South Africa - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture
David Holt-Biddle
Language: English
Pages: 168
ISBN: 1857333462
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
food. DRINK South Africans have a reputation for enjoying the occasional drink. When it comes to meeting them all the usual norms apply—gin and tonic, whiskey and water or soda, a cold beer, possibly sherry, martini, or a cocktail (but less likely), then chilled dry white wine or red wine (often slightly chilled—when room temperature is 86°F [30°C], red wine goes into the fridge!). Also realize that there are some local specialties, like cane spirit, a white rum-type drink made from the
and perhaps the “bright lights” too. They seldom find either, but at least in the informal settlements they have each other. There are perhaps five million people in hundreds of such settlements across the country, and although the government is clearly doing its best to correct the housing shortage, it is just as clearly an uphill struggle. LIFESTYLES The lifestyles of South Africans vary enormously. For most working people it is a five- or five-and-a-half-day working week, with the
watching soccer or golf on television, or enjoying the Great Outdoors playing one of them. The Great Outdoors certainly features prominently in South African leisure time; from a quiet picnic for two, to a packed stadium full of sports fans, it is all “out there.” Before you step out in South Africa, however, be aware that many place-names across the country have changed. The administrative capital, Pretoria, is now Tshwane, although a few central city blocks are still officially called
making a good living in his or her preferred way, or a destitute individual to whom a couple of rands will make the difference between eating and not eating. The visitor may also be surprised to note that beggars come from all communities—poverty knows no neat pigeonholes. In South Africa begging is particularly noticeable at traffic lights, where you will find all sorts of people with signs hanging around their necks often giving highly imaginative reasons why you should make a los
economic factor. With its natural and human resources, South Africa has been for decades the economic powerhouse of Africa. South Africa’s is a free market economy. At more than R1,219,000 million, South Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) is the largest in Africa, taking up 25 percent of the continent’s GDP, and the country’s economy is considered to be the twelfth-most resilient in the world. The economy has shown an upward trend since 1999, the longest period of economic expansion in the