| Republic of South Africa | |
|---|---|
 Flag
 Coat of arms
| |
 | |
| Largest city | Johannesburg |
| Official languages | Afrikaans English Ndebele Sepedi Sesotho Setswana Swazi Tshivenda Xhosa Xitsonga Zulu |
| Dominant mode of production | Capitalism |
| Area | |
• Total | 1,221,037 km² |
| Population | |
• 2021 estimate | 60,142,978 |
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost country in Africa. The richest 1% of the population controls more than 40% of the wealth.[1]
History
British colonization
At the 1885 Berlin Conference, European powers divided and colonized Africa. The South African government supported Rhodesia's racist government and invaded Angola, Mozambique, and Namibia.[2]
Apartheid era
Until 1994, South Africa was segregated under the Apartheid system. Many Black Africans were confined to puppet states called Bantustans that were nominally independent. Bantustans made up 13% of the country's area and were on poor land far from urban areas. Africans who left the Bantustans without identification documents could be arrested and deported to the nearest Bantustan. In 1960, white supremacist forces killed people protesting against this system in the Sharpeville massacre.[3]
The CIA suppressed the anti-apartheid movement from the 1960s to 1980s and provided information about ANC members and activities. In 1981, they sent the South African military into Mozambique to assassinate ANC members in exile. The CIA was responsible for the arrest of Nelson Mandela and violated a UN policy by sending weapons to South Africa.[4]
In the 1980s, the United States provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to South African media to promote Western bourgeois ideals and counter Marxism.[5]
Racial inequality
White settlers own over 70% of South Africa's farmland despite only being 8% of the population,[6] whereas Africans only own 4% of the farmland.[1] The average income for settlers is five times as high as for Black Africans.[3]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "This Land Is the Land of Our Ancestors" (2022-06-22). Tricontinental. Archived from the original on 2022-09-05. Retrieved 2022-11-12.
- ↑ "South Africa and the continental struggle for socialism" (2014-01-26). Archived from the original on 2019-07-14. Retrieved 2022-07-02.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lewis Barnes (2018-05-05). "South Africa: Major developments in the long struggle for land reform" Liberation News. Archived from the original on 2019-07-14. Retrieved 2022-07-02.
- ↑ William Blum (2002). Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower: 'A Concise History of United States Global Interventions, 1945 to the Present' (pp. 122–123). [PDF] Zed Books Ltd. ISBN 9781842772201 [LG]
- ↑ Ajit Singh, Roscoe Palm (2022-08-08). "Manufacturing consent: How the United States has penetrated South African media" Monthly Review. Archived from the original on 2022-08-08. Retrieved 2022-08-09.
- ↑ Francis Njubi Nesbitt (2018-08-27). "In South Africa, Trump Embraces a Global Neo-Nazi Myth" MintPress News. Retrieved 2022-07-02.