title: History of South Africa

text: Smith's expansion of the Cape Colony resulted in conflict with disaffected Boers in the Orange River Sovereignty who in 1848 mounted an abortive rebellion at Boomplaats, where the Boers were defeated by a detachment of the Cape Mounted Rifles. Annexation also precipitated a war between British colonial forces and the indigenous Xhosa nation in 1850, in the eastern coastal region.


title: History of South Africa

text: Starting from the mid-1800s, the Cape of Good Hope, which was then the largest state in southern Africa, began moving towards greater independence from Britain.


title: History of South Africa

text: In 1872, after a long political struggle, it attained responsible government with a locally accountable executive and Prime Minister. The Cape nonetheless remained nominally part of the British Empire, even though it was self-governing in practice.


title: History of South Africa

text: The Cape Colony was unusual in southern Africa in that its laws prohibited any discrimination on the basis of race and, unlike the Boer republics, elections were held according to the non-racial Cape Qualified Franchise system, whereby suffrage qualifications applied universally, regardless of race.


title: History of South Africa

text: Initially, a period of strong economic growth and social development ensued. However, an ill-informed British attempt to force the states of southern Africa into a British federation led to inter-ethnic tensions and the First Boer War. Meanwhile, the discovery of diamonds around Kimberley and gold in the Transvaal led to a later return to instability, particularly because they fueled the rise to power of the ambitious colonialist Cecil Rhodes. As Cape Prime Minister, Rhodes curtailed the multi-racial franchise, and his expansionist policies set the stage for the Second Boer War.


title: History of South Africa

text: Indian slaves from the Dutch colonies in India had been introduced into the Cape area of South Africa by the Dutch settlers in 1654.


title: History of South Africa

text: By the end of 1847, following annexation by Britain of the former Boer republic of Natalia, nearly all the Boers had left their former republic, which the British renamed Natal. The role of the Boer settlers was replaced by subsidised British immigrants of whom 5,000 arrived between 1849 and 1851.


title: History of South Africa

text: By 1860, with slavery having been abolished in 1834, and after the annexation of Natal as a British colony in 1843, the British colonists in Natal (now kwaZulu-Natal) turned to India to resolve a labour shortage, as men of the local Zulu warrior nation were refusing to work on the plantations and farms established by the colonists. In that year, the SS "Truro" arrived in Durban harbour with over 300 Indians on board.


title: History of South Africa

text: Over the next 50 years, 150,000 more indentured Indian servants and labourers arrived, as well as numerous free "passenger Indians," building the base for what would become the largest Indian diasporic community outside India.


title: History of South Africa

text: By 1893, when the lawyer and social activist Mahatma Gandhi arrived in Durban, Indians outnumbered whites in Natal. The civil rights struggle of Gandhi's Natal Indian Congress failed; until the 1994 advent of democracy, Indians in South Africa were subject to most of the discriminatory laws that applied to all non-white inhabitants of the country.


title: History of South Africa

text: By the late 1700s, the Cape Colony population had grown to include a large number of mixed-race so-called "coloureds" who were the offspring of extensive interracial relations between male Dutch settlers, Khoikhoi females, and female slaves imported from Dutch colonies in the East. Members of this mixed-race community formed the core of what was to become the Griqua people.


title: History of South Africa

text: Under the leadership of a former slave named Adam Kok, these "coloureds" or "Basters" (meaning mixed race or multiracial) as they were named by the Dutch—a word derived from "baster", meaning "bastard"—started trekking northward into the interior, through what is today named Northern Cape Province. The trek of the Griquas to escape the influence of the Cape Colony has been described as "one of the great epics of the 19th century." They were joined on their long journey by a number of San and Khoikhoi aboriginals, local African tribesmen, and also some white renegades. Around 1800, they started crossing the northern frontier formed by the Orange River, arriving ultimately in an uninhabited area, which they named Griqualand.


title: History of South Africa

text: In 1825, a faction of the Griqua people was induced by Dr John Philip, superintendent of the London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, to relocate to a place called Philippolis, a mission station for the San, several hundred miles southeast of Griqualand. Philip's intention was for the Griquas to protect the missionary station there against banditti in the region, and as a bulwark against the northward movement of white settlers from the Cape Colony. Friction between the Griquas and the settlers over land rights resulted in British troops being sent to the region in 1845. It marked the beginning of nine years of British intervention in the affairs of the region, which the British named Transorange.


title: History of South Africa

text: In 1861, to avoid the imminent prospect of either being colonised by the Cape Colony or coming into conflict with the expanding Boer Republic of Orange Free State, most of the Philippolis Griquas embarked on a further trek. They moved about 500 miles eastward, over the Quathlamba (today known as the Drakensberg mountain range), settling ultimately in an area officially designated as "Nomansland", which the Griquas renamed Griqualand East. East Griqualand was subsequently annexed by Britain in 1874 and incorporated into the Cape Colony in 1879.


title: History of South Africa

text: The original Griqualand, north of the Orange River, was annexed by Britain's Cape Colony and renamed Griqualand West after the discovery in 1871 of the world's richest deposit of diamonds at Kimberley, so named after the British Colonial Secretary, Earl Kimberley.


title: History of South Africa

text: Although no formally surveyed boundaries existed, Griqua leader Nicolaas Waterboer claimed the diamond fields were situated on land belonging to the Griquas. The Boer republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State also vied for ownership of the land, but Britain, being the preeminent force in the region, won control over the disputed territory. In 1878, Waterboer led an unsuccessful rebellion against the colonial authorities, for which he was arrested and briefly exiled.


title: History of South Africa

text: In early South Africa, European notions of national boundaries and land ownership had no counterparts in African political culture. To Moshoeshoe the BaSotho chieftain from Lesotho, it was customary tribute in the form of horses and cattle represented acceptance of land use under his authority. To European settlers in Southern Africa, the same form of tribute was believed to constitute purchase and permanent ownership of the land under independent authority.


title: History of South Africa

text: As European settlers started establishing permanent farms after trekking across the country in search of prime agricultural land, they encountered resistance from the local Bantu people who had originally migrated southwards from central Africa hundreds of years earlier. The consequent frontier wars became known as the Xhosa Wars (which were also referred to in contemporary discussion as the Kafir Wars or the Cape Frontier Wars). In the southeastern part of South Africa, Boer settlers and the Xhosa clashed along the Great Fish River, and in 1779 the First Xhosa War broke out. For nearly 100 years subsequently, the Xhosa fought the settlers sporadically, first the Boers or Afrikaners and later the British. In the Fourth Xhosa War, which lasted from 1811 to 1812, the British colonial authorities forced the Xhosa back across the Great Fish River and established forts along this boundary.


title: History of South Africa

text: The increasing economic involvement of the British in southern Africa from the 1820s, and especially following the discovery of first diamonds at Kimberley and gold in the Transvaal, resulted in pressure for land and African labour, and led to increasingly tense relations with Southern African states.


title: History of South Africa

text: In 1818 differences between two Xhosa leaders, Ndlambe and Ngqika, ended in Ngqika's defeat, but the British continued to recognise Ngqika as the paramount chief. He appealed to the British for help against Ndlambe, who retaliated in 1819 during the Fifth Frontier War by attacking the British colonial town of Grahamstown.


title: History of South Africa

text: In the eastern part of what is today South Africa, in the region named Natalia by the Boer trekkers, the latter negotiated an agreement with Zulu King Dingane kaSenzangakhona allowing the Boers to settle in part of the then Zulu kingdom. Cattle rustling ensued and a party of Boers under the leadership of Piet Retief were killed.


title: History of South Africa

text: Subsequent to the killing of the Retief party, the Boers defended themselves against a Zulu attack, at the Ncome River on 16 December 1838. An estimated five thousand Zulu warriors were involved. The Boers took a defensive position with the high banks of the Ncome River forming a natural barrier to their rear with their ox waggons as barricades between themselves and the attacking Zulu army. About three thousand Zulu warriors died in the clash known historically as the Battle of Blood River.


title: History of South Africa

text: In the later annexation of the Zulu kingdom by imperial Britain, an Anglo-Zulu War was fought in 1879. Following Lord Carnarvon's successful introduction of federation in Canada, it was thought that similar political effort, coupled with military campaigns, might succeed with the African kingdoms, tribal areas and Boer republics in South Africa.


title: History of South Africa

text: In 1874, Henry Bartle Frere was sent to South Africa as High Commissioner for the British Empire to bring such plans into being. Among the obstacles were the presence of the independent states of the South African Republic and the Kingdom of Zululand and its army. Frere, on his own initiative, without the approval of the British government and with the intent of instigating a war with the Zulu, had presented an ultimatum on 11 December 1878, to the Zulu king Cetshwayo with which the Zulu king could not comply. Bartle Frere then sent Lord Chelmsford to invade Zululand. The war is notable for several particularly bloody battles, including an overwhelming victory by the Zulu at the Battle of Isandlwana, as well as for being a landmark in the timeline of imperialism in the region.


title: History of South Africa

text: Britain's eventual defeat of the Zulus, marking the end of the Zulu nation's independence, was accomplished with the assistance of Zulu collaborators who harboured cultural and political resentments against centralised Zulu authority. The British then set about establishing large sugar plantations in the area today named KwaZulu-Natal Province.


title: History of South Africa

text: From the 1830s onwards, numbers of white settlers from the Cape Colony crossed the Orange River and started arriving in the fertile southern part of territory known as the Lower Caledon Valley, which was occupied by Basotho cattle herders under the authority of the Basotho founding monarch Moshoeshoe I. In 1845, a treaty was signed between the British colonists and Moshoeshoe, which recognised white settlement in the area. No firm boundaries were drawn between the area of white settlement and Moshoeshoe's kingdom, which led to border clashes. Moshoeshoe was under the impression he was loaning grazing land to the settlers in accordance with African precepts of occupation rather than ownership, while the settlers believed they had been granted permanent land rights. Afrikaner settlers in particular were loath to live under Moshoesoe's authority and among Africans.


title: History of South Africa

text: The British, who at that time controlled the area between the Orange and Vaal Rivers called the Orange River Sovereignty, decided a discernible boundary was necessary and proclaimed a line named the Warden Line, dividing the area between British and Basotho territories. This led to conflict between the Basotho and the British, who were defeated by Moshoeshoe's warriors at the battle of Viervoet in 1851.


title: History of South Africa

text: As punishment to the Basotho, the governor and commander-in-chief of the Cape Colony, George Cathcart, deployed troops to the Mohokare River; Moshoeshoe was ordered to pay a fine. When he did not pay the fine in full, a battle broke out on the Berea Plateau in 1852, where the British suffered heavy losses. In 1854, the British handed over the territory to the Boers through the signing of the Sand River Convention. This territory and others in the region then became the Republic of the Orange Free State.


title: History of South Africa

text: A succession of wars followed from 1858 to 1868 between the Basotho kingdom and the Boer republic of Orange Free State. In the battles that followed, the Orange Free State tried unsuccessfully to capture Moshoeshoe's mountain stronghold at Thaba Bosiu, while the Sotho conducted raids in Free State territories. Both sides adopted scorched-earth tactics, with large swathes of pasturage and cropland being destroyed. Faced with starvation, Moshoeshoe signed a peace treaty on 15 October 1858, though crucial boundary issues remained unresolved. War broke out again in 1865. After an unsuccessful appeal for aid from the British Empire, Moshoeshoe signed the 1866 treaty of Thaba Bosiu, with the Basotho ceding substantial territory to the Orange Free State. On 12 March 1868, the British parliament declared the Basotho Kingdom a British protectorate and part of the British Empire. Open hostilities ceased between the Orange Free State and the Basotho. The country was subsequently named Basutoland and is presently named Lesotho.


title: History of South Africa

text: In 1836, when Boer V"oortrekkers" (pioneers) arrived in the northwestern part of present-day South Africa, they came into conflict with a Ndebele sub-group that the settlers named "Matabele", under chief Mzilikazi. A series of battles ensued, in which Mzilikazi was eventually defeated. He withdrew from the area and led his people northwards to what would later become the Matabele region of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).


title: History of South Africa

text: Other members of the Ndebele ethnic language group in different areas of the region similarly came into conflict with the Voortrekkers, notably in the area that would later become the Northern Transvaal. In September 1854, 28 Boers accused of cattle rustling were killed in three separate incidents by an alliance of the Ndebele chiefdoms of Mokopane and Mankopane. Mokopane and his followers, anticipating retaliation by the settlers, retreated into the mountain caves known as Gwasa, (or Makapansgat in Afrikaans). In late October, Boer commandos supported by local Kgatla tribal collaborators laid siege to the caves. By the end of the siege, about three weeks later, Mokopane and between 1,000 and 3,000 people had died in the caves. The survivors were captured and allegedly enslaved.


title: History of South Africa

text: The Bapedi wars, also known as the Sekhukhune wars, consisted of three separate campaigns fought between 1876 and 1879 against the Bapedi under their reigning monarch King Sekhukhune I, in the northeastern region known as Sekhukhuneland, bordering on Swaziland. Further friction was caused by the refusal of Sekhukhune to allow prospectors to search for gold in territory he considered to be sovereign and independent under his authority. The First Sekhukhune War of 1876 was conducted by the Boers, and the two separate campaigns of the Second Sekhukhune War of 1878/1879 were conducted by the British.


title: History of South Africa

text: During the final campaign, Sekukuni (also spelled Sekhukhune) and members of his entourage took refuge in a mountain cave where he was cut off from food and water. He eventually surrendered to a combined deputation of Boer and British forces on 2 December 1879. Sekhukhune, members of his family and some Bapedi generals were subsequently imprisoned in Pretoria for two years, with Sekhukhuneland becoming part of the Transvaal Republic. No gold was ever discovered in the annexed territory.


title: History of South Africa

text: The first diamond discoveries between 1866 and 1867 were alluvial, on the southern banks of the Orange River. By 1869, diamonds were found at some distance from any stream or river, in hard rock called blue ground, later called kimberlite, after the mining town of Kimberley where the diamond diggings were concentrated. The diggings were located in an area of vague boundaries and disputed land ownership. Claimants to the site included the South African (Transvaal) Republic, the Orange Free State Republic, and the mixed-race Griqua nation under Nicolaas Waterboer. Cape Colony Governor Henry Barkly persuaded all claimants to submit themselves to a decision of an arbitrator and so Robert W Keate, Lieutenant-Governor of Natal was asked to arbitrate. Keate awarded ownership to the Griquas. Waterboer, fearing conflict with the Boer republic of Orange Free State, subsequently asked for and received British protection. Griqualand then became a separate Crown Colony renamed Griqualand West in 1871, with a Lieutenant-General and legislative council.


title: History of South Africa

text: The Crown Colony of Griqualand West was annexed into the Cape Colony in 1877, enacted into law in 1880. No material benefits accrued to the Griquas as a result of either colonisation or annexation; they did not receive any share of the diamond wealth generated at Kimberley. The Griqua community became subsequently dissimulated.


title: History of South Africa

text: By the 1870s and 1880s the mines at Kimberley were producing 95% of the world's diamonds. The widening search for gold and other resources were financed by the wealth produced and the practical experience gained at Kimberley. Revenue accruing to the Cape Colony from the Kimberley diamond diggings enabled the Cape Colony to be granted responsible government status in 1872, since it was no longer dependent on the British Treasury and hence allowing it to be fully self-governing in similar fashion to the federation of Canada, New Zealand and some of the Australian states. The wealth derived from Kimberley diamond mining, having effectively tripled the customs revenue of the Cape Colony from 1871 to 1875, also doubled its population, and allowed it to expand its boundaries and railways to the north.


title: History of South Africa

text: In 1888, British mining magnate Cecil John Rhodes co-founded De Beers Consolidated Mines at Kimberley, after buying up and amalgamating the individual claims with finance provided by the Rothschild dynasty. Abundant, cheap African labour was central to the success of Kimberley diamond mining, as it would later also be to the success of gold mining on the Witwatersrand. It has been suggested in some academic circles that the wealth produced at Kimberley was a significant factor influencing the Scramble for Africa, in which European powers had by 1902 competed with each other in drawing arbitrary boundaries across almost the entire continent and dividing it among themselves.


title: History of South Africa

text: Although many tales abound, there is no conclusive evidence as to who first discovered gold or the manner in which it was originally discovered in the late 19th century on the Witwatersrand (meaning White Waters Ridge) of the Transvaal. The discovery of gold in February 1886 at a farm called Langlaagte on the Witwatersrand in particular precipitated a gold rush by prospectors and fortune seekers from all over the world. Except in rare outcrops, however, the main gold deposits had over many years become covered gradually by thousands of feet of hard rock. Finding and extracting the deposits far below the ground called for the capital and engineering skills that would soon result in the deep-level mines of the Witwatersrand producing a quarter of the world's gold, with the "instant city" of Johannesburg arising astride the main Witwatersrand gold reef.


title: History of South Africa

text: Within two years of gold being discovered on the Witwatersrand, four mining finance houses had been established. The first was formed by Hermann Eckstein in 1887, eventually becoming Rand Mines. Cecil Rhodes and Charles Rudd followed, with their Gold Fields of South Africa company. Rhodes and Rudd had earlier made fortunes from diamond mining at Kimberley. In 1895 there was an investment boom in Witwatersrand gold-mining shares. The precious metal that underpinned international trade would dominate South African exports for decades to come.


title: History of South Africa

text: Of the leading 25 foreign industrialists who were instrumental in opening up deep level mining operations at the Witwatersrand gold fields, 15 were Jewish, 11 of the total were from Germany or Austria, and nine of that latter category were also Jewish. The commercial opportunities opened by the discovery of gold attracted many other people of European Jewish origin. The Jewish population of South Africa in 1880 numbered approximately 4,000; by 1914 it had grown to more than 40,000, mostly migrants from Lithuania.


title: History of South Africa

text: The working environment of the mines, meanwhile, as one historian has described it, was "dangerous, brutal and onerous", and therefore unpopular among local black Africans. Recruitment of black labour began to prove difficult, even with an offer of improved wages. In mid-1903 there remained barely half of the 90,000 black labourers who had been employed in the industry in mid-1899. The decision was made to start importing Chinese indentured labourers who were prepared to work for far less wages than local African labourers. The first 1,000 indentured Chinese labourers arrived in June 1904. By January 1907, 53,000 Chinese labourers were working in the gold mines.


title: History of South Africa

text: The Transvaal Boer republic was forcefully annexed by Britain in 1877, during Britain's attempt to consolidate the states of southern Africa under British rule. Long-standing Boer resentment turned into full-blown rebellion in the Transvaal and the first Anglo–Boer War, also known as the Boer Insurrection, broke out in 1880. The conflict ended almost as soon as it began with a decisive Boer victory at Battle of Majuba Hill (27 February 1881).


title: History of South Africa

text: The republic regained its independence as the "Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek" ("South African Republic"), or ZAR. Paul Kruger, one of the leaders of the uprising, became President of the ZAR in 1883. Meanwhile, the British, who viewed their defeat at Majuba as an aberration, forged ahead with their desire to federate the Southern African colonies and republics. They saw this as the best way to come to terms with the fact of a white Afrikaner majority, as well as to promote their larger strategic interests in the area.


title: History of South Africa

text: The cause of the Anglo–Boer wars has been attributed to a contest over which nation would control and benefit most from the Witwatersrand gold mines. The enormous wealth of the mines was in the hands of European "Randlords" overseeing the mainly British foreign managers, mining foremen, engineers and technical specialists, characterised by the Boers as "uitlander", meaning aliens. The "aliens" objected to being denied parliamentary representation and the right to vote, and they complained also of bureaucratic government delays in the issuing of licenses and permits, and general administrative incompetence on the part of the government.


title: History of South Africa

text: In 1895, a column of mercenaries in the employ of Cecil John Rhodes' Rhodesian-based Charter Company and led by Captain Leander Starr Jameson had entered the ZAR with the intention of sparking an uprising on the Witwatersrand and installing a British administration there. The armed incursion became known as the Jameson Raid. It ended when the invading column was ambushed and captured by Boer commandos. President Kruger suspected the insurgency had received at least the tacit approval of the Cape Colony government under the premiership of Cecil John Rhodes, and that Kruger's South African Republic faced imminent danger. Kruger reacted by forming an alliance with the neighbouring Boer republic of Orange Free State. This did not prevent the outbreak of a Second Anglo–Boer war.


title: History of South Africa

text: Renewed tensions between Britain and the Boers peaked in 1899 when the British demanded voting rights for the 60,000 foreign whites on the Witwatersrand. Until that point, President Paul Kruger's government had excluded all foreigners from the franchise. Kruger rejected the British demand and called for the withdrawal of British troops from the borders of the South African Republic. When the British refused, Kruger declared war. This Second Anglo–Boer War, also known as the South African War lasted longer than the first, with British troops being supplemented by colonial troops from Southern Rhodesia, Canada, India, Australia and New Zealand. It has been estimated that the total number of British and colonial troops deployed in South Africa during the war outnumbered the population of the two Boer Republics by more than 150,000.


title: History of South Africa

text: By June 1900, Pretoria, the last of the major Boer towns, had surrendered. Yet resistance by Boer "bittereinders" (meaning those who would fight to the bitter end) continued for two more years with guerrilla warfare, which the British met in turn with scorched earth tactics. The Boers kept on fighting.


title: History of South Africa

text: The British suffragette Emily Hobhouse visited British concentration camps in South Africa and produced a report condemning the appalling conditions there. By 1902, 26,000 Boer women and children had died of disease and neglect in the camps.


title: History of South Africa

text: The Anglo–Boer War affected all ethnic groups in South Africa. Black people were recruited or conscripted by both sides into working for them either as combatants or non-combatants to sustain the respective war efforts of both the Boers and the British. The official statistics of blacks killed in action are inaccurate. Most of the bodies were dumped in unmarked graves. It has, however, been verified that 17,182 black people died mainly of diseases in the Cape concentration camps alone, but this figure is not accepted historically as a true reflection of the overall numbers. Concentration camp superintendents did not always record the deaths of black inmates in the camps.


title: History of South Africa

text: From the outset of hostilities in October 1899 to the signing of peace on 31 May 1902 the war claimed the lives of 22,000 imperial soldiers and 7,000 republican fighters. In terms of the peace agreement known as the Treaty of Vereeniging, the Boer republics acknowledged British sovereignty, while the British in turn committed themselves to reconstruction of the areas under their control.


title: History of South Africa

text: During the years immediately following the Anglo–Boer wars, Britain set about unifying the four colonies including the former Boer republics into a single self-governed country called the Union of South Africa. This was accomplished after several years of negotiations, when the South Africa Act 1909 consolidated the Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal, and Orange Free State into one nation. Under the provisions of the act, the Union became an independent Dominion of the British Empire, governed under a form of constitutional monarchy, with the British monarch represented by a Governor-General. Prosecutions before the courts of the Union of South Africa were instituted in the name of the Crown and government officials served in the name of the Crown. The British High Commission territories of Basutoland (now Lesotho), Bechuanaland (now Botswana), and Swaziland (now Eswatini) continued under direct rule from Britain.


title: History of South Africa

text: Among other harsh segregationist laws, including denial of voting rights to black people, the Union parliament enacted the 1913 Natives' Land Act, which earmarked only eight percent of South Africa's available land for black occupancy. White people, who constituted 20 percent of the population, held 90 percent of the land. The Land Act would form a cornerstone of legalised racial discrimination for the next nine decades.


title: History of South Africa

text: General Louis Botha headed the first government of the new Union, with General Jan Smuts as his deputy. Their "South African National Party", later known as the South African Party or SAP, followed a generally pro-British, white-unity line. The more radical Boers split away under the leadership of General Barry Hertzog, forming the National Party (NP) in 1914. The National Party championed Afrikaner interests, advocating separate development for the two white groups, and independence from Britain.


title: History of South Africa

text: Dissatisfaction with British influence in the Union's affairs reached a climax in September 1914, when impoverished Boers, anti-British Boers and "bitter-enders" launched a rebellion. The rebellion was suppressed, and at least one officer was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad.


title: History of South Africa

text: In 1924 the Afrikaner-dominated National Party came to power in a coalition government with the Labour Party. Afrikaans, previously regarded as a low-level Dutch patois, replaced Dutch as an official language of the Union. English and Dutch became the two official languages in 1925.


title: History of South Africa

text: The Union of South Africa came to an end after a referendum on 5 October 1960, in which a majority of white South Africans voted in favour of unilateral withdrawal from the British Commonwealth and the establishment of a Republic of South Africa.


title: History of South Africa

text: At the outbreak of World War I, South Africa joined Great Britain and the Allies against the German Empire. Both Prime Minister Louis Botha and Defence Minister Jan Smuts were former Second Boer War generals who had previously fought against the British, but they now became active and respected members of the Imperial War Cabinet. Elements of the South African Army refused to fight against the Germans and along with other opponents of the government; they rose in an open revolt known as the Maritz Rebellion. The government declared martial law on 14 October 1914, and forces loyal to the government under the command of generals Louis Botha and Jan Smuts defeated the rebellion. The rebel leaders were prosecuted, fined heavily and sentenced to imprisonment ranging from six to seven years.


title: History of South Africa

text: Public opinion in South Africa split along racial and ethnic lines. The British elements strongly supported the war, and formed by far the largest military component. Likewise the Indian element (led by Mahatma Gandhi) generally supported the war effort. Afrikaners were split, with some like Botha and Smuts taking a prominent leadership role in the British war effort. This position was rejected by many rural Afrikaners who supported the Maritz Rebellion. The trade union movement was divided. Many urban blacks supported the war expecting it would raise their status in society. Others said it was not relevant to the struggle for their rights. The Coloured element was generally supportive and many served in a Coloured Corps in East Africa and France, also hoping to better themselves after the war.


title: History of South Africa

text: With a population of roughly 6 million, between 1914–1918, over 250,000 South Africans of all races voluntarily served their country. Thousands more served in the British Army directly, with over 3,000 joining the British Royal Flying Corps and over 100 volunteering for the Royal Navy. It is likely that around 50% of white men of military age served during the war, more than 146,000 whites. 83,000 Blacks and 2,500 Coloureds and Asians also served in either German South-West Africa, East Africa, the Middle East, or on the Western Front in Europe. Over 7,000 South Africans were killed, and nearly 12,000 were wounded during the course of the war. Eight South Africans won the Victoria Cross for gallantry, the Empire's highest and prestigious military medal. The Battle of Delville Wood and the sinking of the SS "Mendi" being the greatest single incidents of loss of life.


title: History of South Africa

text: 25,000 Black South Africans were recruited at the request of the British War Cabinet to serve as non-combatant labourers in the South African Native Labour Contingent (SANLC). 21,000 of them were deployed to France as stevedores at French ports, where they were housed in segregated compounds. A total of 616 men from the Fifth Battalion of the SANLC drowned on 21 February 1917 when the troopship "SS Mendi", on which they were being transported to France, collided with another vessel near the Isle of Wight. The "Mendi" disaster was one of South Africa's worst tragedies of the Great War, second perhaps only to the Battle of Delville Wood. The South African government issued no war service medal to the black servicemen and the special medal issued by King George V to "native troops" that served the Empire, the British War Medal in bronze, was disallowed and not issued to the SANLC.


title: History of South Africa

text: Black and mixed-race South Africans who had supported the war were embittered when post-war South Africa saw no easing of white domination and racial segregation.


title: History of South Africa

text: The assistance that South Africa gave the British Empire was significant. Two German African colonies were occupied, either by South Africa alone or with significant South African assistance. Manpower, from all races, helped Allied operations not just on the Western Front and Africa, but also in the Middle East against the Ottoman Empire. South Africa's ports and harbours on the Home Front were a crucial strategic asset when conducting a war on a global scale. Providing important rest and refuelling stations, the Royal Navy could ensure vital sea lane connections to the British Raj, and the Far East stayed open.


title: History of South Africa

text: Economically, South Africa supplied two-thirds of gold production in the British Empire, with most of the remainder coming from Australia. At the start of the war, Bank of England officials in London worked with South Africa to block gold shipments to Germany, and force mine owners to sell only to the British Treasury, at prices set by the Treasury. This facilitated purchases of munitions and food in the United States and neutral countries.


title: History of South Africa

text: During World War II, South Africa's ports and harbours, such as at Cape Town, Durban, and Simon's Town, were important strategic assets to the British Royal Navy. South Africa's top-secret Special Signals Service played a significant role in the early development and deployment of radio detection and ranging (radar) technology used in protecting the vital coastal shipping route around southern Africa. By August 1945, South African Air Force aircraft in conjunction with British and Dutch aircraft stationed in South Africa had intercepted 17 enemy ships, assisted in the rescue of 437 survivors of sunken ships, attacked 26 of the 36 enemy submarines operating the vicinity of the South African coast, and flown 15,000 coastal patrol sorties.


title: History of South Africa

text: About 334,000 South Africans volunteered for full-time military service in support of the Allies abroad. Nearly 9,000 were killed in action. On 21 June 1942 nearly 10,000 South African soldiers, representing one-third of the entire South African force in the field, were taken prisoner by German Field Marshal Rommel's forces in the fall of Tobruk, Libya. A number of South African fighter pilots served with distinction in the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain, including Group Captain Adolph "Sailor" Malan who led 74 Squadron and established a record of personally destroying 27 enemy aircraft.


title: History of South Africa

text: General Jan Smuts was the only important non-British general whose advice was constantly sought by Britain's war-time Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Smuts was invited to the Imperial War Cabinet in 1939 as the most senior South African in favour of war. On 28 May 1941, Smuts was appointed a Field Marshal of the British Army, becoming the first South African to hold that rank. When the war ended, Smuts represented South Africa in San Francisco at the drafting of the United Nations Charter in May 1945. Just as he had done in 1919, Smuts urged the delegates to create a powerful international body to preserve peace; he was determined that, unlike the League of Nations, the UN would have teeth. Smuts also signed the Paris Peace Treaty, resolving the peace in Europe, thus becoming the only signatory of both the treaty ending the First World War, and that which ended the Second.


title: History of South Africa

text: After the suppression of the abortive, pro-German Maritz Rebellion during the South African World War I campaign against German South West Africa in 1914, the South African rebel General Manie Maritz escaped to Spain. He returned in 1923, and continued working in the Union of South Africa as a German Spy for the Third Reich.


title: History of South Africa

text: In 1896, the German Kaiser Kaiser Wilhelm had enraged Britain by sending congratulations to Boer republican leader Paul Kruger after Kruger's commandos captured a column of British South Africa Company soldiers engaged in an armed incursion and abortive insurrection, known historically as the Jameson Raid, into Boer territory. Germany was the primary supplier of weapons to the Boers during the subsequent Anglo–Boer war. Kaiser Wilhelm's government arranged for the two Boer Republics to purchase modern breech-loading Mauser rifles and millions of smokeless gunpowder cartridges. Germany's Ludwig Loewe company, later known as Deutsche Waffen-und Munitionfabriken, delivered 55,000 of these rifles to the Boers in 1896.


title: History of South Africa

text: The early-1940s saw the pro-Nazi "Ossewa Brandwag" (OB) movement become half-a-million strong, including future prime minister John Vorster and Hendrik van den Bergh, the future head of police intelligence. The anti-semitic "Boerenasie" (Boer Nation) and other similar groups soon joined them. When the war ended, the OB was one of the anti-parliamentary groups absorbed into the National Party.


title: History of South Africa

text: The South African "Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging" or AWB (meaning Afrikaner Resistance Movement), a militant neo-Nazi, mainly Afrikaner white supremacist movement that arose in the 1970s, and was active until the mid-1990s, openly used a flag that closely resembled the swastika. In the early to mid-1990s, the AWB attempted unsuccessfully through various acts of public violence and intimidation to derail the country's transition to democracy. After the country's first multiracial democratic elections in 1994, a number of terrorist bomb blasts were linked to the AWB. On 11 March 1994, several hundred AWB members formed part of an armed right-wing force that invaded the nominally independent "homeland" territory of Bophuthatswana, in a failed attempt to prop up its unpopular, conservative leader Chief Lucas Mangope. The AWB leader Eugène Terre'Blanche was murdered by farm workers on 3 April 2010.


title: History of South Africa

text: A majority of politically moderate Afrikaners were pragmatic and did not support the AWB's extremism.


title: History of South Africa

text: The segregationist policies of apartheid stemmed from colonial legislation introduced during the period of Dutch rule in the 17th century, which was continued and expanded upon during the British colonial era, and reached its apogee during the Boer-dominated Union of South Africa.


title: History of South Africa

text: From 1948, successive National Party administrations formalised and extended the existing system of racial discrimination and denial of human rights into the legal system of "apartheid", which lasted until 1991. A key act of legislation during this time was the Homeland Citizens Act of 1970. This act augmented the Native Land Act of 1913 through the establishment of so-called "homelands" or "reserves". It authorised the forced evictions of thousands of African people from urban centres in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) to what became described colloquially as "Bantustans" or the "original homes", as they were officially referred to, of the black tribes of South Africa. The same legislation applied also to South West Africa over which South Africa had continued after World War I to exercise a disputed League of Nations mandate. Pro-apartheid South Africans attempted to justify the Bantustan policy by citing the British government's 1947 partition of India, which they claimed was a similar situation that did not arouse international condemnation.


title: History of South Africa

text: Although many important events occurred during this period, apartheid remained the central pivot around which most of the historical issues of this period revolved, including violent conflict and the militarisation of South African society. By 1987, total military expenditure amounted to about 28% of the national budget.


title: History of South Africa

text: In the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto uprising and the security clampdown that accompanied it, Joint Management Centres (JMCs) operating in at least 34 State-designated "high-risk" areas became the key element in a National Security Management System. The police and military who controlled the JMCs by the mid-1980s were endowed with influence in decision-making at every level, from the Cabinet down to local government.


title: History of South Africa

text: On 16 December 1966, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2202 A (XXI) identified apartheid as a "crime against humanity".


title: History of South Africa

text: The Apartheid Convention, as it came to be known, was adopted by the General Assembly on 30 November 1973 with 91 member states voting in favour, four against (Portugal, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States) and 26 abstentions. The convention came into force on 18 July 1976. On 23 October 1984 the UN Security Council endorsed this formal determination. The convention declared that apartheid was both unlawful and criminal because it violated the Charter of the United Nations.


title: History of South Africa

text: The General Assembly had already suspended South Africa from the UN organisation on 12 November 1974. On 4 November 1977, the Security Council imposed a mandatory arms embargo in terms of Resolution 181 calling upon all States to cease the sale and shipment of arms, ammunition and military vehicles to South Africa. The country would only be readmitted to the UN in 1994 following its transition to democracy. Apartheid South Africa reacted to the UN arms embargo by strengthening its military ties with Israel, and establishing its own arms manufacturing industry with the help of Israel. Four hundred M-113A1 armoured personnel carriers, and 106mm recoilless rifles manufactured in the United States were delivered to South Africa via Israel.


title: History of South Africa

text: In the mid-1980s, police and army death squads conducted state-sponsored assassinations of dissidents and activists. By mid-1987 the Human Rights Commission knew of at least 140 political assassinations in the country, while about 200 people died at the hands of South African agents in neighbouring states. The exact numbers of all the victims may never be known. Strict censorship disallowed journalists from reporting, filming or photographing such incidents, while the government ran its own covert disinformation programme that provided distorted accounts of the extrajudicial killings. At the same time, State-sponsored vigilante groups carried out violent attacks on communities and community leaders associated with resistance to apartheid. The attacks were then falsely attributed by the government to "black-on-black" or factional violence within the communities.


title: History of South Africa

text: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) would later establish that a covert, informal network of former or still serving army and police operatives, frequently acting in conjunction with extreme right-wing elements, was involved in actions that could be construed as fomenting violence and which resulted in gross human rights violations, including random and targeted killings.


title: History of South Africa

text: Between 1960–1994, according to statistics from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Inkatha Freedom Party was responsible for 4,500 deaths, South African Police 2,700, and the ANC about 1,300.


title: History of South Africa

text: In early 2002, a planned military coup by a white supremacist movement known as the "Boeremag" (Boer Force) was foiled by the South African police. Two dozen conspirators including senior South African Army officers were arrested on charges of treason and murder, after a bomb explosion in Soweto. The effectiveness of the police in foiling the planned coup strengthened public perceptions that the post-1994 democratic order was irreversible.


title: History of South Africa

text: The TRC, at the conclusion of its mandate in 2004, handed over a list of 300 names of alleged perpetrators to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) for investigation and prosecution by the NPA's Priority Crimes Litigation Unit. Less than a handful of prosecutions were ever pursued.


title: History of South Africa

text: South African security forces during the latter part of the apartheid era had a policy of destabilising neighbouring states, supporting opposition movements, conducting sabotage operations and attacking ANC bases and places of refuge for exiles in those states. These states, forming a regional alliance of southern African states, were named collectively as the Frontline States: Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and, from 1980, Zimbabwe.


title: History of South Africa

text: In early-November 1975, immediately after Portugal granted independence to its former African colony of Angola, civil war broke out between the rival UNITA and MPLA movements. In order to prevent UNITA's collapse and cement the rule of a friendly government, South Africa intervened on 23 October, sending between 1,500 and 2,000 troops from Namibia into southern Angola in order to fight the MPLA. In response to the South African intervention, Cuba sent 18,000 soldiers as part of a large-scale military intervention nicknamed Operation Carlota in support of the MPLA. Cuba had initially provided the MPLA with 230 military advisers prior to the South African intervention. The Cuban intervention was decisive in helping reverse SADF and UNITA advances and cement MPLA rule in Angola. More than a decade later 36,000 Cuban troops were deployed throughout the country helping providing support for MPLA's fight with UNITA. The civil war in Angola resulted in 550,000–1,250,000 deaths in total mostly from famine. Most of the deaths occurred between 1992 and 1993, after South African and Cuban involvement had ended.


title: History of South Africa

text: Between 1975 and 1988, the SADF continued to stage massive conventional raids into Angola and Zambia to eliminate PLAN's forward operating bases across the border from Namibia as well as provide support for UNITA. A controversial bombing and airborne assault conducted by 200 South African paratroopers on 4 May 1978 at Cassinga in southern Angola, resulted in around 700 South West Africans being killed, including PLAN militants and a large number of women and children. Colonel Jan Breytenbach, the South African parachute battalion commander, claimed it was "recognised in Western military circles as the most successful airborne assault since World War II." The Angolan government described the target of the attack as a refugee camp. The United Nations Security Council on 6 May 1978 condemned South Africa for the attack. On 23 August 1981 South African troops again launched an incursion into Angola with collaboration and encouragement provided by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The Angolan army, in resisting what it perceived as a South African invasion, was supported by a combination of Cuban forces and PLAN and ANC guerrillas, all armed with weapons supplied by the Soviet Union. The apartheid-era South African military and political intelligence services, for their part, worked closely with American, British and West German secret services throughout the Cold War.


title: History of South Africa

text: Both South Africa and Cuba claimed victory at the decisive battle of Cuito Cuanavale, which have been described as "the fiercest in Africa since World War II". However, the South African military had lost air superiority and its technological advantage, largely due to an international arms embargo against the country. South African involvement in Angola ended formally after the signing of a United Nations-brokered agreement known as the New York Accords between the governments of Angola, Cuba and South Africa, resulting in the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Angola and also South Africa's withdrawal from South West Africa (now Namibia), which the UN regarded as illegally occupied since 1966.


title: History of South Africa

text: South Africa in the 1980s also provided logistical and other covert support to "Resistência Nacional Moçambicana" (RENAMO) rebels, in neighbouring Mozambique fighting the FRELIMO-run government during the Mozambique Civil War, and it launched cross-border raids into Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana, killing or capturing a number of South African exiles.


title: History of South Africa

text: Organised resistance to Afrikaner nationalism was not confined exclusively to activists of the oppressed, dark-skinned population. A movement known as the Torch Commando was formed in the 1950s, led by white war veterans who had fought fascism in Europe and North Africa during World War II, only to find fascism on the rise in South Africa when they returned home. With 250,000 paid-up members at the height of its existence, it was the largest white protest movement in the country's history. By 1952, the brief flame of mass-based white radicalism was extinguished, when the Torch Commando disbanded due to government legislation under the Suppression of Communism Act, 1950. Some members of the Torch Commando subsequently became leading figures in the armed wing of the banned African National Congress.


title: History of South Africa

text: From the 1940s to the 1960s, anti-apartheid resistance within the country took the form mainly of passive resistance, influenced in part by the pacifist ideology of Mahatma Gandhi. After the March 1960 massacre of 69 peaceful demonstrators at Sharpeville, and the subsequent declaration of a state of emergency, and the banning of anti-apartheid parties including the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), and the Communist Party of South Africa, the focus of national resistance turned to armed struggle and underground activity. The armed wing of the ANC, Umkhonto weSizwe (abbreviation MK, meaning Spear of the Nation) claimed moral legitimacy for the resort to violence on the grounds of necessary defence and just war. From the 1960s onwards until 1989, MK carried out numerous acts of sabotage and attacks on military and police personnel. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission noted in 2003 that, despite the ANC's stated policy of attacking only military and police targets, "the majority of casualties of MK operations were civilians."


title: History of South Africa

text: The national liberation movement was divided in the early 1960s when an "Africanist" faction within the ANC objected to an alliance between the ANC and the Communist Party of South Africa. Leaders of the Communist Party of South Africa were mostly white. The Africanists broke away from the ANC to form the Pan-Africanist Congress and its military wing named Poqo, which became active mainly in the Cape provinces. During the early-1990s, Poqo was renamed Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA). Its underground cells conducted armed robberies to raise funds and obtain weapons and vehicles. Civilians were killed or injured in many of these robberies. In 1993, attacks on white civilian targets in public places increased. APLA denied the attacks were racist in character, claiming that the attacks were directed against the apartheid government as all whites, according to the PAC, were complicit in the policy of apartheid. An attack on a Christian church in Cape Town in 1993, left eleven people dead and 58 injured.


title: History of South Africa

text: Hundreds of students and others who fled to neighbouring countries, especially Botswana, to avoid arrest after the Soweto uprising of 16 June 1976, provided a fertile recruiting ground for the military wings of both the ANC and PAC. The uprising had been precipitated by Government legislation forcing African students to accept Afrikaans as the official medium for tuition, with support from the wider Black Consciousness Movement. The uprising spread throughout the country. By the time it was finally quelled, hundreds of protesters had been shot dead with many more wounded or arrested by police.


title: History of South Africa

text: A non-racial United Democratic Front (UDF) coalition of about 400 civic, church, student, trade union and other organisations emerged in 1983. At its peak in 1987, the UDF had some 700 affiliates and about 3,000,000 members. It pursued a very violent strategy known as "ungovernability", they killed thousands of opposition party, mostly members of Inkatha Freedom Party in some cases burning them alive, including rent boycotts, student protests, and strike campaigns. A strong relationship existed between the African National Congress (ANC) and the UDF, based on the shared mission statement of the Freedom Charter. Following restrictions placed on its activities, the UDF was replaced in 1988 by the Mass Democratic Movement, a loose and amorphous alliance of anti-apartheid groups that had no permanent structure, making it difficult for the government to place a ban on its activities.


title: History of South Africa

text: A total of 130 political prisoners were hanged on the gallows of Pretoria Central Prison between 1960 and 1990. The prisoners were mainly members of the Pan Africanist Congress and United Democratic Front.


title: History of South Africa

text: The dissolution of the Soviet Union in the late-1980s meant the African National Congress (ANC) in alliance with the South African Communist Party, could no longer depend on the Soviet Union for weaponry and political support. It also meant the apartheid government could no longer link apartheid and its purported legitimacy to the protection of Christian values and civilisation in the face of the "rooi gevaar", meaning "red danger" or the threat of communism. Both sides were forced to the negotiating table, with the result that in June 1991, all apartheid laws were finally rescinded- opening the way for the country's first multiracial democratic elections three years later. As the culmination of mounting local and international opposition to apartheid in the 1980s, including the armed struggle, widespread civil unrest, economic and cultural sanctions by the international community, and pressure from the anti-apartheid movement around the world, State President F. W. de Klerk announced the lifting of the ban on the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress and the South African Communist Party, as well as the release of political prisoner Nelson Mandela on 2 February 1990, after twenty-seven years in prison. In a referendum held on 17 March 1992, the white electorate voted 68% in favour of democracy.


title: History of South Africa

text: After lengthy negotiations under the auspices of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), a draft constitution was published on 26 July 1993, containing concessions towards all sides: a federal system of regional legislatures, equal voting-rights regardless of race, and a bicameral legislature.


title: History of South Africa

text: From 26–29 April 1994, the South African population voted in the first universal suffrage general elections. The African National Congress won, well ahead of the governing National Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party. The Democratic Party and Pan Africanist Congress, among others, formed a parliamentary opposition in the country's first non-racial parliament. Nelson Mandela was elected as President on 9 May 1994 and formed a Government of National Unity, consisting of the ANC, the National Party and Inkatha. On 10 May 1994 Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa's new President in Pretoria with Thabo Mbeki and F. W. De Klerk as his vice-presidents. The Government of National Unity lapsed at the end of the first parliament sitting in 1999, with the ANC becoming the sole party in power while maintaining a strategic alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party. After considerable debate, and following submissions from advocacy groups, individuals and ordinary citizens, the Parliament enacted a new Constitution and Bill of Rights in 1996. The death penalty was abolished, land reform and redistribution policies were introduced, and equitable labour laws legislated.


title: History of South Africa

text: The ANC had risen to power on the strength of a socialist agenda embodied in a Freedom Charter, which was intended to form the basis of ANC social, economic and political policies. The Charter decreed that "the national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people; the mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people". ANC icon Nelson Mandela, asserted in a statement released on 25 January 1990: "The nationalisation of the mines, banks and monopoly industries is the policy of the ANC, and a change or modification of our views in this regard is inconceivable."


title: History of South Africa

text: Following the ANC's electoral victory in 1994, the eradication of mass poverty through nationalisation was never implemented. The ANC-led government, in a historic reversal of policy, adopted neoliberalism instead. A wealth tax on the super-rich to fund developmental projects was set aside, while domestic and international corporations, enriched by apartheid, were excused from any financial reparations. Large corporations were allowed to shift their main listings abroad. According to Solomon Johannes Terreblanche, a South African academic economist, the government's concessions to big business represented "treacherous decisions that [will] haunt South Africa for generations to come".


title: History of South Africa

text: The immediate post-apartheid period was marked by an exodus of skilled, white South Africans amid crime related safety concerns. The South African Institute of Race Relations estimated in 2008 that 800,000 or more white people had emigrated since 1995, out of the approximately 4,000,000 who were in South Africa when apartheid formally ended the year before. Large white South African diasporas, both English- and Afrikaans-speaking, sprouted in Australia, New Zealand, North America, and especially in the UK, to which around 550,000 South Africans emigrated. As of 2021, tens of thousands of white South Africans continue to emigrate each year. By 2019 the number of skilled black South Africans emigrating out of the country had surpassed the number of white emigres.


title: History of South Africa

text: The apartheid government had declared a moratorium on foreign debt repayments in the mid-1980s, when it declared a state of emergency in the face of escalating civil unrest. With the formal end of apartheid in 1994, the new democratic government was saddled with an onerous foreign debt amounting to R86,700,000,000 (US$14,000,000,000 at then current exchange rates) accrued by the former apartheid regime. The cash-strapped post-apartheid government was obliged to repay this debt or else face a credit downgrading by foreign financial institutions. The debt was finally settled in September 2001.


title: History of South Africa

text: A further financial burden was imposed on the new post-apartheid government through its obligation to provide antiretroviral (ARV) treatment to impoverished victims of the HIV/AIDS epidemic sweeping the country. South Africa had the highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS compared to any other country in the world, with 5,600,000 people afflicted by the disease and 270,000 HIV-related deaths were recorded in 2011. By that time, more than 2,000,000 children were orphaned due to the epidemic. The provision of ARV treatment resulted in 100,000 fewer AIDS-related deaths in 2011 than in 2005.


title: History of South Africa

text: Migrant labour remained a fundamental aspect of the South African mining industry, which employed half a million mostly black miners. Labour unrest in the industry resulted in a massacre in mid-August 2012, when anti-riot police shot dead 34 striking miners and wounded many more in what is known as the Marikana massacre. The incident was widely criticised by the public, civil society organisations and religious leaders. The migrant labour system was identified as a primary cause of the unrest. Multi-national mining corporations including Anglo-American Corporation, Lonmin, and Anglo Platinum, were accused of failing to address the enduring legacies of apartheid.


title: History of South Africa

text: In 2014, around 47% of (mostly black) South Africans lived in poverty, making it one of the most unequal countries in the world. Widespread dissatisfaction with the slow pace of socio-economic transformation, government incompetence and maladministration, and other public grievances in the post-apartheid era, precipitated many violent protest demonstrations. In 2007, less than half the protests were associated with some form of violence, compared with 2014, when almost 80% of protests involved violence on the part of the participants or the authorities. The slow pace of transformation also fomented tensions within the tripartite alliance between the ANC, the Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions.


title: History of South Africa

text: During the administration of President Jacob Zuma corruption in South Africa had also become a growing problem. Notable corruption related scandals during this period included incidents of widespread state capture often involving allegations against the Gupta family. These also involved corruption related financial difficulties at some state owned enterprises such as Eskom and South African Airways that had a notable negative economic impact on the country's finances. Other corruption related scandals to emerge during this period included the collapse of VBS Mutual Bank and Bosasa. The Zondo Commission of Inquiry was appointed during the Presidency of Cyril Ramaphosa to investigate allegations of state capture related corruption.


title: History of South Africa

text: Since 2007 South Africa has experienced an ongoing energy crisis that has negatively impacted the country's economy, its ability to create jobs, and reduce poverty. A lack of investment in new power generating capacity and an aging fleet of existing power plants was the initial cause of the crisis. The government owned power utility Eskom has been plagued with corruption and mismanagement, most notability during the presidency of Jacob Zuma, which has limited its ability to resolve the crisis.


title: History of South Africa

text: The post-apartheid period has been marked by numerous outbreaks of xenophobic attacks against foreign migrants and asylum seekers from various conflict zones in Africa. An academic study conducted in 2006, found that South Africans showed levels of xenophobia greater than anywhere else in the world. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) found that competition over jobs, business opportunities, public services and housing gave rise to tension among refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and host communities, identified as a main cause of the xenophobic violence. South Africa received more than 207,000 individual asylum applications in 2008 and a further 222,300 in 2009, representing nearly a four-fold rise in both years over the levels seen in 2007. These refugees and asylum seekers originated mainly from Zimbabwe, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia.


title: History of South Africa

text: Civil unrest occurred in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces in July 2021, sparked by the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma for contempt of court, after he declined to testify at the Zondo Commission, an inquiry into allegations of corruption during his term as president from 2009 to 2018. Protests against the incarceration triggered wider rioting and looting, further exacerbated by job layoffs and economic woes worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: History of South Africa

text: The Economist called it the worst violence that South Africa had experienced since the end of Apartheid.


title: History of South Africa

text: Police and military authorities were mobilised to quell the unrest. By mid-July, the South African National Defense Forces had deployed approximately 25,000 military personnel. As of 18 July, over 3,400 people had been arrested, while as of 22 July, 337 people had died in connection with the unrest.


title: History of South Africa

text: The July 2021 unrest coincided with the Cape Town taxi conflict and Transnet ransomware attack leading to unproven speculation that they might have been connected.


title: History of South Africa

text: Under the post-apartheid Constitution the president is head of both state and government. The president is elected by the National Assembly and serves a term that expires at the next general election. A president may serve a maximum of two terms. In the event of a vacancy the Deputy President serves as Acting President.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Snow Patrol are a Northern Irish–Scottish rock band formed in 1994 in Dundee, Scotland. They consist of Gary Lightbody (vocals, guitar), Nathan Connolly (guitar, backing vocals), Paul Wilson (bass guitar, backing vocals), Jonny Quinn (drums), and Johnny McDaid (piano, guitar, backing vocals). Initially an indie rock band, Snow Patrol rose to prominence in the early– mid-2000s as part of the post-Britpop movement.


title: Snow Patrol

text: The band were founded at the University of Dundee in 1994 by Lightbody, Mark McClelland, and Michael Morrison of Shrug. After briefly using the name Polarbear, releasing the EP "Starfighter Pilot" (1997) and losing Morrison as a member, the band became Snow Patrol in 1997 and added Quinn to its lineup. Their first two studio albums, "Songs for Polarbears" (1998) and "When It's All Over We Still Have to Clear Up" (2001), released by the independent record label Jeepster Records, were commercially unsuccessful. The band then signed to the major record label Polydor Records in 2002.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Connolly joined Snow Patrol in 2002, and after their major-label debut album, "Final Straw", the following year, with "Run", the album's biggest hit, the band rose to national fame. The album was certified 5× platinum in the UK. Their next studio album, "Eyes Open" (2006), and its hit single, "Chasing Cars"—reported in 2019 to be the most-played song of the 21st century on UK radio—propelled the band to greater international fame. The album topped the UK Albums Chart and was the best-selling British album of the year. In 2008, Snow Patrol released their fifth studio album, "A Hundred Million Suns"; then, in 2009, they released their first compilation album, "Up to Now"; and, in 2011, their sixth studio album, "Fallen Empires", was published. The band released their seventh album, "Wildness", on 25 May 2018.


title: Snow Patrol

text: During the course of their career, Snow Patrol have won seven Meteor Ireland Music Awards and been nominated for six Brit Awards and one Grammy. "Final Straw", "Eyes Open", and "A Hundred Million Suns" have sold ten million copies worldwide, combined.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Snow Patrol were originally formed in early 1994 by University of Dundee students Gary Lightbody, Mark McClelland, and Michael Morrison under the name Shrug. The band started by performing gigs at the university and surrounding pubs such as Lucifer's Mill. Their first EP was entitled "The Yogurt vs. Yoghurt Debate". In 1996, they changed their name to Polarbear to avoid issues with any American bands that were also named Shrug. Shortly afterwards, drummer Michael Morrison left the group after suffering a breakdown and returned to Northern Ireland. In mid-1997, Polarbear released a three-track EP, "Starfighter Pilot", on the Electric Honey label. The band again renamed, this time to Snow Patrol in 1997, because of a naming conflict with a band named Polar Bear, fronted by ex-Jane's Addiction bassist Eric Avery.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Snow Patrol joined independent label Jeepster in 1997. Jeepster had the same idea for Snow Patrol as the approach they had with Belle & Sebastian, who had become popular by word of mouth, without heavy promotion. The band were happy to be associated with an indie label, because it provided them greater independence than a major label would. At that time, they were quoted as saying Jeepster wouldn't expect them to have a strict work ethic or focus too much on promotional efforts.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Snow Patrol's debut album, "Songs for Polarbears", was released in 1998 after the band had started living in Glasgow. Lightbody was then working at the Nice n Sleazy's Bar in Sauchiehall Street. The album was a critical success but did not make any impact commercially. The same year, the band came close to getting featured in a worldwide advertisement for Philips. Gomez was ultimately signed. In 1999, Snow Patrol won the "Phil Lynott Award for Best New Band" by Irish music magazine "Hot Press". In 2001, still living in Glasgow, the trio followed up with "When It's All Over We Still Have to Clear Up". Like its predecessor, the album was praised by critics but did not sell.


title: Snow Patrol

text: The band began to work harder and tour more. They slept on fans' floors after concerts and pretended to be members of Belle & Sebastian to get into nightclubs. They owed rent to their landlords and used to receive regular visits and letters from them when on tour. After the failure of the second album, Snow Patrol began to realise that the label's lax attitude towards management and record promotion, qualities that had initially attracted them to Jeepster, was likely holding them back. The band's manager at the time was Danny McIntosh. Lightbody has described him as "the angriest man in pop: great, great man". He has said that he loved the band "with every atom in his body" and was never angry towards them. Lightbody has credited their manager with keeping the band together in those years. McIntosh had a gold-coloured splitter bus, in which the band used to travel to play concerts.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Jeepster dropped Snow Patrol in 2001, a decision that was criticised by "Hot Press" magazine as brainless. By July 2001, many major labels had started showing interest in the band, who were cash-strapped and had no record deal. Lightbody sold a major part of his record collection to raise money to keep the band going. The singer calls the time "miserable" but he was confident they would get signed to another label quickly. However, the music scene in the United Kingdom had turned its attention to American bands, and British bands were not getting signed. The group spent this time constantly writing songs. Lightbody, bored at this point, assembled The Reindeer Section, a Scottish supergroup, and found a record label to release the project's recordings. Quinn said that though the time was hard for everyone involved except for Nathan, the question of splitting up never arose. It was during this time the band wrote "Run" (which had been around since 2000) in a room on an acoustic guitar, which later became the band's breakthrough single. The band's "low point" came when they played a concert to eighteen people at a popular strip club in High Wycombe. The show took place in a shoddy VIP area, and the management had to unscrew poles used by pole dancers to make space for the band to play, something that Gary would later joke about whilst performing at a sold-out Wembley Arena. Quinn calls the show "horrendous". Desperate for attention, the band raised £200 to nominate themselves for a Mercury Prize but failed to get shortlisted.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Guitarist Nathan Connolly, previously a member of the band File Under Easy Listening, had been working in an HMV store room in Belfast at the time. Connolly and the band had a mutual friend, who introduced them to him. Connolly moved to Glasgow to join Snow Patrol in the spring of 2002.


title: Snow Patrol

text: During Lightbody and McClelland's years at the University of Dundee, they had been noticed by Richard Smernicki, a senior student. Richard's brother Paul had come to know the band as well. Richard graduated in 1996, two years before Lightbody and McClelland, to become Polydor's Scottish A&R representative. Paul became Polydor's Press and Artist Development Manager and Fiction's label manager. Later, Jim Chancellor, an A&R executive for Fiction, and fellow talent scout Alex Close, approached Snow Patrol in Glasgow to listen to their demos, and judged them on "the quality of the songs", according to Lightbody. Chancellor introduced them to producer Jacknife Lee, who despite having been a guitarist in 1990s punk rock band Compulsion, had no rock production experience at that point, being known instead for his work with Basement Jaxx and Eminem.


title: Snow Patrol

text: "Final Straw" was released on 4 August 2003, under Black Lion, a subsidiary of Polydor Records. Its music was along the same lines as the band's first two albums, and no attempt was made to change the sound to something more radio-friendly. The release of "Final Straw" in the US in 2004 saw the album sell more than 250,000 copies and become the 26th-most popular album in the UK of that year. The album was eventually certified five-times platinum in the UK. In mid-2005, during their tour to support "Final Straw", the band toured with U2 as an opening act on the Vertigo Tour in Europe. That summer also saw Snow Patrol playing a short set in London at the worldwide benefit concert Live 8. After finishing their opening act duties and extensive two-year tour of "Final Straw" in late July, the band took a few weeks off and began writing and recording songs for a new album. Snow Patrol's new version of John Lennon's "Isolation" was released on 10 December 2005 as part of the Amnesty International campaign Make Some Noise. The song was later issued on the 2007 John Lennon tribute album, "."


title: Snow Patrol

text: On 16 March 2005, McClelland left the band, with Lightbody stating, "a whole new set of new and unexpected pressures...have unfortunately taken their toll on working relationships within the band, and it was felt the band could not move forward with Mark as a member." At the end of March 2005, former Terra Diablo member Paul Wilson was announced as the official replacement for McClelland, and Snow Patrol also declared longtime touring keyboardist Tom Simpson an official member of the band.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Snow Patrol completed the recording of "Eyes Open" in December 2005, with Jacknife Lee returning for production. The album was released on 28 April 2006 in Ireland and 1 May 2006 in the UK, with the first UK single, "You're All I Have", coming out on 24 April 2006. The record was released in North America on 9 May. While "Hands Open" was the first American single, "Chasing Cars" pushed its way onto the download and pop charts after it was heard during an emotional scene of the second-season finale of the television show "Grey's Anatomy" on 15 May 2006. On 23 July 2006, "Chasing Cars" had the distinction of being the last song performed live on the BBC's "Top of the Pops". The song peaked at number 6 on the UK Singles Chart and number 5 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100.


title: Snow Patrol

text: On 26 November 2006, "Eyes Open" had become the best-selling album of 2006 in the UK, selling 1.5 million copies. It was also the 15th best-selling album of the 2000s and is one of the best-selling albums in UK chart history.


title: Snow Patrol

text: At the 2007 Grammy Awards, "Chasing Cars" was nominated for Best Rock Song and at the 2007 Brit Awards, the song was nominated for Best British Single. 1 September 2007 saw Snow Patrol headlining a "homecoming" mini-festival in Lightbody and Jonny Quinn's home town of Bangor, County Down. Around 30,000 people came to see the band.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Lightbody stated that recording for the follow-up to "Eyes Open" was to begin in Autumn 2006, with Jacknife Lee returning a third time for production.


title: Snow Patrol

text: The band kicked off their Taking Back the Cities Tour on 26 October 2008. Singer Miriam Kaufmann toured with the band and sang backing vocals, most notably on "Set the Fire to the Third Bar", which originally featured Martha Wainwright. The UK & Ireland Arena Tour ended on 23 March. The final show was played at the Odyssey in Belfast to a 9,000-strong crowd, including family and friends of the band, and the Northern Irish football squad. It was also reported that the band played to an estimated 200,000 fans during the tour.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Snow Patrol next visited South Africa to play a few dates at the Coca-Cola Zero Festival, supporting Oasis, before beginning a European leg of the tour. In June, they supported Coldplay for a month on the Viva la Vida Tour.


title: Snow Patrol

text: The band also released a compilation album featuring tracks from their fifteen-year history, "Up to Now", on 9 November 2009. It includes thirty tracks spanning two CDs, of which three are new songs. "Just Say Yes", a track written by Lightbody and earlier recorded by Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger and X Factor star Diana Vickers, was released as the lead single on 2 November. The album additionally contains covers and rarities, including songs from the band's side project, The Reindeer Section. Snow Patrol expressed wishes to make a tour documentary in the future, along the lines of U2's "Rattle and Hum".


title: Snow Patrol

text: In December 2009, the PPL announced "Chasing Cars" was the most-played song of the decade in the UK. The same month, in a UK poll conducted by Channel 4, it was voted the nation's favourite "song of the noughties". In January 2010, the band were nominated in three categories in the annual Meteor Awards. They also played at the event, on 19 February 2010 at The RDS.


title: Snow Patrol

text: In 2009, Snow Patrol stated they would enter their "next phase" with the release of their sixth album. The band took a new musical direction, and Connolly advised fans to keep an open mind regarding the new material. On 12 January 2011, Lightbody launched a blog to give details about the progress of the band's next release.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Snow Patrol released the single "Called Out in the Dark" (remixed by Fatboy Slim) for radio airplay on 21 July 2011 on BBC Radio 1 on Zane Lowe's radio show. According to official sources, the single itself would be released independently and as part of an EP later on and the UK release date was said to be 4 September. More details on the EP were announced on 3 August, when the group's website revealed the artwork and track list contents. Along with the new single, the release contained three new tracks, entitled "My Brothers", "I'm Ready", and "Fallen Empires". In addition, it was revealed that the EP was intended to be a digital release limited to the UK and Ireland.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Shortly after the premiere of the new lead single, the quintet's official website confirmed the news that the name of the new album would be "Fallen Empires". "Fallen Empires" was released on 14 November 2011 in the UK and was launched at O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire. Singer-songwriter Johnny McDaid, after being involved in the album as a guest musician and songwriter, would then join the band on the subsequent tour and eventually become a full member of Snow Patrol.


title: Snow Patrol

text: The second single from "Fallen Empires" was "This Isn't Everything You Are", released on 13 November 2011.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Snow Patrol headlined the Tennent's Vital festival in August 2013 and performed a special warm-up show in London before the festival. After the show, they announced that Simpson would be leaving the band.


title: Snow Patrol

text: The follow-up to "Fallen Empires" was initially due for release in 2016. Lightbody told "NME" that he had to overcome a bout of writer's block and that the songs written for the new album were scrapped before being replaced by new "mind-boggling" material.


title: Snow Patrol

text: On 28 January 2018, the band's social media announced the upcoming release of their seventh studio album, entitled "Wildness", which was published on 25 May 2018.


title: Snow Patrol

text: In November 2018, they released an EP, "What If This Is All the Love You Ever Get?", featuring remixes of the track of the same name from "Wildness". The band released their third compilation album, "Reworked", on 8 November 2019, and followed it up with a tour.


title: Snow Patrol

text: In 2009, Snow Patrol curated the 22nd album in the "Late Night Tales" series of mix albums. The band covered the INXS song "New Sensation" for the occasion. Lightbody has also spoken of plans to release songs from the Listen... Tanks! project (with Snow Patrol producer Jacknife Lee) and Tired Pony, a country group.


title: Snow Patrol

text: In 2014, the band contributed a new song, "I Won't Let You Go", to the soundtrack for the film "Divergent".


title: Snow Patrol

text: On 30 July 2006, Snow Patrol appeared on the finale of the long-running BBC music show "Top of the Pops", performing "Chasing Cars". The band were the last act to appear on the show.


title: Snow Patrol

text: On 7 July 2007, they performed at the UK leg of Live Earth at Wembley Stadium, London. Shortly after their performance, Simpson was arrested at RAF Northolt for missing a court date in Glasgow, having been charged with possession of cocaine.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Snow Patrol founded Polar Music, a publishing company run through Kobalt Music. The venture is independent from the band's publishing deal with Universal Music. Polar Music was planned to sign artists regardless of their genre, as drummer Jonny Quinn explained: "there is no agenda—if it's good enough and we believe in it 110%, we will sign it." Quinn, and his fellow band members Connolly and Lightbody, are acting as A&R. The company's first signing was Johnny McDaid, previously of the Northern Irish band Vega4. Quinn has said that they wish to sign artists to a one-album deal and do not want to put undue pressure on the artists with bigger, multi-year contracts. Polar Music had its initial chart hit in the first week of October 2009.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Gary Lightbody and Tom Simpson are both fans of the football club Dundee F.C. In 2008, they met the club's board of directors to find ways to financially help the struggling club. The band also owns a stake in the Houndstooth Pub in New York City.


title: Snow Patrol

text: On 25 November 2007, Snow Patrol performed an acoustic session for the charity Mencap at Union Chapel, Islington. They were one of the main bands to take part in the project, called "Little Noise Sessions", which was curated by Jo Whiley.


title: Snow Patrol

text: In 2009, Lightbody and Connolly donated plectrums and certificates to the Music Beats Mines project, which aims to clear unexploded mines/landmines from conflict zones. The items were auctioned on eBay.


title: Snow Patrol

text: Other musicians, such as Ozzy Osbourne, Bono, Michael Stipe, and Nikki Sixx, have expressed admiration for Snow Patrol. Terri Hooley, founder of the Good Vibrations label and a lifelong supporter of local Northern Irish music, has expressed pride in bands like Snow Patrol.


title: Snow Patrol

text: "Chasing Cars" was voted the song of the decade on Channel 4's programme "The Song of the Decade", which was broadcast on 28 December 2009. On 30 December 2009, Phonographic Performance Limited announced "Chasing Cars" was the most-played song of the decade in the UK. Ten years later in 2019, it was reportedly still the most played song of the 21st century in the UK.


title: Snow Patrol

text: In June 2010, the band were commemorated with a Heritage Award by PRS for Music. A plaque was erected on the Duke of York pub in Belfast, where Snow Patrol performed their first gig. The band were the sixth to receive the award, with all its members turning out. They later performed a live set to a small crowd of around thirty people.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: Bologna Football Club 1909, commonly referred to as Bologna (), is an Italian professional football club based in Bologna, Emilia-Romagna that plays in Serie A, the top flight of Italian football. The club have won seven top-flight titles, two Coppa Italia titles, and one UEFA Intertoto Cup.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: Founded in 1909, Bologna were founding members of Serie A, and won many of their league championships during the late 1930s. The club ceded any league dominance by 1964, when they won their last league title to date. They won their two Coppa Italia titles in the 1970s, before battling relegation throughout the latter part of the 20th century. Bologna changed ownership multiple times during the early 2000s and 2010s, due to financial mismanagement, and later stabilized under the guise of a Canadian consortium led by Joey Saputo.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: Bologna have participated in 75 Serie A seasons, which is the ninth-most in Italian football history. The club have played in the Stadio Renato Dall'Ara since 1927, which is the tenth-largest stadium by capacity in Serie A.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: Bologna Football Club's formation was orchestrated by Emilio Arnstein, an Austrian who became interested in football at university in Vienna and Prague. He and his brother had previously founded another football club, Black Star, in Austria.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: The club was founded on 3 October 1909, in the Northern Italian city of Bologna. Upon its formation, Carlo Sandoni was the club's sponsor and general manager, Swiss Louis Rauch became president, nobleman Guido Della Valle was the vice-president, Enrico Penaglia secretary, Sergio Lampronti cashier, while Emilio Arnstein and Leone Vincenzi were appointed councilmen.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: On 20 March 1910, Bologna played their first ever game, against Virtus, who wore white shirts. Bologna outclassed their opponents, winning 9–1. The first football squad featured; Koch, Chiara, Pessarelli, Bragaglia, Guido Della Valle, Nanni, Donati, Rauch, Bernabeu, Mezzano, and Gradi.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: Their formative season was spent in the regional league under Arrigo Gradi as captain, Bologna won their league gaining promotion to a league named "Group Veneto-Emiliano". They spent four seasons in this league, never finishing lower than fifth. Bologna were entered into the Northern League before all football leagues were postponed for World War I.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: After the first war, Bologna began to become more successful. First reaching the semi-finals of the Northern Italian competition in 1919–20, they went one better the following season by reaching the Northern League finals, going out 2–1 to Pro Vercelli. They would equal this again in 1923–24, coming runner up to eventual national champions Genoa.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: Bologna became Northern and National League champions for the first time during 1924–25, beating Genoa CFC after five hard-fought final matches to take the championship. The finals against the Ligurian giants were marred by heavy crowd troubles. A few seasons later Bologna became champions of Italy for the second time in 1928–29 giving them a foothold in Italian football, building up a legacy, this was the last time the league was competed in the old system, Serie A was instated the following year.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: Bologna won the "Scudetto" three more times before World War II, in 1935–36, 1936–37 and 1938–39, and once during the war (1940–41).


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: After World War II, the club was less successful. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the club generally floated between fourth, fifth and sixth position in the league, until they took the league title back in 1963–64. To date this remains their last Serie A championship, bringing the club's total to seven. This qualified Bologna to the 1964–65 European Cup (today UEFA Champions League), but they were eliminated in the preliminary round against Anderlecht.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: It was not all doom and gloom for the club, however; in the 1970s, they won the Italian Cup twice, the second of which was disputed against Palermo. The game was tense and finished 1–1 before going to a penalty shootout, where Bologna won 4–3.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: Beginning in the 1981–82 season, the club began to slide. First, they were relegated from Serie A after battling it out for survival with Cagliari and Genoa. They were relegated twice in succession and slid into Serie C1. They won their way out of C1 the next year, and returned to Serie A for the 1988–89 season after four years of fighting it out in Serie B.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: They did not remain long, however, being relegated in 1991 and returning to Serie C1 in 1993. The club returned to Serie A for 1996. Two years later, Bologna tasted a slice of success on the European stage, winning the UEFA Intertoto Cup and playing in the UEFA Cup. The club remained in Serie A until the 2004–05 campaign, losing to Parma in the playoffs.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: Despite losing some key players, Bologna expected to be challenging strongly for promotion from Serie B in the 2005–06 campaign. Despite its ambition, however, Bologna had a poor start to the season, causing the sacking of experienced coach Renzo Ulivieri, replaced by former Internazionale defender Andrea Mandorlini.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: During this time, the team was sold by Giuseppe Gazzoni Frascara to Alfredo Cazzola, a local entrepreneur. Mandorlini, however, was not either able to bring Bologna up the Serie B table, and was fired on 5 March 2006; Ulivieri was then appointed back as team coach, after having been sacked a few months before. Bologna ended the 2005–06 Serie B campaign in eighth place. In the 2006–07 season, Bologna ended with the seventh place: there were several clashes between chairman Cazzola and head coach Ulivieri, who was ultimately fired on 14 April 2007 and replaced by caretaker and former assistant coach Luca Cecconi. For the 2007–08 season, Bologna was led by Daniele Arrigoni, who helped the "rossoblù" achieve automatic promotion back to the top flight after finishing second in Serie B.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: During the summer of 2008, a club takeover was agreed between Cazzola and an American-based consortium; this was, however, cancelled in the end, following disagreements between the parties, and the club was successively sold to a local group led by new chairman Francesca Menarini, who thus became the second female chairman in the whole Serie A. Arrigoni was confirmed as head coach by the new group, and the start appeared to be particularly impressive, with a surprising 2–1 win at San Siro against Milan thanks to a winning goal scored by Francesco Valiani. The next weeks saw Bologna struggling in the league, however, with eight losses in nine matches. A disappointing 5–1 loss to Cagliari ultimately led the club management to sack Daniele Arrigoni on 3 November 2008 and appoint Siniša Mihajlović as new "rossoblù" boss.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: On 14 April 2009, Giuseppe Papadopulo was appointed as the new manager, and successfully managed to raise the team spirit avoiding relegation to Serie B only in the last match of the season. In the 2009–10 season, Bologna played in Serie A for the 65th time, and escaped relegation again despite financial issues under new head coach Franco Colomba.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: In June 2010, a club takeover was completed, with the club being sold by the Menarini family to Sardinian entrepreneur Sergio Porcedda. Franco Colomba was sacked right before the 2010–11 season opener on 29 August 2010, despite surviving relegation with the team in the 2009–10 season. The president of the club, Sergio Porcedda, said that the decision was made mostly "because he [Colomba] was skeptical of the team."


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: On 23 December 2010, the consortium "Bologna 2010" led by banker Giovanni Consorte and coffee businessman Massimo Zanetti acquired the club from Sergio Porcedda, after the latter failed to pay wages for the club during his short-tenured ownership and put Bologna in threat of bankruptcy. The company also owed agent fee to Leonardo Corsi in the Andrea Raggi's transfer. Zanetti also became the new club chairman, with popular Italian musician and long-time Bologna supporter Gianni Morandi appointed as honorary president.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: On 21 January 2011, chairman Massimo Zanetti and CEO Luca Baraldi, after only 28 days, resigned because of irreconcilable differences with the other personal and financial partners.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: From 7 April 2011, after the resignation of Pavignani and having paid €2.5m of capital increase, the new chairman was Albano Guaraldi, the second largest shareholder of the consortium "Bologna 2010" with the 17% of the quotas, behind the outgoing Zanetti.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: The 2013–14 season saw Bologna once again relegated to the Serie B, and also gave light to a number of financial problems involving the club and its ownership of Albino Guaraldi, who was considerably criticized by the team supporters also for a number of controversial decisions, including the sale of star player Alessandro Diamanti to Chinese club Guangzhou Evergrande. A new head coach was then found in former Cagliari boss Diego López for the new season, whereas Guaraldi clearly stated his intention to hand over his Bologna stakes to a new owner. A North American group headed by Joe Tacopina and Joey Saputo (owner of CF Montréal, also the team of former Bologna hero Marco Di Vaio) then stated its interest in acquiring the club; this was followed by another offer coming from former chairman Massimo Zanetti. On 15 October 2014, the board of directors ratified the sale of the club to BFC 1909 Lux SPV, and Tacopina became the new club chairman.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: Under the new ownership of which BFC 1909 Lux Spv S.A. of Luxemburg is an intermediate holding company, Bologna was promoted back to Serie A in 2015. Saputo also succeeded Tacopina as the new chairman of the board of directors of Bologna on 17 November 2014.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: In their first season back in Serie A, Bologna finished 14th avoiding relegation. In the following two seasons, Bologna finished in 15th place on the table. In the 2018-19 Serie A season, Bologna finished in a creditable 10th position on the table.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: Over the next three seasons, Bologna continued to finish mid table in Serie A coming 12th two campaigns in a row followed by a 13th placed finish in the 2021/2022 season.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: The official stadium of Bologna is the Stadio Renato Dall'Ara. Dall'Ara is the biggest sports building of Bologna and its name is taken from an ex-chairman of the club, Renato Dall'Ara, who died three days before the final for Serie A's "Scudetto". Its capacity is 38,500. The "curva Bulgarelli" (in English, Bulgarelli curve), the curve of Bologna's ultras, is dedicated to player Giacomo Bulgarelli, who died on 21 February 2009. The other curve, part of which is reserved for the away fans, is dedicated to Árpád Weisz, coach of Bologna's winning pre-war team, and killed by the Nazis in a concentration camp during WWII.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: Bologna have had numerous Chairmen over the course of their history, some of which have been the owners of the club, others have been honorary chairmen. Here is a complete list of Bologna chairmen from 1909 until the present day.


title: Bologna F.C. 1909

text: Bologna have had many managers and trainers, some seasons they have had co-managers running the team. Here is a chronological list of them from 1920 onwards.


title: Diesel exhaust fluid

text: Diesel exhaust fluid (DEF; also known as AUS 32 and marketed as AdBlue) is a liquid used to reduce the amount of air pollution created by a diesel engine. Specifically, DEF is an aqueous urea solution made with 32.5% urea and 67.5% deionized water. DEF is consumed in a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) that lowers the concentration of nitrogen oxides () in the diesel exhaust emissions from a diesel engine.


title: Diesel exhaust fluid

text: In the international standard defining DEF (ISO 22241), it is referred to as AUS 32 (aqueous urea solution 32%). DEF is also sold as AdBlue, a registered trademark of the German Association of the Automotive Industry.