Open an ICAO textbook and you'll meet seven airspace classes, A through G. Open a South African chart and most of them are missing. SA runs its entire sky on four letters: A, C, F and G. No Class B, no D, no E — and once you stop looking for them, the system becomes beautifully simple.
Class C does the heavy lifting
Broadly, all controlled airspace below FL200 is Class C — the TMAs around the major fields included. The rules are a tidy little matrix: both IFR and VFR are permitted, everything is subject to ATC, IFR is separated from both IFR and VFR, while VFR is separated from IFR and receives traffic information on other VFR. Learn that asymmetry cold; it's a question generator.
Above it all sits Class A, where VFR simply isn't invited — which is why FL195 is the highest level a VFR flight can plan. Class F exists as advisory routes, and Class G is everything else: uncontrolled, with traffic information available on request. Below 1500 ft in uncontrolled airspace, position reports go out on 124.8.
CTR vs CTA: the two verticals
Two abbreviations, one distinction: a CTR (control zone) grows up from the ground — everything from the surface to a specified limit, built to protect IFR traffic around an aerodrome. A CTA (control area) starts in the air — it extends upward from a specified limit above the earth, and the most likely place you'll find one established is above one or more TMAs. Surface up: CTR. Airborne up: CTA. Exam sorted.
The odd corners worth knowing
The country's upper airspace is carved into three sections — Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Oceanic. Special VFR exists, but only inside a CTR, with a minimum ceiling of 600 ft AGL for aeroplanes — and the phrasing your notes flag is worth keeping: to arrange an SVFR clearance, ideally contact ATC telephonically or in person rather than springing it on frequency. A General Flying Area, meanwhile, sits inside an FAD — a danger area — and FAD upper limits are expressed in AMSL.
Four letters, two verticals, one frequency. That's the South African sky.