5 Cents AFRIKA-DZONGA

South Africa's post-apartheid coinage introduced all eleven official languages across its circulating series, rotating the country's name through different language groups on successive issues. "Afrika-Dzonga" is Tsonga, one of the less widely spoken of the eleven — a deliberate political choice to give equal denominational presence to languages that had been systematically marginalized under the previous government's Afrikaans-and-English dominance.

The copper-plated steel composition replaced the earlier nickel alloy in the mid-1990s as a cost-cutting measure following significant rises in base metal prices.