Which city is South Africa's legislative capital?

South Africa distributes its capital functions among three cities, and the arrangement is a direct product of how the country was assembled. When the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910 from two British colonies and two former Boer republics, each of the leading centres expected to gain from unification, and the compromise gave parliament to Cape Town, the executive to Pretoria and the appellate court to Bloemfontein. Cape Town, capital of the old Cape Colony, is the oldest European settlement in the country, founded as a resupply station for ships rounding Africa, and it sits beneath Table Mountain on one of the most dramatic urban sites anywhere. The practical consequence of the split is that when parliament is in session, ministers and civil servants shuttle between Cape Town and Pretoria, an inconvenience that has been debated many times without ever being resolved.

The three-way division was a bargain among the former colonies and republics that joined to form the union.