Alice (South Africa), town in southern South Africa, in Eastern Cape Province, 100 km (62 mi) northwest of East London, on the Tyume River. Although the surrounding plateau is used for cattle grazing and for the production of citrus fruit and tobacco, Alice is known principally as an educational and medical center. The Lovedale Hospitals, founded by British missionaries in 1898, are now under provincial control. A training school for nurses was added in 1929 and a tuberculosis hospital in 1940. The Lovedale Missionary Institute (1841) was one of South Africa’s earliest schools for blacks. Nearby is the University of Fort Hare (1916), South Africa’s oldest black university, founded as the South African Native College. Its graduates include many African political leaders, including Nelson Mandela and Robert Mugabe.

The British founded Alice as a mission station for the Xhosa people in 1824. In 1847 it became the seat of the magistracy for the newly annexed district of Victoria East. Named after Princess Alice, second daughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria, it became a municipality in 1852. Population (1990) 15,703.