South Africa

The country where a settler minority built the most systematic racial state of the twentieth century, and then negotiated its way out. Dutch settlement began at the Cape in 1652, and the descendants of those settlers trekked inland in the 1830s to escape British rule, founding republics on land taken from African polities. Diamonds at Kimberley in 1867 and gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 transformed everything: the mines needed cheap labour in vast quantities, and the migrant contracts, single-sex compounds, pass laws and colour bar built to supply it became the template for the whole society. Britain took the republics in the war of 1899 to 1902, inventing the concentration camp to do it, and the Union of 1910 united white South Africa while excluding almost everyone else. The National Party's victory in 1948 systematised the existing order as apartheid, with population registration, forced removals, bantustans stripping citizenship, and the Sharpeville and Soweto killings. The ANC was banned for thirty years and Nelson Mandela imprisoned for twenty-seven. Negotiations from 1990 produced universal elections in April 1994 and a constitution among the most admired anywhere. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission traded amnesty for testimony. Inequality remains among the highest measured. There are eleven official languages and three capitals. Pretoria is the executive capital, Cape Town the legislative and Bloemfontein the judicial. The country has about sixty-three million people. Table Mountain, the Cradle of Humankind and Robben Island are among its World Heritage sites. It is the only country to have built nuclear weapons and then dismantled them voluntarily. Platinum and gold remain major exports.

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