South Africa

The South African Border War, commonly referred to as the Angolan Bush War in South Africa, was a conflict that took place from 1966 to 1989 in... South-West Africa and Angola between South Africa and its allied forces on the one side and the Angolan government, South-West Africa People's Organisation , and their allies – mainly Cuba – on the other. It was closely intertwined with the Angolan Civil War and the Namibian War of Independence. The roots of the conflict can be traced back to World War I. In 1915 South Africa invaded and conquered the then German South-West Africa on behalf of the Allied Forces. After five years of South African military rule, the territory was granted to South Africa as a C-class mandate by the League of Nations in 1920. After World War II, the League of Nations dissolved and the South African government of Jan Smuts hoped to be able to take over the territory. They formally applied to the United Nations in 1946 for this, but their request was refused, because the indigenous people had not been adequately consulted.
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See also South African Border War. The Namibian War of Independence, also known as the South African Border War, which lasted from 1966 to 1988, was... a guerrilla war, which the nationalist South-West Africa People's Organization and others, fought against the apartheid government in South Africa. South Africa had administered what was then still known as South West Africa since it captured the German territory during World War I. In 1966 the United Nations General Assembly revoked South Africa's mandate to govern South-West African territory and declared that it was under direct UN administration. South Africa refused to recognize this resolution and continued to administer the territory de facto. On August 26, 1966, SWAPO guerilla forces launched an attack against the South African Defence Force at Omugulugwombashe. It was the first armed battle in the Namibian struggle for independence. In commemoration of the day, August 26 is a public holiday in Namibia. It is recognized by the United Nations as Namibia Day but Namibians refer to it as Heroes' Day.
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The attack on the Sui-ho Dam was the collective name for a large series of air attacks by United Nations Command air forces on thirteen hydroelectric... generating facilities that took place June 23 and June 24, 1952, during the Korean War. Primarily targeting the hydroelectric complex associated with the Sui-ho Dam in North Korea, the attacks were intended to apply political pressure at the stalled truce negotiations at Panmunjeom. The attacks were conducted jointly by fighters and fighter-bombers of the United States Air Force, United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, and South African Air Force, the first time in 21 months that the separate air arms had worked together on a massive scale. It was followed seventeen days later by another series of large-scale joint attacks on the capital city of Pyongyang. The attacks succeeded in permanently destroying 90% of the facilities struck and completely knocked out power in North Korea for two weeks, as well as reducing available power to northeast China by 23%. North Korea, however, built new facilities but did not restore its previous capacity until after the armistice in 1953.
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World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict that was underway by 1939 and ended in 1945. It involved most of the world's... nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, with more than 100 million military personnel mobilised. In a state of "total war", the major participants placed their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Marked by significant events involving the mass death of civilians, including the Holocaust and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, it is the deadliest conflict in human history, resulting in 50 million to over 70 million fatalities. Although Japan was already at war with China in 1937,, the world war is generally said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany, and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and most of the countries of the British Empire and Commonwealth. Germany set out to establish a large empire in Europe.
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The African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States is a group of countries , created by the Georgetown Agreement in 1975. The group's main... objectives are sustainable development and poverty reduction within its member states, as well as their greater integration into the world's economy. All of the member states, except Cuba are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. The Cotonou Agreement is the successor to the Lomé Conventions. One of the major differences from the Lomé Convention is that the partnership is extended to new actors such as civil society, private sector, trade unions and local authorities. These will be involved in consultations and planning of national development strategies, provided with access to financial resources and involved in the implementation of programmes. Many small island developing states are ACP states; the fourth Lomé Convention was revised in 1995 in Mauritius and gives special attention to island countries in this agreement.
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The African Development Bank Group is a development bank established in 1964 with the intention of promoting economic and social development in... Africa. The Group comprises the African Development Bank , the African Development Fund , and the Nigeria Trust Fund . AfDB provides loans and grants to African governments and private companies investing in the regional member countries in Africa. It is owned and funded by member governments, and has a public-interest mandate to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development. Following the end of colonial period in Africa, growing desire for more unity within the continent led to the establishment of two draft charters, one for the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity , and for a regional development bank. A draft accord was submitted to top African officials, then to African Ministers, before being cosigned by twenty-three African governments on August 4, 1963, in the form of an agreement establishing the African Development Bank.
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The African Union is a union consisting of 54 African states. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established on 9 July 2002,... the AU was formed as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity . The most important decisions of the AU are made by the Assembly of the African Union, a semi-annual meeting of the heads of state and government of its member states. The AU's secretariat, the African Union Commission, is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Among the objectives of the AU's leading institutions are: The African Union is made up of both political and administrative bodies. The highest decision-making organ is the Assembly of the African Union, made up of all the heads of state or government of member states of the AU. The Assembly is chaired by Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, leader of Equatorial Guinea, elected at the tenth ordinary meeting of the Assembly in January 2011. The AU also has a representative body, the Pan African Parliament, which consists of 265 members elected by the national parliaments of the AU member states. Its president is Idriss Ndele Moussa.
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The Zangger Committee, also known as the Nuclear Exporters Committee, sprang from Article III.2 of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear... Weapons which entered into force on March 5, 1970. Under the terms of Article III.2 International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards must be applied to nuclear exports. Between 1971 and 1974, a group of 15 nuclear supplier states held a series of informal meetings in Vienna chaired by Professor Claude Zangger of Switzerland. The group's objective was to reach a common understanding on: the definition of "equipment or material especially designed or prepared for the processing, use or production of special fissionable material;" and the conditions and procedures that would govern exports of such equipment or material in order to meet the obligations of Article III.2 on the basis of fair commercial competition. The group, which became known as the Zangger Committee, decided that it would be informal and that its decisions would not be legally binding upon its members.
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Tshwane University of Technology is a higher education institution in South Africa that came into being through a merger of three technikons —... Technikon Northern Gauteng, Technikon North-West and Technikon Pretoria. As the number of students registering annually grows rapidly, records show that Tshwane University of Technology caters for approximately 60 000 students and it has become the largest residential higher education institution in South Africa. It comprises up to six well-equipped satellite campuses positioned well to meet the higher education needs of different communities in South Africa. These campuses include Pretoria West , Soshanguve, Ga-Rankuwa, Witbank, Nelspruit and Polokwane. Two faculties, namely the Faculties of Natural Sciences and Arts, have dedicated campuses in the Pretoria city centre. There are over six campuses under the name of Tshwane University of Technology. In Limpopo province, the campus is situated in the provincial capital Polokwane. In Mpumalanga, there’s a campus in Nelspruit and another in eMalahleni ; and in North-West province a campus serves Ga-Rankuwa.
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The North-West University is a newly merged institution from 1 January 2004 onwards with four campuses at Potchefstroom, Mafikeng, Vanderbijlpark and... Mankwe. The Potchefstroom Campus is the largest, and the head office of the University is situated at this location. With its merged status the North-West University became one of the largest universities in South Africa with approximately 32 000 students . The universities that merged to form this institution are the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education and the University of North-West . These two campuses form the main hubs of the university, with the Potchefstroom campus catering towards the Afrikaans-orientated academic sphere, and the Mafikeng campus being geared towards meeting the needs of a more diverse academic field. Webometrics ranked NWU 12th best university in South Africa, 14th in Africa and 3023 in the world in 2010.
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The University of Pretoria is a multi campus public research university located in Pretoria, the administrative and de facto capital of South... Africa. The university was established in 1908 as the Pretoria campus of the Johannesburg based Transvaal University College and is the fourth South African insitution in continuous operation to be awarded university status. The university has grown from the original 32 students in a single late Victorian house to approximately 39,000 in 2010. The University was built on 7 suburban campuses on 1120ha . The University is organised into nine faculties and a business school. Establsihed in 1920, the University of Pretoria Faculty of Veterinary Science is the second oldest veterinary school in Africa and the only veterinary school in South Africa. In 1949 the university launched the first MBA programme outside of North America and the university's Gordon Institute of Business Science has consistently been ranked the top business school in Africa for executive education , as well as being placed in the top 50 in the world.
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Sharlto Copley is a South African producer, actor, and director who has produced and co-directed short films which have appeared at the Cannes Film... Festival, as well as commercials and music videos. He is perhaps best known for playing the roles of Wikus van der Merwe in the Oscar-nominated science fiction film District 9 and Howling Mad Murdock in the 2010 adaptation of The A-Team. Copley was born in Pretoria and educated at St. Andrew's Preparatory School in Grahamstown and Redhill School in Morningside, Johannesburg. His brother Donovan is a musician, and his sister Marisa is a fashion designer. His parents are Linda, a housewife, and Bruce, a university professor. He resides alternately in Cape Town and Los Angeles. A year after leaving high school, Copley first met director Neill Blomkamp; Copley was 22 and Blomkamp was 16, and Copley provided Blomkamp with use of computers at his production company to assist the company with pitches for various projects and allow Blomkamp to further pursue his passion and talent for 3D animation and design.
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Frederik Willem de Klerk , often known as F. W. de Klerk, was the seventh and last State President of apartheid-era South Africa, serving from... September 1989 to May 1994. De Klerk was also leader of the National Party from February 1989 to September 1997. De Klerk is best known for engineering the end of apartheid, South Africa's racial segregation policy, and supporting the transformation of South Africa into a multi-racial democracy by entering into the negotiations that resulted in all citizens, including the country's black majority, having equal voting and other rights. He won the Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize in 1991, the Prince of Asturias Award in 1992 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 along with Nelson Mandela for his role in the ending of apartheid. He was one of the Deputy Presidents of South Africa during the presidency of Nelson Mandela until 1996, the last white person to hold the position to date. In 1997, he retired from politics.
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Charlize Theron is a South African actress. She started her acting career in the United States and rose to fame in the late 1990s following roles in... The Devil's Advocate , Mighty Joe Young , and The Cider House Rules . Theron won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster , becoming the first African to win an Academy Award in a major acting category. She received another Academy Award nomination for her performance in North Country . Theron became an American citizen in 2007, while retaining her South African citizenship. Theron was born in Benoni, in the then Transvaal Province of South Africa, the only child of Gerda Martiz and Charles Theron . Her mother is of German descent and her father was of Occitan and Dutch ancestry; Theron is descended from early Huguenot settlers, and Boer War figure Danie Theron was her great-great uncle.
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Gillian Larson is a former contestant on the reality television show Survivor: Gabon.

Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by... South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three official languages: English, Shona and Ndebele. Zimbabwe began as the British crown colony of Southern Rhodesia, created from land held by the British South Africa Company. President Robert Mugabe is the head of State and Commander in Chief of the armed forces. Morgan Tsvangirai is the Prime Minister. Mugabe has been in power since the country's internationally recognized independence in 1980. Zimbabwe was formerly known as Southern Rhodesia , Rhodesia , and Zimbabwe Rhodesia . The name Zimbabwe was introduced from ca. 1960 in the context of the unilateral declaration of independence, and used by the African nationalist faction in the Rhodesian Bush War, the Zimbabwe African National Union of Robert Mugabe, and the Zimbabwe African People's Union of Joshua Nkomo.
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Lesotho , officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a landlocked country and enclave, completely surrounded by its only neighboring country, the Republic... of South Africa. It is just over 30,000 km in size with a population of approximately 2,067,000. Its capital and largest city is Maseru. Lesotho is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. The name Lesotho translates roughly into the land of the people who speak Sesotho. About 40% of the population live below the international poverty line of US$ 1.25 a day. The earliest known inhabitants of the area were Khoisan hunter-gatherers. They were largely replaced by Wasja-speaking tribes during Bantu migrations. The Sotho-Tswana people colonized the general region of South Africa between the 3rd and 11th centuries. The present Lesotho emerged as a single polity under king Moshoeshoe I in 1822. Moshoeshoe, a son of Mokhachane, a minor chief of the Bakoteli lineage, formed his own clan and became a chief around 1804.
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Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with... Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March 1990, following the Namibian War of Independence. Its capital and largest city is Windhoek. Namibia is a member state of the United Nations , the Southern African Development Community , the African Union , and the Commonwealth of Nations. The dry lands of Namibia were inhabited since early times by Bushmen, Damara, and Namaqua, and since about the 14th century AD by immigrating Bantu who came with the Bantu expansion. It became a German Imperial protectorate in 1884 and remained a German colony until the end of World War I. In 1920, the League of Nations mandated the country to South Africa, which imposed its laws and, from 1948, its apartheid policy. Uprisings and demands by African leaders led the UN to assume direct responsibility over the territory.
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Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the... north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest. The capital city is Maputo, formerly known as Lourenço Marques. Between the 1st and 5th centuries AD, Bantu-speaking peoples migrated from farther north and west. Swahili, and later also Arab, commercial ports existed along the coasts until the arrival of Europeans. The area was explored by Vasco da Gama in 1498 and colonized by Portugal in 1505. Mozambique became independent in 1975, and became the People's Republic of Mozambique shortly thereafter. It was the scene of an intense civil war lasting from 1977 to 1992. Mozambique is endowed with rich and extensive natural resources. The country's economy is based largely on agriculture, but with industry, mainly food and beverages, chemical manufacturing, aluminium and petroleum production, is growing fast. The country's tourism sector is also growing.
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