South Africa

South Africa is a country at the southern tip of Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean on the west and the Indian Ocean on the east. The two oceans meet at a rocky point called Cape Agulhas. South Africa is about twice the size of Texas. More than 60 million people live there.

The country has three capital cities, not one. Pretoria is where the president works. Cape Town is where lawmakers meet. Bloemfontein is home to the highest courts. Splitting the capital was a compromise made when South Africa was formed in 1910. No other country does this.

South Africa has 11 official languages. These include Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, English, and seven others. Many people speak two or three. Some Xhosa words include click sounds made with the tongue. Most kids learn at least one other language in school.

The land itself is full of variety. The Drakensberg Mountains rise more than 11,000 feet along the eastern edge. The Kalahari Desert stretches across the north. In between are wide grasslands called the veld. Table Mountain, a flat-topped mountain above Cape Town, is more than 260 million years old. That makes it older than the dinosaurs.

South Africa is famous for its wildlife. Kruger National Park is about the size of Israel. Visitors come to see the "Big Five": lions, leopards, elephants, rhinoceroses, and African buffalo. Nearly 80 percent of the world's remaining white rhinos live in South Africa. Poaching is a serious problem, and rangers work to protect them.

For most of the 1900s, South Africa was ruled by a system called apartheid. Under apartheid, the government sorted people by race and gave white South Africans almost all the power. Black South Africans, who made up most of the population, could not vote, could not live where they wanted, and could not go to the same schools as white children. Millions of people resisted these laws for decades.

Nelson Mandela was one of the leaders of that fight. He spent 27 years in prison. After his release in 1990, he helped end apartheid peacefully. In 1994, South Africa held its first election in which everyone could vote. Mandela was elected president. He called the new country the "Rainbow Nation" because of its many cultures.

South Africa has large deposits of gold, platinum, and diamonds. The world's deepest mine, the Mponeng gold mine, goes almost two and a half miles underground. That is deeper than eight Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other. Miners there work in tunnels so hot that cool air has to be pumped down to them.