South Africa

Republic of South Africa

(In detail) (In Detail)
National motto: !ke e: ǀxarra ǁke (/Xam: Unity In Diversity or lit. Diverse People Unite)
Official languages	Afrikaans, English, Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, Ndebele, Southern Sotho, Northern Sotho, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda
Capitals	Cape Town (legislative) Pretoria (administrative) Bloemfontein (judicial)
Largest city	Johannesburg
President	Thabo Mbeki
Area  - Total  - % water	Ranked 24th 1,219,912 km² Negligible
Population  - July 2005 est.  - Density	Ranked 26th 46,888,200 36/km²
HDI (2003)	0.658 (120th) – medium
Independence - Dominion - Republic	From the United Kingdom 31 May 1910 31 May 1961
Currency	ZAR - South African Rand (R)
Time zone	UTC+2
National anthem	Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika/Die Stem van Suid-Afrika
Internet TLD	.za
Calling code	+27
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This article is about the country called 'South Africa'. For the region, see southern Africa.

The Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of the African continent. It borders the countries of Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Swaziland. Lesotho is an enclave entirely surrounded by South African territory.

South Africa is a racially diverse nation. It has the largest population of people of Coloured, European, and Indian communities in Africa. Ethnic strife between the white minority and the black majority have played a large part in the country's history and politics, culminating in apartheid which was instituted in 1948 by the National Party. The laws that defined apartheid began to be repealed or abolished in 1990 after a long and violent struggle by the black majority, as well as some white, Coloured, and Indian South Africans.

The country is one of the few in Africa never to have had a coup d'état, and regular free and fair elections have been held for almost a century, although blacks were only enfranchised in 1994. This stability has made it a regional power and among the most stable liberal democracies in Africa. The economy of South Africa is the largest and best developed on the continent, with modern infrastructure common throughout the country.

South Africa is often referred to as The Rainbow Nation - a term coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and later elaborated upon by then-President Nelson Mandela as a metaphor to describe the country's newly-developing multicultural diversity in the wake of seperatist Apartheidist ideology.

Languages

South Africa has 11 official languages: English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Swati, Ndebele, Southern Sotho, Northern Sotho, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda and Xhosa. In this regard it is second only to India in number. As a result, there are many official names for the country.

The country also recognises eight non-official languages: Fanagalo, Lobedu, Northern Ndebele, Phuthi, South African Sign Language, Khoe, Nama and San. These non-official languages may be used in certain official uses in limited areas where it has been determined that these languages are prevalent. Nevertheless, their populations are not as such that they require nationwide recognition.

Many of the "unofficial languages" of the San and Khoikhoi people contain regional dialects stretching northward into Namibia and Botswana, and elsewhere. These people, who are a physically distinct population from other Africans, have their own cultural identity based on their hunter-gatherer societies. They have been marginalised to a great extent, and many of their languages are in danger of becoming extinct.

Many white South Africans also speak other European languages, such as Portuguese, German, and Greek, while many Asians and Indians in South Africa speak languages such as Gujarati and Tamil.

There are 11 official names for South Africa, one for each of the official national languages. While each language is technically equal to every other, English has emerged recently as the chief-among-peers as it is the most widely spoken language across racial barriers as well as globally, even though it is not the most widely spoken language by population. Afrikaans has been downgraded in order to accommodate other official languages. The South African passport currently has only French and English on the front cover and lists the other official names of South Africa on an inner page.

Many of the minority groups in South Africa feel that their languages, despite having official status, are being sidelined in favour of English.

History

Painting of a fictional account of the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck.

Boer women and children in one of the first concentration camps.

A segregated beach in 1982 during apartheid. Non-whites were only allowed on the left side of the boundary.

Main article: History of South Africa

South Africa contains some of the oldest archaeological sites in Africa. Extensive fossil remains at the Sterkfontein, Kromdraai and Makapansgat caves suggest that various australopithecines existed in South Africa from about three million years ago. These were succeeded by various species of Homo, including Homo habilis, Homo erectus and modern man, Homo sapiens. Bantu iron-using agriculturists and herdsmen moved south of the Limpopo River into modern-day South Africa by the 4th or 5th century (the Bantu expansion). They slowly moved south and the earliest ironworks in modern-day KwaZulu-Natal Province are believed to date from around 1050. The furthest south they reached was the Fish River, in today's Eastern Cape Province. These Iron Age populations displaced earlier hunter-gatherer peoples as they migrated.

The written history of South Africa began on April 6, 1652, when a victualing station was established at the Cape of Good Hope by Jan van Riebeeck on behalf of the Dutch East India Company. For most of the 17th and 18th centuries, the slowly expanding settlement was a Dutch possession. The Dutch settlers initiated a series of wars called Cape Frontier Wars against the Xhosa people, and imported slaves from Indonesia, Madagascar, and India. Descendants of these slaves, who often married with Dutch settlers, were later classified together with the remnants of the Khoikhoi as Cape Coloureds and "Cape Malays", constituting roughly 50 percent of the population in the Western Cape Province.

Great Britain seized the Cape of Good Hope area in 1797 during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. The Dutch declared bankruptcy, and the British annexed the Cape Colony in 1805. The British continued the frontier wars against the AmaXhosa, pushing the eastern frontier eastward through a line of forts established along the Fish River and consolidating it by encouraging British settlement. Due to pressure of abolitionist societies in Britain, the British parliament first stopped its global slave trade in 1806, then abolished slavery in all its colonies in 1833.

The discovery of diamonds in 1867 and gold in 1886 encouraged economic growth and immigration, intensifying the subjugation of the natives. The Boers successfully resisted British encroachments during the First Boer War (1880–1881) basing their tactics much better on local conditions. For example, the Boers wore khaki clothing, which was the same colour as the earth, whereas the British wore bright red uniforms, making them easy targets for Boer sharpshooters. The British returned in greater numbers without their red jackets in the Second Boer War (1899–1902), which was largely opposed by the Liberal Party in the British Parliament. The Boers' attempt to ally themselves with German South West Africa provided the British with yet another excuse to take control of the Boer Republics.

The Boers resisted fiercely, but the British eventually overwhelmed the Boer forces, using their superior numbers and external supply chains, as well as the controversial scorched earth tactic. The Treaty of Vereeniging specified full British sovereignty over the South African republics, and the British government agreed to assume the £3,000,000 war debt owed by the Afrikaner governments. One of the main provisions of the treaty ending the war was that blacks would not be allowed to vote, except in the Cape Colony.

After four years of negotiations, the Union of South Africa was created from the colonies of Cape Colony, Natal Colony, and the republics of Orange Free State, and Transvaal on May 31, 1910, exactly eight years after the end of the Second Boer War. In 1934 the South African Party and National Parties merged to form the United Party, seeking reconciliation between Afrikaners and English-speaking whites, but split in 1939 over the Union's entry in World War II as an ally of the United Kingdom. The right-wing National Party sympathised with Nazi Germany during the war, and sought greater racial segregation, or apartheid after it.

After World War II, by the National Party's takeover in 1948, the white minority were able to maintain their powergrip by implementing the policies that would become known collectively as apartheid, a series of harsh racist laws segregating the country along racial lines. Apartheid became increasingly controversial, leading to widespread sanctions and divestment abroad and growing unrest and oppression within South Africa. (See also special section on History of South Africa in the apartheid era.) A long period of harsh supression by the government, and resistance, strikes, marches, protests, and sabotage, by various anti-apartheid movements, most notably the African National Congress(ANC) folowed. In 1990 National Party government took the first step towards negotiating itself out of power when it lifted the ban on the African National Congress and other left-wing political organisations, and released Nelson Mandela from prison after 27 years. Apartheid legislation was gradually removed from the statute books, and the first multi-racial elections were held in 1994. The ANC won by an overwhelming majority, and has been in power ever since. South Africa is the first, and to date only, country to build nuclear weapons and then voluntarily dismantle its entire nuclear weapons programme.

Despite the end of apartheid, millions of South Africans, mostly black, continue to live in poverty. The reason for this is attributed to the legacy of the apartheid regime and increasingly, what many see as the failure of the current government to tackle social issues. However, the ANC's social housing policy has produced some improvement in living conditions in many areas.

Government

The National Assembly building, located in Cape Town.

Main article: Government of South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a constitutional democracy with a three-tiered system of government and an independent judiciary, operating under a parliamentary system. However, unlike republics with Westminster-style parliamentary systems, the President is both Head of State and Head of Government. The minimum age for voting in South Africa is 18. In the first post-apartheid elections, permanent residents as well as citizens were allowed to vote. In all subsequent elections, only citizens have been granted this privilege - as is the case with most other nations.

The government is decentralised: the national, provincial, and local levels of government all have legislative and executive authority in their own spheres, and is defined in the South African constitution as "distinctive, interdependent, and interrelated"—a system of separation of powers.

All bodies and branches of the South African government are subject to the rule of the constitution, which is the supreme law in South Africa.

The national legislature is the bicameral Parliament, consisting of the National Assembly (the lower house) and the National Council of Provinces (the upper house), which replaced the Senate in 1997.

Each province has a unicameral Provincial Legislature, from which a Premier is elected, who in turn appoints an Executive Council .

The judiciary consists of the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court of Appeal, and the High Court.

Operating at both national and provincial levels are advisory bodies drawn from South Africa's traditional leaders. The Council of Traditional Leaders being the national body, while each province except the Western Cape and Northern Cape have a House of Traditional Leaders. It is a stated intention in the Constitution that the country be run on a system of cooperative governance.

Politics

The central area of Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa.

Main article: Politics of South Africa

South Africa has a bicameral Parliament, comprising the National Council of Provinces (or upper house) with 90 members, and a National Assembly (or lower house) with 400 members. Members of the lower house are elected on a population basis by proportional representation: half of the members are elected from national lists and half are elected from provincial lists. Ten members are elected to represent each province in the National Council of Provinces, regardless of the population of the province. Elections for both chambers are held every five years. The government is formed in the lower house, and the leader of the majority party in the National Assembly is the President.

Current South African politics is dominated by the ANC, who received 69.7 percent of the vote during the 2004 general election. The main challenger to the ANC's rule is the Democratic Alliance party, which received only 12.4 percent of the vote. The formerly dominant New National Party, who introduced apartheid through its predecessor, the National Party, has suffered increasing humiliation at election polls since 1994, and finally voted to disband on 9 April 2005.

Provinces

Main article: Provinces of South Africa

When apartheid ended in 1994, the South African government had to integrate the formerly independent and semi-independent Bantustans into the political structure of South Africa. To this end, it abolished the four former provinces of South Africa (Cape Province, Natal, Orange Free State, and Transvaal) and replaced them with nine fully integrated provinces. The new provinces are usually much smaller than the former provinces, which theoretically is in order to give local governments more resources to distribute over smaller areas. The new provinces are:

Geography

Map of South Africa

Main article: Geography of South Africa

South Africa is located at the extreme south of Africa, with a long coastline that stretches more than 2,500 km and across two oceans (the Atlantic and the Indian). South Africa has a great variety of climate zones, from the extreme desert of the Kalahari near Namibia to lush subtropical climate along the border with Mozambique. It quickly rises over a mountainous escarpment towards the interior plateau known as the Highveld. Even though South Africa is classified as semi-arid, there is considerable variation in climate as well as topography.

The interior of South Africa is a giant, mountainous, and sparsely populated scrubland Karoo plateau, which is drier towards the north-west along the Kalahari desert. In contrast, the eastern coastline is lush and well-watered which produces a climate similar to the tropics. The extreme south west has a climate remarkably similar to that of the Mediterranean with wet winters and hot, dry summers. This area also produces much of South Africa's wine. This region is also particularly known for its wind, which blows intermittently almost all year. The severity of this wind made passing around the Cape of Good Hope particularly treacherous for sailors, causing many shipwrecks. Further east on the country's south coast rainfall is distributed more evenly throughout the year, producing a green landscape. This area is popularly known as the Garden Route.

The Free State is particularly flat due to the fact that the eastern region of the Highveld does not extend as far north as the western region. North the Vaal River, the Highveld becomes better watered and does not experience subtropical extremes of heat. Johannesburg, in the centre of the Highveld, is at 1,740 m and receives an annual rainfall of 760 mm. Winters in this region are cold, although snow is rare.

To the north and east of Johannesburg, the altitude drops beyond the Highveld's escarpment, and turns into the Lowveld. The Lowveld has particularly high temperatures, and is also the location of traditional South African Bushveld. The high Drakensberg mountains, which form the eastern escarpment of the Highveld, offer limited skiing opportunities in winter. The coldest place in South Africa is Sutherland in the western Roggeveld Mountains, where midwinter temperatures can reach as low as –15 degrees Celsius. The deep interior has the hottest temperatures: A temperature of 51.7 °C was recorded in 1948 in the Northern Cape Kalahari near Upington.[1]

South Africa also has one possession, the small sub-antarctic archipelago of the Prince Edward Islands, consisting of Marion Island (290 km²) and Prince Edward Island (45 km²; not to be confused with the Canadian province of the same name).

Flora and fauna

The fynbos, a floral kingdom unique to South Africa, is found near Cape Town.

South Africa has more than 20,000 different plants, or about 10 percent of all the known species of plants on Earth, making it particularly verdant. The Fynbos Biome, one of the six floral kingdoms, is located in a small region of the Western Cape and contains more than 9,000 of those species, making it among the most green places on earth. The majority of the plants are evergreen hard-leaf plants with fine, needle-like leaves, such as the sclerophyllous. Another particularly South African plant is the protea, which is a genus of blooming plants. There are 130 different species recorded in South Africa.

While South Africa has a really great wealth of flowering plants, it has a dearth of forest resources. Only 1 percent of South Africa is forest, almost exclusively in the humid coastal plain along the Indian Ocean in KwaZulu-Natal. There are even smaller reserves of forests that are out of the reach of fire, known as montane forests. Plantations of imported tree species are predominant, particularly the non-native eucalyptus and pine. The original temperate forest that met the first European settlers to South Africa was extinguished ruthlessly until only small patches remained. Currently, South African hardwood trees like Real Yellowwood (Podocarpus latifolius), stinkwood (Ocotea bullata), and South African Black Ironwood (Olea laurifolia) are under government protection.

South Africa's most prevalent biome is grassland, which is particularly present on the Highveld, where the plant cover is dominated by different grasses, low shrubs, and acacia trees, mainly camel-thorn and whitethorn. Vegetation becomes even more sparse towards the northwest due to low precipitation. There are several species of water-storing succulents like aloes and euphorbias in the very hot and dry Namaqualand area. The grass and thorn savannah turns slowly into a bush savannah towards the northeast of the country, with more dense growth. There are significant numbers of baobab trees in this area, near the northern end of Kruger National Park. [2]

Economy

Durban, a famous resort city on the Indian Ocean coast and site of Africa's largest commercial port.

The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town with Table Mountain in the background. Cape Town has become an important retail and tourism centre for the country, and attracts the largest number of foreign visitors in South Africa.

Main article: Economy of South Africa

South Africa is a middle-income country with an abundant supply of resources, well-developed financial, legal, communications, energy, and transport sectors, a stock exchange, JSE Securities Exchange, that ranks among the 10 largest in the world, and a modern infrastructure supporting an efficient distribution of goods to major urban centres throughout the region. South Africa's per capita GDP, corrected for purchasing power parity, positions the country as one of the 50 wealthiest in the world. In many respects, South Africa is developed; however, this development is significantly localised around 4 areas, namely: Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, and Pretoria-Johannesburg. Beyond these 4 economic centres, development is marginal and poverty still reigns despite Government strategies. Large income gaps and a dual economy designate South Africa as developing. Only Brazil and India show a greater divide between its country's wealthy and poor residents. Consecutive growth rates in the last ten years are helping lower unemployment, however, the economy still has ways to go, and daunting economic problems remain from the apartheid era, especially the problems of poverty and lack of economic empowerment among the disadvantaged groups. Other problems are crime, corruption, and HIV/AIDS. At the start of 2000, President Thabo Mbeki vowed to promote economic growth and foreign investment by relaxing restrictive labour laws, stepping up the pace of privatisation, and cutting unneeded governmental spending. His policies face strong opposition from organised labour. It is estimated that South Africa accounts for up to 30 percent of the gross domestic product of the entire African continent. South Africa is also the continent's largest energy producer and consumer.

The rand, the world's most actively traded emerging market currency, has joined an elite club of 15 currencies - the Continuous Linked Settlement (CLS) - where forex transactions are settled immediately, lowering the risks of transacting across time zone. The South African Rand was the best performing currency against the US Dollar between 2002 and 2005, according to the Bloomberg Currency Scorecard. The volatility of the rand has affected economic activity, with the rand falling sharply during 2001, hitting an historic low of R13.85 to the United States dollar, raising fears of inflation, and causing the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates. The rand has since dramatically recovered, trading at R6.55 to the dollar as of July 2005 while the South African Reserve Bank's policy of inflation targeting has brought inflation under control. The stronger rand has however put exporters under considerable pressure, with many calling for government to intervene in the exchange rate to help soften the rand, and many others dismissing staff.

21.5% of the South African population have been estimated to be HIV positive in 2004. The government has recently, after much delay, devoted substantial resources to fighting the epidemic. A recent study from the African Journal of AIDS Research by Thomas Rehle and Olive Shisana showed the infection rate starting to level off, from 4.2 percent to 1.7 percent infection rate for 15-49 year olds, and AIDS deaths peaking at 487,320 in 2008.

Refugees from poorer neighbouring count