Date and time notation in South Africa
Date and time notation in South Africa describes methods of expressing date and time used South Africa.
| Full date | 5 February 2021 (English) 5 Februarie 2021 (Afrikaans) |
|---|---|
| All-numeric date | 2021/02/05 2021-02-05 02/05/2021 (in Zulu) |
| Time | 12:05 |
Date
South Africa signed up to use ISO 8601 for date and time representation through national standard ARP 010:1989 in 1998. The most recent South African Bureau of Standards standard SANS 8601:2009 "... is the identical implementation of ISO 8601:2004, and is adopted with the permission of the International Organization for Standardization" and was reviewed in 2016.
All-numerical dates can be written as 2021/02/05 or 2021-02-05 in all the languages used in South Africa (except Zulu).[1]
Even so, the old date format is still commonly used in the format "dd/mm/yyyy", with the "day month year" order being more common with non-numeric month designations.
Sunday is the first day of the week and Saturday is the last day of the week.[2] The first week of the year is the week that contains January 1st, the first day of the year.[3]
English
In English, the full date format can be written as 5 February 2021.
Afrikaans
In Afrikaans, the full date format is written as 5 Februarie 2021.
Xhosa
In Xhosa, the full date is written as 2020 Disemba 14 for 14 December 2020, for example.
Zulu
Unlike other languages used in South Africa, the Zulu language use the month-day-year order (e.g. "Disemba 14, 2020" for December 14, 2020).[1]
All-numeric dates is written as 02/05/2021 for February 5, 2021.[1]
Time
The 12-hour clock is often used in the oral or spoken language. The 24-hour notation is used in writing with a colon as a separator (12:05). It is also to use the "h" as time separator, is still common (e.g., 03h25 in place of 03:25), particularly when only the time is given.