Template:Vital article

	South Africa is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
	This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on April 28, 2005.
Article milestones Date Process Result March 2, 2005 Featured article candidate Not promoted March 10, 2005 Featured article candidate Promoted February 13, 2008 Featured article review Demoted June 12, 2008 Good article nominee Not listed Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on May 31, 2004, May 31, 2005, May 31, 2006, and May 31, 2021. Current status: Former featured article

This article has not yet been rated on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. South Africa: PSP SA Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject South Africa, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of South Africa on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.South AfricaWikipedia:WikiProject South AfricaTemplate:WikiProject South AfricaSouth Africa Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by Wikipedia Primary School project. Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. Africa Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Africa, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Africa on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AfricaWikipedia:WikiProject AfricaTemplate:WikiProject AfricaAfrica Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. Countries This article is within the scope of WikiProject Countries, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of countries on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CountriesWikipedia:WikiProject CountriesTemplate:WikiProject Countriescountry WikiProject Countries to-do list: Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Article requests : Check out the article alerts; see if anything catches your fancy. Cleanup : clean-up listing for Countries Stubs : de-stub articles in Category:Stubs by region. Other : add {{WPCountries}} to talk pages of related articles, and assess. Template:WP1.0

Template:Outline of knowledge coverage

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect SouthAfrica and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 December 4#SouthAfrica until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 (talk) 20:14, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Cape town stadium aerial view 1.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 10:53, 21 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is undoubtedly going to be a very notable and potentially controversial change, but I feel as if it is improper for there to not be a separate article on Apartheid-era South Africa and modern day South Africa. By not having a separate article, crucial details about Apartheid-era South Africa lack a central place for them to be explored, such as foreign policy, economic policy, and the differing demographic makeup of the nation at the time. I am aware that the article Apartheid exists, however, Apartheid refers only to the racial policy and segregated nature of the regime. It's like not having an article on Nazi Germany because Racial policy of Nazi Germany and Nuremberg Laws exist.

Although they are both the same geographic country and have the same official name (which doesn't disqualify a separate article, South Korea has a separate article for each government between 1948 and 1987 and it was always called the "Republic of Korea"), they are entirely and completely different in many aspects, such as:

• Most importantly, the constitution of the Republic was completely different, as the current Constitution of South Africa was adopted after the end of Apartheid in 1996, and after an interim constitution in 1993.
• A different flag, the lack of the African languages being co-official, completely different government structure and legislature.
• Completely different foreign policy built around anti-Communism, with close ties to America and Israel contrasted to the more multi-polar relations of modern South Africa.
• The entire Bantustan system, which although is explored in its own article, could have information integrated to the rest of the page.
• Vastly different international perception, often depicted as a bastion of civilization and development in positive foreign depictions and a hive of racism and white supremacy in negative.
• Different functional borders- as South West Africa was under the mandate of South Africa
• The South African Defence Force and the military having been reorganized to sustain the Apartheid system.

Ultimately, I propose that by creating a new article for the defunct state of Apartheid South Africa would be entirely warranted in encyclopedic terms and also be immensely helpful for anyone who wants to understand the differences of modern South Africa and that of the previous era. I would argue that Wikipedia already has separate "former state" articles already for much more minor changes in governance- e.g. Second Czechoslovak Republic- and that its wrong to not have one for what is arguably one of the most distinct entities of the Cold War contrasted to now. My proposed title for this new article would be Republic of South Africa (1961 - 1994), but of course this could be changed. I am eager to hear everyone's opinions on this matter. HadesTTW (he/him • talk) 17:04, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. I support this proposal 100%.  Lefcentreright  Discuss  19:25, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• I would think the title Apartheid South Africa would qualify as the WP:COMMON name similarly to e.g. Nazi Germany, although this might create a conflict with Union of South Africa for the 1948–1961 period. I do feel quite strongly that it must be very clear that this article is about a particular era of government in South Africa, and that the article South Africa still covers the country in all periods. For example, people born pre-1994 must not have their country of birth in the infobox or on Wikidata changed to point to the new article. (Just as the birth country of e.g. Jacques Chirac is "France" and not "French Third Republic".) - htonl (talk) 21:23, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose, the request is for a split, but the arguments say nothing about a split. What part of this article would be split? The argument also doesn't mention many of the already existing articles. Constitutions under apartheid are discussed in South African Constitution of 1961, South African Constitution of 1983, and perhaps Interim Constitution (South Africa), which also discuss the relevant government structures. The flag has an article at Flag of South Africa (1928–1994). Bantustan as mentioned has an existing article, Foreign relations of South Africa during apartheid covers that aspect. Could a new article provide a useful place to pull this together? Perhaps, but the above does not explain how it would be a split, or grasp the many existing articles that are in need of much attention. CMD (talk) 03:51, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. As a disclaimer, I'm not a huge fan of the current structure of splitting off the Union of South Africa as if 1961 was the breaking point date (rather than 1933 when the National Party took power despite getting a minority of the votes, then passed voting laws ensuring that they'd never stop having power). But IMO, making a bunch of separate country articles is the wrong way to go. I'd suggest expanding a History of South Africa summary-style spin-off first, perhaps something like History of apartheid-era South Africa (if including the 30s, 40s, and 50s) or History of South Africa, 1961–1994. We can re-assess later based off what that article looks like. Honestly my more radical preference would be to merge the Union of South Africa article back into the South Africa article and the History of South Africa articles - it really was not that different between 1960 and 1962, and we don't need separate articles for each change in governance. SnowFire (talk) 05:03, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Further comment. Also, since the proposer mentioned the Second Czechoslovak Republic, I don't think this case is that comparable. That state had different borders and was nearly a puppet state of a foreign power. IMO, the closer comparison is to something like South Korea before the 1987 democratization or the lifting of martial law in Taiwan, two countries that became much more democratic around the same time. Or perhaps Antebellum United States vs. Reconstruction United States for an earlier example. Important changes, to be sure, but not "separate country" changes. SnowFire (talk) 06:35, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

    I apologize for taking a lot of time to respond to this, but I think you are glossing over a lot of the important reasons why I suggested Apartheid South Africa's article to be separate. Due to the integration of South West Africa as a constituent part of the country with a similar Bantustan system, South Africa did have different borders than that of today, not only internally but externally. In addition, there's the fact that both the constitution of Apartheid South Africa and the entire government structure was completely different. Martial Law Taiwan, on the other hand, has the same constitution as the modern day Republic of China, and Antebellum United States also has the exact same government structure as it during Reconstruction, except with slavery as an institution. Apartheid was the racial system of segregation, yes- but it was just one part of many ways South Africa was, in many ways, a completely different nation than it is today in all but name, which I consider to be the only "separate country" change that wasn't present in the transition from Apartheid to a multiracial democracy. HadesTTW (he/him • talk) 22:56, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    • Apologies for the slow reply here as well. My understanding is that South West Africa was never annexed by South Africa - they just kept the mandate even after the UN terminated. Taking the internal perspective of South Africa that this was a mandate (rather than an occupation), we don't normally consider mandates as part of the core territory - e.g. Lebanon/Syria weren't part of France, Transjordan/Iraq wasn't part of Britain, etc.

      I disagree about the changes in Reconstruction not being significant - 3 major Constitutional Amendments, military governments in Southern States, federal control of colonization of the American West. There's a bit of a Ship of Theseus problem here where obviously the Articles of Confederation government in 1783 is unrecognizable to 2023 and vice versa, but it changed over time and not in one sudden revolution. I still think Taiwan / South Korea are good examples: they both went from being de jure democracies to de facto democracies, which is the exact thing that happened in South Africa, too.

      Per above, I don't think a draft article would be wasted work or anything, I'd just prefer to title it "History of South Africa 19xx-1944" or whatever. SnowFire (talk) 23:15, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak Support. A while back, I was interested in having an article just about Apartheid South Africa from 1948-1994, similar to the articles about Fascist Italy (1922-1943), Nazi Germany, and Ba'athist Iraq on this website, while using similar reasoning as you. However, I noticed how adamant editors were in rejecting it. I do support your proposal though. I just feel that if you want to focus on the apartheid aspect of South African history from 1961-1994, you might as well focus on its entire history beginning from 1948. Iamawesomeautomatic (talk) 05:19, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  This is fair, though it kinda gets tricky considering how we already have Union of South Africa with overlaps with the starting period of Apartheid back when it was a monarchy under the British crown. I guess we can have both a Union article for 1910 - 1961 and an Apartheid article from 1948 - 1994, considering how we have both Kingdom of Italy and Fascist Italy covering mostly overlapping periods, though there could be some redundant information. HadesTTW (he/him • talk) 23:02, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Yeah, you make a great point there on redundancy. But whatever you decide I'll still support it. If you decide on making a page for the entirety of Apartheid South Africa another commenter mentioned that there's already a draft article for it. I've been planning to work on it whenever I have time, but it looks promising and could be approved with some touching up. Iamawesomeautomatic (talk) 03:09, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose This is an overall brief history of the origin of South Africa. Other pages can be expanded to explain different points in its history with links from this page. Conlinp (talk) 11:10, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong Support It is functionally an entirely different country, it would be hugely beneficial to cover the apartheid regime in its own format. It would be much more informative and give a deeper understanding and explanations into the former state. The differences are even more defined than Zimbabwe vs Rhodesia. 100% this should be done. I think splitting it up into 1961-1994 is an excellent idea, and something I've wanted done for a while now. SailingOn (talk) 05:29, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  What would you split from this page? As for trying to build a page, Draft:Apartheid South Africa is available if anyone here wants to put it into actual good shape. CMD (talk) 05:43, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I would want to include things such as the state of the military at the time, the vastly different legal structure and societal norms, the influence of religion on the state with regards to things such as abortion, gambling, etc, and its importance in gaining soicetal status. Going on about the economy and what differed about it versus modern South Africa. I would also go in detail regarding policing etc at the time, the influence of mining on the economy, white only education systems, what education was for other racial groups at the time, etc. Even things like its transport network and rail system were really run in a fundamentally different way. I did my Honours Thesis for my history degree on how South Africa strived to be systematically independent of outside countries for fuel and other materials. This is something that really isn't as much of a goal of modern South Africa as it was for the apartheid era. It's really quite extensive, what I think it would be great for is acting as a centralized beginning page to give a strong overview of what the nation was like during this period. SailingOn (talk) 17:26, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I am asking not what would be included on a new page, but what would be split from this page, given this is a splitting proposal. CMD (talk) 01:58, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose It might make sense for History of South Africa, but this is not the history article. (And it was a gradual transition - many of the problematic laws were repealed in the ~1990 - 1994 period - the transition was due to an election result after the election laws was changed - it was not an a revolution-type transition - it was normal legislative changes to dismantle the apartheid system and then the next election giving much fairer results. MoHaG (talk) 08:01, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Support It's often struck me as odd that such a page doesn't already exist, considering various examples of other past regimes, like Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy (1922–1943), getting their own articles – as well as the long-running article on the Union of South Africa. There is no need for an article specifically on "Apartheid South Africa" though, since there is already one on Apartheid in South Africa, and there were also significant differences between the apartheid state as a Commonwealth dominion and the apartheid state as a republic. But the Republic of South Africa between 1961 and 1994 was a completely different country to its successor state today, despite their shared name, and basically I think a lot of detail is lost when coverage of this period is restricted to brief summaries in the history section of this article and History of South Africa. In the sidebar template on historical states in South Africa, two completely different states are conflated right at the end, as the "Republic of South Africa (1961–present)": a split would better reflect the reality of the situation. ENEvery (talk) 14:57, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I would be interested in sources that discuss that today's South Africa is a successor state of a pre-1994 entity. CMD (talk) 01:46, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In international law, a successor state is a state that inherits the international obligations, armed forces, state structures and territory of a preceding state or states. Post-1994 South Africa inherited the obligations, armed forces, state structures and territories of pre-1994 (post-Namibian independence) SA as well as the internationally unrecognised 'independent' homelands. The state structures were subsequently re-organised on a new basis, and the armed forces were integrated. While one of the first acts of the post-94 government was to hand over Walvis Bay and some associated islands (which had originally been part of the Cape Colony before the Germans ever established their colony there) to Namibia, but otherwise the territory inherited has remained unchanged.

In the absence of sources, obviously none of this can be stated in any articles, with or without the proposed split; but I don't think the debate here hinges on whether or not that one statement about state succession is properly encyclopaedic or not. I'll see if I can find reliable sources for it though; I'm sure they exist. ENEvery (talk) 12:38, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I just generally support this idea because it splits the racist state from the modern day South Africa. Patriciogetsongettingridofhiswiki (talk) 04:06, 16 January 2023 (UTC) Disagree, I would rather us have a page speaking about the apartheid South Africa, and indicate in the article that there is a separate page concerning apartheid South Africa. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mthunzi Mapatwana (talk • contribs) 17:17, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose Apartheid was a political policy instituted under the Union of South Africa (which does have a separate page) and was retained after the establishment of the republic in 1961. Between 1948 and 1991 South Africa was an illiberal democracy with an unfair franchise and entrenched legal discrimination on the grounds of race. 1994 was when the ANC won the first one-man one-vote elections, but Apartheid had already ended in 1991 when the last laws supporting it were repealed. I don't believe a party winning an election changes the nature of a polity enough to warrant a separate article, otherwise one might as well split every country's main article based on past elections. Valethske (talk) 08:53, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose This article is about the place known as "South Africa", it is not about any particular political entity or structure. Apartheid was an ideology and a system of government, not a place. The Apartheid article already exists, as do many other articles about various aspects of Apartheid.

By way of analogy; there is one main article about the United States of America. It is not split into seperate articles for pre-civil war and post-civil war, or split every time a constitutional amendment was enacted. There are of course a variety of articles about all these historic topics, but nobody has suggested entirely seperate "main root articles" for the different eras of the US's history. We must have an all-encompassing "main root" summary/overview article about South Africa, and this one is it. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:28, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Support because we have articles like French Fourth Republic and West Germany. The French Fourth Republic replaced its constitution and became the French Fifth Republic, while the constitution of West Germany is the same as the constitution of Germany. --Spekkios (talk) 03:47, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose The splits would make sense for a history article, but not the main article on South Africa. 1961 is an arbitrary cut-off point anyway, and 1994 to a lesser extent. The only practical change in 1961 is that the Governor-General became the State President and the "Union" became a "Republic". 1948 was a turning point because of the National Party getting into power with ideological racism as its guiding policy. And 1984 was far more impactful constitutionally than 1961, with the introduction of the Tricameral parliament and executive State President. Apartheid laws were repealed in 1990, although the pass laws went in 1986. Namibia gained its independence in 1990, not 1994. The post-1994 state was legislatively created by the apartheid parliament via the 1993 Constitution. It never repudiated the debts or international obligations of the apartheid regime, and the civil service remained in place, albeit augmented by bantustan administrations. The coat of arms was changed some time after 1994. The education system took a while to consolidate, and single matric exams per province only happened in 1997. The country remains as race-obsessed as ever, and it remains quite culturally segregated. The addition of the official African languages was (IIRC) a compromise so that Afrikaans could retain its official status, the reality is that very little changed, and most "good" schools still only teach English with Afrikaans as a second language. 2007, with the introduction of load-shedding may one day prove to be the turning point. Or the election of Jacob Zuma as ANC president in 2007. Maybe this is a Ship of Theseus type problem, but the fact is no clear line for when South Africa became the "modern" state. Park3r (talk) 03:57, 2 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I feel that recent additions to the article give undue weight to opinion pieces that are not backed up by fact and are not made by particularly noteworthy people. BazingaMan455 (talk) 02:18, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You'll need to be more specific as to the additions to which you're referring. General Ization ^Talk 02:40, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Some input on this would be highly appreciated. Thanks. M.Bitton (talk) 20:53, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]