Area Profiles

Aberdeen is a small town in the Sarah Baartman District Municipality of the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. With its numerous examples of Victorian architecture, it is one of the architectural conservation areas of the Karoo. The town is some 55 km south-west of Graaff-Reinet, 155 km east-south-east of Beaufort West and 32 km south of the Camdeboo Mountains. Laid out on the farm Brakkefontein as a settlement of the Dutch Reformed Church in 1856, it became a municipality in 1858. It is named after Aberdeen in Scotland, birthplace of the Reverend Andrew Murray of Graaff-Reinet, relieving minister. Country South...

Despatch is a small town in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa situated between Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage with an estimated population of 40 000.  It forms part of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality which includes Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage, and has collectively a population of over 1.3 million. he town of Despatch is situated on rich clay soil and in the late 1800s was the site of a flourishing brick industry. Despatch's name derives from this brick industry history on the account that bricks were dispatched from the original railway siding. Many of the older buildings in Uitenhage and Port Elizabeth were built from these...

Jeffreys Bay (Afrikaans: Jeffreysbaai, nicknamed J-bay) is a town of 27, 107 inhabitants as of the 2011 census in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It Is the seat of the Kouga municipality and is famous umongst surfers as a surf capital due to the right-hand point break at Supertubes Beach. The town is situated just off the N2 Highway, about 75 kilometres southwest of Port Elizabeth. Jeffreys Bay is named after the senior partner of the firm Jeffrey & Glendinnings that opened a store in 1849 on the location where the town is today. Jeffrey is believed to be the first person to have settled there. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jeffreys Bay was...

Port Elizabeth, officially renamed Gqeberha (Xhosa) and colloquially often referred to as PE, is a major seaport city and the most populous city in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is the seat of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality,  South Africa's second-largest metropolitan district by area size It is the sixth-most-populous city in South Africa and is the cultural, economic and financial centre of the Eastern Cape The city was founded as "Port Elizabeth" in 1820 by the government of the Cape Colony when 4,000 British colonists settled Algoa Bay to strengthen the border region between the Cape Colony and the Xhosa. It is nicknamed...

Uitenhage  officially renamed Kariega is a South African town in the Eastern Cape Province. It is well known for the Volkswagen factory located there, which is the biggest car factory on the African continent.  Along with the city of Port Elizabeth and the small town of Despatch, it forms the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality. Uitenhage was founded on 25 April 1804 by landdrost (district magistrate) Jacob Glen Cuyler and named in honour of the Cape's Commissioner-General Jacob Abraham Uitenhage de Mist by the Dutch Cape Colony governor, Jan Willem Janssens.[Uitenhage formed part of the district of Graaff Reinet (shortly after its short-lived...

Cape Town (Afrikaans: Kaapstad;  Xhosa: Khoekhoe:  is the oldest and second largest city in South Africa, after Johannesburg, and also the legislative capital of South Africa. Colloquially named the Mother City,it is the largest city of the Western Cape province and forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. The Parliament of South Africa is situated in Cape Town.The other two capitals are located in Gauteng (Pretoria the executive capital where the Presidency is based) and in the Free State (Bloemfontein the judicial capital where the Supreme Court of Appeal is located).The city is known for its harbour, for its natural setting in the Cape...

George is the second largest city in the Western Cape province of South Africa. The city is a popular holiday and conference centre and the administrative and commercial hub and the capital city of the Garden Route. The city is situated roughly halfway between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth on the Garden Route. It is situated on a 10-kilometre plateau between the Outeniqua Mountains to the north and the Indian Ocean to the south. The former township of Pacaltsdorp, now a fully incorporated suburb, lies to the south. The city of George was established as a result of the growing demand for timber and the wood used in building, transport and furniture. In 1776...