Since 1994, all ethnic and linguistic groups have held political representation in the country's liberal democracy, which comprises a parliamentary republic and nine provinces. During the Dutch and British colonial years, racial segregation was mostly informal, though some legislation was enacted to control the settlement and movement of native people, including the Native Location Act of 1879 and the system of pass laws. The two major historic groups were the Xhosa and Zulu peoples. The southernmost group was the Xhosa people, whose language incorporates certain linguistic traits from the earlier Khoisan people. HIV & AIDS and STI Strategic Plan 2007–2011", "South Africa has excelled in treating HIV – prevention remains a disaster", "The Nobel Prize in Literature: John Maxwell Coetzee", "South African music after Apartheid: kwaito, the "party politic," and the appropriation of gold as a sign of success", "South African Wine Guide: Stellenbosch, Constantia, Walker Bay and more", Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China, Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, Southern African Development Coordination Conference, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, List of countries by English-speaking population, List of countries where English is an official language, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=South_Africa&oldid=980396599, Afrikaans-speaking countries and territories, English-speaking countries and territories, Member states of the Commonwealth of Nations, States and territories established in 1910, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference, Articles with dead external links from May 2019, CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown, Wikipedia pages semi-protected against vandalism, Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, Short description is different from Wikidata, Use South African English from September 2013, All Wikipedia articles written in South African English, Articles containing Afrikaans-language text, Articles containing Northern Sotho-language text, Articles containing Southern Ndebele-language text, Pages using collapsible list with both background and text-align in titlestyle, Pages using infobox country or infobox former country with the symbol caption or type parameters, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2013, Pages using columns with the default column width, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz area identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Officially the Republic of China, participates as ", This page was last edited on 26 September 2020, at 09:04.

JM Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 2003. Former president, FW de Klerk, maintained that South Africa had "never conducted a clandestine nuclear test. Die meisten Tiere leben in den großen und kleinen Natinonalparks von Südafrika. Only 15% of South African jobs are in the informal sector, compared with around half in Brazil and India and nearly three-quarters in Indonesia. [176] However, water supply and sanitation in South Africa has come under increasing pressure in recent years despite a commitment made by the government to improve service standards and provide investment subsidies to the water industry. [44] Vrijburgers who became independent farmers on the frontier were known as Boers, with some adopting semi-nomadic lifestyles being denoted as trekboers. In Highveld ist die vorherrschende Vegetation das Grasland. As they migrated, these larger Iron Age populations displaced or assimilated earlier peoples. To the north of Highveld, from about the 25° 30' S line of latitude, the plateau slopes downwards into the Bushveld, which ultimately gives way to the Limpopo lowlands or Lowveld.[86]. As the Union of South Africa, the country was a founding member of the UN. [203] South African Muslims claim that their faith is the fastest-growing religion of conversion in the country, with the number of black Muslims growing sixfold, from 12,000 in 1991 to 74,700 in 2004. Arguably, the most high-profile film portraying South Africa in recent years was District 9. South Africa signed the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity on 4 June 1994, and became a party to the convention on 2 November 1995. Different methods of transport in South Africa include roads, railways, airports, water, and pipelines for petroleum oil. South African art includes the oldest art objects in the world, which were discovered in a South African cave, and dated from 75,000 years ago. Klima und Vegetation. There are significant numbers of baobab trees in this area, near the northern end of Kruger National Park.[106]. Mit 1.600 km ist der Oranje der längste Fluss Südafrikas. The summer and winter rainfall region is the Eastern Cape. Winter is the sunniest time of the year, with cool days and cold nights. South Africa’s remoteness—it lies thousands of miles distant from major African cities such as Lagos and Cairo and more than 6,000 miles (10,000 km) away from most of Europe, North America, and eastern Asia, where its major trading partners are located—helped reinforce the official system of apartheid for a large part of the 20th century. Johannesburg, in the centre of the Highveld, is at 1,740 m (5,709 ft) above sea level and receives an annual rainfall of 760 mm (29.9 in). It was imported before the codification of European law into the Napoleonic Code and is comparable in many ways to Scots law. In at least some major South African ecosystems, an exceptionally high percentage of fungi are highly specific in terms of the plants with which they occur. The Little Karoo is historically, and still, famous for its ostrich farming around the town of Oudtshoorn. [38] They also sowed vegetables in the fertile soil. The interior of South Africa consists of a vast, in most places almost flat, plateau with an altitude of between 1,000 m (3,300 ft) and 2,100 m (6,900 ft), highest in the east and sloping gently downwards towards the west and north, and slightly less noticeably so to the south and south-west. Sie umfasst das Winterregengebiet an der Südspitze von Afrika und ist durch einen Wüstengürtel (aus Karoo und Namib) vom übrigen Afrika getrennt.Sie ist mit etwa 90.000 km² das kleinste der Florenreiche, im Verhältnis zur Fläche stellt die Kapregion jedoch das artenreichste dar. [155] From 2004 onward, economic growth picked up significantly; both employment and capital formation increased. p. 13. South Africa has played a key role as a mediator in African conflicts over the last decade, such as in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Comoros, and Zimbabwe. The provinces are in turn divided into 52 districts: 8 metropolitan and 44 district municipalities. [157], The South African agricultural industry contributes around 10% of formal employment, relatively low compared to other parts of Africa, as well as providing work for casual labourers and contributing around 2.6% of GDP for the nation.

[44] Both sides launched bloody but inconclusive offensives, and sporadic violence, often accompanied by livestock theft, remained common for several decades. Since 2004, South Africa has had many thousands of popular protests, some violent, making it, according to one academic, the "most protest-rich country in the world". [205], The adult literacy rate in 2007 was 88.7%. South African cuisine is heavily meat-based and has spawned the distinctively South African social gathering known as the braai, a variation of the barbecue. [210], According to the South African Institute of Race Relations, the life expectancy in 2009 was 71 years for a white South African and 48 years for a black South African. The weather is also influenced by the El Niño–Southern Oscillation.