South African Standard Time (SAST) is the

time zone A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, Commerce, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between Country, countries and their Administrative division, subdivisions instead of ...

used by all of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

as well as

Eswatini Eswatini, formally the Kingdom of Eswatini, also known by its former official names Swaziland and the Kingdom of Swaziland, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by South Africa on all sides except the northeast, where i ...

and

Lesotho Lesotho, formally the Kingdom of Lesotho and formerly known as Basutoland, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Entirely surrounded by South Africa, it is the largest of only three sovereign enclave and exclave, enclaves in the world, t ...

. The zone is two hours ahead of UTC ( UTC+02:00) and is the same as Central Africa Time. Daylight saving time is not observed in either time zone. Solar noon in this time zone occurs at 30° E in SAST, effectively making Pietermaritzburg at the correct solar noon point, with

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alon ...

and

Pretoria Pretoria ( ; ) is the Capital of South Africa, administrative capital of South Africa, serving as the seat of the Executive (government), executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to the country. Pretoria strad ...

slightly west at 28° E and

Durban Durban ( ; , from meaning "bay, lagoon") is the third-most populous city in South Africa, after Johannesburg and Cape Town, and the largest city in the Provinces of South Africa, province of KwaZulu-Natal. Situated on the east coast of South ...

slightly east at 31° E. Thus, most of South Africa's population experience true solar noon at approximately 12:00 daily. The western Northern Cape and Western Cape differ, however. Everywhere on land west of 22°30′ E effectively experiences year-round daylight saving time because of its location in true UTC+01:00 but still being in South African Standard Time. Sunrise and sunset are thus relatively late in

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

, compared to the rest of the country. To illustrate, daylight hours for South Africa's western and easternmost major cities: The South African National Time Standard, or 'SA Time' Master Clock, is maintained at the Time and Frequency Laboratory of the National Metrology Institute of South Africa (NMISA) at Pretoria and is distributed publicly by an NTP Internet Time service.

History

Before 8 February 1892, there was no uniformity of time in South Africa and local mean time was in use at the various towns. In 1892, a railway conference was held in

Bloemfontein Bloemfontein ( ; ), also known as Bloem, is the capital and the largest city of the Free State (province), Free State province in South Africa. It is often, and has been traditionally, referred to as the country's "judicial capital", alongsi ...

and discussed difficulty of working a railway system, in the absence of a uniform time system. The governments of the Orange Free State, Transvaal and the

Cape Colony The Cape Colony (), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British Empire, British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope. It existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when it united with three ...

officially adopted a uniform standard time of UTC+01:30 which was defined as mean time 22.5° east of Greenwich. On 1 March 1903 GMT+02:00 was adopted, which became the current UTC+02:00 when UTC replaced GMT for most purposes. Prior to 1 March 1903, the Colony of Natal was already using a uniform time supplied by the Natal Observatory. The observatory's local mean time was ( UTC+01:52). South Africa observed a daylight saving time of GMT+03:00 ( UTC+03:00) between 20 September 1942 to 21 March 1943 and 19 September 1943 to 19 March 1944. South African Standard Time is defined as "Coordinated Universal Time plus two hours" ( UTC+02:00) as defined in South African National Government Gazette No. 40125 of 8 July 2016.

References

{{Use dmy dates, date=August 2019 Time zones Time in Africa

History

See also

References