South African Standard Time (SAST) is the time zone used by all of South Africa as well as

Eswatini Eswatini ( ; ss, eSwatini ), officially the Kingdom of Eswatini and formerly named Swaziland ( ; officially renamed in 2018), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by Mozambique to its northeast and South Africa to its no ...

and

Lesotho Lesotho ( ), officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a country landlocked country, landlocked as an Enclave and exclave, enclave in South Africa. It is situated in the Maloti Mountains and contains the Thabana Ntlenyana, highest mountains in Sou ...

. The zone is two hours ahead of UTC ( UTC+02:00) and is the same as

Central Africa Time Central Africa Time or CAT, is a time zone used in central and southern Africa. Central Africa Time is two hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time ( UTC+02:00), which is the same as the adjacent South Africa Standard Time, Egypt Standard 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 Pietermaritzburg (; Zulu: umGungundlovu) is the capital and second-largest city in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It was founded in 1838 and is currently governed by the Msunduzi Local Municipality. Its Zulu name umGungundlovu ...

at the correct solar noon point, with Johannesburg and Pretoria slightly west at 28° E and Durban 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 The Northern Cape is the largest and most sparsely populated province of South Africa. It was created in 1994 when the Cape Province was split up. Its capital is Kimberley. It includes the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, part of the Kgalagadi T ...

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, 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 Local mean time (LMT) is a form of solar time that corrects the variations of Solar time#Apparent solar time, local apparent time, forming a uniform time scale at a specific longitude. This measurement of time was used for everyday use during the ...

was in use at the various towns. In 1892, a railway conference was held in Bloemfontein 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 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

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 South Africa

History

See also

References