South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of Africa. It has had a rich colonial history since the seventeenth century. In 1652 the Dutch arrived who founded a refreshment post on the Cape. After a century and a half of Dutch colonization, the Cape Colony was taken over by the United Kingdom. As a result, a large number of Dutch-speaking settlers, known as Boers, migrated inland with the Great Trek and founded several Boer states, of which the South African Republic and the Orange Free State were ultimately the most important. These republics were conquered by the British in 1902 in the Second Boer War and united together with the Cape Colony and Natal in 1910 to form South Africa. In the 20th century, South Africa was overshadowed by apartheid, a system of racial segregation that systematically disadvantaged the non-white population. In 1990, apartheid was abolished and in 1994 Nelson Mandela was elected South Africa's first black president. It is a country with diverse population groups and eleven official languages, including Afrikaans, which is related to Dutch. The country is a parliamentary republic with three capitals and is one of the most developed countries in the continent, but poverty and crime rates remain high.
