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Louis Botha
Louis Botha , 1862-1919, South African soldier and statesman. A Boer (Afrikaner), he participated in the founding (1884) of the New Republic, which joined (1888) the Transvaal. Although Botha had little previous military experience, he brilliantly commanded Boer troops in the South African War. He b...
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Pieter Willem Botha
Pieter Willem Botha , 1916-2006, South African political leader. An Afrikaner and a member of the right-wing National party, he first entered parliament in 1948. Botha gained prominence as minister of defense (1966-80) and became prime minister in 1978. He initiated a limited reform of apartheid p...
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Jan Christiaan Smuts
Jan Christiaan Smuts , 1870-1950, South African statesman and soldier, b. Cape Colony.
Of Boer (Afrikaner) stock but a British subject by birth, he was educated at Victoria College (at Stellenbosch) and at Cambridge, where he won highest honors in law. In 1895 he was admitted to the Cape Colony...
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F. W. de Klerk
F. W. de Klerk (Frederik Willem de Klerk) , 1936-, South African statesman, president of South Africa (1989-94). Holding ministerial posts from 1978, he became (1989) acting president when P. W. Botha resigned. Recognizing that black resistance to the white power monopoly would only increase, de...
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Durban
Durban , city (1991 pop. 473,826), KwaZulu-Natal, E South Africa, on Natal Bay, an arm of the Indian Ocean. Durban is an industrial center, a major seaport, and a year-round resort. Industries include sugar refining, shipbuilding and ship repairing, petroleum refining, fishing, automobile assembly, ...
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James Barry Munnik Hertzog
James Barry Munnik Hertzog , 1866-1942, South African military and political leader. Before the South African War, in which he commanded a division of the Boer forces (1899-1902), he had been a judge in the Orange Free State. As minister of education in the Orange River Colony (1907-10), he insisted...
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Transvaal
Transvaal , former province, NE South Africa. With the new constitution of 1994, it was divided into Eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga), Northern Transvaal (now Limpopo), Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Veereeniging (now Gauteng), and part of North West prov. The Transvaal was bounded on the N and W by the L...
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South African War
South African War or Boer War, 1899-1902, war of the South African Republic (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State against Great Britain.
Background
Beginning with the acquisition in 1814 of the Cape of Good Hope, Great Britain gradually increased its territorial possessions in S Afric...
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South Africa
South Africa Afrikaans Suid-Afrika, officially Republic of South Africa, republic (2005 est. pop. 44,344,000), 471,442 sq mi (1,221,037 sq km), S Africa. It borders on the Atlantic Ocean in the west, on Namibia in the northwest, on Botswana and Zimbabwe in the north, on Mozambique and Swaziland i...
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apartheid
apartheid [Afrik.,=apartness], system of racial segregation peculiar to the Republic of South Africa, the legal basis of which was largely repealed in 1991-92.
History
Racial segregation and the supremacy of whites had been traditionally accepted in South Africa prior to 1948, but in the ...
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