South Africa


South Africa is just packed with natural beauty, culture and wildlife. Many of these positive features were overshadowed by a repressive racist government, but all that changed with South Africa’s first multi-racial elections in 1994. South Africa is Africa’s wealthiest country with good infrastructure, but there’s still plenty of poverty. South Africa was the first African country to host the FIFA World Cup in 2010.

Location: South Africa is located on the southern tip of Africa, see map.

Area: South Africa covers 1,219,912 sq km (471 011 square miles), slightly less than twice the size of Texas and twice the size of France.

Capital City: Pretoria (Tshwane) is the administrative capital, Cape Town is the Legislative Capital and Bloemfontein the Judicial capital.

Population: 49 million; 50% live below the poverty line with an unemployment rate of 23%.

Language: South Africa has 11 official languages (and plenty more are spoken): Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda and Xitsonga.

Religion: Zionist 11.1%, Pentecostal 8.2%, Catholic 7.1%, Methodist 6.8%, Dutch Reformed 6.7%, Anglican 3.8%, Muslim 1.5%.

Climate: South Africa’s summers (November to March) are generally warm with average temperatures around 77 Fahrenheit (25 C). Winters (June to August) can get quite cold especially at night with temperatures averaging around 50 Fahrenheit (10 C).

Currency: South African Rand.

Fun Fact: Polokwane is the 12th largest city in South Africa with a population of roughly 561,000.

Economy: South Africa is a middle-income, emerging market with an abundant supply of natural resources; well-developed financial, legal, communications, energy, and transport sectors; a stock exchange that is 17th largest in the world; and modern infrastructure supporting an efficient distribution of goods to major urban centers throughout the region. However, unemployment remains high and outdated infrastructure has constrained growth. Daunting economic problems remain from the apartheid era – especially poverty, lack of economic empowerment among the disadvantaged groups, and a shortage of public transportation. South African economic policy is fiscally conservative but pragmatic, focusing on controlling inflation, maintaining a budget surplus, and using state-owned enterprises to deliver basic services to low-income areas as a means to increase job growth and household income.

History/Politics: Dutch traders landed at the southern tip of modern day South Africa in 1652 and established a stopover point on the spice route between the Netherlands and the East, founding the city of Cape Town. After the British seized the Cape of Good Hope area in 1806, many of the Dutch settlers (the Boers) trekked north to found their own republics. The discovery of diamonds (1867) and gold (1886) spurred wealth and immigration and intensified the subjugation of the native inhabitants. The Boers resisted British encroachments but were defeated in the Boer War (1899-1902); however, the British and the Afrikaners, as the Boers became known, ruled together under the Union of South Africa. In 1948, the National Party was voted into power and instituted a policy of apartheid – the separate development of the races. The first multi-racial elections in 1994 brought an end to apartheid and ushered in black majority rule under the African National Congress (ANC). ANC infighting, which has grown in recent years, came to a head in September 2008 after President Thabo Mbeki resigned. Kgalema Motlanthe, the party’s General-Secretary, succeeded as interim president until general elections scheduled for 2009.

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