this time nobody does but that is a seperate issue.

This would create a situation where a person would look up Port Elizabeth and find in the article a line stating that it forms part of and is served by the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Council. In an article on the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan a list of towns/cities etc in the Municipality will be listed and Port Elizabeth will be given as the seat.

Im not going to change this page until there is some form of consensus on the matter.

Purpose of this article
In light of the development of Municipality articles, Im struggling to see a point to this article as it appears to be nothing more than a page dedicated to the Cities Network. List of settlements in South Africa make sense but this article does not achieve that Paul Hjul 14:22, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Sortable list
I created a sortable table, but I'm no expert in whether the table was correctly created. The data was taken from the wiki pages of each city. I believe there are more cities than these 9, but I think we should start by having a table like the one I created. -- leuce (talk) 13:36, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Different definitions of "city"
I think this article should mention whether there is an official definition of "city" in South Africa, and if so (or if not) whether there was a definition in the Old South Africa.

Not sure if we should add a "trivia"-like section mentioning a list of placenames that contain the word 'city' but are not cities, or words that contain something like 'town' but are cities :-) because Afrikaanse placenames with "stad" (city) often have "town" in their English equivalents, eg the villages of Simons Town (Simonstad) and Grahams Town (Grahamstad), and the city of Cape Town (Kaapstad).

So, definitions of city:


 * The South African Cities Network -- they receive government funding but that doesn't mean their definition of city is the official government definition.  I find no definition of "city" anywhere on their site.


 * If a town has a "city council", then that's one way of finding out whether it considers itself a city or not. An examples not included in the 9-list is Klerksdorp, Gauteng.  They have a city council and not a town council.


 * Mongabay's list of towns with more than 100 000 residents -- their list is here:

(Oops, I forgot to add mention of which dates the Wikipedia figures were estamated on.)


 * Check out how I unsuccessfully tried to have Bellville classified as a city in Wikipedia. :-)


 * I'm not sure which authority in South Africa would be responsible for defining a city and classifying something as a city. I'm under the impression that city status was officially conferred on places in the Old South Africa, but I find no references for it.


 * And then of course there are the metropoles or municipalities with "City" in their name but which encompass multiple tows and cities, eg City of Cape Town, City of Tswane, and City of Matlosana. -- leuce (talk) 14:13, 18 April 2009 (UTC)


 * If we define a city as something with at least 1 skyskraper, then according to there are 9 such places, namely Bellville, Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Port Elizabeth, Pretoria, Sandton and Strand.  However I doubt if their list is exhaustive because I used to live in Bellville and I think there are many buildings in the area bigger than the 1 building listed at this site.  And Strand is an anomaly because the high-rise there is a holiday hotel. -- leuce (talk) 22:01, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

The sortable table
I removed this table from the front page... but we can add it again later when we've cleaned it up.

-- leuce (talk) 22:12, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Resources to improve this article

 * Urban Development Strategy of the Government of National Unity, Pretoria, 12 October 1995
 * A sustainability analysis of human settlements in South Africa, —Preceding unsigned comment added by NJR ZA (talk • contribs) 19:18, 4 December 2009 (UTC)