South African Standard Time (SAST) is the

time zone A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between countries and their subdivisions instead of strictly following longitude, because it ...

used by all of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

as well as Eswatini and Lesotho. The zone is two hours ahead of UTC ( UTC+02:00) and is the same as Central Africa Time.

Daylight saving time Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time or simply daylight time (United States, Canada, and Australia), and summer time (United Kingdom, European Union, and others), is the practice of advancing clocks (typicall ...

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 and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Dem ...

and

Pretoria Pretoria () is South Africa's administrative capital, serving as the seat of the executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to South Africa. Pretoria straddles the Apies River and extends eastward into the foot ...

slightly west at 28° E and

Durban Durban ( ) ( zu, eThekwini, from meaning 'the port' also called zu, eZibubulungwini for the mountain range that terminates in the area), nicknamed ''Durbs'',Ishani ChettyCity nicknames in SA and across the worldArticle on ''news24.com'' from ...

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 The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 2020 ...

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 ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the 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, ( ; , "fountain of flowers") also known as Bloem, is one of South Africa's three capital cities and the capital of the Free State province. It serves as the country's judicial capital, along with legislative capital Cape To ...

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

Orange Free State The Orange Free State ( nl, Oranje Vrijstaat; af, Oranje-Vrystaat;) was an independent Boer sovereign republic under British suzerainty in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century, which ceased to exist after it was defeat ...

, Transvaal and the

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

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 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, counted from midnight. At different times in the past, it has been calculated in different ways, including being calculated from noon; as a cons ...

for most purposes. Prior to 1 March 1903, the

Colony of Natal The Colony of Natal was a British colony in south-eastern Africa. It was proclaimed a British colony on 4 May 1843 after the British government had annexed the Boer Natalia Republic, Republic of Natalia, and on 31 May 1910 combined with three o ...

was already using a uniform time supplied by the

Natal Observatory The Natal Observatory was an astronomical observatory in the Colony of Natal (now the KwaZulu-Natal province of the Republic of South Africa) from 1882 to 1911. The most important work carried out there was a study of the motion of the moon. F ...

. 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 South Africa

History

See also

References