Thozamile Botha (born 16 June 1948) is a South African politician. [1] He started his political career as a trade unionist and was an executive member of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Due to the apartheid government he went into exile in 1980 to Lesotho where he worked with Chris Hani. He later moved to Lusaka, Zambia before completing a master's degree in political science and public administration at the University of Essex. He returned to South Africa when the African National Congress was unbanned in 1990 and was elected head of the ANC's Department of Local and Regional Government.
Frederik Willem de Klerk was a South African politician who served as state president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994 and as deputy president from 1994 to 1996 in the democratic government. As South Africa's last head of state from the era of white-minority rule, he and his government dismantled the apartheid system and introduced universal suffrage. Ideologically a conservative and an economic liberal, he led the National Party (NP) from 1989 to 1997.
The state president of the Republic of South Africa was the head of state of South Africa from 1961 to 1994. The office was established when the country became a republic in 1961, and Queen Elizabeth II ceased to be monarch of South Africa. The position of Governor-General of South Africa was accordingly abolished. From 1961 to 1984, the post was largely ceremonial. After constitutional reforms enacted in 1983 and taking effect in 1984, the State President became an executive post, and its holder was both head of state and head of government.
Pieter Willem Botha,, commonly known as P. W. and Afrikaans: Die Groot Krokodil, was a South African politician. He served as the last prime minister of South Africa from 1978 to 1984 and the first executive state president of South Africa from 1984 to 1989.
The National Party, also known as the Nationalist Party, was a political party in South Africa founded in 1914 and disbanded in 1997. The party was an Afrikaner ethnic nationalist party that promoted Afrikaner interests in South Africa. However, in 1990 it became a South African civic nationalist party seeking to represent all South Africans. It first became the governing party of the country in 1924. It was an opposition party during World War II but it returned to power and was again in the government from 4 June 1948 until 9 May 1994.
Louis Botha was a South African politician who was the first prime minister of the Union of South Africa—the forerunner of the modern South African state. A Boer war hero during the Second Boer War, he eventually fought to have South Africa become a British Dominion.
The United Democratic Movement (UDM) is a centre-left, social-democratic, South African political party, formed by a prominent former National Party leader, Roelf Meyer, a former African National Congress and Transkei homeland leader, General Bantu Holomisa, and a former ANC Executive Committee member, John Taylor. It has an anti-separatist, pro-diversity platform; and supports an individualist South Africa with a strong moral sense, in both social and economic senses.
Liberalism in South Africa has encompassed various traditions and parties. The moderate South African Party and its successor, the United Party, formed government several times between the formation of the Union and the election of the National Party in 1948. In 1953, the anti-Apartheid and multi-racial Liberal Party of South Africa was formed. A second liberal tradition started in 1959 with the forming of the Progressive Party. The Democratic Alliance is its modern successor.
Roelof Frederik "Pik" Botha, was a South African politician who served as the country's foreign minister in the last years of the apartheid era. Botha was relatively liberal for this context. He also served as Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs from 1994 to 1996.
The Cabinet of South Africa is the most senior level of the executive branch of the Government of South Africa. It is made up of the President, the Deputy President, and the Ministers.
Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s. Apartheid was characterized by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap, which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. According to this system of social stratification, white citizens had the highest status, followed by Indians and Coloureds, then black Africans. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day.
The United Democratic Front (UDF) was a South African popular front that existed from 1983 to 1991. The UDF comprised more than 400 public organizations including trade unions, students' unions, women's and parachurch organizations. The UDF's goal was to establish a "non-racial, united South Africa in which segregation is abolished and in which society is freed from institutional and systematic racism." Its slogan was "UDF Unites, Apartheid Divides." The Front was established in 1983 to oppose the introduction of the Tricameral Parliament by the white-dominated National Party government, and dissolved in 1991 during the early stages of the transition to democracy.
Jan Christiaan Smuts, OM was a prominent South African and Commonwealth statesman and military leader. He served as a Boer general during the Boer War, a British general during the First World War and was appointed field marshal during the Second World War. In addition to various Cabinet appointments, he served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 to 1924 and from 1939 to 1948. He played a leading part in the post war settlements at the end of both world wars, making significant contributions towards the creation of both the League of Nations and the United Nations.
The Tricameral Parliament, officially the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa, was the legislature of South Africa between 1984 to 1994, established by the South African Constitution of 1983, which gave a limited political voice to the country's Coloured and Indian population groups. The majority Black population group was however still excluded, their interests notionally represented in the governments of the black homelands, or "bantustans", of which they were formally citizens. As these institutions were largely politically impotent, its principal effect was to further entrench the political power of the White section of the South African population.
General Hendrik Johan van den Bergh, SSA was a South African police official most famous for founding the Bureau of State Security (B.O.S.S.), an intelligence agency created on 16 May 1969 to coordinate military and domestic intelligence for the government as well as to suppress political dissidents. He was known as "Tall Hendrik" on account of his height.
South Africa–United Kingdom relations refer to the current and historical relationship between the United Kingdom (UK) and the Republic of South Africa. South Africa is Britain's largest trade partner in Africa and an important partner for the UK in a number of areas.
People's Republic of China – South Africa relations refer to the current and historical relationship between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of South Africa.
South Africa–Taiwan relations, also before 1998: ROC-South Africa relations refers to the current and historical relationship between the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the Republic of South Africa. The Republic of China and South Africa established diplomatic ties in 1949.
Maximum Security Prison is an inactive prison at Robben Island in Table Bay, 6.9 kilometers (4.3 mi) west of the coast of Bloubergstrand, Cape Town, South Africa. It is prominent because Nobel Laureate and former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela was imprisoned there for 18 of the 27 years he served behind bars before the fall of apartheid. After that, three former inmates of this prison Nelson Mandela, Kgalema Motlanthe, and Jacob Zuma have gone on to become President of South Africa.
Solidarity was a political party created in the lead-up to the 1984 South African general election, which determined the makeup of the first House of Delegates, the body within the Apartheid Tricameral Parliament reserved for Indian South Africans. It took its name from the Polish trade union.p.40 Its first leader was JN Reddy, an influential banker and businessman with a number of company directorships. To be able to lead the party, Reddy relinquished some of his business interests. Another important party member was Pat Poovalingam, the chairman of weekly newspaper "The Graphic". Solidarity appealed more to South Africans with Southern Indian roots, while Amichand Rajbansi's National People's Party appealed more to those with a North Indian heritage.
Jacobus Hercules "Koos" van der Merwe is a South African former politician. He was a member of the South African Parliament, representing the National Party, Conservative Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). He was a member of the House of Assembly and later the South African National Assembly between 1977 and 2014, being the longest serving member of Parliament at the time of his retirement.