Rainbow Nation : South Africa is a cutlturally diverse country, one nation made up of many peoples.

With 11 different official languages, a multiplicity of traditions and skin tones ranging from ebony to sunburnt pink, we are as Archbishop Desmond Tuto once put it, the Rainbow Nation of Africa Afrikaners:

Afrikaners
Afrikaners are Dutch, German, and French Europeans Who Settled in South Africa
The Afrikaners are a South African ethnic group who are descended from 17th century Dutch, German, and French settlers to South Africa. The Afrikaners slowly developed their own language and culture when they came into contact with Africans and Asians. The word Afrikaners means Africans in Dutch. About three million people out of South Africas total population of 42 million identify themselves as Afrikaners. The Afrikaners have impacted South African history tremendously, and their culture has spread across the world. Apartheid The Europeans in South Africa were responsible for establishing apartheid in the twentieth century. The word apartheid means separateness in Afrikaans. Although the Afrikaners were the minority ethnic group in the country, the Afrikaner National Party gained control of the government in 1948. In order to restrict the ability of less civilized ethnic groups to participate in government, different races were strictly segregated. Whites had access to much better housing, education, employment, transportation, and medical care. Blacks could not vote and had no representation in government. After many decades of inequality, other countries began to condemn apartheid. Apartheid ended in 1994 when members of all ethnic classes were allowed to vote in the Presidential election. Nelson Mandela became South Africas first black president. The Boer Diaspora After the Boer Wars, many poor, homeless Afrikaners moved into other countries in Southern Africa like Namibia and Zimbabwe. Some Afrikaners returned to the Netherlands and some even moved to distant places like South America, Australia, and the southwestern United States. Due to racial violence and in search of better educational and employment opportunities, many Afrikaners have left South Africa since the end of apartheid. About 100,000 Afrikaners now reside in the United Kingdom. Current Afrikaans Language The Dutch language spoken at the Cape Colony in the 17th century slowly transformed into a separate language, with differences in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Today, Afrikaans, the Afrikaner language, is one of the eleven official languages of South Africa. It is spoken across the country and by people from many different races. Worldwide, between 15 and 23 million people speak Afrikaans as a first or second language. Most Afrikaans words are of Dutch origin, but the languages of the Asian and African slaves, as well as European languages like English, French, and Portuguese, greatly influenced the language. Many English words, such as aardvark, meerkat, and trek, derive from Afrikaans. To reflect local languages, many South African cities with names of Afrikaner origin are now being changed. Pretoria, South Africas executive capital, may one day permanently change its name to Tshwane.

The Future of the Afrikaners The Afrikaners, descended from hard-working, resourceful pioneers, have developed a rich culture and language over the past four centuries. Although the Afrikaners have been associated with the oppression of apartheid, Afrikaners today are happy to live in a multi-ethnic society where all races can participate in government and benefit economically from South Africas abundant resources. The Afrikaner culture will undoubtedly endure in Africa and around the world.

In South Africa, the term township and location usually refers to the (often underdeveloped) urban living areas that, from the late 19th century until the end of Apartheid, were reserved for non-whites (black Africans, Coloureds and Indians). Townships were usually built on the periphery of towns and cities.[1][2] The term township also has a distinct legal meaning, in South Africa's system of land title, that carries no racial connotations.
Apartheid is an afrikaans word meaning "seperateness" - it was a legal system whereby people were classified into racial groups - White, Black, Indian and Coloured; and seperate geographic areas were demarcated for each racial group. Apartheid laws were part of South Africa's legal framework from 1948 to 1994.

Apartheid is (aptly) pronounced "apart-h

Apartheid was a system of racial segregation enforced through legislation by the National Party governments, who were the ruling party from 1948 to 1994, of South Africa, under which the rights of the majority non-white inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and white supremacy and Afrikaner minority rule was maintained. Apartheid was developed after World War II by the Afrikanerdominated National Party and Broederbond organizations and was practiced also in South West Africa,

which was administered by South Africa under a League of Nations mandate (revoked in 1966), until it gained independence as Namibia in 1990.
For many, particularly outside of South Africa, the name Soweto evokes an image by Sam Nzima made during the 1976 Soweto Uprising. In that iconic photograph, 18-year-old Mbuyisa Mahkubo carries Hector Pieterson, a 13-year-old boy who was fatally wounded when police fired on students protesting the official lowering of academic standards in South Africas black schools. The image of the dying boy spread around the world, and today the uprising is widely seen as a turning point in the struggle against the nationalist government. Soweto became the symbol of the profound social, cultural, economic and physical divisions of apartheid. But such a black and white reading belies the complex spatial history of townships in South Africa. Soweto itself is not a unitary place but an abbreviation for South Western Townships, a collection of over 25 townships bordering Johannesburgs mining belt to the south, which range from middle-class enclaves to informal settlements (sometimes known as shantytowns). Until the early 1990s, when South Africa became an inclusive democracy, nonwhite workers were forced to live outside cities in residential areas known as townships. The systematic segregation dates back to the colonial era: in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the British colonial government resettled racial groups under the pretense of responding to disease epidemics in overcrowded neighborhoods. The area now known as Soweto was settled by blacks and other nonwhites who were relocated after an outbreak of bubonic plague in central Johannesburg. Early separation was formalized and reinforced by colonial laws such as the Natives Land Act of 1913, which reserved nearly 90 percent of the land in South Africa for a tiny minority white population. In the following decades, during which South Africa became an independent republic, a series of pass and influx laws comprehensively restricted the rights of the nonwhite population. During the Apartheid Era, from 1948 to 1994, the ruling Nationalist Party, dominated by white Afrikaaners, passed miscegenation laws, institutionalized legal segregation, formalized racial categories and restrictions on movement, and embedded apartheid physically in the landscape. Cities were designated for whites only, and townships became, in effect, the mechanism for housing the nonwhite labor force. Such policies accelerated the growth of separate townships across the country at all scales from cities like Cape Town and Johannesburg to the smallest villages.