Rands and Cents

Jessica and I enjoy coin collecting and one of the things our Dad always brings back home for us when he visits another country, is some of that country's currency. If there are any of our readers who enjoy the same hobby I thought that a post about the money we use in South Africa might be interesting. :)
South Africa’s currency is the Rand. We find it interesting that the Rand takes its name from the Witwatersrand (White-waters-ridge) which is the ridge upon which the city of Johannesburg is built. It is along this ridge where most of South Africa’s gold deposits were found.

One Rand is divided up into 100 cents. The symbol for the rand is: “R”, and it’s ISO code is: ZAR.
[Just by the way - you will often see South Africa represented by “ZAR”. This comes from the Dutch: Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek . You might have noticed too that SA's internet TLD name is "za".

The Rand became S.A’s currency in 1961, when the country got independence from Britain and became a republic. The Rand replaced the S.A. pound.
The first banknotes had the image of Jan van Riebeeck (the first VOC administrator of the Cape) printed on them. In the 1990’s the notes were redesigned with images of the Big 5 wildlife. As Jessica and I were born in the ‘90s these are the banknotes that we are familiar with, though we do have some of the old ones in our coin/banknote collection. :)

The Rand has quite a history – not always good! We were very surprised to learn that between 1961- 1982 it was worth more than the US dollar! The current exchange rate is around
R1 = $ 7.34. Of course this makes things rather expensive when we have to order something from the USA or Europe. :(