South Africa, down to your ward

How to read it

• Each colour is one figure for the whole place, from one of our numbered releases. The legend names the source, the release and the credit.
• Colours mean the same in every year, so you can compare 1990 with today. The slider moves through the layer’s history; play steps through it.
• A hatched place is a gap: the satellite did not see it well, the figure is not out yet, or the dataset holds nothing there. We do not fill gaps in.
• Rain and air are modelled, not measured at a station. Heat is the ground’s surface seen from space on clear mornings, not the air. Greenness, fire, surface water and land cover are seen from space.
• Dam levels, toll tariffs, electricity tariffs and Blue Drop ratings are official figures; the electricity bill and the share of water systems at risk are our sums from them. Nothing here is a forecast.
• Boundaries are the Municipal Demarcation Board’s wards of 2026, simplified by us so the map loads fast. Towns and streets in the search, and the place names beside each ward number, come from © OpenStreetMap contributors.

More about the satellite layers on From space. Every place also has a page: every place, A to Z.