Country of the Week.
Since they just had national elections this past week, I think South Africa will be a great CotW. A variety of indigenous tribes lived in the area of South Africa when Europeans discovered it in the 1400s, including the Mapungubwe, and the Khoisan. Portuguese sailors Batholemeu Dias and Vasco de Gama sailed around it about 1487. Some sailors surveyed the coast, and some set up trade with the natives, but the land was not subject to any permanent settlements until the Dutch came in and set up a "refreshment station" represented by the Dutch East India Company in 1652.

The Dutch settlers ended up having many confrontations with the Khoikhoi over the land about 20 years after that. By the mid 1700s all their land was taken and they were absorbed into the Dutch world as indentured workers. Copper is first discovered by the Dutch in 1760. After that the Dutch continue to expand and run into the AmaXhosa people, and begin a series of wars with them as well.

The British start to settle at the Cape in 1807 and eventually drive the Dutch in to the mainland. In the interior, what had been a number of scattered tribes, united in many cases only by language, started to amalgamate into larger kingdoms, often very brutally, the largest of them being the Zulu under the leader Shaka. Even after his death and the re-organization of tribes, the result was larger communities of people and the older, smaller chief led clans were gone.

One reason for the downfall of the Zulus was the Battle of Blood River, where 464 Boers, in 1838, defeated over 10,000 Zulus, which the Boers commemorated annually after that as a sign from God. Another battle, later in the 1800s between the British and the Zulus along the Natal coast, east of the Cape resulted in the same, although it was a particularly difficult battle for the British, who lost thousands of men.
What resulted was that there were two British colonies, the Cape and Natal, and two Boer colonies: Orange free state and the Transvaal. For a while the Brits were fine with this, as they were not interested in anything that far into the interior. But once they realized the mineral deposits located in the Transvaal, they made efforts to bring that land under the crown. This led to the Boer war. Imagine if you will 45,000 plain clothed Boer militia vs. 450,000 British troops. The Boers fought hard but couldn't accomplish what the Americans did over 100 years earlier. All of South Africa became a British colony in 1900.

About this time is when the Apartheid state came into being. The bulk of laws to this effect were enacted in 1910, although it wasn't called apartheid until after WWII. Soon after 1910 the blacks formed the African National Congress, although it was very unorganized. In the 1970s the ANC became militant, causing South Africa to become an almost militant state until the late 1980s, when President de Klerk declared that Apartheid had been a failure. A major reason for this backing off of the policies of Apartheid was that the economy had become such a mess because of years of international embargoes due to the Apartheid issue.

You all know the rest of what happened. De Klerk unbanned the ANC and Nelson Mandela was elected president. The AmaXhosa (Xhosa) are represented by the ANC, but the Zulu were represented by the Inkatha Freedom party, which was quite a bit more violent in reaction to Apartheid policy. In 1999, Mandela's vice president, Thabo Mbeki was elected president.

The ANC completely captured the vote again this week, but there are some changes brewing. The ANC is under some flak for the sad state of South Africa, which is still partially due to the after affect of sanctions in the 80s. But they are also not dealing (or even recognizing) a pretty bad Aids problem there.

Analysts say it's only a matter of time before people lose their devotion to the ANC for freeing them from Apartheid and expects it to generate results. In the mean time the old africaans National party is losing ground, but the predominately white Democratic Alliance is gaining ground. The papers call it that, but I have also heard of an African Christian Democratic Party, and am not sure if this is the same thing or not. The ACD party is also gaining ground.

The Government of SA is pretty similar to most democratic nations. There is a president (no “prime minister”), a judicial system and a congress consisting of two houses, the National assembly who are elected by popular vote, and the National Council of Provinces who are elected by the provincial legislatures. Note that in the course of my CotWs that many democracies work this way, as did the US before the 20th century. The Senate was not popularly elected.
Another interesting tidbit, for those who are unaware, is that the different branches of government are not in one place. The President resides in Pretoria, near Johannesberg, the legislature resides in Cape Town and the Judicial branch operates in Bloemfontein.