Countries With More Than One Capital
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A small, closed list of countries formally split their capital functions across two or three cities — almost always separating the executive/administrative, legislative, and judicial functions of government. This is one of the highest-yield "trap" clusters in the whole book because most revision material lists only one capital per country, so a question naming the "other" capital of one of these countries catches under-prepared candidates immediately. Notice, too, that the underlying reasons for a split are rarely identical from one country to the next — South Africa's split is a century-old political compromise between rival provinces, Bolivia's and Sri Lanka's splits separate an older historic/constitutional seat from a newer or more commercially dominant city, and Tanzania's and Côte d'Ivoire's splits reflect a deliberate, still-incomplete government relocation away from an old colonial coastal capital toward a more centrally located one — so treat "why" as part of what you're memorising, not just "which city does what."
| Country | Administrative/Executive capital | Legislative capital | Judicial capital |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Africa | Pretoria (Tshwane) | Cape Town | Bloemfontein (Mangaung) |
| Sri Lanka | Colombo (commercial capital; many government offices remain here) | Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte (official capital, seat of Parliament) | — |
| Bolivia | La Paz (seat of government, executive and legislative branches) | — | Sucre (constitutional capital, seat of the Supreme Court) |
| Malaysia | Putrajaya (seat of the federal executive and judiciary) | Kuala Lumpur (official capital, seat of the King and Parliament) | — |
| Netherlands | The Hague (seat of government, parliament, and the King's official residence) | — | Amsterdam (constitutional capital) |
| Eswatini | Mbabane (administrative capital) | Lobamba (royal and legislative capital) | — |
| Benin | Cotonou (seat of government, largest city) | Porto-Novo (official capital) | — |
| Tanzania | Dodoma (official capital since 1996, seat of Parliament) | Dar es Salaam (former capital, still the commercial hub and home to several ministries) | — |
| Côte d'Ivoire | Abidjan (de facto seat of government and economic capital) | Yamoussoukro (official capital since 1983) | — |
| Chile | Santiago (national capital) | Valparaíso (seat of the National Congress) | — |
South Africa's three-capital system is by far the most frequently tested entry in this table: it dates to the 1910 Union of South Africa compromise between rival provinces, each of which hosted one branch of government as a political trade-off, and the arrangement has simply persisted ever since. Sri Lanka and Bolivia are the two most commonly confused pairs — in each case, the commercially dominant, better-known city (Colombo, La Paz) is not the official/constitutional capital, and the actual official capital (Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, Sucre) is the smaller, less famous one, which is precisely why exams like to test them.
Memory hook — "Three functions, three cities — but only in a handful of countries": Executive, Legislative, Judicial — South Africa is the cleanest three-way split of all (Pretoria-Cape Town-Bloemfontein); every other country on this list splits only two of the three functions, with the third staying combined wherever it's listed as "—" above.
Practice Recall: Name South Africa's three capitals and which function each serves, then name Bolivia's two capitals and Sri Lanka's two capitals, specifying which one is the official capital in each of those last two cases.