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History
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 président. Jacob Zuma has been elected as président in april 2009.



Geography

South Africa is a medium-sized country, with a total land area of slightly more than 1.2-million square kilometres, making it roughly the same size as Niger, Angola, Mali and Colombia.
It is one-eighth the size of the US, twice the size of France and over three times the size of Germany. South Africa measures some 1 600km from north to south, and roughly the same from east to west.
South Africa occupies the southern tip of Africa, its long coastline stretching more than 2 500km from the desert border with Namibia on the Atlantic coast, southwards around the tip of Africa, then north to the border with subtropical Mozambique on the Indian Ocean.
The low-lying coastal zone is narrow for much of that distance, soon giving way to a mountainous escarpment that separates it from the high inland plateau. In some places, notably the province of KwaZulu-Natal in the east, a greater distance separates the coast from the escarpment.
The country has nine provinces, which vary considerably in size. The smallest is tiny and crowded Gauteng, a highly urbanised region, and the largest the vast, arid and empty Northern Cape, which takes up almost a third of South Africa's total land area.
Pretoria is the executive capital and Cape Town the legislative capital. Other major cities include Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein and East London.
The country’s climate varies from region to region. The Western Cape experiences a Mediterranean climate and the interior has a semi-desert climate with cold, dry winters and summer rainfall. Kwazulu Natal has a subtropical climate with humid conditions. Snow is uncommon and is limited to the highest lying regions of the country.




Government
South Africa is a constitutional democracy with a three-tier system of government and an independent judiciary. The national, provincial and local levels of government all have legislative and executive authority in their own spheres, and are defined in the Constitution as "distinctive, interdependent and interrelated".
Operating at both national and provincial levels are advisory bodies drawn from South Africa's traditional leaders.
It is a stated intention in the Constitution that the country be run on a system of co-operative governance.




Population
South Africa is a nation of over 48 million people of diverse origins, cultures, languages and beliefs.
Africans are in the majority at just over 38-million, making up 79.6% of the total population. The white population is estimated at 4.3-million (9.1%), the coloured population at 4.2-million (8.9%) and the Indian/Asian population at just short of 1.2-million (2.5%).
While more than three-quarters of South Africa's population is black African, this category is neither culturally nor linguistically homogenous.
In terms of religious affiliation, about two-thirds of South Africans are Christian, mainly Protestant. They belong to a variety of churches, including many that combine Christian and traditional African beliefs. Many non-Christians espouse these traditional beliefs. Other significant religions are Islam, Hinduism and Judaism
Population 49,052,489
note: estimates for this country explicitly take into account the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS; this can result in lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, higher death rates, lower population growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex than would otherwise be expected (July 2009 est.)
Age structure 0-14 years: 28.9% (male 7,093,328/female 7,061,579)
15-64 years: 65.8% (male 16,275,424/female 15,984,181)
65 years and over: 5.4% (male 1,075,117/female 1,562,860) (2009 est.)
Birth rate 20.23 births/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Death rate 16.94 deaths/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Urbanization urban population: 61% of total population (2008)
rate of urbanization: 1.4% annual rate of change (2005-2010)
Life expectancy at birth total population: 48.98 years
male: 49.81 years
female: 48.13 years (2009 est.)
Total fertility rate 2.38 children born/woman (2009 est.)
HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate 18.1% (2007 est.)
HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/AIDS 5.7 million (2007 est.)
HIV/AIDS - deaths: 350,000 (2007 est.)




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. Growth was robust from 2004 to 2008 as South Africa reaped the benefits of macroeconomic stability and a global commodities boom, but began to slow in the second half of 2008 due to the global financial crisis' impact on commodity prices and demand. However, unemployment remains high and outdated infrastructure has constrained growth. At the end of 2007, South Africa began to experience an electricity crisis because state power supplier Eskom suffered supply problems with aged plants, necessitating "load-shedding" cuts to residents and businesses in the major cities. 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.
GDP (purchasing power parity) $489.7 billion (2008 est.)
$476.4 billion (2007)
$453.3 billion (2006)
GDP (official exchange rate) $300.4 billion (2008 est.)
GDP - real growth rate 2.8% (2008 est.)
GDP - per capita (PPP) $10,000 (2008 est.)
GDP - composition by sector agriculture: 3.4%
industry: 31.3%
services: 65.3% (2008 est.
Labor force 18.22 million economically active (2008 est.)
Labor force - by occupation agriculture: 9%
industry: 26%
services: 65% (2007 est.)
Unemployment rate 21.7% (2008 est.)
Household income or consumption by percentage share lowest 10%: 1.4%
highest 10%: 44.7% (2000)
Budget revenues: $83.85 billion
expenditures: $83.3 billion (2008 est.)
Public debt 29.9% of GDP (2008 est.)
Inflation rate (consumer prices) 11.3% (2008 est.)
Agriculture - products corn, wheat, sugarcane, fruits, vegetables; beef, poultry, mutton, wool, dairy products
Industries mining (world's largest producer of platinum, gold, chromium), automobile assembly, metalworking, machinery, textiles, iron and steel, chemicals, fertilizer, foodstuffs, commercial ship repair
Telephones - main lines in use 4.642 million (2007)
Telephones - mobile cellular 42.3 million (2007)
Telephone system general assessment: the system is the best developed and most modern in Africa
domestic: combined fixed-line and mobile-cellular teledensity is nearly 110 telephones per 100 persons; consists of carrier-equipped open-wire lines, coaxial cables, microwave radio relay links, fiber-optic cable, radiotelephone communication stations, and wireless local loops; key centers are Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth, and Pretoria
Internet hosts 1.297 million (2008)
Internet users 5.1 million (2005)





- Imagine Media, 2009 -