South Africa

The Republic of South Africa joined the Commonwealth in 1931 under the Statute of Westminster. Having left in 1961 it re-joined in 1994. South Africa comprises of nine provinces and borders five other countries and encloses Lesotho within its own land area. It also has the Atlantic and Indian oceans as sea borders.

Making their debut in the 1930 Games, South Africa has enjoyed uniterrupted participation since the 1994 Games in Victoria. Prior to these Games they had participated from 1930-38 and 1950-58 with the Manchester edition of the Games yielding forty six medals and thirty eight from Melbourne in 2006. In Delhi in 2010 a further thirty three medals took their overall Games total to 312.

The South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) is the body responsible for controlling high performance sport in South Africa and was formed at a meeting of all sports bodies in South Africa on 27 November 2004. On the formation of this body SASCOC assumed the responsibilities of the South African Commonwealth Games Association in organising the national team for the Commonwealth Games and the Commonwealth Youth Games.