Ethnic divisions: black 75.2%, white 13.6%, Colored 8.6%, Indian 2.6%
Principal languages: Afrikaans, English (both official); many local languages, including Zulu, Xhosa, North and South Sotho, Tswana
Principal religions: Christian, Hindu, Islam, Bantu
Rank of affluence among U.N. members: 58/183
Although people have inhabited what is now South Africa for as long as 100,000 years, the ancestors of today's Xhosa and Zulu probably did not appear until 2,000 years ago. Living in big towns, they farmed millet and sorghum and raised sheep, goats, and cattle. In 1652 Dutch colonists arrived. Within a century they had created a closed, rigid society based on slave labor from the East Indies.
As South Africa's great stores of diamonds and gold were discovered in the late 1800s, power struggles erupted among Dutch colonists (Afrikaners), Xhosa farmers, Zulu invaders, British administrators (who had annexed the colony) and Mfengu--refugees from intra-African wars to the north. After years of conflict, the British formed the Union of South Africa in 1910.
The government fell into the hands of the white Afrikaner National party in the late 1940s, when strict apartheid laws were passed that officially divided the population into four groups: black, colored, white, and Indian/Asian. Apartheid dictated separate and unequal systems for housing, education, and employment. The black African majority (about 3/4 of the population) fared the worst, being denied the right to vote or to receive a fair share of the nation's economic prosperity.
Social tensions continued to build, transforming Africa's richest nation into a battleground. In the 1990s South Africa repealed apartheid and in the spring of 1994 elected its first black president--ANC leader Nelson Mandela. But the legacy of violence and bitter mistrust left by generations of apartheid will be a long time healing.
