South African Union (In Frederick's Fields)

The South African Union (usually abbreviated as South Africa) is a federal parliamentary monarchy, part of the, located in the southern tip of the. Surrounded by the Lusophone countries of, , and , the South African Union is the second largest country in the African continent (after the ) and the fifth most developed in the continent (after the , , , and ).

Founded by Dutch colonists starting in the XVII century, then conquered by the United Kingdom during the Napoleonic Wars, the South African Union is a deeply diverse, multiethnic federation of different states: with representation from English-speaking whites and Coloured people (especially in the state of Cape, Southwest Africa and Walvis Bay), Dutch colonists known as afrikaners or boers (especially in the two Dutch-speaking states of Transvaal and the Federation of Orange and Stellaland) and many native States (of which many monarchies remain, especially in KwaZulu, eSwatini and Lesotho), both of Bantu and Khoisan origin.

Founded as a federation of colonies in 1910, then declared a State on equal standing with the in 1923, and finally joining the Imperial Federation in 1934, South Africa has a long tradition of democratic stability, but not such a long tradition of racial and ethnic equality (with the discrimination practises in the SAU only being fully removed by 1956). That being said, South Africa is not only an extremely stable multiethnic democracy but also a success story in the African subcontinent, with Blacks and Whites living in harmony in the country, and with a Human Development Index close to that of the. While somewhat overshadowed by the nearby East African Federation, far larger and more influential, the SAU still manages to hold large influence both over the African continent and within the Imperial Federation, and is a fundamental part of the international system.

History
The South African Union's modern history began with the Boer Wars, conflicts between the mostly Dutch-speaking Afrikaans (and Griqua) states and the encroaching authority of British colonialism within the region. Long conflicts over land ownership and British plans to unite all States in South Africa (as a counterweight to growing German colonialism in Namaqualand and the victorious Portuguese, which had managed to acquire what today is Matebia and Pintonia through the . While long and protracted, as well as extremely brutal, eventually the British gained the upper hand, having far larger sources of manpower and weaponry, and managed to annex the three independent Afrikaner states into Cape Colony, though the states retained autonomy within the new Union of South Africa: a federation of four colonies within the British Empire, with a degree of self-determination (limited, informally, to white people through a series of poll taxes).

The South African Union, at the time only grudgingly a part of the British Empire, often rebelled: rebellions by Afrikaner peasants were violently put down in 1912 and 1914, and only the outbreak of the allowed the third revolt in 1916 to reach the negotiating table, where British and Afrikaner representatives set out a group of policies looking for eventual independence and autonomy of Afrikaner states. South Africa's importance as a fundamental source of gold and other luxury metals, as well as its geographic position allowed for South Africa to be a fundamental upper hand with the UK, and after long negotiations and a period of expansion of these negotiations to other British colonies, South Africa was finally made a Commonwealth State equal in standing to the United Kingdom through the Imperial Parliament Act of 1923, generally (as in convincing most South Africans of their loyalty to the British Empire.

Administrative Divisions
The South African Union has undergone several territorial reforms throughout its history, changing from a federation of four states (the mostly British-influenced Cape of Good Hope and Natal provinces and the mostly Afrikaner Transvaal and the Orange-Stellaland Federation), to becoming a descentralised state of 20 autonomous Provinces, each mostly oriented around ethnic identity (with the exception of Cape Province, nominally nonethnic but actually mostly English-speaking). States vary widely in population - Cape, the largest province, has 14 million inhabitants, while the Khoisan autonomous provinces usually number less than 50,000.

While autonomy varies depending on the powers attributed to each Province by its own Provincial Statute (an equivalent to the State Constitutions of other federal nations), by and large South African provinces have relatively wide autonomy regarding cultural and linguistic policy, some migration policy (especially in Khoisan autonomous provinces), education and health, and the delivery of public services: while infrastructure, the economy, the judicial system and defense, amongst others, are concentrated with the national government, housed in Cape Town.