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INTRODUCTION
UNDERSTANDING GEOGRAPHIC ACCESSIBILITY
South Africa is a medium-sized country, with a total land area of slightly more than 1.2-million square
kilometres, making it roughly the same size as Angola and Mali. Its long coastline stretches more than 2
500km. It measures about 1 600km from north to south, and roughly the same from east to west. Figure
1 provides an image showing the nine provinces of South Africa. The smallest is Gauteng and the largest
is the arid Northern Cape which takes up almost a third of South Africa’s total land area.
Figure 1: The nine provinces of South Africa
Travel distances to service centres tend to be fairly short in Gauteng whereas they are much longer in
the Northern Cape which is characterised by many small and isolated urban and quasi-urban settlements
scattered across its vast area. Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal have limited road infrastructure and
contain numerous mountains and rivers in some areas causing natural barriers which could possibly
hamper access to government services. The Waterberg and Soutpansberg mountain ranges in Limpopo
also provide examples of natural barriers. Towns in the Free State are scattered far apart with large
commercial farming areas in between, and hence distances to service points can be fairly long in some
instances.
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