English+speaking+countries

= = When we got an assignment to write about an English speaking country I knew at once which country I wanted to write about: This September I got to know some great South African people. They told me some things about their country, and this task was a great opportunity to learn more about it. =** Republic of South Africa **= (Official name) South Africa is the country located on the southernmost tip of the African continent. It borders to Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, it also surrounds the country Lesotho. South Africa is considered to be one of the most developed countries in Africa, both economically and technologically. It is also one of the most influential countries in Africa when it comes to politics. In spite of this there are lot of internal disagreements, especially between different ethnic groups. Most people have heard about the apartheid state, which was South Africa’s official racial politics through almost 50 years This I will come back to.

Here is a small video I made about South Africa, hope it makes you want to know more:

media type="youtube" key="l8kwqtAjW1g" height="344" width="425"

Moving on:
South Africa is the only country in the world that has three capitals. Cape town is legislative capital, and is where the parliament lies, and the laws are made. Pretoria is the executive capital; South Africa’s government has theire home her. Bloemfontein is judicial capital, and has the supreme court.

But the largest city in South Africa is on the other hand Johannesburg, which economically is the most important. South Africa is the world’s largest exporter of gold, and it is an important trade, even though it never benefited the poor. Johannesburg is a trading centre for gold and diamonds, and that is the reason the city has grown into one of the largest in Africa.



Language:
South Africa has 11 official languages: English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, Ndebele, South-Sotho, North Sotho, Tsonga, Tswana and Venda. English and Afrikaans where the two official languages approved by the apartheid state. They are also the only two that are indo-European languages. Afrikaans is much like Dutch, and came to Africa with Dutch settlements, and has developed into a separate language The Afrikaans grammars are simpler than the Dutch, it also has a lot of words from English, French, Malai, and other African languages. The rest of the languages are African “Bantu” languages. (“Bantu” was the Europeans´ word for the black African people.) The administrative language is mostly English. But the other languages are also used depending on the relation and county. Most people learn one mother tongue in addition to English, and this is why we can define South Africa as an English speaking country. The biggest languages outside English are Zulu, Xhosa, and Afrikaans.

Demography
South Africa has 48 millions inhabitants, of diverse cultures, languages ethnicity, and religion. About 79% of these consider themselves to be “Black Africans”, 9% white, 8% coloured, and 2,5% Asian. The majority of the black population are Xhosa and Zulu. This is ethnic groups that are unique to South Africa. Many of the other groups are also found in neighbour countries. Parts of the white population are descendants from Dutch, French, Belgian, and German immigrants. These where called //bores// which means //farmer// in Dutch. A big part of these have Afrikaans as their mother tongue. Big parts of the couloured population also speak Afrikaans. Many of these where slaves that the Dutch settlements took from Madagascar and Indonesia that mixed with the other people in South Africa. The other part of the white population descends from England a  nd is English speaking.

History
South Africa has an incredibly interesting history, which is known all over the world. There are found bones of homo – sapiens that are dated 100 000 years BC. But it is not that part of South Africa’s history that is interesting in this project. South Africa’s modern history started in 1652 when the Dutch east India company came to Cape of good hope, And founded a station for travellers going to European colonies like India and other asian countries. The supplying station expanded into a colony with Dutch, French, German, and Belgian immigrants, and later it came to be the city we now know as Cape Town. There also came a lot of Englishmen, to the colony, and in 1899 a war broke loose between the Englishmen and the bores.. The bores fought hard but had to give up against the Englishmen’s superior military power. And that is how South Africa became a part of the British Empire. The colony went in and out of British and Dutch hands ever since the British came to South Africa. In 1910 South Africa was independent, but was still a part of the British Empire. The British monarch was the topmost leader.

Apartheid
After the Second World War the differences grew between the white minority and the black population and in 1948 the government enforced the racial segregation that lasted for almost 50 years. “Apartheid” is Afrikaans and means separation. Though the Europeans always had looked at the African people as less worth it was during the apartheid there actually where laws about it. During the Apartheid the right to vote was reserved for white people. Black people where discriminated in order of where to live, where to work, where to sit on the bus, and what schools to go to. Black people couldn’t even take a swim on a public beach. Ethnicity decided what peoples´ rights should be. The white people had all the power, and coloured people didn’t have any rights.

From the 1980s the apartheid regime began to weaken. There was a lot of dislike towards the regime, both among the people living in South Africa, and in other countries. Also the Norwegian government and volunteering Norwegian organisations were en  gaged in the battle against apartheid. Many countries boycotted South Africa, and demonstrated against Apartheid. South Africa was also shut out of the Olympics from 1960. The political party ANC (African National Congress) were v  ery active in the battle against Apartheid. Albert Lutuli, Desmond Tutu, Frederik Willem de Klerk, and Nelson Mandela all got the Nobel peace price for their work against apartheid. Nelson Mandela was in jail for 27 years, much of the time on the famous Robben Island together with several other political prisoners. He got the peace price in 1993, and in 1994 he became South Africa’s first black president. The Apartheid was one of the last countries with laws that discriminated that big part of the population. And they are world famous for the peaceful solution that made the end of apartheid. But still the economical differences between white and black are very visible in South Africa. And many old people are still bitter because of the injustice they where exposed to.

=== How did British colonization   a  ffect South Africa, and what similarities are still visible today? === South Africa and Great Britain are two very different countries when you look straight at it. One thing is that they are on two different sides of the world. But in the foundations, they are like night and day, especially because the traditions of the native people are completely different. When the British came to South Africa people lived in villages, and were living very primitively compared to the Europeans, they where farmers, and hunters with simple weapons.

At the same time in Britain the Industrial revolution was at full speed and their writers were world famous. Their explorers had been to just about every corner in the world, and their military power was superior. One can ask oneself how these countries would have looked if it had not been for the British and the European colonization. The British did not only leave their language. They left religion, culture and education systems. Today there is 10-15% illiteracy in South Africa, while in some African countries it is over 50%. You can say that the British contributed to build a modern society. But because of all this they also held themselves to be “better” than the uneducated African people. And this might have been a good foundation for the apartheid. So the colonization was good and bad.

The most visible similarity outside the language is probably the education system, and that is not only because they wear very similar school uniforms. Before the colonization it only existed oral education. This education contained cultural, religious and social skills. The British brought with them the traditional European education system. And today it is very similar to the British, with 13 grades. 1-7 is primary school, and 8-12 is High School. (Grade 0 is more like kinder garden.) The difference is that the British schools have a considerably larger budget.

When it comes to economy these are two very different countries. In Great Britain unemployment is only 5%. While in South Africa it is over 25%. South Africa has a GNP that is 255,0 billion US$, while Great Britain’s GNP is 2.345,0 billion US$. That is over 2.000 billions in difference. Even if Great Britain’s´ population is a little bigger it is still a huge difference. South Africa is a country with a growing economy. They recently opened a bourse and no longer deliver all their raw materials to industrial countries like Great Britain. The South African industry is growing. South Africa is a country that is very rich in resources and supplied Great Britain with big resources very cheaply. That is why the British government would not let go of South Africa in spite of the Apartheid.

In the end these are two countries that have been depending on each other through good and bad. I think that South Africa has come a long way, even after 50 years of Apartheid. I think it is an experience they and everyone else should try to learn something from. So that not everyone has to learn it the hard way like the South Africans did.



Sources of information: "Land i Afrika" - Sigrun Riedel Lundstol- -faktum orfeus forlangen AS.

http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Det_forente_kongerike_Storbritannia_og_Nord-Irland http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sør_Afrika http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_South_Africa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_mandela http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapp_det_gode_håp