The Protea telephone plug

Telephone plug

A telephone plug is a type of male connector used to connect a telephone to the telephone wiring in a home or business, and in turn to a local telephone network. It is inserted into its female counterpart, a telephone "jack", commonly affixed to a wall or baseboard...

, sometimes called simply the South African telephone plug, was widely used in South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 from the 1960s or 1970s until the 1990s. As of 2004, new telephone installations in South Africa use RJ11 plugs (which are sometimes referred to in South Africa as Venus plugs), but Protea plugs are still often encountered in older installations.