"!ke e: |xarra ǁke (|Xam) ("Unity in diversity") | |||||||
| Anthem | "God Save the Queen" | ||||||
| Capital (and largest city) |
Cape Town | ||||||
| Other cities | Pretoria, Durban, Johannesburg, many others | ||||||
| Language | Engish (national) Local languages (regional) | ||||||
| Religion main |
Christianity | ||||||
| others | Islam, irreligion, Hinduism, others | ||||||
| Ethnic Groups main |
Bantu | ||||||
| others | Afrikaans, Khoisan, Indian, many others | ||||||
| Demonym | South African | ||||||
| Government | Federal parliamentary monarchy | ||||||
| Legislature | National Assembly | ||||||
| King | Victoria II | ||||||
| royal house: | Windsor | ||||||
| Prime Minister | Cyril Lekota | ||||||
| Population | 63,450,000 people | ||||||
| Currency | Imperial Pound Sterling (GBP) | ||||||
| Time Zone | UTC+2 | ||||||
| summer | yes | ||||||
| Internet TLD | .sa | ||||||
| Organizations | UN, IF | ||||||
The South African Union (usually abbreviated as South Africa) is a federal parliamentary monarchy, part of the Imperial Federation, located in the southern tip of the African continent. Surrounded by the Lusophone countries of Angola, Matebia, Pintonia and Mozambique, the South African Union is the second largest country in the African continent (after the East African Federation) and the fifth most developed in the continent (after the Mascarene Federation, Egypt, Liberia, and Spain-in-exile).
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 United Kingdom 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 United States. 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 Rose-coloured Treaty. 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 Great War 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 Ireland) convincing most South Africans of their loyalty to the British Empire.
The 1924 election brought political shock waves to the South African Union, where the South African Labour Party, led by Frederic Creswell, won 40 seats (up 32 from the previous local elections), and formed an alliance with the Afrikaner-nationalist National Party to enter government, unseating the local English and high-class Afrikaner party that had ruled South Africa for the first 20 years of its history.
Government and Politics[]
Administrative Divisions[]
Provinces and neighbors of the South African Union.
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 decentralised state of 21 autonomous Provinces, each mostly oriented around ethnic identity (with the exception of Cape Province, nominally non-ethnic 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.
Politics[]
The South African Union is a federal bicameral parliamentary monarchy, where supreme government authority is vested on the South African Parliament, which is composed by two different houses:
- The upper house, the Senate of South Africa, is composed of 93 representatives elected by the different States in different ways (with the most common being open party-list proportional representation), with Senators representing every State, with representative allocation given by the South African Constitution (in somewhat, but not entirely, proportion to the population of States):
- The Cape has 20 seats, the most out of any State:
- KwaXhosa, KwaZulu, Lesotho, eSwatini, Botswana, the Federation of Orange and Stellaland, and the Transvaal have 5 seats each,
- Lüderlitz, Namaqualand, Matabeleland, the Gauteng, Southwest Africa, Victoria and Walvis Bay have 4 seats each,
- Kaokoland and Hereroland have 3 seats each,
- and the local autonomies of Xoonland, Bwelland, Kungland, and Haiǁoma have 1 representative each.
- The lower house, the People's House (most commonly known by its Afrikaans name, the Volksraad), is composed of 429 representatives, electd by open-list proportional representation, without a minimum threshold for entry (as per the Dutch system), allowing for a very high representation of parties.
South Africa has a multiparty system, characterised by marked pillarisation where most ethnic (or at least racial) groups have their own parties across different ideological spectra, which also includes individual independent newspapers, trade unions (although all trade unions are represented in the national COSATU Trade Union, which also has independent representatives in the Volksraad), and even universities and youth clubs. The pillarised sequence within the South African Union is as follows:
- Black citizens have the most diversity within South African pillarisation, because of their own ethnic and social divisions that further divide the Black South African pillar system. That being said, Pan-Africanism sweeping local politics throughout the 1960s managed the unification of all African political parties within three major political alliances, which survive to this day, although (with the exception of the SAANC), with only a nominal value, with party loyalty or discipline being practically nonexistent:
- The left-wing is mostly assumed, throughout all African ethnicities, by the South African African National Congress (SAANC), a left-wing federation of political parties across all regions within the South African Union. It is internationally recognised as the paramount party of the left in South Africa, and is one of two South African member parties of the Workers' International (together with the mostly white Labour). The ANC managed to unify left-wing parties within their "Rainbow Coalition" and allowed for the continued existence of the party as South Africa's largest political party by far, although in recent years it has suffered losses by other parties that do not follow the strict pillar system, or other more radically left-wing parties:
- The Communist Party of South Africa, formerly an integral part of the SAANC (and, until the 1980 elections, its largest member party), withdrew in 2008 over perceived ideological triangulation by part of an ANC. While officially nonracial, the CPSA has historically been seen as the party of urban and educated Africans, and voter polls indicate up to 90% of its electorate is black;
- The Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania, founded in 1972 after the SAANC and the CPSA officially abandoned Marxian thought in favour of democratic socialism, has managed to appeal strongly to the poor urban black youth, and managed to enter the Volksraad for the second time since its creation.
- The Socialist-Humanist African Kingdom Alliance (more often known as SHAKA) is a populist radical left-wing party operating in Zululand, which has taken as much as 30% of all Zulu voters from the SAANC,
- The Khoisan Federation, formerly known as the Bushmen Socialist Party, is the paramount political organisation in Khoisan Autonomies. Formerly a part of the SAANC, they officially split after the party proposed centralising reservation funding, which would have effectively eliminated their autonomy. The KF has little power in the Volksraad (with their only sizable representation belonging to the Griqua-aligned Korana Party), but have an oversized representation in the Senate due to the disproportionate amount of seats given to autonomies, with a total of five senators.
- The centre is more divided, with centrist Africans often voting for parties outside the pillar. However, large portions of the left-wing black vote for the Liberal People's Alliance, of which the largest representative is the Cape-centred Democratic Alliance, which has a historical rivalry with the second largest political party of the LPA, the Botswana Liberal Party. Other relevant political parties are the African National Congress of Zululand, a breakaway from the SAANC that switched to the LPA in the 1960s, as well as the Centre Party of Victoria.
- The right-wing is comprised of the unofficial but closely-knit alliance of the Kings' Parties in most African states (especially named as such in states that retain a ceremonial monarch, for obvious reasons). Amongst these are the Crown Freedom Party in KwaZulu, the All-Basotho People's Party in Lesotho, the eSwatini Congress and the Matabele Party in Matabeleland.
- Coloured citizens are far more culturally homogeneous, leading to a lesser diversity of parties within this pillar, with the only internal division occurring between Coloured people and the Griqua:
- The left is mostly comprised by the ancient African People's Organisation (APO), as well as the (much weaker) Griqua National Congress (GNC) for Griquas (most Griquas generally vote for the Khoisan Federation instead), with close ties to the British Social Democrats and the Dutch Labour Party, respectively;
- The centre is managed by the dominant Federal Party and the smaller Griqua Labour Party,
- The right is mostly comprised of the New National Party, which has extremely close ties to the mostly white National Party.
- Indians (and Asians in general) are banded within two general, mostly non-ideological parties, depending mostly on geographical location rather than ideology: those living near the city of Durban mostly vote for the Natalia Autonomy Party (which seeks to split the Durban coast from the kingdom of KwaZulu into a twenty-second state), while those living in the rest of South Africa generally vote for the Minority Party.
- Whites are mostly divided based on their native language, although this often crosses over into ideology: English-speakers are almost universally centrist, while Afrikaners-speakers belong to the left and right of the political spectrum. White political parties are as following:
- The Labour Party (L/PvdA), the other member of the Workers' International, is a white (though officially non-denominational) left-wing party, which appeals to both Afrikaners and English-speakers (though is far more popular amongst the first): a secondary, smaller white party, the People's Labour Party, is socially conservative.
- The Social Democratic Party of Namibia (SPDN) is a smaller, breakaway party from Labour, and the chief party of German-speakers in South Africa.
- The centre is represented by the almost universally English-speaking Democratic People's Alliance, while the Liberal Party of Stellaland and the African Freethinkers' League occupy the (smaller) Afrikaner-centrist space:
- The right is almost exclusively represented by the National Party of South Africa, as well as the far-right Freedom Front.
- The Free Agrarian League is a right-wing, agrarian party mostly catering to the interests of Afrikaner landowners.
- Some parties have decided, with varying degrees of success, to eschew the traditional pillars, and instead appeal to all races. Most of these parties are generally appealing to the urban youth of the country, and are focused either on single-issues or on new political parties. They also belong almost exclusively to the centre-left. They are as follows:
- The largest non-denominational party in South Africa is the united list, the Unity in Diversity, created in 2009 to unify most non-racial parties. Achieving relatively high success, UiD has become an important actor in the South African Parliament. Its member parties are:
- The Ubuntu Humanist Party, composed of a union of Labour, SAANC and APO representatives that sought to unify all three parties into a single centre-left juggernaut. Ideological differences and racial tensions prevented the three parties from merging, but the UiD was born as a polity of the centre-left, achieving mixed results. The party is the oldest, and until recently the largest, party to eschew the racial division system.
- The Greens of South Africa, whose motto is "not black, not white - only green", have also formed as a non-denominational party, stating that protection of the environment is more important than racial disputes. The Greens are far to the left of the FLP in social issues, but near the centre in economic issues, appealing mostly to university students and wealthy whites.
- The Pirates of South Africa have recently formed after electoral success of Parties in Polynesia, and have achieved an electoral agreement with UiD to form part of its lists in the 2019 elections. As the Oceanic Pirates, they follow the five-point Honolulu Programme.
- The Rainbow Coalition, named after the alliance of all minority parties under the banner of the SAANC in the 1960s before its division, is a mostly non-ideological alliance of political parties, destined to end racial discrimination:
- The South Africa Feminist League is a centre-left feminist party,
- The Organisation of Lesbians and Gays Against Opression, or OLGA, is the smallest part of UiD, a left-wing pro-LGBT rights organisation.
- Although extremely similar, and both personally and ideologically close to Unity in Diversity, the left-wing Freethinking Labour' Party' decided not to join the united list in 2009 or 2017.
- Neither did the South African Constitutional Democrats, a social liberal political alliance mostly based around the city of Walvis Bay.
- The Christian Democrats of South Africa are a non-denominational centrist organisation mostly composed of church influences. Because of South Africa's extreme religious diversity, no strong ideological bias has formed (and the Christian Democrats have stated that they even accept Muslim, Hindu and Jewish members, as long as they believe in the tenets of religious democracy - something that has triggered an impending vote for a change of name), and they are a centrist group mostly focused on religious freedom, mild social conservatism and a degree of dirigisme.
- As said before, the Congress of South African Trade Unions - COSATU also participates independently in parliamentary elections, where unionised workers (especially teachers and diamond mine workers) provide an essential source of strength. COSATU is usually a fairly left-wing party, dedicated to democratic socialism and syndicalism.