This review examines pollen rain-vegetation studies that have been conducted in South Africa and Namibia. Many fossil pollen studies conducted now include a contemporary pollen analysis using either surface soil samples and/or passive pollen samplers. Statistical analyses, including multiple discriminant analysis, have been undertaken to determine any possible contemporary pollen-vegetation relationships and to enable modern analogue vegetation communities to be identified in the fossil pollen spectra and hence strengthen the conclusions of the fossil analysis. Such studies in South Africa have extended the limited understanding of the contemporary pollen rain-vegetation relationship and enables the interpretation of fossil pollen spectra to be carried out with greater confidence. This in turn lends greater credibility to Quaternary environmental change models required to help understand present and possible future environmental change.