South Africa Political Map

Bantu-speaking groups began settling into what is now northeastern South Africa about 500 A.D., displacing Khoisan-speaking groups to the southwest. Dutch traders landed at the southern tip of present-day South Africa in 1652 and established a trade point on the spice route between the Netherlands and the Far East, founding the city of Cape Town. After the British seized the Cape of Good Hope area in 1806, many settlers of Dutch descent, known then as "Boers", or farmers, but later called Afrikaners, trekked north to found their own republics, Transvaal and Orange Free State. In the 1820s, several decades of wars began as the Zulus expanded their territory, moving out of what is today southeastern South Africa and clashing with other indigenous peoples and the growing European settlements. The discovery of diamonds (1867) and gold (1886) spurred mass immigration, predominantly from Europe.

Today, South Africa is a parliamentary republic. Pretoria is administrative capital, Cape Town is legislative capital and Bloemfontein is the judicial capital. The country is politically divided into nine provinces; Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Northern Cape, North West and Western Cape.