Talk:Provinces of South Africa

Federal structure

Does anyone know the relationship of the Provincial governments to the central government? Is South Africa a Federal state? Joziboy 14 March 2006, 12:59 (UTC)

South Africa doesn't have a specific lable, but it is almost semi-federal. Provincial governments have complete control over certain services, while the central government has control over stuff like education and health care. ► Adriaan90 ( Talk ♥ Contribs ) ♪♫ 23:25, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

SA is definitely not a federal country - it is a unitary state. The provinces' powers and even their very existence is granted to them by the national government. Roger (talk) 18:33, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

The powers and boundaries of the provinces are set out in the Constitution, and they can't be amended without the agreement of six of the nine provinces in the NCOP. If a constitutional amendment affects one province specifically, then that province's legislature has to consent. (I don't know if you remember the fuss over the alteration of the EC/KZN border - the Constitutional Court suspended it because the EC legislature hadn't followed proper procedure in giving its consent.) The most accurate description is probably regional state - something between unitary and federal - htonl (talk) 19:44, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Of course, the fact that the ANC controls eight provinces and the national government does tend to obscure any federal qualities. I've been wondering if the DA administration in the Western Cape is going to start insisting on its full constitutional powers. - htonl (talk) 19:49, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Province article naming

Note: this discussion copied from Talk:Western Cape Province#Province, as it is more appropriate here.

After the long debate about whether or not to call Cape Town, City of Cape Town... I have another! :) What's everyone's view on using the word Province for all the provinces? It looks odd to me, and I know I'd never say 'Western Cape Province' or 'Gauteng Province'. They're just Western Cape, Gauteng, Mpumalanga etc. Joziboy 15 March 2006, 20:06 (UTC)

I know what you mean - certainly I wouldn't normally say "Western Cape Province", and it feels kind of wrong on all the articles. However, it is quite normal to talk about North West Province and Limpopo Province, if only to distinguish them from the cardinal direction and the river respectively. It seems to me that there are three choices:

1. sticking with the "Province" suffix on all 9 articles, which is probably technically correct with respect to the full name of the governmental entity - and after all, SA provinces are purely government entities; the provinces don't really have geographical significance.
2. dropping "Province" on the articles except Limpopo and North West, which would seem less wrong, but it wouldn't really be consistent.
3. dropping "Province" on all the articles, and change Limpopo to "Limpopo (South African province)" and similarly for North West. It also seems less wrong (to me), and more consistent with Wikipedia standards for disambiguating article titles.

I would be in favour of number 3, but I don't really have a strong opinion any way. - htonl 22:15, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I wouldn't say Limpopo Province either. Prepositions usually clear up any confusion - "I'm going to Limpopo", "What's the capital of Limpopo?", "We have a house in Limpopo" all make it sound like it's the province. Else it would be the Limpopo. But yeah, I suppose it's not the end of the world either way. It just looks odd - we don't call South Africa "South Africa Country" :) Anyways, option 3 sounds good to me. Joziboy 16 March 2006, 15:13 (UTC)

Yup, count me in on #3 as well. I would very, very rarely add "province" when referring to any of our provinces. dewet|™ 15:19, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Comments up to here copied from Talk:Western Cape Province#Province. New comments continue below.

Okay, I'm gonna move them all then. Let me know if anyone disagrees Joziboy 20 March 2006, 23:48 (UTC)

JB, as my note on your talk page revealed, I would find it really odd if "North-West" is really automatically understood to mean the Province, except if if is mentioned or listed in the specific context, viz provinces of ZA. The names of the other provinces do not require much disambiguation, since it is implied that those names refer to the provinces, as opposed to any former entities or natural features. In fact, if you compare with similar such subnational entities elsewhere, named after the ordinal or cardinal directions, the type of entity is invariably included in the name in order to avoid confusion (hence Northwest Territories and not simply "the Northwest, etc). This is my two nickels, at least. // Big Adamsky • BA's talk page 17:12, 23 March 2006 (UTC) PS: Compare Northern (subnational entity), Southern (subnational entity), Eastern (subnational entity), Western (subnational entity), Central (subnational entity), Southeast, Southwest, Northeast and Northwest.

Mm, you're right. Part of the justification in my head was international norms, and I couldn't imagine Quebec being called Quebec State, or the British Midlands being called the British Midlands Region, but you're right - when a province is named after a direction (a dire and regrettable lack of imagination in my opinion!) it is usually included in the name. I've moved North West back to North West Province. How do you feel about the others? Joziboy 23 March 2006, 17:33 (UTC)

Cool. Quebec might be referred to as the Province of Quebec if the context would otherwise lead the reader/listener to assume that what was meant was Quebec City, the same goes for Kuwait, Guatemala, Mexico, Oklahoma, Bern et al. And there's the region formally called the East of England, so as not to confuse itself with the vague concept of The East (of what?). My suggestion is to use parentheses in the title of a Wikipedia article in disambiguation is necessary, but if the actual name itself already contains such an explanatory qualifier, then, heck, why not just copy that into the article's title and evade Wikipedia bureaucracy althogether?! ;v] I don't think that the other provinces of ZA need to include the word "province" in their titles, as long as a short dab-notice is placed at the top. What do you think? // Big Adamsky • BA's talk page 17:48, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that sounds good to me. I've moved everything except Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, both of which I can't move because they have redirect pages with the province-less name. But I've requested they be moved so hopefully someone technical in wikipedia will get onto that for me :) For parentheses do you agree with (South African province) that I've put after Limpopo and Free State in their titles? And, um, what's a dab notice? Joziboy 23 March 2006, 19:55 (UTC)

Dab = disambiguation. I agree with all proposals to shorten article titles and only use explanatory qualifiers when necessary to avoid confusion. I would guess that the article simply called Limpopo should be about the province, and secondary meanings should be Limpopo (river) etc. There is an article about historical free states, so I'm unsure as to whether Free State (capitalized) needs further explanation. Haha, this is a whole lotta nitpicking about tiny minor details, this innit? You should take a peek at Talk:Georgia and Talk:Ireland to get an overview of how much attention can be afforded to perceptions of primary and secondary meanings, btw. =J // Big Adamsky • BA's talk page 20:27, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

My god the talk page on Georgia spans years and pages! For once I'm happy no-one's heard of our provinces, that way they can't start fights :) Joziboy 23 March 2006, 20:40 (UTC)

Please note that PZFUN reverted your moves -- I've reverted his actions and placed a notice on his talk page. —Nightstallion (?) ^{Seen this already?} 08:39, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Semi-provincial division

I have seen a couple of maps in the late 1990s that had a line within Eastern Cape, running from north to south, dividing the province into two (administrative?) zones. No other province had such a division. What is it? Perhaps it should be mentioned somewhere. — Wikipeditor (talk) 23:20, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I also recall seeing such maps. I don't know for sure what that line meant; but my speculation is that it was perhaps proposed to eliminate the Eastern Cape entirely, and attach the two halves to the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. I seem to recall that some of the maps also showed dotted lines indicating other, less radical, proposed changes to the provincial borders. Certainly the division is not of any significance now to the administration of the Eastern Cape. - htonl (talk) 19:24, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Both Gauteng (then known as the PWV) and the Eastern Cape had two blocks (known as block A and block B). Some parties (DP was one) wanted more than 9 provinces - the dotted lines could allow up to 11 provinces. The blocks are defined (together with the original provinces) in the Interim Constitution. As the ANC won the elctions in each of these two provinces they were never split up. --Uxejn (talk) 17:26, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that helped a lot! I was able to find it in the 1993 interim constitution as you said, together with a lot of other interesting information. Wikipeditor (talk) 04:21, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Flags

The section has been "under construction" since before grandma was a baby. I have never seen or heard/read that the provinces even have official flags. I would in fact like to see some evidence that the one shown for Mpumalanga actually exists. Finish it or delete it. Roger (talk) 07:14, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Mpumalanga is in fact the only province to have a flag at all. I will delete the section. Never mind, it's gone already. - htonl (talk) 15:56, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Province-related category renaming

At User:Htonl/South Africa provincial category renaming I've proposed a list of categories relating to South African provinces that should be renamed to produce a consistent naming scheme for such categories. (The Western Cape has already been done; see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Western Cape Province.) Please feel free to contribute to the list or discuss it on the talk page there. I've already made a couple of comments about the particularly tricky case of the North West. - htonl (talk) 16:01, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Is the map up to date?

Resolved

 – Map updated. htonl (talk) 12:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

With all the to and fro movements of provincial boundaries (particularly EC<>KZN and NW<>GP) in recent years I'm not sure the map is current. Roger (talk) 22:03, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

It's not quite correct; it doesn't include the transfer of Merafong City Local Municipality from North West to Gauteng, which came into effect just before last year's elections. In rather a coincidence, I was just thinking today that I need to update the map. I'm working on it now. - htonl (talk) 19:36, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, it's done. You might have to clear your cache to see it. - htonl (talk) 22:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Abbreviations

I have recently been having a discussion with a user that feels the Western Cape should be abbreviated as "WP". Has anyone come across a reference (other than ISO 3166-2:ZA) that explicitly states what the official abbreviations are? --NJR_ZA (talk) 06:14, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

There are no "official" abbreviations other than ISO 3166-2:ZA. After all, we don't generally use abbreviations to refer to the provinces in the way that, for example, Americans use their two-character state codes. I think we should either remove the column entirely, or retitle it "ISO 3166 abbreviation" and remove the other variations. Listing what codes are used on numberplates is a task that can be left to Vehicle registration plates of South Africa. - htonl (talk) 08:03, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I support the deletion of the abbreviation column Gerald Dorr (talk) 11:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Additional names

I really do like the neatness of this article, so without rampaging in with <br>s and bold, I was just wondering how would I go about adding additional names for some provinces, for example the Afrikaans, Xhosa and Sotho names for their respective provinces. I tried looking at articles of provinces in spain (and the range of names there) to try and get a better idea. Bezuidenhout (talk) 17:27, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Can I also just say thanks to Htonl for getting a better reference and HDI :) Bezuidenhout (talk) 17:30, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

No problem! I saw that you added the HDIs, and remembered that there's an article List of South African provinces by HDI, and wondered if they agreed. When I found they didn't, I decided to look for a more authoritative source.

As far as adding other names, I think if we make the main table any wider it'll get too wide for people with narrow browser windows. (In fact, on my laptop's screen it's already about as wide as it can get without overflowing.) Perhaps a separate section entitled "Names", with a table showing the names in various languages? - htonl (talk) 18:12, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

South-West Africa Mandate and Bantustans

The historical section has a table showing the dependent and self-governing Bantustans before 1990, which also adds a line for South-West Africa. There are good reasons to do so when enumerating the four historical provinces and their ramifications, but I see two problems with clarity and consistency:

1. The following commentary doesn't make clear that, rather than being reintegrated with existing provinces after 1990, South-West Africa became the independent nation of Namibia (although the United Nations, in their own eyes, had long ago dissolved South Africa's League of Nations mandate in favour of a yet-to-be-liberated "Namibia").
2. South-West Africa under South African rule had her own ten Bantustans, four of them graduating to self-governing status. This should be recognized in some way without necessarily listing them all in the South African table. Should there be a separate parallel table for South-West Africa?

• What solutions, adjustments or fixes make the most sense to other editors? —— Shakescene (talk) 08:50, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

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