SOUTHERN AFRICA

region of the African continent, comprising the countries of Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The island nation of Madagascar is excluded because of its distinct language and cultural heritage. Southern Africa has been the background for a continuous political and economic struggle of European colonizers and the white elite of emerging nations with the diverse national groups seeking self-determination. Nowhere was this more in evidence than in South Africa, which since 1945 has been a frequent focus of world attention. The apartheid (apartness) policy of the South African government, which established a system of strict racial segregation, evoked growing opposition from most other nations, especially as other prominent states in the area, such as Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia), gained independence under majority rule. During this period, and in the 1980s in particular, the other southern African countries explored the possibilities of regional trade and cooperation as a means to their advancement. In the early 1990s South Africa dismantled its apartheid system and in 1994 held nonracial, democratic elections, thus opening the door to increased cooperation among all the nations of the region. This article discusses the physical geography, settlement patterns, anthropology, and economy of the region of southern Africa. southern region of the African continent, comprising the countries of Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The island nation of Madagascar is excluded from this region because of its distinct language and cultural heritage. Area 2,316,000 square miles (5,999,000 square km). Pop. (1995 est.) 107,731,000. The interior of the region consists of a series of undulating plateaus, which extend from western South Africa and central Angola to Zambia, Zimbabwe, and western Mozambique. The plateau region is divided altitudinally from east to west into three subregions: the Highveld, lying above 4,000 feet (about 1,200 m); the Middleveld, averaging between 2,000 and 4,000 feet (600 to 1,200 m); and the Lowveld, below 2,000 feet (600 m). The Kalahari basin is the central depression of the plateau region. It is flanked by the Great Escarpment, a series of mountain ranges that run in an almost unbroken arc southward from the Zambezi River and around the Cape of Good Hope before turning north toward Angola. These ranges characterize the coastal margins throughout much of the region, though coastal plains lie along the Indian Ocean in Mozambique and on the Atlantic in parts of Angola and Namibia. Southern African climates range from temperate to tropical. Its temperatures are somewhat lower than those of equatorial Africa, Fahrenheit temperatures in the 70s and 80s (20s Celsius) being the norm. Most of southern Africa receives a moderate annual rainfall of about 30 to 50 inches (760 to 1,270 mm). Much of southern Angola, Namibia, Botswana, and western South Africa have a more arid climate and higher mean temperatures, however; these are especially marked in the Namib and Kalahari deserts. Most of southern Africa is covered with either savannas or subdesert scrublands. Wooded grasslands are somewhat more common to the east, in Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, and northern Zimbabwe. The indigenous inhabitants of southern Africa can be conventionally classed into two major divisions, based primarily on linguistic distinctions: the Khoisan-speaking peoples, including the San and the Khoikhoin (formerly known, derogatorily, as Bushmen and Hottentots, respectively), and Bantu-speaking peoples. The San are now found primarily in the Kalahari and in surrounding areas. The Khoikhoin are located in the southern half of Namibia. The far more numerous and widespread Bantu constitute the vast majority of the people living in southern Africa. Among the larger ethnic groups of the Bantu are the Xhosa, Tembu, and Zulu peoples of South Africa; the Ndebele of Zimbabwe; the Tsonga of Mozambique; the Tswana of Botswana; the Shona peoples of Zimbabwe and Mozambique; and the Herero and Ambo of Namibia. Culturally the history of most of the peoples of the region is comparatively recent. The oldest inhabitants are probably the San and Khoi peoples, who have occupied parts of the area since Paleolithic times. They were succeeded (and often displaced) by the arrival of Bantu-speaking peoples from the north and east beginning sometime during the first half of the 1st millennium AD. The Bantu-speaking peoples' Iron Age cultures were based primarily on the keeping and milking of cattle, although there was some scattered farming using iron implements. By the 8th century AD Arab traders had begun to visit the region's inhabitants, who traded ivory, copper, and gold for the Arabs' wares. In the 14th and 15th centuries there arose a stone-building culture represented in the present day by the walled ruins of Great Zimbabwe in Zimbabwe. This and several other cultures before and after it were based on great wealth in cattle, which in turn gave them preferential access to the coastal trade with the Arabs. However, the arrival of Portuguese traders and colonizers on the coast in the 16th century led to the economic and cultural decline of the African cultures in the region. The Portuguese pushed inland during the 17th century, establishing themselves in the Zambezi River valley and into present-day Mozambique and Angola, conquering the local kingdoms. The second half of the 17th century saw increasing numbers of Dutch colonists arriving at the Cape of Good Hope (in present-day South Africa). The immediate consequences of Dutch settlement were the decimation of the indigenous Khoi peoples of the Cape area. During the first half of the 19th century, much of southern Africa underwent great political and economic dislocations. These were due partly to the pressures of Dutch settlement as it spread northward from the Cape, but a more important cause was the rise to power in the 1820s of the Zulu kingdom under Shaka. He created a highly centralized military kingdom in what is now southeastern South Africa, and his armies pushed many other neighbouring peoples northward into Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Mozambique. The resulting migrations of peoples largely determined the current ethnic geography of the eastern half of southern Africa, with its patchwork of different Bantu subgroups. The imposition in the early 19th century of British rule over the Dutch at the Cape had far-reaching consequences; the white settlement of the area expanded rapidly thereafter; many descendants of the Dutch, called Boers, migrated northward to escape British rule; and the British during the late 19th and early 20th centuries established a number of protectorates, territories, and colonies that came to constitute virtually all of southern Africa north of the Union (later the Republic) of South Africa. These British possessions were flanked on the east and west by the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola, respectively, and by German-held South West Africa (now Namibia) on the southwest. Out of the remaining British colonies in southern Africa there eventually emerged in the 1960s the independent African nations of Zambia, Mala wi, Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland. Zimbabwe came under the rule of its black African majority in 1980. Mozambique and Angola achieved independence from Portuguese colonial rule in the 1970s. In 1988 South Africa accepted a UN resolution granting free elections in Namibia and the withdrawal of South African troops; the country officially gained its independence in 1990. In 1994 democratic elections in South Africa resulted in the ascendancy of the country's black majority. Pop. (1996 est.) 108,300,000. Additional reading General works Africa South of the Sahara (annual) and Africa Contemporary Record (annual) contain updated essays on all aspects of the southern African countries. The region may be seen in its larger context in Roland Oliver and Michael Crowder (eds.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Africa (1981); while the Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa, 12 vol. (197076), focuses more specifically on the region. Physical and human geography The land Alan B. Mountjoy and David Hilling, Africa: Geography and Development (1988); and A.T. Grove, The Changing Geography of Africa (1989), include discussions of regional geography. A.J. Christopher, Southern Africa (1976), studies the historical geography of the area south of the Zambezi River. N. Lancaster, The Namib Sand Sea: Dune Forms, Processes, and Sediments (1989), comprehensively reviews the geomorphology of the Namib; while David S.G. Thomas and Paul A. Shaw, The Kalahari Environment (1991), brings together much of the recent environmental work on the Kalahari desert. P.D. Tyson, Climatic Change and Variability in Southern Africa (1986), discusses weather patterns. M.J.A. Werger and A.C. van Bruggen (eds.), Biogeography and Ecology of Southern Africa, 2 vol. (1978), provides comprehensive coverage of the plant and animal life of the region. Andrew Millington et al., Biomass Assessment: Woody Biomass in the SADCC Region (1989), assesses land cover and woody biomass resources in southern Africa for fuelwood energy planning. Barry Munslow et al., The Fuelwood Trap: A Study of the SADCC Region (1988), analyzes fuelwood collection, land degradation, and its socioeconomic effects over much of southern Africa. Andrew C. Millington The people Studies of southern African peoples are contained in George Murdock, Africa: Its Peoples and Their Culture History (1959); Harold K. Schneider, The Africans: An Ethnological Account (1981); Jocelyn Murray (ed.), Cultural Atlas of Africa (1981); Carmel Schrire (ed.), Past and Present in Hunter-Gatherer Studies (1984); Jan Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (1990), and Western Bantu Expansion, Journal of African History, 25(2):129145 (1984); Edwin N. Wilmsen, Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari (1989), a challenge to stereotypes of hunter-gatherers in the Kalahari; Richard B. Lee and Irven Devore (eds.), Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers: Studies of the !Kung San and Their Neighbors (1976); Anthony Traill, The Languages of the Bushmen, in Phillip V. Tobias (ed.), The Bushmen: San Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa (1978), pp. 137147; and Leroy Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (1989). Reginald H. Green et al., Children on the Front Line: The Impact of Apartheid, Destabilization, and Warfare on Children in Southern and South Africa, 3rd ed. (1989), reviews the position of children in the region in the context of war with reference to lives lost and GDP eroded as well as health service and nutrition issues. James R. Denbow The economy Aspects of the southern African economy, including agriculture, policies, and development, are treated in Survey of Economic and Social Conditions in Africa (annual), a United Nations publication; Ralph A. Austen, African Economic History: Internal Development and External Dependency (1987); Roger Riddell et al., Manufacturing Africa: Performance & Prospects of Seven Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (1990); Hans Binswanger and Prabhu Pingali, Technological Priorities for Farming in Sub-Saharan Africa, Journal of International Development, 1(1):4665 (January 1989); Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth: A Long-term Perspective Study (1989), a World Bank publication; Allan Low, Agricultural Development in Southern Africa: Farm-Household Economics and the Food Crisis (1986); and Joseph Hanlon, SADCC in the 1990s: Development on the Front Line (1989). Robin Palmer and Neil Parsons (eds.), The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa (1977), contains key essays on the region's political economy in the 19th and 20th centuries. John B. Sender Harry Zarenda