Profile of A Nation

South Africa and Its People

Author: Godfrey Mwakikagile

Paperback: 416 pages

Publisher: New Africa Press (28 November 2008)

ISBN-10: 0981425836

ISBN-13: 9780981425832

Part II:

Profile of A Nation

SOUTH AFRICA is one of the largest countries in Africa in terms of area and population. It is also the most developed on the entire continent and is now and then referred to as Africa's “super power.”

The country's official name is the Republic of South Africa but it is mostly known by its shorter name simply as South Africa.

South Africa is bordered by Botswana and Zimbabwe on the north, Mozambique and Swaziland on the northeast, the Indian Ocean on the east and south, the Atlantic Ocean on the west, and by Namibia on the northwest.

Within South Africa is the independent nation of Lesotho in the east. It is completely surrounded by South Africa and is almost totally dependent on its powerful neighbour for survival.

The largest city in South Africa is Johannesburg. It is the financial capital of South Africa, and indeed of the entire continent, and is appropriately known as the City of Gold.

Not only is it the country's centre of its important gold-mining industry; it's also its manufacturing and commercial centre and the hub of its transport network which is also the most developed in Africa.

Gold mining has been the city's main industry from the beginning. Manufactured products include cut diamonds, industrial chemicals, plastics, cement; electrical, electronic and mining equipment; paper and paper products, glass, a variety of food products, beer, and many others.

Johannesburg is a sprawling city. It was founded as a mining settlement in 1886 when gold was found on the Witwatersrand.

The city's large black population is the backbone of the mining industry, providing cheap labour. And it has been that way since the area became one of the most important mining centres in the world.

Most blacks still live in Soweto, an acronym for southwest township. Formerly a group of black townships southwest of Johannesburg, Soweto became an independent city in 1983.

The nation's capital is Pretoria and there have been some attempts to change its name to Tshwane, the name of an African chief who ruled the area before the coming of Europeans.

Cape Town is the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.

Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria, Durban, and Port Elizabeth are the largest cities.

South Africa has three geographic regions. It has a great interior plateau; an escarpment of mountain ranges that rims the plateau in the east, south and west; and a marginal area lying between the escarpment and the sea.

Most of the plateau is rolling grassland, known as highveld, with an elevation of 4,000 to 6,000 feet. Also in the northeast is a ridge of rock, the Witwatersrand, where gold had been mined since 1886.

The Limpopo River Basin is also in the northeast. So is the Bushveld Basin, a zone of savanna at 2,000 to 3,000 feet above sea level.

In the northern part of the country are the southern fringes of the Kalahari desert. The semiarid Cape middleveld which includes part of the Orange River is in the west at 2,500 to 4,000 feet above sea level.

In the east are the Drakensberg Mountains, the highest part of the escarpment with an elevation of 10,000 to 11,000 feet above sea level. This is also where Lesotho is, a rugged, mile-high plateau country nestled amid the 11,000 peaks of these mountains. Only 10 per cent of the land in Lesotho can be farmed.

Also in the east are fertile coastal lowlands from which the land rises steeply to the Drakensberg Mountains.

The Orange River rises in the Drakensberg Mountains and with its tributary, the Vaal, flows westwards into the Atlantic and drains most of the interior plateau.

The Limpopo River, one of the continent's main rivers, flows from the Witwatersrand in the Transvaal to the Indian Ocean in the east.

There are also considerable stretches of grassland in the east, mountains and the semiarid Great and Little Karroo tablelands in the south, and desert in the west. The desert area is a southern extension of the Namib desert in neighbouring Namibia.

Much of the land in the west is arid or semiarid. Rainfall is greatest in the south and east.

The world-famous Kruger National Park, a major tourist attraction, is in the northeastern part of South Africa bordering Mozambique and Swaziland.

Most of South Africa is a plateau with an average height of 4,000 feet. A vast system of grassland plateaus is separated from narrow coastal plains by the ranges of the Great Escarpment.

The climate is mainly warm temperate. But winters are cold. It also snows in the Drakensberg Mountains during winter.

Cape Aghulas is the continent's southern tip.

South Africa is divided into nine provinces: Free State, North West, Northern Cape, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, Limpopo, and Mpumalanga.

Before the end of apartheid in 1994, there were four provinces: Cape Province, Natal, Orange Free State, and Transvaal.

And there, of course, during the apartheid era, homelands for blacks which were originally called Bantustans. Gazankulu, Kangwane, KwaNdebele, KwaZulu, Lebowa, and QwaQwa. Were Bantu national homelands which existed under South African sovereignty.

Transkei, the first homeland established in 1963, Bophuthatswana, Ciskei, and Venda all of which were granted “independence” by the early 1980s, existed as nominal republics.

None of them, including Transkei, won international recognition of any kind – except as pet projects of the apartheid regime – and all were abolished when white-minority rule ended in 1994.

The people of South Africa are mostly black African. Blacks constitute about 75 per cent of the total population; whites about 13 per cent; people of mixed race – white, Malay, and black, and formerly known as Coloureds – about 9 per cent; and those of Asian, mostly of Indian, origin, about 3 per cent.

South Africa has 11 official languages – nine of them indigenous: Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Southern Sotho, Swazi, Venda, Ndebele, Sepedi (Pedi), and Tsonga. The other two are English and Afrikaans.

Afrikaans is the first language of about 60 per cent of the whites and the majority of the people of mixed race. The majority of whites are of Dutch descent, and their language, Afrikaans, is essentially derived from or is based on the Dutch language. Many black Africans also speak Afrikaans or English. Afrikaans and English are the other official languages.

A lingua franca called Fanagalo evolved in the mines, enabling people of different tribes or ethnic groups from many countries in East and Southern Africa, to communicate. It was common during the apartheid era but is not widely used today.

About 68 per cent of the population is Christian. Major groups include the Dutch Reformed, Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, and Zionist churches. More than 28 per cent of the people follow traditional African religions. And there are small minorities of Muslims, Hindus, and Jews.

South Africa has some of the most developed farmlands on the continent and, until about 1870, the economy of the region – which later became the country of South Africa – was almost entirely based on agriculture.

With the discovery of diamonds and gold in the 19^th century, mining became the foundation for rapid economic development.

In the 20^th century, the economy became diversified so that by 1945, manufacturing was the leading contributor to the gross national product (GNP).

By the 1990s, services contributed almost 60 per cent of the GNP, while industry contributed more than 35 per cent, and agriculture about 5 per cent.

Even after the end of apartheid, the economy is still controlled by whites, although nonwhites, especially blacks, constitute more than 75 per cent of the workforce. Working conditions are poor and wages low, and many nonwhites work as subsistence farmers or as peasants.

This disparity shows that although political apartheid ended in the mid-1990s, economic apartheid still exists. Only highly educated blacks and other nonwhites have benefited the most from the changes which have taken place since the end of apartheid, and they constitute a relatively large and growing middle class.

South Africa's farmlands produce ample amounts of food crops, with some left for export, although the country has a limited amount of arable land, about 10 per cent, and inadequate irrigation. Also production is diminished during periodic droughts.

Not only is South Africa self-sufficient in food production; it is a major exporter of food to neighbouring countries. The leading crops are maize, wheat, sugarcane, citrus fruits, sorghum, potatoes, groundnuts, cotton, and tobacco.

Wool is also a major export and dairy farming is an important sector of the economy.

Large numbers of dairy and beef cattle, sheep, goats – including many Angora goats – and hogs, are raised. There is also a large fishing industry and a substantial amount of fish meal is produced.

South Africa is known worldwide for its minerals. It produces most of the world's gem diamonds and gold, has large coal reserves – the country has undertaken large scale production of petroleum from coal – and is also rich in uranium, iron ore, asbestos, copper, manganese, nickel, chrome, titanium, phosphates, silver, platinum, vanadium, and other minerals.

The main industrial centres are Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Pretoria, and Germiston.

South Africa has a fairly developed manufacturing sector which includes food processing, beverages amongst which wine is a leading export; chemicals, iron and steel production, ship building, car manufacturing, production of oil from coal, machinery, metal products, forest products, engineering and textiles. Industry and mining are concentrated in the southern and in the eastern parts of the country.

South Africa is also a weapons manufacturer. Its armaments industry served the country well during the struggle against apartheid when the apartheid regime was at war with the liberation movements supported by other African countries and was one of the main reasons it took so long to end white-minority rule in the country.

South Africa has the best infrastructure among all the countries on the continent. Its roads and railways serve the country well.

The road and rail networks also serve neighbouring countries which are dependent on their southern neighbour as an outlet to the sea.

The main sea ports are Durban, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, Saldonha Bay, and Mossel Bay where natural gas is extracted offshore.

The Orange River Project, a major hydroelectric and irrigation scheme which was launched in 1963 in central South Africa, became fully operational in the mid-eighties and is one of the most important parts of the country's infrastructure.

Although South Africa is a federal state, provinces are given exclusive powers in only a few areas such as roads and recreation. It has a strong central government, as stipulated by the constitution, and for all practical purposes functions as a unitary state like the rest – including Federal Nigeria – on the continent.

There is fear in all countries on the continent that extensive devolution of power to the regions may lead to instability, threaten national unity and even encourage secessionist movements.

The dominant political party in South Africa is the African National Congress (ANC) and it played a major role in writing the constitution. The other major political parties are the predominantly white Democratic Alliance and the Inkatha Freedom Party which is predominantly Zulu.