THE LAND

Situated at the southern tip of Africa, South Africa contains a diversity of climatic regions that contribute to its renowned scenic beauty. Cape Town, at 35o south latitutde, is about the same distance from the equator as Sydney, Australia, or as Los Angeles is in the Northern Hemisphere, while Durban on the east coast approximates to Brisbane, Australia or New Orleans in the US. On the west coast the cold Atlantic current produces arid scrubland conditions, changing to summer rainfall highveld grassland as one approaches the central plateau of the country. A continuous mountain range runs down the east coast, which is warmed by the Indian Ocean producing a sub-tropical climate in the Natal region. The far-north of the country has savannah-type vegetation, while the Cape has a winter rainfall Mediterranean climate.There are no commercially navigable rivers or lakes in South Africa, and many rivers the in dry western half of the country flow only during the rainy summer seasons.The Republic of South Africa is 1 228 376 km2 in extent [including the "independent" national states of Transkei (41 000 km2), Bophuthatswana (44 000 km2), Venda (7 176 km2), and Ciskei (9 000 km2)]. This makes South Africa bigger than Holland, Belgium, Italy, France and Germany combined. It is further divided into four provinces, the Cape, Transvaal, Orange Free State, and Natal.

South Africa has a coastline of 2 954 km, with few natural harbours other than those at Richards Bay, Durban, East London, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town and Saldanha Bay.

THE CLIMATE

South Africa enjoys a temperate climate. While the south-western Cape has a winter rainfall and a narrow strip along the south Cape coast has its rainfall spread almost uniformly throughout the year, for the rest, 80 percent of the rain falls during the summer months, October to March, much of it in thunderstorms, and often with hail. Summers are generally warm to hot and although winters are normally dry and mild, occasional spells of intense cold with frost and snow on the high mountains can occur in the interior.

Mean annual rainfall decreases sharply with progress from east to west across the subcontinent. In the lower rainfall areas, rainfall is also more erratic in character. Only about one-fifth of the country enjoys average rainfall in excess of 760 mm. Some of the high mountains of the eastern escarpment and south-west Cape have annual rainfalls upwards of 2 000 mm, but along the west coast the annual average drops to 50 mm.

WATER RESOURCES

South Africa is subject to pseudo-cyclical drough phases in some parts of the country, while other areas are naturally arid. For these reasons

South Africa has about 450 large dams (ie over 15 m in height) and a range of schemes for surface and underground water extraction and
storage. Thus on the largest rivber in South Africa, the Orange River flowing approximately 1 860 km in a westerly direction to the Atlantic Ocean, there are two large storage dams (Hendrik Verwoerd and PK le Roux), with hydro-electric power stations and a network of canals and tunnels to convey the water to other areas. Other schems of significance are the Tugela-Vaal scheme, on the Tugela River in Natal to divert water to the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging (PWV) area, the Usutu/Vaal scheme to supply water to the eastern Transvaal, the Riviersonderend-Berg River scheme in the western Cape, and the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, still under way, to provide water to the PWV area by 1995.

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

South Africa’s development of environmental commitment can be traced through events such as the acceptance of the World Conservation Strategy, Green Heritage Year, the first Environment Conservation Act and other environmental milestones.

The 1993 white paper on environmental policy is in agreement with international trends and subscribes to the principle of sustainable
development. Major attention is envisaged for matters such as the human environment and urbanisation, land use planning and rehabilitation of degraded areas, conservation of biodiversity, pollution control and environmental economics.

Such guidelines will be tested against financial feasibility and devolution of collective responsibility.

THE PEOPLE

The area now known as South Africa was originally populated by San hunter-gatherers. About 2 000 years ago some of these communities
turned to pastoralism by acquiring livestock from Bantu-speaking peoples migrating southwards. About 1 500 years ago Bantu-speakers were living in the area south of the Limpopo River.

The first white settlers arrived at the Cape in 1652. Under Dutch rule in the decades that followed they gradually spread into the interior as
stock-farmers. The Dutch-speaking settlers, living in great isolation, developed over time their own vernacular, Afrikaans, and a form of social segregation began to develop between themselves and the indigenous black inhabitants they encountered in the interior: first the Khoisan hunter-gatherers and herders, later the Bantu-speaking groups, the Nguni (Xhosa, Zulu, Swazi, Ndebele), Sotho (North, South and Tswana), Venda, Lemba and Shangaan-Tsonga. These tribes, together with the predominantly mixed-race “coloured” people of the Cape, and Indian traders and the indentured Indian labourers who arrived to work on the sugar cane plantations on the east coast (Natal) in the late 1800s, constitute South Africa’s black population.

Under British rule from the early 1800s large number of English settlers began to arrive, stimulating a rising white Afrikaner sense of identity.
These sentiments coalesced around the Anglo-Boer war between Britain and the Afrikaner republics which ended with British victory in 1902. In turn this led to the unification of the four colonies (Cape, Natal, Orange Free State and Transvaal) into one independent country in 1910. In 1960 South Africa became a Republic and left the Commonwealth.

Key developments in South Africa’s history were the discovery of diamonds in 1867 and of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886. Not only did this bring a rush of new immigrants, and created Johannesburg as the economic heartland of the country, but it steadily transformed the economy from a predominantly rural pastoral one into a modernizing, industrializing economy by the 1950s. This stimulated rapid urbanization of both black and white, with profound political consequences.

In the clash between Afrikaner and black nationalists that developed in South Africa, most Afrikaners united in the National Party after 1948 to
protect their language, culture and heritage from the black majority and to assert their economic and political independence from British
domination. Building on existing segregational policies they designed a system of apartheid, of complete territorial, social and political
segregation for black and white. Over time, however, black opposition and the growing economic interdependence of black and white in a
modernising, urbanising economy made this system of absolute separate development increasingly unworkable.

The result, particularly since the 1970s, has been an accelerating move away from apartheid, fuelled by socio-economic and demographic realities, towards some sort of power sharing combined with the protection of minority rights. The government has formally abandoned the apartheid ideology, and introduced a wide range of reforms. Core apartheid legislation has been abolished, black political parties operate freely and preparations for a negotiated new constitution are under way. This political transformation is underscored by changes in the economy over the past decade. The modernising economy demands a skilled, educated and stable workforce and a growing black consumer market. In the latter respect, average black incomes have risen dramatically since 1970, the black informal sector is booming, and black spending power is already over half of the total and rising.

The most densely populated parts of South Africa are the four major industrial areas, the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging (PWV) area, the Durban-Pinetown-Pietermaritzburg area, the south-western Cape, and the Port Elizabeth-Uitenhage area. More than a third of the country’s total population lives in these four regions, accounting for 80 percent of the total urban population, although the four areas together constitute only four percent of the country’s total area.