Pen pals in South Africa

If your pen pal is at school in South Africa, their school year starts in January and finishes in early December, in four terms. So while a reader in Europe is heading back to class in September, a South African pupil is in the final stretch before the long summer holiday, which takes in Christmas and New Year. This is the southern hemisphere: December is hot, June and July are winter, and seasonal small talk works in reverse.

A country of very different climates

"Winter" means different things depending on where your pen pal lives. Cape Town and the Western Cape get most of their rain in winter, while Johannesburg and Pretoria, up on the high inland plateau known as the Highveld, have dry, sunny winters with cold, sometimes frosty, nights and summer afternoon thunderstorms. Durban, on the east coast, stays warm and humid for much of the year. Outsiders often assume South Africa is hot all the time; a Highveld pen pal in July may well be writing to you wrapped in a blanket.

The distances are large and the cities very different from one another, so one pen pal's South Africa is not the whole country. Ask where they live before you assume anything about their daily life.

Twelve official languages

South Africa has twelve official languages, the most recent being South African Sign Language, added in 2023. The others include isiZulu, isiXhosa, Afrikaans, English, Sepedi, Setswana, Sesotho, Xitsonga, siSwati, Tshivenda and isiNdebele. English is widely used in business, media and much of education, so most pen pals will write to you in English, but for many it is not the language they speak at home. Plenty of South Africans switch between two or three languages in a day, and the mix depends a lot on the region.

That makes a good conversation starter: which language does your pen pal speak with their grandparents, which with friends, and which at school? If you are learning Afrikaans or isiZulu, a pen pal can be a patient guide, though resources for some of the languages are thinner than for English, so be ready to ask for help rather than expect a textbook.

Dates in the year

• Freedom Day, 27 April, marks the country's first democratic elections in 1994.
• Youth Day, 16 June, commemorates the 1976 student uprising in Soweto.
• Heritage Day, 24 September, celebrates the country's many cultures. Many people mark it with a braai, the South African word for a barbecue, which is a social occasion in its own right.
• Christmas falls in summer, so it is often spent outdoors, at the beach or around a braai rather than a fireplace.

What to ask first

• What does Christmas look like in your family when it is summer?
• Which languages do you use in an ordinary day?
• What would you cook at a braai, and who does the cooking?
• What is something about your city that surprises visitors from other parts of the country?

International post can be slow, so many pen pals keep their main conversation online and send postcards for birthdays or holidays. If you are not sure how to begin, our first letter guide can help.