Pretoria

Pretoria exists because the Voortrekkers won at Blood River—and needed a capital for their new republic. In 1838, Andries Pretorius led Boer forces to victory over Dingane's Zulu army, avenging an earlier massacre and securing Boer claims to the Transvaal. Seventeen years later, his son Marthinus founded a town on the Apies River and named it after his father. When the South African Republic (Transvaal) needed a capital in 1860, Pretoria got the job.

That administrative function became permanent. When the Union of South Africa formed in 1910, the new country couldn't agree on a single capital, so it created three: Cape Town for the legislature, Bloemfontein for the judiciary, Pretoria for the executive. Every foreign embassy in South Africa is in Pretoria. Every cabinet meeting happens here. The city became a monument to Afrikaner nationalism—the Voortrekker Monument commemorates the Great Trek; the Union Buildings house the presidency; jacaranda trees (70,000 of them, by some counts) line the streets each spring.

Today, Pretoria is less distinctive than it once was. It merged administratively with the surrounding area into the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, though the name Pretoria persists in common usage. A proposed renaming to Tshwane has stalled repeatedly since the 2000s and as of 2025 seems unlikely to happen. The city remains the bureaucratic heart of South Africa—embassies, ministries, the presidency—while Johannesburg, 55 km south, dominates commerce.

By 2026, Pretoria's identity remains tied to its administrative role. The 'Jacaranda City' blooms purple each October, but its future depends on whether South African government remains centralized—or whether remote work and decentralization erode the logic of a purpose-built capital.