User:Elinor.Dashwood/Sandbox South Africa

The Republic of South Africa (also known by other official names) is a country located at the southern tip of Africa. South Africa's coast stretches 2 798 kilometres and borers both the Atlantic and Indian oceans. To the north of South Africa lie Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Swaziland, while the kingdom of Lesotho is an independent enclave surrounded by South African territory.

south africa history has been heavily influenced by early immigration from Europe and the strategic importance of the Cape Sea Route. European immigration began shortly after the Dutch East India Company founded a station at what would become Cape Town, in 1652. The country's relatively developed infrastructure made its mineral wealth available and important to Western interests, particularly throughout the late nineteenth century and, with international competition and rivalry, during the Cold War. South Africa is ethnically diverse, with the largest Caucasian, Indian, and racially mixed communities in Africa. Black South Africans, who speak nine officially recognised languages, and many more dialects, account for nearly 80% of the population.

Racial strife between the black majority and white minority has played a large part in South Africa's history and politics, culminating in apartheid, which was instituted in 1948 by the National Party (although segregation existed before that time). The laws that defined apartheid began to be repealed or abolished by the National Party in 1990, after a long and sometimes violent struggle, including economic sanctions from the international community. Regular elections have been held for almost a century; but the majority of South Africans were not enfranchised until 1994.

The closure of the Suez Canal during the Six-Day War highlighted its significance to East-West trade.

South Africa is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations and is currently a member of the United Nations Security Council. The South African economy is the largest in Africa and the 24th largest in the world.

Several philosophies and ideologies have developed in South Africa, including ubuntu (the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity) and Jan Smuts' holism.

South Africa is often called the "Rainbow Nation", a term coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and later adopted by then President Nelson Mandela. Mandela used the term "Rainbow Nation" as a metaphor to describe the country's newly developing multicultural diversity after segregationist apartheid ideology. By 2007, the country had joined Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, and Spain in legalising same-sex marriage.

Later, the great Portuguese poet Camões immortalised Dias' voyage in the epic poem The Lusiads,specifically via the mythological character, Adamastor, which symbolises the forces of nature the Portuguese navigators had to overcome during the circumnavigation of the Cape.Along with the accounts of the very early navigators, the accounts of shipwreck survivors provide the earliest written accounts of Southern Africa. The appalling conditions in British concentration camps were brought to light by Welfare Campaigner Emily Hobhouse in her report "Report of a Visit to the Camps of Women and Children in the Cape and Orange River Colonies". Maltreatment and undernourishment were common in camps. Food was often poisoned and glass pieces and hooks were found in many rations. The death toll reached 26,370 of which 24,000 were children.

The written history of South Africa began with the arrival of the Portuguese. When he returned to Lisbon carrying news of the discovery, which he called Cabo das Tormentas (Cape of Storms) due to the stormy conditions he had encountered in the region, his royal sponsor, John II of Portugal, chose a different name, Cabo da Boa Esperança or Cape of Good Hope, for it promised a sea route to the riches of India then being sought by Portugal. In the two centuries following 1488, a number of small fishing settlements were made along the coast by Portuguese sailors. but no written account of these settlements survives. For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the slowly-expanding settlement was a Dutch possession.

To ease Cape labour shortages Furthermore, troublesome leaders, often of royal descent, were banished from Dutch colonies to South Africa. This group of slaves eventually gave rise to a population that now identifies themselves as "Cape Malays". Cape Malays have traditionally been accorded a higher social status by the European colonists - many became wealthy landowners, but became increasingly dispossessed as apartheid developed. Cape Malay mosques in District Six were spared, and now serve as monuments for the destruction that occurred around them. Most of the descendants of these slaves, who often married with Dutch settlers, were later classified together with the remnants of the Khoikhoi (aka Khoisan) as Cape Coloureds. Further intermingling within the Cape Coloured population itself, as well as with Xhosa and other South African people, now means that they constitute roughly 50% of the population in the Western Cape Province.

Media
South Africa has a large, free, and active press that regularly challenges the government, a habit formed during the apartheid era when the press was the medium least controlled by the government. Major scandals have erupted when the press reported charges of corruption that were proven to be true in cases such as that of Schabir Shaik, in which (then) deputy president Jacob Zuma was implicated, and the corruption allegations that led to the dismissal of Winnie Mandela from parliament. Even though South Africa now has the most sophisticated media network in Africa, it was one of the last countries in the world to allow television, with colour TV broadcasts only commencing in 1975. By the end of apartheid in 1994, television networks covered all urban areas and some less populated areas, while radio networks covered almost all of the country.

During the Apartheid era the majority of commercial and all public-service radio stations and all of the television channels were operated by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), and were subject to strict control and censorship by the government, with a few independent regional stations allowed. The creation of the independent black homelands (or Bantustans) in the 1970s allowed for the establishment of TV and radio stations outside of the control of the apartheid Government. Following the demise of apartheid, the broadcasting industry was deregulated with many of the commercial regional SABC radio stations and former Bantustan stations privatised and sold to companies and consortia that were majority-owned by black people. Three SABC television channels are in place at present.

An African language channel was introduced to the SABC in 1981 (during apartheid) with a second African language channel added later in the decade. The SABC's television monopoly was eventually challenged in 1986 when a new privately owned subscription television network, M-Net, was launched. However, M-Net was not licenced to operate a news service.

South Africa currently has two terrestrial free-to-air television networks SABC and e.tv, one subscription based terrestrial network, M-Net, as well as two satellite television services, DStv, operated by M-Net's owners, Multichoice and Vivid, operated by the state-owned signal distributor Sentech. e.tv is licenced to operate an independent television news service. DStv broadcasts local and international news and entertainment channels Africa-wide via satellite. More recently DStv and e.tv announced a joint venture to provide a 24 hour news channel from 2008 that will be distributed through the DStv platform.

The Zulu Wars
Following the annexation of Transvaal by the British in 1877, an increase in tension between the British, the Boers and Zulus led to the Anglo-Zulu War. Despite the dramatic Zulu victory at Isandhlwana, the British defeated their army at Ulundi and Cetshwayo was captured. On 1 September 1879 the Zulu leaders surrendered.

The Zulu War of (1879) was a decisive six-month war in eastern South Africa, resulting in British victory over the Zulus. Before the war the Tugela River formed the boundary between Zululand and the British colony of Natal. Cetshwayo became king of the Zulus in the early 1870s. Unwilling to submit to British hegemony, he assembled a well-disciplined army of 40,000 to 60,000 men. Late in 1878 he received an ultimatum from Natal to disband his army and pay reparations for alleged insults. When he did not respond, British troops invaded under the leadership of Lord Chelmsford. Although the January 1879 rains impeded travel and the long grasses of Zululand hindered their view, the invaders advanced into Zululand without taking normal precautions (such as scouts and sentries)- it has been said that this was down to Lord Chelmsford's contempt for a "native army". The Zulu army attacked and annihilated the central British column at Isandhlwana, killing 800 British soldiers and taking nearly 1,000 rifles, with ammunition, the worst defeat of a British colonial army at the hands of a native force in British military history. Three days later a small number of British soldiers of the South Welsh Border regiment held out heroically against an army of 4000 Zulus that had broken away from the main Zulu contingent at Isandhlwana. This action, Wednesday 22- Thursday 23 January, 1879, when some 150 soldiers defended a hospital and mission station against some 4000 Zulus, aided by the Martini-Henry rifle 'with some guts behind it'. Since the Victoria Cross was instigated by Queen Victoria in 1856, only 1357 have been awarded, the highest number for any single engagement being at the Battle of Rorke's Drift..

British reinforcements arrived later and Cetshwayo fled. The British advantage met a setback in April with the unsolicited arrival of a French prince, Napoleon III's son, in search of adventure. He joined a British expedition, underestimated the enemy, and was killed in a surprise attack in May. His death was an embarrassment for the British, who had been unable to protect him. Their victories continued, nevertheless. In July Cetshwayo was decisively defeated at Ulundi. Zululand then came under informal British control and was annexed to Natal in 1887. 

The First Anglo-Boer War
The First Boer War (1880–1881), also known as the "Transvaal War," or the "Vryheidsoorlog" ("freedom war") was a relatively brief and small-scale colonial conflict in which Boer settlers, citizens of the Zuid Afrikaansch Republiek successfully revolted against a British attempt to annex the Transvaal, and therefore re-established their independence as a republic.

The Second Anglo-Boer War
The Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), by contrast, was a lengthy war involving large numbers of troops from many British possessions, which ended with the conversion of the Boer Republics into British colonies, with a promise of limited self-government. These colonies later formed part of the Union of South Africa established in 1910.

The war commonly known as "the" Boer War is in actual fact the [Second Anglo-Boer War].

The Second Boer War was the first time that Australian and New Zealand troops had fought abroad. Sixty-two percent of the first contingent were New Zealand-born. They were known as the New Zealand mounted rifles and they wore a fern leaf symbol. There was no difficulty in finding volunteers—200 troops set off 10 days after war was declared. Eventually 6495 men and 800 horses were sent (a higher proportion per head of population than Australia or Canada). About 8000 Canadians fought in South Africa, about one-third came from the militia and the rest were paid by government officals.

The British victory in the Second Boer War was secured through the use of "scorched earth" tactics, including the use of concentration camps that led to the death of approximately 22,000 Boer women and children due to the squalor and disease of the camps, figures for non-white deaths in the camps are controversial but an estimated 35,000 non-white, non-combatants may have died.

The Boers resisted fiercely, but the British eventually overwhelmed the Boer forces, using their superior numbers, improved tactics and external supply chains. 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 conditions of the treaty ending the war was that "Blacks" would not be allowed to vote, except in the Cape Colony.