South Africa

South Africa occupies the far tip of the continent, where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. It is a country of contrasts and great diversity, nicknamed the "rainbow nation": African peoples, people of European and Indian descent, and mixed-race communities live together, with twelve official languages. It has three capitals: Pretoria for the government, Cape Town for Parliament and Bloemfontein for the judiciary. About 63 million people live there, between the great metropolis of Johannesburg, born of gold, and Cape Town, at the foot of Table Mountain.

Most of the country is a vast inland plateau, the highveld, covered in savanna and grassland; Africa's big animals live in reserves such as the famous Kruger National Park, with its lions, elephants and rhinos. The plateau is edged like a rampart by the Drakensberg range before dropping to narrow coastal plains. The southwest, around Cape Town, has a Mediterranean climate suited to vines. The two oceans that meet offshore, one cold and one warm, make these waters some of the richest in marine life in the world.

The first inhabitants were the San and the Khoikhoi, the "Khoisan", hunters and herders who had lived here since time immemorial, among the oldest human lineages. A little under two thousand years ago, Bantu peoples, farmers and herders and ancestors of the Zulu and Xhosa, arrived from the north. In 1652 the Dutch set up a supply station at the Cape; the Afrikaners descend from Dutch, German and French Huguenot settlers, and the British took over the colony in the early 19th century. The discovery of diamonds and gold changed everything. In the 20th century the country locked itself into apartheid, a regime of racial segregation, until in 1994, after twenty-seven years in prison, Nelson Mandela became the first president of a democratic South Africa. In 2024 his party, the ANC, lost its majority for the first time and now governs in a coalition.

The country recognises twelve official languages: Zulu and Xhosa, Bantu languages with their famous "clicks", Afrikaans, which grew out of the settlers' Dutch, English, which serves as a common language, sign language and many more. Most South Africans are Christian, often in African churches that combine Christian faith with reverence for ancestors; there are also Hindu communities, from Indian immigration, and Muslim ones, especially among the Cape Malays, descendants of enslaved people and exiles from Southeast Asia.

South Africa gave the world an example of reconciliation and the idea of ubuntu, "I am because we are", the belief that each person's humanity depends on others. It is a country of music, from Zulu choirs to Miriam Makeba's jazz; a sporting country, four-time rugby world champion and mad about football; and an outdoor culture where people gather around the braai, the national barbecue, and head out on safari to watch big game. Its food and well-known wines bear the mark of all its peoples.