Pretoria

Pretoria, city in northeastern South Africa, located in Gauteng Province. The administrative capital of South Africa, Pretoria is one of three national capitals along with Cape Town (the legislative capital) and Bloemfontein (the judicial capital). Pretoria is part of the Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality. The city is situated on both banks of the Apies River and extends east into the foothills of the Magaliesberg mountain range. Most of Pretoria’s labor force works in administration and services related to the government. The city also has a major iron and steel industry as well as engineering, food processing, ceramics, and chemical industries. Highways connect Pretoria to the major northern South African cities, and railways connect the city to Mozambique in the east, Zimbabwe in the northeast, and the South African city of Johannesburg in the southwest.

Pretoria’s city center is laid out in a grid, and skyscrapers surround the central Church Square. The city is spacious with a number of large parks, including the National Zoological Gardens in the north. Pretoria’s many historic buildings include Melrose House (1886), where the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed at the end of the Boer War (1899-1902); the Raadzaal (council chamber); the Palace of Justice; and the home of Paul Kruger, president of the South African Republic (Afrikaner republic in the Transvaal region) from 1883 to 1902. The Union Buildings (built between 1910 and 1913), which house South Africa’s parliament for half the year, were designed by British architect Sir Herbert Baker.

Pretoria’s libraries and museums include the State Library; the government archives; the Transvaal Museum, which has natural history displays; the Pretoria Art Museum, known for its collection of 17th-century Dutch art; and the National Cultural History Museum. The city has several institutions of higher learning, most notably the University of Pretoria (founded as the Transvaal University College in 1908 and renamed in 1930)—one of South Africa’s largest universities.

The settlement of Pretoria was established by Afrikaner leader Marthinius Pretorius in 1855 and named in honor of his father, Andries Pretorius, an Afrikaner military hero and statesman. It became the capital of the South African Republic in 1860 and the administrative capital of the Union of South Africa—which united the former colonies of Cape Colony, Natal, Orange Free State, and the Transvaal—in 1910. By the 1950s the population of Pretoria had grown significantly, and black townships (planned, segregated communities that are densely populated) such as Atteridgeville and Mamelodi had developed in the surrounding area. Pretoria remained the administrative capital following the creation of the Republic of South Africa in 1961. The end of apartheid (South Africa’s former system of racial segregation) in the early 1990s enabled a substantial increase in Pretoria’s black professional class, leading to some movement of blacks into formerly all-white residential areas. Population 1,651,000 (2001) for the city proper and 1.2 million for the urban area.