SOUTH AFRICA 2001

Introduction

South Africa is a country with a dual identity. For the first half of the 20th century, South Africa was known as a prosperous British-created country of immigration not less attractive than Australia. For the better part of a century, a vast and heterogenous stream of European immigrants arrived, joining the 19th century Cape Dutch and British settlers to produce a cosmopolitan Anglophone society whose members enjoyed one of the highest living standards in the world.

Only after the vast civil rights campaigns of the 1950's and the transition to multiracial democracy in the 1960's that did the world recognize that by population and by history, South Africa was an African country, mostly populated by speakers of Bantu languages and still poor. Booming economic growth and a policy of quotas undertaken by the new democratic government helped create an African middle class which now has almost 10 million members. Fully half of South Africa's population -- more than 22 million people -- enjoy First World standards of living. Half of South Africa's population does not, though. As folklorist Eugène Malebranche wrote in his introduction to South African Folklore: A Common Heritage (University Press of Johannesburg, 2001):

     "[T]o live in South Africa at the beginning of the 21st century is to know the best of times and the worst of times. It is  

     to know that fully half of the 41 millions of South Africa live in the midst of First World-style opulence, and to know    

     that the half left over lives in penury more suitable for a Third World country. […] It is to know, then, that the best and

     the worst are mixed together promiscuously, and that they cannot be separated."

Despite these problems, South Africa is a wonderful country to visit. As many blacks live in South Africa as in Brazil, but unlike Brazil this country is unmistakably African -- in its language, its architecture, its history, its culture. At the same time, South Africa is a profoundly modern society, united by an energetic popular culture and by a fascinating history. It is this fusion, and South Africa's diverse sights and tourist attractions, that makes the country such an interesting place to visit.

Visiting South Africa

Since South Africans are inveterate travellers, the Federal Republic of South Africa has long been a signatory of League agreements regarding free travel. Travellers from other African countries -- particularly if they are non-white -- are subject to more stringent inspections than the norm, owing to South African fears of illegal immigration beyond their country's Migration Pact quota.

Visitors should familiarize themselves with entry requirements, especially customs requirements, and be sure to check their visa status before entering. South African customs restrict the entry of firearms and many non-prescription drugs, and check arrivals and their belongings for these.

Although crime rates are relatively high, nonetheless South Africa is a safe country for visitors.

Money

The rand, divided into 100 cents, is the basic unit of currency of South Africa (6.87 rand equals 1 écu as of April 2001). Until recently, the rand has remained remarkably stable relative to major world currencies, thanks in large part to South Africa's abundant reserves of precious metals. With ITA contact and the consequent decline in the prices of precious metals, the rand has suffered a 50% decline in value. Further, prices for basic commodities are considerably lower than in other countries with First World infrastructures, thanks to the large non-First World-cost productive sector. For all intents and purposes, South Africa is a relatively cheap First World destination even by the standards of Tripartite Alliance Earth.

Most retail outlets, tourist attractions, and accommodations, take the écu, the cruzeiro, and the peso at the day's stated exchange rate. If one is going to the countryside, one would do well to convert at least some money into South African currency.

Natural Environment

Climate

Nearly all of South Africa save for the desert northwest enjoys a mild, temperate climate. Save for the extreme southwest, most of the country is under the influence of the easterly trade winds, which blow from over the Indian Ocean and bring about 890 mm of precipitation yearly to the Eastern Low Veld and the Eastern Uplands as far west as the Drakensberg. The High Veld receives about 380 to 760 mm of precipitation annually, the amount diminishing rapidly toward the west. On the western coast rainfall is often as low as 50 mm annually. Most of this rainfall occurs between October and April, in the Southern Hemisphere summer. In the drier regions of the plateaus the amount of rainfall and the beginning of the rainy season can vary greatly from year to year. The extreme southwest of South Africa is influenced by cool western winds that come from the South Atlantic Ocean. This region annually receives about 560 mm of rainfall, most of which occurs between June and September, in the Southern Hemisphere spring.

In Cape Town, the average January temperature range is 16° to 26° C, while in Gauteng, in north-central South Africa, the average temperature varies from 14° to 26° C. (Although Gauteng is closer to the equator than Cape Town, its location some 1 670 m above sea level gives it a cooler temperature). In July, the average temperature ranges between 4° to 17° C in Gauteng, and between 7° to 17° C in Cape Town. Snow is rare in South Africa, though winter frosts occur in the higher areas of the plateau.

Geography

South Africa's topography is dominated by a great plateau region, which occupies about three-quarters of the country. The plateaus reach their greatest heights in the southeastern Drakensberg Mountains, which marks the political border with Kwazulu and the geographical border that separates the plateaus from coastal areas. The Drakensbergs includes Champagne Castle (3 375 m), the highest elevation in South Africa. Inside the plateau, three areas may be distinguished: the High Veld, the Bush Veld, and the Middle Veld. The High Veld, which covers most of the region, ranges in elevation between about 1 200 and 1 800 metres and is characterized by level or gently undulating terrain. The northern limit of the High Veld is marked by a rock ridge, called the Witwatersrand, which includes the city of Johannesburg. North of the Witwatersrand is the Bush Veld or Transvaal Basin. This section, much of which is broken into basins by rock ridges, slopes downward from east to west toward the Limpopo River and the borders with Ndebeleland and Zimbabwe. The Bush Veld averages less than 1 200 metres in height. The western section of the plateau region, known as the Middle Veld, also slopes downward in a westerly direction, towards the Orange River, and elevations vary between about 600 and 1 200 metres.

Between the edge of the plateau region and the southern coastline the land descends seaward in a series of abrupt grades, or steps. The steps, proceeding from the interior to the coast, consist of a plateau called the Great Karroo, or Central Karroo; a lower plateau called the Little Karroo, or Southern Karroo; and a low-lying plain. The Swartberg, a mountain range, lies between the Great Karroo and the Little Karroo. Between the latter area and the coastal plain is another mountain range, the Langeberg. On the southern coast, just south of Cape Town, is an isolated peak, Table Mountain (1 086 m). On the southwestern coast the edge of the plateau is marked by a range of folded mountains, irregular in character and direction, which descends abruptly into a coastal plain. South Africa also includes a part of the Kalahari Desert in the northwest and a section of the Namib Desert in the west.

The chief rivers of South Africa are the Orange, Vaal, and Limpopo. The Orange River is the longest river in the country. It originates in eastern Cape Province on the High Veld, flows in a northwestern direction, and empties into the Atlantic Ocean after a course of some 2 100 kilometres. The westernmost section of the Orange River forms the boundary between South Africa and Namibia. The Vaal River originates in the northeast of the country, near Swaziland, and flows in a southwestern direction to a point in the central portion of the country, where it joins the Orange River. The Limpopo River also originates in the northeast and flows northwest to the Botswana border and then east along the borders of Botswana, Ndebeleland, and Zimbabwe before entering Beira and continuing to the Indian Ocean. Most of the rivers of the country are irregular in flow and shallow, and as a consequence, are of little use for navigation or hydroelectric power but are of some use for irrigation.

The People

Demography

Preliminary results from the 2001 census suggest that as of January 2001, the Federal Republic of South Africa had a total population of some 41.3 million people. While Black Africans number 28.7 million people and make up 69.4% of the South African population, the 10.1 million white South Africans make up 24.4% of the national population, and Afrikaners -- mixed-race speakers of a Dutch creole known since the 1930's as Afrikaans -- make up 5% of South Africa's population. The remaining 400 thousand people are mostly Indian immigrants and Muslim Cape Malays.

European immigration in South Africa dates back to 1652, when the first Dutch settlers landed at the site of modern-day Cape Town in order to create a supply base for Dutch ships heading to Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia. The quarter-million Cape Dutch who lived in the Cape Colony when Britain annexed the isolated Dutch colony in 1795 were soon outnumbered by the large numbers of English and Scottish immigrants attracted by South Africa's fertile coastal lands. The discovery of the mineral wealth of the Transvaal by an Irish prospector in the 1850's unleashed a wave of mass immigration, encouraged by Britain in order to assimilate the remaining Cape Dutch and to secure British sovereignty over the region. Beginning in the mid-19th century, European immigrants acting with British support conquered all South Africa and expropriated African-owned lands for European-owned farms and plantations. Soon, South Africa's cities came to attract large numbers of European immigrants, particularly in prosperous central Transvaal and western Cape Province. By 1950, there were 7.8 million whites in South Africa, most tracing their roots to British, Cape Dutch, German, and Italian ancestors. As a population, South African whites shared in the demographic patterns of other countries of European immigration, with a low death rate and a moderate birth rate combining to produce a average rate of population growth per annum in the 1950's of 1.4 percent.

Moving south as part of a general migration of Bantu-speakers, blacks had assimilated the indigenous Khoisan and settled all of South Africa apart from the Cape Province no later than the 16th century. Living in tribal agricultural societies, South African blacks were periodically decimated by war and famine, most spectacularly by the Zulu mfecane of the first quarter of the 19th century. Despite a very high death rate, blacks remained the majority population of South Africa thanks both to a high birth rate and considerable immigration. Although blacks were converted into an agricultural and industrial proletariat, increased education led many South African blacks to organize for political change, in particular for their enfranchisement. South Africa's blacks were historically divided into two broad linguistic groups (the Nguni of the coastal areas and Sotho of the inland plateaus) and nine major ethnic groups. These ethnic identities were ephemeral and rejected by young blacks beginning in the 1940's, who began to identify themselves as Azanians, after the name of the ancient Greeks for southeastern Africa. Numbering 8.8 million in 1950, and with a rate of population growth per annum in the 1950's of 2.9%, Azanians could no longer be ignored.

The 1.2 million Afrikaners remained an overlooked feature of South African life. Most Afrikaners were descended from the mixed-race slaves held by the Cape Dutch. When slavery was abolished in 1833, many Afrikaners migrated to the northern Cape Colony, where they established a society based on marginal farming and mining. While the Cape Dutch were assimilated into Anglophone society over the course of the 19th century, the Afrikaners retained their Dutch creole language and many elements of Cape Dutch culture. Although Afrikaners could vote, by most standards they were a disenfranchised population, with low levels of income and education and high levels of unemployment and poverty. Other, smaller, minorities included Indian immigrants who had crossed from Kwazulu to work in the mines of Gauteng, and more than a hundred thousand Cape Malays, descended from Indonesian convicts brought to the Cape Colony by the Dutch and who retained their Islamic religion.

Over the 1950's, the basic dynamics of the South African population changed dynamically with the extension of modern medical care to the non-white population. The consequent halving of death rates dramatically accelerated population growth among Afrikaners and Azanians. Further, as low-paid Afrikaner and Azanian workers began to enter once white-dominated sectors of the South African workforce, the resulting competition discouraged European immigration. By 1970,  when white South Africans followed their counterparts in the First World in shifting towards below-replacement fertility, with a TFR of 1.9, Afrikaners and Azanians retained TFRs of 5.8 and 4.1, respectively. Over the 1960's and 1970's, these trends helped the non-white percentage of the South African population rise from 57% to 68%.

South Africa's agricultural surplus in 1982-3 saved almost the entire population of southern Africa -- including the Federal Republic -- from death by starvation. The post-War economic collapse transformed South African demography, as declining living standards not only pushed the TFR of white South Africans down to 1.35 by 1985, but it drove the emigration of 1.1 million whites over the course of the 1980's, most to South America and the British Isles. Birth rates among Afrikaners and Azanians also dropped sharply, though they retained TFRs that were substantially above replacement levels. South Africa's emergency rationalization of farmland with the aim of increasing total experts displaced more than three million non-whites from their home. Things were even more dramatically effected when economic problems in South Africa's northern neighbours encouraged substantial illegal immigration.

In the 1990's, South African demography stabilized somewhat, as emigration (2.3 million in 1990-2000) became substantially more multiracial, while the vast immigration from points elsewhere in Africa (3.9 million in 1990-2000) was regularized. As urbanization of South Africa's population proceeded and the non-white population became progressively better educated, healthier, and richer, Afrikaner and Azanian birth rates declined still further. Towards the end of the 1990's, white TFRs rose to near-replacement levels, slowing down the pace of white aging.

Predicting the future development of the South African population is difficult owing to the very large number of variables involved. It is certain that the general South African population will age substantially; among whites, this aging along with continued emigration will combine to produce an absolutely and relatively declining population. Afrikaner and Azanian TFRs will likely drop below replacement levels by 2015, but the relative youth of both populations will allow them to evidence continued natural increase well into the 21st century, while net immigration from southern Africa will reinforce the growth of the Azanian population. The possibilities of large-scale immigration from elsewhere on Tripartite Alliance Earth or even off-world -- or of large-scale emigration offworld -- would obviously impact the development of the South African population, but since these trends have not yet been described they are usually not considered.

Most projections suggest that between the present and 2050, the white South African population will decline from 10 million to 9 million, that the Afrikaner population will grow from 3 million to 4 million, that the Azanian population will grow from 29 million to 45 million, and that the total South African population will grow to 60 million by 2050. This South Africa will be much more monolithically non-white than before; it will be, for simple demographic purposes, a purely African nation.

Language

South Africa has historically been a plurilingual society. Over the 19th century, South Africa's white population began dominated by speakers of English and Dutch, but gradually diversified through immigration to include speakers of such languages as German, Yiddish, Italian, and Polish. South Africa's non-white population was scarcely less heterogenous -- while the Afrikaners continued to speak their Dutch creole in their isolated communities in the Cape Province, South Africa's Azanians were divided into the major linguistic categories of Nguni (including coastal Azanian populations such as the Xhosa, the Zulus, the Swazi, and the Ndebele) and Sotho (including interior Azanian populations such as the Tswana and Sotho), themselves subdivided into ethnoregional dialectic groups. Though South Africans were almost all universally fluent in at least one language apart from their own mother tongue, the South African linguistic situation bore a considerable resemblance to, as author Olive Schreiner observed, "the confusion wrought by God Himself when He brought down the Tower of Babel."

Surprisingly quickly, then, various homogenizing forces -- education, mass media, migration, and intermarriage -- served to decrease this linguistic heterogeneity over the first half of the 20th century. Among whites, the English language retained enormous prestige as the main language of business and government, and gradually replaced first the immigrant languages then Cape Dutch. Only small groups -- for instance, Pretoria's Belarusian Jews, or the Cape Dutch landowner class -- resisted linguistic assimilation. Afrikaners were necessarily affected by the assimilation of the Cape Dutch, their wealthier and more powerful colinguals. Paradoxically, this assimilation gave the new Afrikaner working and intellectual classes the chance to develop their own language as they saw fit, with a particular emphasis upon the non-European roots of both the Afrikaans language and the Afrikaner culture.

Perhaps the most significant linguistic innovations occurred among Azanians. In the late 19th century, teachers government-supported mission schools worked produce languages of school instruction for their non-white pupils. By the first decade of the 20th century, Nguni and Sotho literary languages had formed, and in urban areas, these languages served as rudimentary lingua franche among labourers from many different dialectal groups. It was not until the 1940's and 1950's, though, that migration by Nguni-speakers and Sotho-speakers to the industrial cities of the Transvaal accelerated, and a predominantly Xhosa educated class rose to prominence. This class favoured the standardization of the Nguni and Sotho literary languages, taking features from both (but mostly from Nguni) to forge a common language, known as Standard Azanian.

The Sotho of Orange Free State initially resisted this language on grounds of their particularism; the Sotho-speaking Tswana and Nguni-speaking Zulu also resisted Standard Azanian, simply because there already existed Tswana and Zulu literary languages. Nonetheless, through trial and error and the work of pioneering journalists and dramatists, Standard Azanian quickly developed a stable literary standard and a close identification with the pro-reform cause that legitimized the language. The 1961 South African Constitution defined Standard Azanian as an official language of the Federal Republic alongside Afrikaans and English, and subsequent education acts established Standard Azanian as a language of school instruction in place of Nguni and Sotho.

Over the 1960's and 1970's, further changes occurred in the sociolinguistic composition of South African society. Among the rapidly urbanizing Azanian population, Standard Azanian quickly gained currency as a community language. Increasingly, speakers of different Azanian dialects lived in the same neighbourhoods, or even intermarried; among the first generation of urban Azanian children, Standard Azanian soon became the main language used. Afrikaans continued a parallel development into a stable literary language, aided by the innovative new Afrikaner writers of Cape Town and the northern Cape Province and their articulation of a distinctly South African Afrikaans modernism. Both languages were extensively used in media -- newspapers, magazines, journals, television, radio, eventually the Euronet -- and, new language regulations made fluency in Azanian (and Afrikaans in Cape Province) a necessary condition for public employment.

Despite these changes, the English language maintained its high status in South Africa, remaining the most commonly-spoken language in western Cape Province and many of the suburban cities of Gauteng, spoken by 15 million non-white South Africans in addition to 11 million white South Africans, and South Africa's only international language. The population shifts of the 1980's and 1990's weakened the status of the English language, particularly as other foreign languages -- the French that serves as this world's lingua franca, for instance, or the Portuguese spoken in Brazil and Angola, two of South Africa's most important trading partners -- gained new prominence.

Culture

Until very recently, South African culture existed only as an aggregate of a wide variety of regional and ethnic cultures, often bound more closely to non-South African cultures than to the cultures of co-nationals. The post-1961 emergence of a prosperous pluriethnic middle class has changed this pattern tremendously, as different Azanian groups, Afrikaners, and an already cosmopolitan white population have been thrown together into a single cauldron. The results are particularly distinctive in the areas of literature and popular music.

South Africa has three main literary traditions--in English, Afrikaans, and Azanian. A specifically South African literature in English began with the 1883 publication of Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm. Later writers in English dealt with the South African land and peoples, and the political and racial problems faced by South Africans. Some relatively prominent authors include the mid-20th century novelists Laurens van der Post, Doris May Lessing, and Saul Kuznetsky, and the short story writer and novelist Nadine Gordimer, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in literature. Poetry is relatively neglected in the English literature of South Africa. Among Afrikaners, a new sense of self-pride has found expression in writing, theater, and music. Afrikaans has proved particularly fruitful as a medium of poetry, in the hands of such writers as the Cape Dutch Breyten Breytenbach, but apart from its seeming speciality in poetry Afrikaans literature has evolved along the same lines as English literature in South Africa.

Azanian literature is distinctive, deriving from an ancient and rich oral tradition. European colonization allowed Azanians to the coming of white settlers traditional themes were given written expression, and in recent years a number of black writers have made significant contributions to South African literature in Standard Azanian as well as in Afrikaans and English. Among the leading 20th-century nonwhite writers are S.T. Plaatje, Samuel E. K. Mqhayi, Thomas Mofolo, A.C. Jordan, B. W. Vilakazi, J. R. Jolobe, Bloke Modisane, and Alex La Guma. Peter Abrahams' Tell Freedom (1954), an autobiography, belongs to the South African literary canon with his description of his childhood racial oppression faced in Gauteng. Ezekiel Mphahlele is a major critic of black African literature, who in his 1962 The African Image discussed both black and white African literature; he deplores its obsession with race relations and calls for a broader and deeper treatment of characters from other points of view. South Africa's foremost playwright is Athol Fugard, who has gained international regard for his brutally frank treatment of South African race relations. Recently, Azanian women such as Miriam Makele and Adrian Magosubu have begun to write, both in Azanian and in English, describing about the once-neglected lives and problems of Azanian women.

South African popular music is renowned the world over as one of the pathbreaking genres of ethnobeat. White and Afrikaner traditional music is based for the most part on European folk music, although North American country/western music is surprisingly popular among South Africans of all races. Azanian folk music was historically not based upon the Western seven-note scale, was based on vocal melodies and harmonizations in the call-and-response format, and often corresponded to different regional cultures. However, urbanization created a new heterogenous Azanian working class that, by the 1940's, constituted an important sector for the emerging South African record industry. Over the 1940's and 1950's, a new somewhat Azanian popular music appeared, retaining basic African vocal and melodic elements but using European instruments -- in particular, the guitar and pennyflute -- and production elements and influenced by Brazilian popular music to create an exciting new hybrid. South African popular music remains dominated by this fusion, in one form or another, and it is a major influence on popular music worldwide.

Religion

By almost any standards, South Africans are religious: Indeed, 95% of South Africans professed to be religious in the 2001 census. Attitudes toward religion and religious beliefs vary widely, however, in keeping with South Africa's tremendous ethnic diversity.  

Nearly three-quarters of the people of South Africa are Christian, mainly Protestant. Almost all whites, save for the quarter-million Jews, are Christian, as are all Afrikaners. Most white and Afrikaner Christians and belong to the Reformed, Anglican, Lutheran, or Roman Catholic churches. There are smaller numbers of Baptists, Congregationalists, and Children of God, along with 40 000 Orthodox Christians who fall under the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. 18 million Azanians belong at least nominally to the major white denominations, in particular to the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. Eight million Azanians belong to African Independent churches, which have at least 4,000 congregations that adhere to combinations of traditional African and Protestant beliefs. A further six million Azanians follow traditional beliefs.

Adherents of other world religions include 400 thousand Hindus, almost all Kwazulu and East African Indians, and some 200 thousand Muslims, equally divided between South Asians and Cape Malays.

Cities

In 1991, 63 percent of the South African population was classified as urban; preliminary results from the 2001 census suggest that 72% of the South African population is urban. Though this figure does reflect different rates of urbanization among South Africa's major populations -- 91% of South African whites are urbanized, as again 70% of Afrikaners and 67% of Azanians -- this high rate of urbanization represents a sea change in a society that traditionally viewed itself as fundamentally rural. Despite problems of overurbanization -- including overstressed municipal services and urban slums -- South African government planners generally favour rapid urbanization, as it concentrates a hitherto-dispersed population in compact areas that can be more easily serviced than dispersed rural populations.

The Gauteng Metropolitan District is the single largest urban area in South Africa, with an estimated population in 2001 of 7.3 million people. This makes Gauteng one of the largest cities in the world, the largest in Africa, and South Africa's commercial, cultural, transportation, financial, and industrial hub. The population is ethnically quite diverse -- one-third are whites, mainly of British, Cape Dutch, and Italian descent, while a wide variety of Azanians and African immigrants make up the majority population. Dominating Gauteng is Johannesburg, home to two million people and founded in 1856 after gold discoveries on the Witwatersrand. South Africa's stock exchange and the headquarters of many international corporations are located here. Among the important buildings of Johannesburg are the City Hall, the Public Library, and the Michaelis Towers, the tallest building in Africa at 637 metres in height itself in a sea of skyscrapers. Points of interest include the Johannesburg Art Gallery and the Museum of South African History. The second city of Gauteng is Pretoria, home to 700 thousand people, the site of South Africa federal government, and the location of most foreign embassies. Pretoria is the site of three universities, including the prestigious University of South Africa at Pretoria. Points of interest include the the Transvaal Museum, the Municipal Art Gallery, the Pretoria Art Museum, the National Cultural History Museum, and the National Zoological Gardens. Important cultural and historical places include the Union Buildings in Pretoria, where the president's executive offices are located and the Sterkfontein Caves, near Krugersdorp, where bone fragments of protohumans have been discovered. Other important cities include Benoni, Brakpan, Germiston, Heidelberg, Krugersdorp, Randburg, Springs, Vanderbijlpark, and Vereeniging. Major manufactures include iron and steel, ceramics, chemicals, paper, textiles, printed materials, electrical equipment, and processed food.

The Cape Town Metropolitan District is the second-largest urban area in the Federal Republic of South Africa. While the district occupies the entire Cape Peninsula, Cape Town proper (Afrikaans Kaapstad) is located at the northern end of the Cape Peninsula, with the associated suburbs and satellite towns of the fast-growing metropolitan area extending south across the neck of the Cape Peninsula to False Bay (Afrikaans Vaalsbaai). Effective urban planning has saved the notable buildings of old Cape Town -- including the Castle, the oldest building in Cape Town dating from 1665; the Old Town House; and the old Dutch-style buildings and mosques found in the Malay Quarter on Signal Hill -- from destruction. Just outside the historical districts are the business districts, marked by high-rise buildings and sprawling suburbs, is located between Table Bay to the north and the steep slopes of Table Mountain (1086 m) to the south. Table Mountain, with cable car service to the top, dominates the city landscape and provides an excellent point from which to view the surrounding area. Several lesser peaks, including Lions Head to the southwest and Signal Hill to the west, rise above the city and overlook the Atlantic Ocean. Cape Town is also a popular vacation resort, noted for natural scenic beauty, fine beaches, and a wide array of cultural and academic institutions that include the South African National Gallery, the University of Cape Town, and the University of South Africa at Cape Town. South Africa's second-largest industrial centre, some of the major industries include oil refining, shipbuilding, diamond cutting, printing, food processing, and the manufacture of inexpensive consumer goods. Port activities are concentrated in a large artificial harbor in Table Bay, equipped with dry docks and modern cargo-handling facilities and a regular port of call for freight and passenger vessels rounding the Cape of Good Hope to the south.

Port Elizabeth is the third-largest city in South Africa, founded in 1820 by the British military leader and colonial official Sir Rufane Shaw Donkin and, since 1973, the capital of Cape Province. Home to 1.2 million people, Port Elizabeth is an important seaport and manufacturing center and a popular resort noted for its fine beaches. Major manufactures include motor vehicles, metal and wood products, footwear, processed food, and chemicals. Port Elizabeth is the site of the University of Port Elizabeth, the King George VI Art Gallery, featuring collections of British and South African art; the Port Elizabeth Museum, with natural history exhibits, an  oceanarium, and a collection of reptiles; and Fort Frederick, built by the British in 1799.

Kimberley is a city in northern Cape Province, home to 600 thousand people in the greater metropolitan area. Founded in 1849 after the discovery of diamond fields, Kimberley remains to this day the center of a diamond-mining region. Principal industries include diamond cutting, the processing of lime and tungsten, and the manufacture of cement and bricks.  

Bloemfontein is the capital of the Orange Free State, and is home to 550 thousand people. The city was founded as the capital of the former Cape Dutch republic called the Orange Free State. The city, the name of which means "fountain of flowers," is noted for its beautiful natural settings. A transportation hub, it is served by several railroads and airlines. In the region surrounding Bloemfontein, farming, livestock raising, and mining are the main occupations. Railroad workshops and metalworking and meat-canning plants are located in the city. Other manufactures include furniture and glassware. Bloemfontein is the site of the University of the Orange Free State (founded in 1855), and several other colleges and astronomical observatories.

East London is a city in southeastern South Africa, in eastern Cape Province, and is home to 500 thousand people. In 1827 East London was used as a British garrison and base during a war between the British and Xhosa Azanians; it was incorporated as a city in 1861. Modern East London is both the main city of the Xhosa and the main regional marketing and distributing center, home to both a railway terminus and a major Indian Ocean port at the mouth of the Buffalo River in the heart of the city. Important industries include food processing, automobile assembly, and the manufacture of furniture, footwear, pharmaceuticals, and textiles. East London is a popular resort city, with a pleasant temperature, fine beaches, and an esplanade extending along the waterfront.

The South African Government

South Africa is commonly defined as a federal republic, but in practice South Africa's system of government has been so often modified as to defy easy description. These numerous modification have been caused by South Africa's attempts to repair a society that, for more than a century, had been pointlessly and destructively divided along racial lines.

Civil Rights

Until the adoption of the 1961 Constitution, only whites and Cape Province Afrikaners 18 years of age or older had the right to vote. (White and Cape Province Afrikaner women 18 years of age or older had received the vote in 1934.) Azanians were guaranteed certain basic property rights and could conduct their own affairs in traditional institutions, but were excluded from meaningful political participation at every level of South African's provinces. Azanians were socially excluded, working as menial labourers in farms and in mines. Over the first half of the 20th century, the continuing flood of European immigrants attracted to South Africa by high-paying jobs and comfortable living standards, threatened to marginalize Azanians completely.

By the 1940's, urbanization and the spread of Western education created an articulate educated class of Azanians who began to protest their social exclusion. The initial reaction of South Africa's whites, like their contemporaries and counterparts in Brazil and Angola, was to dismiss these protests as complaints made by an unrepresentative malcontent minority. As the 1950's progressed, the increasing politicization of South Africa's Azanian population resulted in a series of disruptive strikes and demonstrates, while the continued progress made by the civil rights movement in Brazil and by the independence movement in Angola made it impossible for whites to ignore the obvious parallels. These peaceful protests of Azanians precipitated a constitutional crisis. The famous Round Table Meetings of 1958-1960, involving representatives from every segment of South Africa, prepared South Africans for radical change.

The epochal constitution of 1961 represented a decisive break from South Africa's racist traditions. Article 1 identified South Africa as "a state of all its citizens," and the following seven articles recognized the full civil and political rights of all South Africans, granted the Standard Azanian language official status, and constrained provincial and local governments to enforce the Constitution in its entirety. Moreover, Articles 9 through 13 constrained the South African government, at all levels, to work to ensure the eventual equalization of conditions for all South Africans by any and all constitutional means, including quotas in public and private employment.

Structure

The 1961 Constitution established South Africa as an independent republic within the British Commonwealth of Nations. South Africa's Azanian and Afrikaner populations had no particular attachment to the British monarchy, while the overwhelmingly non-British composition of South Africa's white population had already created a trend towards republicanism. This decisive break with the British Crown signalled South Africa's evolution as an autonomous country.

The President is the head of state of the Federal Republic of South Africa. Inheriting most of the powers of the former Governor-General, the President's signature is required to call national elections, finalize laws already approved by the national parliament, and engage in various ceremonial details. The acting head of state, however, is the Prime Minister, who is elected by the majority party or coalition in Parliament and is most often the leader of the majority party or coalition. The President is elected for a five-year term in a popular vote held concurrently with national elections.

The Parliament is composed of two chambers -- a 500-member National Assembly and a 100-member Senate -- both of which are elected bodies. Members of the National Assembly are elected every five years to their seats from geographically-defined ridings in national elections, on the British parliamentary novel, and constitute the parliamentary body that has the power to propose laws and constitutional changes. The Senate is that parliamentary institution which is responsible for approving or rejecting laws in their final form, and which represents the regions: 20 members are selected by each of South Africa's five provincial and metropolitan legislatures.

South Africa's highest courts are: the Supreme Court, the highest criminal court; and the Constitutional Court, which determines the constitutionality of all laws, including a president and ten judges, who are selected by the Judicial Committee of South Africa. As of January of 2001, the South Africa government has accepted the authority of the World Court in The Hague, Netherlands, as a court of final appeal.

Although South Africa inherited Liberal and Conservative political parties from its British colonizer, the major contemporary political parties of South Africa are: the South African Unity Party, a moderate liberal party that polled 35% of the vote in the 1998 national elections; the National Party, a conservative party that polled 21% of the vote in 1998; the Azanian People's Party, an Azanian nationalist party that polled 19% of the vote in 1998; and, the Communalist Party, which polled 11% of the vote in 1998. Apart from the Azanian People's Party, South African political parties are not based on ethnic cleavages and are mostly concerned with maintaining ethnic harmony while working to resolve political problems affecting all South Africans.

Provincial and Metropolitan Governments

South Africa is divided into three provinces: Cape Province, Orange Free State, and Transvaal, and the two Metropolitan Districts of Cape Town and Gauteng. The three provinces of South Africa have long histories -- Transvaal and the Orange Free State were founded in the mid-19th century as Cape Dutch pioneer republics, while Cape Province traces its ancestry back to the Cape Colony founded by the Dutch in 1652. Even under British sovereignty, these three provinces were accustomed to extensive autonomy under their own popularly-elected legislatures. As a precondition for accepting the British imperial government's proposal of Union in 1889, each province accepted only the loosest federal government possible, with a Union government that held powers only over defense, foreign policy, immigration, transportation and communications networks, and selected other fields. In all other respects, the provinces remained independent.

The Round Table Meetings changed this situation. While South Africa's provincial governments all accepted the need for political reform, there remained resentment at the federal government's abrupt treatment of the provinces. At the same time, the Cape Province and Transvaal became rent by conflict between urban and rural areas. On the one hand, their metropoli -- respectively, Cape Town and Johannesburg -- identified themselves as cosmopolitan and prosperous enclaves whose wealth was being confiscated to finance expensive projects in rural hinterlands. On the other hand, areas outside these cities complained that the sheer demographic weight of these metropoli allowed them to overwhelm complaints from the often-fragmented provinces -- in 1971, greater Cape Town's population was 31% that of Cape Province, while greater Johannesburg's population was 49% that of Transvaal. Despite continued roaring economic growth, the infighting in South Africa's two largest provinces created by the end of the 1960's a situation of political deadlock in provincial governments.

In order to resolve this situation, the Mandela-Bruyn Government proposed, in 1970, the partition of Cape Province and Transvaal between the overbearing metropoli and the resentful hinterlands, allowing urbanites and provincials in each province to enjoy freedom from the other. Surprisingly, this proposal was widely accepted, and formed the basis of the Fifth Amendment to the South African constitution, approved by majority votes in both houses of Parliament in 1973. The Sixth Amendment, passed that year, met the concerns of the new provinces of revenue shortfalls by mandating that the federal government had the authority to redistribute tax revenues from rich provinces to poor provinces, in order to ensure equity of funding for government programs.

All five provincial and metropolitan governments consists of a premier, an executive council of ten ministers, and a legislature. Representation in the nine provincial assemblies is based on the percentage of the vote won by political parties in the elections. The number of votes cast in each province determines the number of seats in each assembly. Thus, more densely populated provinces have larger assemblies than do those with fewer residents. The provincial assembly and premier are elected for five-year terms, or until the next national election. Political parties are allocated seats in the assembly based on the percentage of votes each party receives in the province during the national elections. The assembly elects a premier, who then appoints the members of the executive council. The provincial legislatures have significant powers and responsibilities, including the writing of provincial constitutions. However, they are ultimately under the authority of the parliament and the national constitution.

Customs Union of Southern Africa

CASU is a crucial regional forum for South Africa, legitimizing Gauteng's dominance over southern Africa and ensuring the stability of South African investments in neighbouring countries. In exchange, South Africa has given up much of its autonomy in regards to domestic economic and immigration policies to an unelected multinational bureaucracy with lawmaking powers. Historically, South Africa was prevented from expanding into the non-South African member-states of CASU by British foreign policy. Some South Africans view the Customs Union as an body that could allow South Africa to expand, but most simply view the Customs Union as an organization that vastly simplifies South Africa's relations with its neighbours.

The South African Military

In 2001, the South African Defense Forces comprised 69 800 regular personnel (including an air force of 14 000 and navy of 8 100) and a 135 000 member Citizen Force. There were 45 000 serving officers in the SAP in the mid-1990s. South African military equipment is quite modern by the standards of Tripartite Alliance Earth, but is lacking by interworld standards.

Prior to the 1950's, South Africa's military policies were geared towards the defense of the sea routes off the South African coast against possible attack, perhaps by a hostile South American coalition. The disappearance of any plausible threat to these sealanes with the strengthening of the League, the gradual decolonization of southern Africa, and South African democratization pushed a reappraisal of this policy over the 1960's. South Africa's modern military doctrine is constructed with the aim of enforcing stability in Africa below the equator, in conjunction with the League of Nations and other states in the region. The First through Fourth Armies and the South African navy remain organized along conventional lines, but the Fifth Army and the air force are organized for rapid intervention against ill-armed and disorganized Third World military forces. South Africa has led multinational interventions in Barotseland (1984-5), Katanga (1986, 1993, 2000) and Beira (1983-4).

South African Foreign Relations

From the early 1960's, various South African governments have followed the Mzilikazi Principles enunciated by Foreign Minister Anthony Mzilikazi in Cape Town in October of 1961. These principles include: the promotion of human rights and democracy; respect for justice and international law in interstate relations; the achievement of peace through "internationally agreed nonviolent mechanisms"; incorporation of African concerns and interests into foreign policy choices; and economic development based on "cooperation in an interdependent and egalitarian world."

Presently, the Mzilikazi Principles are used by Gauteng in order to ensure the continued existence of the modern-day international framework, which allows for unhindered trade and migration between the First World countries and the rest of the planet. To this end, the South African government favours the development of multinational regional blocs in Africa, the democratization of the Third World, the economic development of the littoral countries bordering the Indian Ocean, and the extension of large-scale development aid and trade concessions to Second and Third World countries.

Regional

Argentina: South Africa and Argentina have historically competed for export markets for their wheat, meat and wool, even after Argentina's early 20th-century evolution into a superlative industrial power. However, this economic rivalry has not been accompanied by any significant political or military rivalry; indeed, the common social-democratic orientations of the two countries have ensured relations that, if not particularly intimate, are friendly.

Angola: South Africa's relations with this country, the most prosperous in southern Africa apart from the Federal Republic itself and the only Lusophone country in Africa, are moderately close and friendly. South Africa sees in Angola a vital barrier against the continuing anarchy in the Congolais mandates; to reinforce Angola, South Africa has given substantial amounts of development aid, both material and monetary, to government and non-governmental organizations inside Angola. Angola, in turn, generally follows South Africa's foreign policy lead in Africa.

Australia: The old British colonial links between this two Anglophone countries of settlement have been reinforced by the emigration, since 1960, of more than 700 thousand South Africans to Australia. Both countries share a common interest in furthering the economic prospects of their co-littoral states in the Indian Ocean Rim, and in encouraging democracy and pluralistic societies throughout this region. Further, Australian interest in South African prosperity has led to the extension of substantial amounts of development aid to South Africa. Gauteng and Canberra maintain close and friendly diplomatic relations.

Brazil: Over the second half of the 20th century, South Africans became acutely aware of the immense wealth and vast cultural influence of their nearest neighbour in the Americas. While Brazilians view South Africa somewhat patronizingly as a liberal Brazilian proxy in Africa  and a source of well-educated immigrants and enjoyable popular musics, South Africa depends enormously upon Brazil for investment and popular culture. Indeed, Portuguese vies with French as the most popular foreign language in South Africa. With large mutual flows of trade, migrants, and culture, Brazilian-South African relations are moderately close and quite friendly.

Customs Union of Southern Africa: In addition to the Federal Republic, five countries -- from west to east, Namibia, Botswana, Ndebeleland, Swaziland, and Kwazulu -- belong to CUSA, which maintains a single market for trade and labour and a development fund for the union's poorer members. South African relations with the smaller members of the Customs Union are friendly, despite concerns over large-scale immigration into South Africa. In turn, South Africa's smaller partners are suspicious over their larger neighbour's overwhelming power and occasional hints at expansionism, while in Botswana and Kwazulu there is latent irredentism directed towards Transvaal's Tswana and Zulu populations. These are minor irritants, though, in a generally friendly relationship.

East African Community: For Gauteng, the East African Community provides a perfect example of the ideal state of Africa: Not only does the East African Community unite almost a dozen separate states in an intimate confederation, but its grass-roots development policies have allowed East Africans to enjoy comparatively high standards of health and literacy, and its macroeconomic policies have created a foundation for future economic expansion. The East African Community is the single largest recipient of South African development aid, and South Africa maintains embassies in Dar es Salaam and each of the capital's of the Community's member-states.

Conseil de l'Entente de l'Océan Indien: Until the end of the 1960's, South African official relations with the six only part-African island states of the Indian Ocean were conducted through the medium of the French Community to which all were subjected. Since independence, South Africa has found few reasons to expand its links. The Seychelles are a popular vacation destination for middle-class South Africans and enjoy a reputation as a regional banking centre, while the islands of Mauritius and Réunion are useful middlemen countries for South Africa's foreign trade with southern Asia. Madagascar has evidenced little interest in developing relations with the African continent, and Gauteng has reciprocated, limiting a South African presence to an embassy in the capital of Antananarivo and to aid outposts in the Madagascarene highlands. For all intents and purposes, South Africa has no relationship with either the Comoros or the Kerguélens.

Egypt: Although the Egyptian government has responded positively to South African diplomatic initiatives aimed at maintaining the Trade and Migration Pacts, the conservatism inherent to the Egyptian ruling classes has led Cairo to look askance upon Gauteng's social-democratic radicalism. The two countries maintain friendly, if somewhat distant, diplomatic relations through their embassies in the other country's capital and honorary consulates.

Southern African Community: The dysfunction of the Community and many of its member-states has prevented the emergence of a regional bloc competitive with the Federal Republic. South African relations with the Community's member-states are conducted on a purely bilateral basis that allows it to exert overwhelming strength. South African relations with Zimbabwe are complicated by the latter's role as a corridor for illegal extra-Migration Pact immigration, Malawi and Beira are impoverished suppliers of labourers, while South African interests own most of the productive mining districts of Zambia and Katanga. The brutal authoritarianism of some of these countries -- in particular, Katanga -- is an enduring source of discord for South African liberals, while many South Africans are concerned by the population pressures accumulating in the Community's member-states, unrelieved by substantial emigration to Brazil and South Africa. South African foreign policy seeks to create an environment that will allow the sustainable modernization of the Community's member-states.

West Africa: West Africa and South Africa are the two most powerful states in Africa. While South Africa is far wealthier on a per capita basis than West Africa, West Africa's larger population and substantial cultural and demographic influences in the Americas and Europe gives Dakar an edge that Gauteng does not have. Both bilaterally and through the medium of the Pan-African Union, the two countries have cooperated in trying to encourage the stabilization of central Africa and the prosperity of the entire continent, despite rivalry related to West African leadership of Francophone Africa and South African leadership of Anglophone Africa.

Yorubaland: As a moderately prosperous, culturally autonomous, and British-influenced African empire, Yorubaland has historically served as a potent symbol of Africa's potential to Azanians. Since the early 1960's, South African-Yorubaland relations have become progressively more important, as demonstrated by the mutual popularity of their popular musics, extensive South African purchases of Yorubaland oil and Yorubaland's dependence on South African manufactured goods, and by the common desire of Azanians and Yoruba to collaborate in the articulation of a distinctly African modernity for the 21st century.

Non-Regional

European Confederation: The European Confederation is one of South Africa's largest export markets, an important military partner of South Africa, and plays a substantial role in South African migration history. These facts ensure a close and reasonably friendly relationship. In addition to its Paris embassy, South Africa maintains consulates in London, Amsterdam, Milan, Frankfurt, and Warsaw; the Confederation maintains an embassy in Gauteng, full consulates in Cape Town, East London, and Bloemfontein, and aid offices in eastern Transvaal.

Indian States: South Africa's large Indian population and desire to promote economic growth in the littoral countries of the Indian Ocean has led South Africa to maintain a minimal presence in each of the independent states and mandates included in the Indian Community, including embassies in Mumbai, Chennai, and Varanasi. Most of South Africa's development aid is expended in the African continent, though, while none of the Indian states have evidenced any particular interest in strengthening their relationships with South Africa.

Iran: Iranian dominance of the abundant Persian Gulf oil fields has historically worried South Africans, owing to the near-absence of any usable oil fields in southern Africa, while South Africa's support of the Persian Gulf War led to a brief break in Iranian-South African diplomatic relations. The new availability of offworld oil supplies has allowed South Africa to enter into a cautious rapprochement with Tehran, and each country maintains an embassy in the other's capital.

League of Nations: South Africa's enthusiastic integration into and support of the League of Nations has ingratiated it to Genève, which in turn appreciates South Africa's ability to ensure stability in sub-equatorial Africa. The Genève-Gauteng relationship is relatively close, and the League maintains an extensive presence across South Africa through its various organs.

Japan: The close association in the minds of South Africans between Japan and the Pacific War has hindered the development of bilateral economic or military relations between Tokyô and Gauteng, despite Japan's dependence on South African exports of iron ore, coal, and other strategic minerals. In recent years, the two countries have begun to explore the possibilities of closer associations. As yet, these discussions have not created anything more substantial than large and well-appointed embassies in each other's capitals and honorary consulates in major cities.

Korea: This country is viewed by South Africans as a dangerously competitive industrial power that threatens to undermine the basis for South African prosperity. Despite Korean investment in  some large-scale manufacturing plants in Gauteng for the southern African market, South African public opinion of Korea is still poor, Diplomatic relations are accordingly strained.

Mexico: South African relations with Mexico only truly began in the post-War era, when both countries lobbied extensively for the global acceptance of the Trade and Migration Pacts of 1985. Since 1985, the two countries have tried to coordinate their foreign policies in regards to non-First World affairs.

Thailand: Given the obliteration of every other country in Southeast Asia in the Third World War, Thailand is, to South Africa, the only likely anchor for future economic development in that portion of the Indian Ocean littoral. In recent years, South Africa has begun to extend limited amounts of development aid to Thailand. The two countries maintain polite, if distant, relations.

Economy

In terms of GDP per capita, South Africa qualifies as a Second World country. In fact, South Africa's economy can be best described as a combination of First and Third World economies. South Africa's First World economy includes half of the population, including all whites, most Afrikaners, and one-third of Azanians, enjoying per capita levels of GDP, income, and consumption as high as in most First World countries. South Africa's Third World economy is uniformly Azanian and immigrant African in composition, a population converted into an impoverished and mobile proletariat, imperfectly educated and with lifespans far below the national average, and poorly integrated into the national economy. This bifurcation is a product of South Africa's unique economic history.

Before South Africa's vast mineral wealth was discovered in the late nineteenth century, there was a general belief that the region was devoid of the natural riches that had drawn Europeans to the rest of the continent. The sparse population even deterred slave traders from visiting. The Dutch colony founded at the Cape in the mid-17th century subsisted as an agricultural enclave. Sponsored immigration from Britain in the second quarter of the 19th century did create a significantly larger European population in the Cape, deriving its sustenance from agriculture, but the region remained marginal.

The discovery of diamonds in 1849 and of gold in 1856 revolutionized the economy. European investment flowed in; by the end of the nineteenth century, it was equivalent to all European investment in the rest of Africa. Attracted by the diamond and gold mines, international banks and private lenders vastly increased their loans to local entrepreneurs, who in turn began to create a modern economy in South Africa in part by confiscating land and labour from local African populations. The cycle of economic growth was stimulated both by the mining industry's continual expansion and by consumer demand increased both by greater income per capita and by mass immigration. By the end of the 1930's, South Africa had emerged as a modern industrial society, but growing demands for labour forced South Africans to draw on Azanians and Afrikaners as workers.

During the quarante glorieuses, manufacturing experienced continued growth, as cities expanded, farms were rationalized with greater emphasis on commercial production, and investments were diversified. Growing political unrest among non-whites led to a slowdown of economic growth in the 1950's as constitutional discussions were opened. The 1961 Constitution committed the South African government to begin subsidizing the creation of Azanian and Afrikaner middle classes, through massive investment in the social and physical infrastructures of non-white communities and job quotas in the public and private sectors of the economy. Despite concerns over the effects of the 1961 Constitution on the economy, the rapid growth of demand for South African exports combined with the ready availability of capital to fuel a tremendous economic boom -- between 1965 and 1980, South Africa's GDP grew threefold, while despite rapid population growth South African GDP per capital more than doubled. Almost overnight, a new non-white middle class was created in South Africa, by the end of the 1970's almost as numerous as the white middle class.

The Third World War badly affected the South African economy. Non-whites suffered the sharpest decline in living standards, as the South African boom came to an end. By the mid-1980's, the South African economy began to show a marked recovery as agricultural exports earned spectacularly high prices and South Africa became the only major supplier of certain strategic minerals following the destruction of the Siberian, United States, and Congolais economies. By 1994, South Africa had regained pre-War levels of GDP per capita, and over the next four years GDP per capita grew a further 15%. However, first contact with the ITA precipitated a catastrophic decline in the prices of South Africa's non-manufactured exports, and South Africa is only now recovering.

The early 21st century South African economy has many positive features, including a modern First World industrial base, world-class communications and transportation networks, low-cost unskilled labourers, a weak currency, and a dominant position in southern Africa, home to almost 80 million people. Conversely, there is a relatively inefficient education system, a rapidly increasing working-age population, an underdeveloped infrastructure, and a high rate of emigration among skilled professionals. Most specialists believe that, based on the South African record to date, South Africa may enjoy moderate growth in the coming years, fuelled in part by a thriving and internationally competitive manufacturing sector, and that up to two-thirds of the Azanian population will be included in South Africa's First World economy. Full rattrapage with the First World, though, will be some time yet.

Agriculture and Fishing

Limited rainfall and infertile soil restrict the areas in South Africa suitable for crop raising. As a result, about nine-tenths of the farmland is devoted to raising livestock, particularly sheep, goats, cattle, hogs, and poultry. Still, the country produces almost all the crops needed for food thanks to extensive use of irrigation and extensive farms, disproportionately owned by whites. (Nonwhite peasant farmers have been mostly displaced from their small traditional farms owing to those farms' inefficiency and land purchases. South Africa's agricultural output includes sugarcane, grapes, corn, potatoes, apples, oranges, and wheat. Livestock includes very large numbers numbers of sheep, cattle, goats, pigs, and chickens.

Timber production in South Africa comes largely from stands of pine, eucalyptus, and wattle planted under the forestation program of the government. Bark from the wattle tree, used to produced tannins for tanning, is an important export. In 1998, a total of 13.4 million cubic metres of wood was harvested.

Coastal fishing, for both domestic and African markets, is an important industry. Much of the catch is processed into fish meal. In 1999, the fish catch amounted to 308 100 metric tons. Among the fish caught were anchovy, Cape hake, South African pilchard, Cape horse mackerel, and Whitehead's round herring.

Manufacturing and Services

Prior 1900, manufacturing less important than mining or agriculture, but after this date manufacturing expanded rapidly. In the late 1990's this sector of the economy contributed an estimated 56 percent of GDP. Most of the capital for this expansion was from private sources, both domestic and foreign, but the public sector also played a key role. Leading manufactures of South Africa include chemical products, petroleum and coal products, processed food and beverages, transportation equipment, iron and steel, metal products, machinery, paper, and textiles. Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Port Elizabeth are leading manufacturing centers. In addition, large service industries catering to the middle and upper classes have also come into being across South Africa.

Mining and Petrochemicals

Substantial amounts of every commodity essential to industry save oil is located in the country. The mining industry has been an important sector of the economy since the 19th century, when large-scale gold and diamond production began. In the late 1990's mining accounted for nearly one-quarter of South Africa's export revenue. The country is the world's leading producer of gold, with annual extraction representing more than one-quarter of Tripartite Alliance Earth's total production. South Africa is also the second largest producer of diamonds, including nearly 30 percent of the world's quality gemstones, with an annual extraction of 8.3 million carats. Mineral production included gold, coal, iron ore, copper, manganese ore, lime and limestone, and chromium ore. Small quantities of antimony, asbestos, fluorite, nickel, phosphates, platinum, tin, titanium, uranium, and vanadium are also mined.

Transportation

The railroad system, which links all main centers, is almost entirely administered by the federally-operated South African Rail public corporation, which operated about 32 860 km of railroad track in 1990. The country also was served by some 214 900 km of roads, of which nearly 60 percent were paved. About 11.5 million passenger cars were in use. The major airline is South African Airways, and the country also is served by several smaller carriers as well as foreign airlines, most operating from the Johannesburg International Airport in Gauteng. The country's main seaport is Cape Town, distantly followed by Mossel Bay, Port Elizabeth, and East London.

Problems

Since 1960, South Africa has developed into an authentically multiracial and pluriethnic state despite daunting problems of all kinds. Though this development -- in particular, the extension of employment and education quotas to Azanians and Afrikaners -- has disturbed the sensibilities of some whites, South Africa's liberal polity and generally prosperous economy has silenced the most fervent doubters.

Still, South Africa continues to be haunted by the same problems that it suffered from in the mid-20th century, if in less attenuated form. White resistance to quotas continues; most Azanians remain trapped in poverty; emigration saps the country of many of its needed professionals; South Africa remains bifurcated between First World and Second World societies; the outlook for development in southern Africa remains mixed, at best.

South Africa's future depends on the extent to which it manages to overcome these problems, and the way in which the country reacts to the new interworld environment. To their credit, South Africans are aware of these problems, and are coping with their usual ease. It remains uncertain, however, as to how quickly South Africa will be able to overcome these problems.