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§> 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannic
(1,219,090 sq km). Population (2005 est.):
46,888,000. Capitals: PRETORIA/Tshwane (executive), Cape Town (legislative),
BLOEMFONTEIN/Mangaung (judicial). Three- fourths of the population are black Africans, including the Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, and Tswana; nearly all of the remainder are of European or mixed or South Asian descent. Languages: Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Pedi (North
SOUTH AFRICA
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0 100
200 mi
6 150
300 km
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
1788 I South African War ► South Asian arts
Sotho), Sotho (South Sotho), Swati (Swazi), Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu (all official). Religions: Christianity (other [mostly indepen¬ dent] Christians, Protestant, Roman Catholic); also traditional beliefs, Hin¬ duism, Islam. Currency: rand. South Africa has three major zones: the broad interior plateau, the surrounding mountainous Great Escarpment, and a narrow belt of coastal plain. It has a temperate subtropical climate. It is one of the world’s major producers and exporters of gold, coal, dia¬ monds, platinum, and vanadium. It is a multiparty republic with two leg¬ islative houses; its head of state and government is the president. San and Khoekhoe (Khoisan speakers) roamed the area as hunters and gatherers in the Stone Age, and the latter had developed a pastoralist culture by the time of European contact. By the 14th century, peoples speaking Bantu lan¬ guages had settled in the area and developed gold and copper mining and an active East African trade. In 1652 the Dutch established a colony at the Cape of Good Hope; the Dutch settlers became known as Boers (Dutch: “Farmers”) and later as Afrikaners (for their Afrikaans language). In 1795 British forces captured the cape. In 1836 Dutch settlers seeking new land made the Great Trek northward and established (1838) the independent Boer republics of Orange Free State and the South African Republic (later the Transvaal region), which the British annexed as colonies by 1902 fol¬ lowing the Soutfi African War. In 1910 the British colonies of Cape Colony, Transvaal, Natal, and Orange River were unified into the new Union of South Africa, which became independent and withdrew from the Commonwealth in 1961. Throughout the 20th century, South African poli¬ tics were dominated by the question of maintaining white European supremacy over the country’s black majority, and in 1948 South Africa for¬ mally instituted apartheid. Faced by increasing worldwide condemnation, it began dismantling the apartheid laws in 1990. In free elections in 1994, Nelson Mandela became the country’s first black president. A permanent nonracial constitution was promulgated in 1997.
South African War or Boer War War fought between Great Brit¬ ain and the two Boer (see Afrikaner) republics—the South African Repub¬ lic (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State —from 1899 to 1902. It was precipitated by the refusal of the Boer leader Paul Kruger to grant politi¬ cal rights to Uitlanders (“foreigners,” mostly English) in the interior min¬ ing districts and by the aggressiveness of the British high commissioner, Alfred Milner. Initially the Boers defeated the British in major engage¬ ments and besieged the key towns of Ladysmith, Mafikeng, and Kimber¬ ley; but British reinforcements under H.H. Kitchener and F.S. Roberts relieved the besieged towns, dispersed the Boer armies, and occupied Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, and Pretoria (1900). When Boer commando attacks continued, Kitchener implemented a scorched-earth policy: Boer farms were destroyed and Boer civilians were herded into concentration camps. More than 20,000 men, women, and children (including black Africans) died as a result, causing international outrage. The Boers finally accepted defeat at the Peace of Vereeniging.
South America Continent, Western Hemisphere. The world’s fourth largest continent, it is bounded by the Caribbean Sea to the northwest, the Atlantic Ocean to the northeast, east, and southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is separated from Antarctica by the Drake Passage and is joined to North America by the Isthmus of Panama. Area: 6,895,210 sq mi (17,858,520sq km). Pop., 2002 est.: 350,977,000. Four main ethnic groups have populated South America: Indians, who were the continent’s pre- Columbian inhabitants; Spanish and Portuguese who dominated the con¬ tinent from the 16th to the early 19th century; Africans imported as slaves; and the postindependence immigrants from overseas, mostly Germans and southern Europeans but also Lebanese, South Asians, and Japanese. Nine- tenths of the people are Christian, the vast majority of whom are Roman Catholic. Spanish is the official language everywhere except in Brazil (Por¬ tuguese), French Guiana (French), Guyana (English), and Suriname (Dutch); some Indian languages are spoken. South America has three major geographic regions. In the west, the Andes Mountains, which are prone to seismic activity, extend the length of the continent; Mount Aconcagua, at 22,834 ft (6,960 m), is the highest peak in the Western Hemisphere. High¬ lands lie in the north and east, bordered by lowland sedimentary basins that include the Amazon River, the world’s largest drainage basin, and the Pampas of eastern Argentina, whose fertile soils constitute one of South America’s most productive agricultural areas. Other important drainage systems include those of the Orinoco and Sao Francisco rivers and the Parana- Paraguay-Rio de la Plata system. Four-fifths of South America lies within the tropics, but it also has temperate, arid, and cold climatic regions. Less than one-tenth of its land is arable, producing mainly com (maize), wheat, and rice, and about one-fourth is under permanent pasture. About half is
covered by forest, mainly the enormous but steadily diminishing rainforest of the Amazon basin. Almost one-fourth of all the world’s known animal species live in the continent’s rainforests, plateaus, rivers, and swamps. South America has one-eighth of the world’s total deposits of iron and one- fourth of its copper reserves. Exploitation of these and numerous other mineral resources are important to the economies of many regions. Com¬ mercial crops include bananas, citrus fruits, sugar, and coffee; fishing is important along the Pacific coast. Trade in illegal narcotics (mostly for export) is a major source of revenue in some countries. Most countries have free-market or mixed (state and private enterprise) economies. Income tends to be unevenly distributed between large numbers of poor people and a small number of wealthy families, with the middle classes, though grow¬ ing, still a minority in most countries. Asiatic hunters and gatherers are thought to have been the first settlers, probably arriving less than 12,000 years ago. The growth of agriculture from c. 2500 bc (it had begun some 6,000 years earlier) initiated a period of rapid cultural evolution whose greatest development occurred in the central Andes region and culminated with the Inca empire. European exploration began when Christopher Colum¬ bus landed in 1498; thereafter Spanish and Portuguese adventurers (see coNQUiSTADORes) opened it for plunder and, later, settlement. According to terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas, Portugal received the eastern part of the continent, while Spain received the rest. The Indian peoples were deci¬ mated by this contact, and most of those who survived were reduced to a form of serfdom. The continent was free of European rule by the early 1800s except for the Guianas. Most of the countries adopted a republican form of government; however, social and economic inequalities or border disputes led to periodic revolutions in many of them, and by the early 20th century most had fallen under some form of autocratic rule. All joined the United Nations after World War II (1938-45), and all joined the Organi¬ zation of American States in 1948. By the second half of the 20th century most countries had begun to integrate their economies into world markets, and by the 1990s most had embraced democratic rule. See map on opposite page.