by
Austin S.

NATIONAL FLAG OF SOUTH AFRICA:

LOCATION:

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA

            The name of my country that I am going to inform you about is South Africa. The San people were very infamous in South Africa’s history. The San people were also known widely as the Dutch and they treated the indigenous people very poorly. They acted as though they were of more importance in the world than the people who already lived there. After occupying the Cape Colony in 1815, Great Britain took control of South Africa at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, bringing with them 5,000 settlers.

            Colonization hurt the indigenous people mainly because the German, British, and the Dutch all believed that they were superior to the South Africans. They treated them very poorly just because they were of a different race.

            South Africa won their independence when a war ended in 1902 that led to the gathering of the Union of South Africa in 1910. Two years later they created a congress. The country was still run by the white settlers and the indigenous people still had no rights. The main reason for these people not having rights was apartheid, or racial separation.

            This country entered World War II on the side of the Allies. Later they joined the United Nations in 1945, but Jan Christian Smuts, the one who brought the country into World War II, refused to sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Right now they are having a very tough election for a new president.

            If South Africa had never been colonized, they would be completely controlled by another country. I know this because the South Africans were defeated easily before when they were in different tribes.

Works Cited

Flag and map courtesy of Microsoft Clipart Gallery.

Infoplease. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107983.html

Lonely Planet. http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/south-africa/history

Stein, Conrad. Enchantment of the World: South Africa