Information about South Africa

This document is a map, the one of South Africa. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean in the south east and the Atlantic Ocean in the south west. It is composed of ...
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Information about South Africa This document is a map, the one of South Africa. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean in the south east and the Atlantic Ocean in the south west. It is composed of nine states. There is something special about South Africa since there is another country inside it. Its name is Lesotho. South Africa shares frontiers/borders with Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique in the north. In the south west of South Africa, there is Western Cape. In the north of Western Cape, there is Northern Cape, its state capital is Kimberley. As for the legend of the map, blue stands for the oceans and seas and black represents the states. There are about 55.6 (fifty-five point six) million inhabitants in South Africa, more exactly 55, 600, 000 (fifty-five million six hundred thousand). South Africa’s area is about 1, 219, 912 (one million two hundred and nineteen thousand nine hundred and twelve) square kilometres. Its capital cities are :

• Pretoria (executive), • Cape Town (legislative) also known as the Mother City because many tourists go there. • and Bloemfontain (judicial). Nonetheless its largest city is Johannesburg with about 1 million inhabitants.

The first settlers were Dutch, the navigator's name was Jan Van Riebeeck. He was asked to establish a refreshment station for passing ships to India. He landed there on April 6 th 1652. But in 1806, the Dutch definitely left South Africa and it became part of the British Commonwealth. South Africa got independent from the Commonwealth on May, 31 st (the thirty-first) 1961 (nineteen sixty-one) because they did not want to apply Apartheid, derived from Apart-hood, meaning « the state of being apart ». It was a system of racial segregation. It started under the Dutch rule but became an official policy from 1948. It was progressively stopped between 1990 and 1993 but officially ceased on April 27 th 1994 for the first non-racial democratic elections. The president is Jacob Zuma. South Africa’s currency is the Rand (ZAR = Zuid-Afrikaanse Rand).

The languages spoken in South Africa and mentioned in the Constitution are the Khoi, Nama and San languages, sign language, Arabic, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Portuguese, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu. There are also a few indigenous creoles and pidgins. Though English is the language of media, business and understood in the whole country, it is recognized to be only the fifth mother language.