South Africa Hotels

South Africa is located at the southern tip of Africa. It is bordered by Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho (which is completely surrounded by South Africa). It is a vast country with widely varying landscapes and has 11 official languages, as well as an equally diverse population.

South Africa has been home to the Khoisan and Bushmen people for thousands of years. Their rock art can still be found in many places throughout South Africa. Bantu tribes started expanding into Southern Africa around 2500 years ago and by around 500 AD the different cultural groups as we know them today had been established in the area.

The first permanent European settlement was built after the Dutch East India Company reached the Cape of Good Hope in April 1652. In the late 1700's the Boers slowly started expanding into the interior. In 1795 Britain took control of the Cape and in 1820 a large group of British Settlers arrived in the region. In 1835 large numbers of Boers started out on the Groot Trek into the interior after becoming dissatisfied with the British rule.

In the interior they established their own republics after a number of bloody conflicts with the local population. Two wars for control over the region were fought between the Boers and the British in 1880 and 1899. This was when the British contained the Boer population in the first modern concentration camps. The Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, consolidating the various Boer republics and British colonies. From this, the Republic of South Africa was formed in 1961. Non-Europeans were largely excluded in all these political changes and even with the creation of the Union were not given the right to vote. From 1948 additional apartheid laws were introduced to erode the right of the black population further. Since then, South Africa became almost synonymous with fascism, racism, and many other pejorative descriptions.