South African Post Office

South African Post Office SOC Ltd (SA Post Office)

Type	State owned company
Industry	Postal services, courier, banking
Founded	1 October 1991; 25 years ago (1 October 1991)
Headquarters	350 Witch Hazel Avenue, Eco Point, Eco Park Estate, Centurion, 0157, Pretoria, South Africa
Area served	South Africa / Worldwide
Key people	Mark Barnes (chief executive officer)
Services	Letter post, parcel service
Revenue	R5,012 million (2015)
Number of employees	23,820 (2015)
Subsidiaries	Speed Services Couriers
Website	postoffice.co.za

South African Post Office (SAPO) is the national postal service of South Africa and as a state owned enterprise, its only shareholder is the South African government. In terms of South African law, the Post Office is the only entity legally allowed to accept reserved mail and as such operates a monopoly. It employs over 23 800 people and operates more than 2 486 postal outlets throughout the country and therefore has a presence in almost every single town and city in South Africa.

The history of postal services in Southern Africa can be traced back over 500 years. In 1500, the captain of a Portuguese ship, Petro D'Ataide, placed a letter in a milkwood tree at Mossel Bay. He reported the sinking of three ships in his fleet, including that of Bartolomeu Dias, during a heavy storm over the Atlantic Ocean. Portuguese ships regularly stopped at Mossel Bay to take on fresh water, and three months later, the letter was found and delivered to Portugal. Sailors travelling to or from the Orient past the south coast of Africa, placed letters under postal stones, hoping that they would be found and delivered by other ships.

On 2 March 1792 the acting governor of the Cape, Johan Isaac Rhenius, opened a post office in a room next to the pantry at the Castle in Cape Town. This was the start of what became the South Africa Post Office (SAPO). By 1805 there was a regular inland mail service between Algoa Bay and False Bay in the Cape, using farmers on horseback. A mail wagon ran twice a week between Cape Town and the town of Stellenbosch. In 1806, Sir David Baird ruled that Khoi, enslaved indigenous people of the Cape, would be used to convey letters and small packages. A mail boat service was introduced between England and the Cape in 1815 and in 1848 the then Transvaal government appointed postmen to transport official mail. Prior to this development mail had been sent by special messenger, or by any available transport. The first stamp issued in South Africa was the Cape Triangular stamp introduced in 1853. The stamp has two values – the four pence blue and the one penny red. In 1860 the first postboxes were erected in the Cape and several railway lines were completed and used to transport mail. The first mail train was introduced in 1883.