![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090117011808im_/http://i.infoplease.com/images/clearpix.gif) |
Travel to South Africa — Unbiased reviews
and great deals from TripAdvisor
South Africa
Republic of South Africa
President: Kgalema Motlanthe (2008)
Current government officials
Total area: 471,008 sq mi (1,219,912 sq
km)
Population (2007 est.): 43,997,828
(growth rate: –0.5%); birth rate: 17.9/1000; infant mortality
rate: 59.4/1000; life expectancy: 42.5; density per sq mi: 93
Administrative capital (2003 est.):
Pretoria, 1,541,300 (metro. area), 1,249,700
(city proper); Legislative capital and largest city: Cape
Town, 3,140,600 (metro. area), 2,733,000 (city proper). Judicial
capital: Bloemfontein, 378,000. No decision has been made to
relocate the seat of government. South Africa is demarcated into
nine provinces, consisting of the Gauteng, Northern Province,
Mpumalanga, North West, KwaZulu/Natal, Eastern Cape, Western Cape,
Northern Cape, and Free State. Each province has its own capital
Other large cities:
Durban/Pinetown, 2,396,100; Johannesburg, 1,675,200; East Rand,
1,378,792 (part of Johannesburg metro. area, 2000 est.)
Monetary unit: Rand
Languages:
IsiZulu 23.8%, IsiXhosa 17.6%, Afrikaans
13.3%, Sepedi 9.4%, English 8.2%, Setswana 8.2%, Sesotho 7.9%,
Xitsonga 4.4%, other 7.2% (2001)
Ethnicity/race:
black African 79%, white 9.6%, colored 8.9%,
Indian/Asian 2.5% (2001)
Religions:
Zion Christian 11%, Pentecostal/Charismatic
8%, Catholic 7%, Methodist 7%, Dutch Reformed 7%, Anglican 4%, other
Christian 36%, Islam 2%, none 15% (2001)
Literacy rate: 86% (2003 est.)
Economic summary: GDP/PPP (2007
est.): $467.1 billion; per capita $9,800. Real growth rate:
5.1%. Inflation: 7.1%. Unemployment: 24.3%. Arable
land: 12%. Agriculture: corn, wheat, sugarcane, fruits,
vegetables; beef, poultry, mutton, wool, dairy products. Labor
force: 15.23 million economically active; agriculture 30%,
industry 25%, services 45% (1999 est.). Industries: mining
(world's largest producer of platinum, gold, chromium), automobile
assembly, metalworking, machinery, textiles, iron and steel,
chemicals, fertilizer, foodstuffs, commercial ship repair.
Natural resources: gold, chromium, antimony, coal, iron ore,
manganese, nickel, phosphates, tin, uranium, gem diamonds, platinum,
copper, vanadium, salt, natural gas. Exports: $50.91 billion
f.o.b. (2005 est.): gold, diamonds, platinum, other metals and
minerals, machinery and equipment. Imports: $52.97 billion
f.o.b. (2005 est.): machinery and equipment, chemicals, petroleum
products, scientific instruments, foodstuffs. Major trading
partners: U.S., UK, Japan, Germany, Netherlands, China, France,
Saudi Arabia, Iran (2004).
Communications: Telephones: main lines
in use: more than 5 million (2001); mobile cellular: 7.06 million
(2001). Radio broadcast stations: AM 14, FM 347 (plus 243
repeaters), shortwave 1 (1998). Radios: 17 million (2001).
Television broadcast stations: 556 (plus 144 network
repeaters) (1997). Televisions: 6 million (2000). Internet
Service Providers (ISPs): 150 (2001). Internet users:
3.068 million (2002).
Transportation: Railways: total: 22,298
km (2002). Highways: total: 362,099 km; paved: 73,506 km
(including 2,032 km of expressways); unpaved: 288,593 km (2000).
Ports and harbors: Cape Town, Durban, East London, Mossel
Bay, Port Elizabeth, Richards Bay, Saldanha. Airports: 727
(2002).
International disputes: managed dispute
with Namibia over the location of the boundary in the Orange
River.
Major sources and definitions
|
|
Geography
South Africa, on the continent's southern tip, is bordered by the
Atlantic Ocean on the west and by the Indian Ocean on the south and east.
Its neighbors are Namibia in the northwest, Zimbabwe and Botswana in the
north, and Mozambique and Swaziland in the northeast. The kingdom of
Lesotho forms an enclave within the southeast part of South Africa, which
occupies an area nearly three times that of California.
The southernmost point of Africa is Cape Agulhas, located in the
Western Cape Province about 100 mi (161 km) southeast of the Cape of Good
Hope.
Government
Republic.
History
The San people were the first settlers; the Khoikhoi and Bantu-speaking
tribes followed. The Dutch East India Company landed the first European
settlers on the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, launching a colony that by the
end of the 18th century numbered only about 15,000. Known as Boers or
Afrikaners, and speaking a Dutch dialect known as Afrikaans, the settlers
as early as 1795 tried to establish an independent republic.
After occupying the Cape Colony in that year, Britain took permanent
possession in 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, bringing in 5,000
settlers. Anglicization of government and the freeing of slaves in 1833
drove about 12,000 Afrikaners to make the “great trek” north
and east into African tribal territory, where they established the
republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
The discovery of diamonds in 1867 and gold nine years later brought an
influx of “outlanders” into the republics and spurred Cape
Colony prime minister Cecil Rhodes to plot annexation. Rhodes's scheme of
sparking an “outlander” rebellion, to which an armed party
under Leander Starr Jameson would ride to the rescue, misfired in 1895,
forcing Rhodes to resign. What British expansionists called the
“inevitable” war with the Boers broke out on Oct. 11, 1899.
The defeat of the Boers in 1902 led in 1910 to the Union of South Africa,
composed of four provinces, the two former republics, and the old Cape and
Natal colonies. Louis Botha, a Boer, became the first prime minister.
Organized political activity among Africans started with the establishment
of the African National Congress in 1912.
Jan Christiaan Smuts brought the nation into World War II on the Allied
side against Nationalist opposition, and South Africa became a charter
member of the United Nations in 1945, but he refused to sign the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Apartheid—racial
separation—dominated domestic politics as the Nationalists gained
power and imposed greater restrictions on Bantus (black Africans), Asians,
and Coloreds (in South Africa the term meant any nonwhite person). Black
voters were removed from the voter rolls in 1936. Over the next
half-century, the nonwhite population of South Africa was forced out of
designated white areas. The Group Areas Acts of 1950 and 1986 forced about
1.5 million Africans to move from cities to rural townships, where they
lived in abject poverty under repressive laws.
South Africa declared itself a republic in 1961 and severed its ties
with the Commonwealth, which strongly objected to the country's racist
policies. The white supremacist National Party, which had first come to
power in 1948, would continue its rule for the next three decades.
In 1960, 70 black protesters were killed during a peaceful
demonstration in Sharpesville. The African National Congress (ANC), the
principal antiapartheid organization, was banned that year, and in 1964
its leader, Nelson Mandela, was sentenced to life imprisonment. Black
protests against apartheid grew stronger and more violent. In 1976, an
uprising in the black township of Soweto spread to other black townships
and left 600 dead. Beginning in the 1960s, international opposition to
apartheid intensified. The UN imposed sanctions, and many countries
divested their South African holdings.
Apartheid's grip on South Africa began to give way when F. W. de Klerk
replaced P. W. Botha as president in 1989. De Klerk removed the
ban on the ANC and released its leader, Nelson Mandela, after 27 years of
imprisonment. The Inkatha Freedom Party, a black opposition group led by
Mangosuthu Buthelezi, which was seen as collaborating with the apartheid
system, frequently clashed with the ANC during this period.
In 1991, a multiracial forum led by de Klerk and Mandela, the
Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), began working on a new
constitution. In 1993, an interim constitution was passed, which
dismantled apartheid and provided for a multiracial democracy with
majority rule. The peaceful transition of South Africa from one of the
world's most repressive societies into a democracy is one of the 20th
century's most remarkable success stories. Mandela and de Klerk were
jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
The 1994 election, the country's first multiracial one, resulted in a
massive victory for Mandela and his ANC. The new government included six
ministers from the National Party and three from the Inkatha Freedom
Party. A new national constitution was approved and adopted in May
1996.
In 1997 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Desmond
Tutu, began hearings regarding human rights violations between 1960 and
1993. The commission promised amnesty to those who confessed their crimes
under the apartheid system. In 1998, F. W. de Klerk, P.W. Botha, and
leaders of the ANC appeared before the commission, and the nation
continued to grapple with its enlightened but often painful and divisive
process of national recovery.
Nelson Mandela, whose term as president cemented his reputation as one
of the world's most farsighted and magnanimous statesmen, retired in 1999.
On June 2, 1999, Thabo Mbeki, the pragmatic deputy president and leader of
the ANC, was elected president in a landslide, having already assumed many
of Mandela's governing responsibilities.
In his first term, Mbeki wrestled with a slumping economy and a
skyrocketing crime rate. South Africa, the country with the highest number
of HIV-positive people in the world (6.5 million in 2005), has been
hampered in fighting the epidemic by its president's highly controversial
views. Mbeki has denied the link between HIV and AIDS and claimed that the
West has exaggerated the epidemic to boost drug profits. The international
community as well as most South African leaders, including Nelson Mandela
and Desmond Tutu, have condemned Mbeki's stance. In 2006, 60 international
scientists called the government's policies “disastrous and
pseudo-scientific.”
As expected, on April 15, 2004, the African National Congress won South
Africa's general election in a landslide, taking about 70% of the vote,
and Thabo Mbeki was sworn in for a second term.
In December 2007, African National Committee delegates chose Jacob Zuma
as their leader, ousting Mbeki, who had been in control of the party for
the last ten years. With the victory, Zuma is poised to become president
when Mbeki's term expires in 2009. Zuma was acquitted of rape charges in
2006. In late December, prosecutors reopened corruption charges against
Zuma and ordered him to face trial for "various counts of racketeering,
money laundering, corruption, and fraud." Zuma's lawyers accused Mbeki of
trying to sabotage Zuma's political career. A High Court judge dismissed
the corruption charges against Zuma in September 2008, saying the
government mishandled the prosecution. The judge also criticized President
Mbeki for attempting to influence the prosecution of Zuma.
Under pressure from leaders the African National Congress (ANC), Mbeki
announced he would step down just days after Zuma was cleared. While party
leader's cited Mbeki's alleged interference in the corruption case against
Zuma, Mbeki's resignation culminated several years of bitter infighting
between Zuma and Mbeki, which led to discord in the ANC. On Sep. 25,
Parliament elected Kgalema Motlanthe, a labor leader who was imprisoned
during apartheid, as president. Zuma must be a member of Parliament before
he can be elected president. Parliamentary elections are expected in early
2009.
On his first day as president, Motlanthe acted to move beyond Mbeki's
resistance to using modern and effective methods, such as antirretroviral
medicines, to tackle its AIDS crisis by replacing South Africa's health
minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who has suggested that garlic, lemon
juice, and beetroot could cure AIDS, with Barbara Hogan. "The era of
denialism is over," she said. More than 5.7 million South Africans are
HIV-positive, the highest number of any country in the world.
In November, about 6,400 dissident members of the ANC held a convention
in Johannesburg and decided to form a new party that will challenge the
leadership of the ANC. The delegates, many of whom supported former
president Mbeki, expressed dissatisfaction with the leadership of the
party, calling it corrupt, authoritarian, and "rotting." In December, the
new party, the Congress of the People (COPE), selected former defense
minister Mosiuoa Lekota as its president.
See also Encyclopedia: South Africa. U.S. State Dept. Country Notes:
South Africa Statistics South Africa
http://www.statssa.gov.za/default3.asp .
Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson
Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
More on South Africa from Infoplease:
|
|