19. South Africa – History

• Boers – descendants of the Dutch people who went to live in South Africa in the 17^th century  Afrikaners

• Cape Colony came under British rule in 1806

• 1830s – ‘Great Trek’ - an eastward and north-eastward migration away from British control in the Cape Colony during the 1830s and 1840s by Boers

• Discovery of gold and diamonds near Kimberly and the Vaal River

• 1880-1881 – The First Anglo-Boer War, the ‘Transvaal Wan’

• 1899-1902 – The Second Anglo-Boer War

• 1902 – the Treaty of Vereeniging - the peace treaty, signed on 31 May 1902, that ended the Second Boer War between the South African Republic and the Republic of the Orange Free State, on the one side, and the British Empire on the other.

• Robert Baden-Powell: in 1899, during the Second Boer War in South Africa, Baden-Powell successfully defended the town in the Siege of Mafeking.

• Mahatma Gandhi - During Gandhi's stay in South Africa his concept of non-violence did not include passivity or cowardice in the face of violence or the abdication of one's duty. Gandhi offered his services freely during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899. He formed an Indian Volunteer Ambulance Corps of 1400 men, many of whom were traders and professionals. They saw to the needs of the sick and wounded and often worked in the thick of battle in areas such as Spion Kop, Colenso and Ladysmith. For their efforts, members of the Corps were decorated with medals.

• Winston Churchill – working as a journalist during the Boer War; he was captured and made a prisoner-of-war before escaping

• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - dedicated his medical skills to the army during the South African (Boer) War. He wrote the first edition of "The Great Boer War" in 1900, later updating it to cover the war to its end in 1902

• Apartheid – separateness, was a system of legal racial segregation enforced by the Rational Party government in South Africa between 1948 and early 1994

• The population was classified into 4 groups: Black, White, Indian and Coloured; strict racial segregation in the urban areas; restricted African urbanization; a tightly-controlled and more restricted system of migrant labour, prohibiting marriage between white people and people of other races

• Nelson Mandela is a national hero; fight against racial oppression in South Africa; the Nobel Prize; born in 1918; the presidency of his country; 27 years – imprisoned for his opposition to apartheid

• 1990 – came out of prison

• 1993 – the Nobel Peace Prize, shared with former South African President F.W. de Klerk

• 1994 – South Africa’s first democratically elected President

• 2004 – officially retired from public life

• November 2009 – UNO – Mandela’s birthday, 18 July – ‘Mandela Bay’ – marking his contribution to world freedom

• [!] South Africa has the cheapest electricity in the world.

20. South Africa – Culture and geography

• Capitals: executive – Pretoria, Judicial – Bloemfontein, Legislative – Cape Town

• 11 official languages: English, Afrikaans and 9 Bantu languages

• South Africa is a nation of diversity, with nearly 52-million people and a wide variety of cultures, languages and religious beliefs.

• Famous South Africans: J.R.R. TOLKIEN, CHARLIZE THERON, ARNOLD VOSLOO [The Mummy]

• Cecil Rhodes - was the founder of the southern African territory of Rhodesia, which was named after him in 1895.

• De Beers – dimond mining, diamond trading

• On 13 March 1888, Rhodes and Rudd launched De Beers Consolidated Mines after the amalgamation of a number of individual claims.

• David Livingstone – explored the African interior; wanted to end the slave trade; Victoria Falls, Zambezi River [malaria, dysentery and sleeping sickness]; the source of the Rile

• [!] South Africa is the world's largest producer of macadamia nuts.