Care & Community - SOUTH AFRICA Country Facts

South Africa

Population: 45.3 million (UN, 2005) Capital: Pretoria Area: 1.22 million sq km (470,693 sq miles) Major languages: 11 official languages including English, Afrikaans, Sesotho, Setswana, Xhosa and Zulu Major religion: Christianity, Islam, indigenous beliefs Life expectancy: 47 years (men), 51 years (women) Monetary unit: 1 Rand = 100 cents Main exports: Gold, diamonds, metals and minerals, cars, machinery GNI per capita: US $4,960 (World Bank, 2006) International dialing code: +27

Geography

South Africa is located at the southernmost tip of the African continent. It has 2798km of coastline and shares land borders with Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. A coastal plain, rugged hills and a vast interior plateau are all part of the terrain. The climate is mostly semiarid but is subtropical along the east coast. In general days are sunny and nights are cool. South Africa sometimes experiences prolonged droughts. The country is rich in natural resources which include gold, coal, iron ore, nickel, tin, gem diamonds, platinum and copper.

People

South Africa has a diverse mix of people in terms of culture, language and beliefs. The five main groups are Black (79.4%), Caucasian (9.3%), Coloured (8.8%), Indian/Asian (2.5%) and Other. Although the vast majority of the population are classified as black African, this is not a homogenous group in terms of culture or language. The group can be divided into smaller ethnic groups, the major ones being: Zulu, Xhosa, Basotho, Badepi, Vanda, Tswana, Tsonga, Swazi and Ndebele. The white population are predominantly descendents of colonial immigrants, mainly Dutch, German, French Huguenot, and British. As with the black population, the white population are divided culturally and linguistically, but only into two groups, the Afrikaners who speak Africaans, and the English-speaking groups who descend from British immigrants. The numbers of whites in South Africa is decreasing due to a low birth rate and emigration. To reflect the number of ethnic groups, South Africa has eleven official languages. The country is however more religiously homogenous with 80% following Christianity. Traditional African beliefs are also important, and the Islamic community is growing rapidly. HIV/AIDS is still a huge problem in South Africa, but with the phasing in of a national health system infant mortality is declining.

Brief History

Before the arrival of the Europeans, the land of South Africa had been inhabited for many thousands of years. The earliest people named by archaeologists are the San and the Khoikhoi people who both inhabited the southern tip of South Africa as hunter-gatherers and pastoral laborers respectively. In the 4th century, these two peoples were joined by Bantu-speaking settlers. In the 12th century a large trading settlement was established by a group of agro-pastoralists who brought to South Africa an Iron Age culture and sophisticated socio-political systems. The Portuguese were the first to discover South Africa in 1480's but they chose not to colonize the land. Instead it was the Dutch who in 1652 founded the Cape Colony at Table Bay. The crew of 90 men was led by Jan van Riebeeck and represented the Dutch East India Company. In 1657, nine men were released from their contracts and given land to farm. These independent farmers grew in number and in the early 1700's began to travel north and east, displacing the Khoikhoi people often with the use of violence. These farmers subsequently earned the name trekboers. They inter-bred with the Khoikhoi people as well as with the imported slaves from Indonesia and Madagascar, which formed the basis of the mixed-race group known as 'Colored.' In the 18th century, the Dutch, German and French settlers had begun to lose touch with their European identity, which marked the beginning of the Afrikaner nation. In 1795, British forces sailed to South Africa and seized the Cape Colony from the Netherlands. In the 19th century the great Zulu king Shaka founded and expanded the Zulu empire and created a strong fighting force. 1834 saw the emancipation of slaves by philanthropically-inclined British missionaries. Unhappy with this unacceptable racial egalitarianism and fed up of living under colonial rule, the Boers left Cape Colony within a year on a 'Great Trek' to found the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The following decades involved a number of wars fought between the three dominant groups; the Boers and British defeated the Zulus in two separate conflicts, and the Anglo-Boer War ended with a negotiated peace. These years also involved the discovery of diamonds at Kimberley and the discovery of gold in the Transvaal. The discovery the gold prompted a gold rush and a second Anglo-Boer War which ended with a treaty. The National party (NP) was founded in 1914, and in 1948 they came to power and implemented a policy of apartheid. Under apartheid, the South African population was classified by race, whites and blacks were geographically separated, non-whites were denied the vote and their public services were vastly inferior. These years were filled with protests and the deaths of hundreds. The most acclaimed leader of anti-apartheid protests was Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress (ANC), who led a campaign of civil disobedience and launched a sabotage campaign before he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. After 27 years in prison Mandela was released in 1990 and one year later apartheid was abolished.

Politics

South Africa is a republic. Since the end of white rule in 1991, South Africa has held three successful elections as well as local polls. The first election in 1994 was won by the ANC (African National Congress) with Mandela as president. In 1997, Mandela handed over leadership of the ANC to Thabo Mbeki, who was re-elected in the elections of 2004 with 70% of the vote. Mbeki's main aims are to improve the lives of ordinary South Africans through delivering basic services such as water, electricity and sewerage. The government also aims to transfer 30% of farmland to black South Africans by 2014. Mbeki has mediated in conflicts in the Ivory Coast, Burundi and DR Congo.

Economy

South Africa is the world's largest producer of gold, platinum and chromium, and along with diamonds and machinery, they constitute the county's main exports. Blessed with so many valuable natural resources, South Africa has managed to achieve one of the biggest economies in Africa with a stock exchange that ranks among the top ten largest in the world. However the country experiences many problems; crime rates are high, in part due to high unemployment rates of 27%, over half the population live below the poverty line, and there still exists inequality between blacks and whites which means that disadvantaged groups lack economic empowerment.