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THE Republic of South Africa joined the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as the 11th Member State in April 1994 and attended the SADC Summit for the first time in August 1994. A statement of accession to the SADC Treaty was delivered by the then Vice-President of the country, Thabo Mbeki, marking a major milestone for regional integration, after a long process in which the SADC region was at the centre.
South Africa occupies the southern-most part of the African continent stretching from the Limpopo River in the north to Cape Agulhas in the south. The country shares borders with Namibia, Botswana to the west, and Zimbabwe in the north, with Eswatini and Mozambique in the north-east. It entirely surrounds the Kingdom of Lesotho. To the west, south and east, South Africa borders the Atlantic and southern Indian oceans.
The country’s first democratic elections were held in 1994. Since then, democratic elections are held every five years and the Head of State is the President.
Capital City: Pretoria (Tshwane)
Area of Country: 1 219 090 square kilometres
Currency: South African Rand (ZAR) R 1 = 100 cents
Head of State: President Cyril Ramaphosa
Official Languages: Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu
South Africa is renowned for its varied topography, great natural beauty, and cultural diversity, all of which have made the country a favoured destination for travellers since the legal ending of apartheid in 1994.
Eventually forced to confront the untenable nature of ethnic separatism in a multicultural land, the South African government of F W de Klerk (1989–94) began to repeal apartheid laws. That process in turn set in motion a transition toward universal suffrage and a true electoral democracy, which culminated in the 1994 election of a government led by the Black majority under the leadership of the long-imprisoned Nelson Mandela.
South Africa has three cities that serve as capitals: Pretoria (executive), Cape Town (legislative), and Bloemfontein (judicial). Johannesburg, the largest urban area in the country and a centre of commerce, lies at the heart of the populous Gauteng province. Durban, a port on the Indian Ocean, is a major industrial centre. East London and Port Elizabeth, both of which lie along the country’s southern coast, are important commercial, industrial, and cultural centres.
Today, South Africa enjoys a relatively stable mixed economy that draws on its fertile agricultural lands, abundant mineral resources, tourist attractions, and highly evolved intellectual capital.
Climate
A plateau covers the largest part of the country, dominating the topography; it is separated from surrounding areas of generally lower elevation by the Great Escarpment. The plateau consists almost entirely of very old rock of the Karoo System, which formed from the Late Carboniferous Epoch (about 320 to 300 million years ago) to the Late Triassic Epoch (about 230 to 200 million years ago). The plateau, generally highest in the east, drops from elevations of more than 2 400 metres in the basaltic Lesotho region to about 600 metres in the sandy Kalahari in the west.
Almost the entire country lies within the temperate zone, and extremes of heat and cold are rare. Its location next to a subtropical high-pressure belt of descending air produces stable atmospheric conditions over most of its surface area, and the climate generally is dry.
Because most of the country lies at a fairly high elevation, which tampers the influence of latitude, even the tropical and near-tropical northern areas are much cooler than would otherwise be the case. High elevation and lack of the moderating influence of the sea produce large diurnal temperature variations in most inland areas.
The climate is greatly influenced by the oceans that surround the country to the east, south, and west.
South Africa is generally semi-arid; its precipitation is highly variable, and farmers often face water shortages.
Summers are warm to hot. Winters are mostly cool to cold, with many higher areas often having temperatures below freezing at night.
People
Bantu-speaking Africans entered the area from the north roughly 1 800 years ago, and their descendants today constitute more than three-fourths of South Africa’s population.
The Black African population is heterogeneous, falling mainly into four linguistic categories. The largest is the Nguni, including various people who speak Swati (primarily the Swazi people) as well as those who speak languages that take their names from the people by whom they are primarily spoken — the Ndebele, Xhosa, and Zulu. They constitute more than half the Black population of the country and form the majority in many eastern and coastal regions as well as in the industrial Gauteng province. The second largest is Sotho-Tswana, again including various people whose language names are derived from the names of people who primarily speak them — the Sotho, Pedi, and Tswana. Speakers of Sotho-Tswana languages constitute a majority in many highveld areas. The other two primary linguistic groups are the Tsonga (or Shangaan) speakers (primarily the Tsonga people), concentrated in Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces, and the Venda speakers (primarily the Venda people), located largely in Limpopo province.
White South Africans form two main language groups. More than half of them are Afrikaans speakers, the descendants of mostly Dutch, French, and German settlers. The remainder consists largely of English speakers who are descended mainly from British colonists, although there is a sizable minority of Portuguese and smaller groups of Italians and others. Most of the population formerly classified as Coloured speaks Afrikaans or, to a lesser extent, English.
Economy
The economy of South Africa was revolutionised in the late 19th century when diamonds and gold were discovered there. Extensive investment from foreign capital followed. In the years since World War II, the country established a well-developed manufacturing base, and it has experienced highly variable growth rates, including some years when its growth rate was among the highest in the world. Since the late 1970s, however, South Africa has had continuing economic problems, initially because its apartheid policies led many countries to withhold foreign investment and to impose increasingly severe trade sanctions against it.
The South African economy is essentially based on private enterprise, but the state participates in many ways. Through the Industrial Development Corporation, the apartheid-era government set up and controlled a wide array of public corporations, many relating to industrial infrastructure. Two such corporations – one, the country’s primary producer of iron and steel; the other, an important producer of oil from coal – were privatised in the 1980s.
Economic policy has been aimed primarily at sustaining growth and achieving a measure of industrial self-sufficiency.
Agriculture is of major importance to South Africa. It produces a significant portion of exports and contributes greatly to the domestic economy, especially as an employer, although land and water resources are generally poor. Among the major crops are corn (maize), wheat, sugar cane, sorghum, peanuts (groundnuts), citrus and other fruits, and tobacco. Sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs are raised for food and other products; wool and meat (beef, lamb and mutton, and goat) are important. Dairy (including butter and cheese) and egg production are also significant, particularly around the major urban centres.
South Africa is rich in a variety of minerals. In addition to diamonds and gold, the country also contains reserves of iron ore, platinum, manganese, chromium, copper, uranium, silver, beryllium, and titanium. No commercially exploitable deposits of petroleum have been found, but there are moderate quantities of natural gas located off the southern coast, and synthetic fuel is made from coal at two large plants in the provinces of Free State and Mpumalanga.
Although for decades manufacturing has employed more people and produced a greater proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) than mining has, the mining sector continues to form the core of the South African economy as mining-centred holding companies invest in other economic activity. Gold remains the most important mineral — South Africa is the world’s largest producer — and reserves are large.
Coal is another of South Africa’s valuable mineral products. Large known deposits lie, mostly at easily mined depths, beneath the Mpumalanga and northern Free State Highveld. Coal is produced primarily for export (to East Asia and Europe) and for the generation of electricity.
South Africa is the world’s largest producer of platinum and chromium, which are mined at centres such as Rustenburg and Steelpoort in the northeast and are becoming increasingly significant economically. Vast deposits of platinum-group and chromium minerals are located mainly to the north of Pretoria. The Northern Cape province contains most of the major deposits of iron ore and manganese, and titanium-bearing sands are common on the eastern seaboard. In addition, the country produces uranium, palladium, nickel, copper, antimony, vanadium, fluorspar, and limestone. Diamond mining, historically concentrated around Kimberley, now occurs in a variety of localities. The South African diamond industry, among the world’s largest, is largely controlled by De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd.
Politics
South Africa’s political development was shaped by its colonial past and the implementation of apartheid policies by the white minority. After widespread protest and social unrest, a new non-racial interim constitution was adopted in 1993 and took effect in 1994. A new, permanent constitution, mandated by the interim document and drafted by Parliament in 1996, took effect in 1997.
The 1996 constitution’s preamble points to the injustices of South Africa’s past and defines the republic as a sovereign democratic state founded on the principles of human dignity, non-racialism and non-sexism, and the achievement of equality and advancement of human rights and freedoms.
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Another of the guiding principles, that of “co-operative government,” emphasises the distinctiveness, interdependence, and interrelationship of the national, provincial, and local spheres of government. The constitution established the bicameral national Parliament. The lower house, or National Assembly, comprises 350 to 400 members who are directly elected to a five-year term through proportional representation. The National Council of Provinces, which replaced the Senate as the upper house, is made up of 10-member delegations (each with six permanent and four special members, including the provincial premier) chosen by each of the provincial assemblies. For most votes, each delegation casts a single vote. The President, elected from among the members of the National Assembly by that body, is the Head of State; as the national executive, the President presides over a Cabinet that includes a Deputy President and a member whom the President designates as the “leader of government business” in the assembly.
The major political party is the African National Congress (ANC; founded in 1912). For many years, the primary opposition party was the Democratic Alliance (DA; founded in 2000). The heir to a long liberal tradition in white politics, the DA’s initial members included the former Democratic Party and Federal Alliance. The Independent Democrats party began the process of integrating with the DA in 2010. Other parties that have enjoyed significant support include the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), established in 2013 by former ANC members; the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), a largely Zulu organisation founded in 1975; the National Freedom Party, founded by a former IFP member in 2011; the United Democratic Movement, formed in 1997 by former officials of the ANC and the National Party; the Freedom Front Plus, a right-wing white party originally founded in 1994 as the Freedom Front that was joined by the Conservative Party of South Africa and Afrikaner Eenheid Beweging in 2003; the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), a group that broke away from the ANC in 1959; and the South African Communist Party (SACP), a longtime ally of the ANC in the fight against apartheid. The uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK Party), headed by former President and ANC veteran Jacob Zuma, debuted in 2023 and captured more than 14 percent of the vote in its first national election this year. Smaller parties that have won seats in legislative elections include Congress of the People (COPE), Agang SA, the African Christian Democratic Party, the African Independent Congress, Build One South Africa (BOSA), GOOD, Action SA, the United Christian Democratic Party, the African People’s Convention, the Azanian People’s Organisation, and the Minority Front. – SADC.int/Brittanica.com
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