Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"South Africa is one of the most strategic places on Earth, the gateway from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, a key source of provisions on the route to Asia’s riches. The Dutch East India Company founded Cape Town as early as 1652, and the Hollanders and their descendants, known as Boers, have been a part of the South African cultural mosaic ever since. The British took over about 150 years later, and both colonial powers vied for control. The British came to dominate the Cape, while the Boers trekked into the South African interior and, on the high plateau they called the highveld, founded their own republics. A war ensued, but by 1910 the Boers and the British had negotiated a power-sharing arrangement, although the Boers eventually achieved dominance that lasted from 1948 to 1994. . . . For more than 40 years, between about 1950 and the mid- 1990s, multicultural South Africa was in the grip of the world’s most notorious racist policy, Apartheid. . . . By the late 1980s, South Africa seemed headed for a violent revolution, but disaster was averted by a most unexpected turn of events." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 32]