Some history on South Africa, location, natural resources, and more interesting facts.

SOUTH AFRICA The Republic of South Africa combines an advanced First World economy with a Third World culture within its boundaries. Its population is made up of a complex of racial and ethnic groups that was dominated politically by a white minority until 1994. Until May of that year, South Africa had an institutionalized racial segregation policy. This policy became associated with the Afrikaans word apartheid, meaning social segregation. After 1948, when the conservative white Nationalist party …

…the area at the time, the Boers settled in the Natal, Transvaal, and Orange Free State regions of southern Africa. The Natal settlers were forced to leave their area, but the Transvaal and Orange Free State Boers eventually achieved their independence from the British and created their own republics. The conflict between the Boers and the British did not end, however, and was settled only by the Boer, or South African, War, which began in 1899.