South Africa

South Africa was a human nation located on the southernmost point of the continent of Africa on Earth in the Sol System. Countries it bordered included Angola and Mozambique.

The first modern humans are believed to have inhabited South Africa more than 100,000 years ago. European exploration of the African coast began in the 13th century when Portugal committed itself to discover an alternative route to the silk road that would lead to China. In the 14th and 15th century, Portuguese explorers traveled down the west African Coast, detailing and mapping the coastline and in 1488 they rounded the Cape of Good Hope. The Dutch East India Company established a trading post in Cape Town under the command of Jan van Riebeeck in 1652, European workers who settled at the Cape became known as the Free Burghers and gradually established farms in the Dutch Cape Colony.

Following the Invasion of the Cape Colony by Great Britain in 1795 and 1806, mass migrations collectively known as the Great Trek occurred during which the Voortrekkers established several Boer settlements on the interior of South Africa. The discoveries of diamonds and gold in the nineteenth century had a profound effect on the fortunes of the region, propelling it onto the world stage and introducing a shift away from an exclusively agrarian-based economy towards industrialisation and the development of urban infrastructure. The discoveries also led to new conflicts culminating in open warfare between the Boer settlers and the British Empire, fought essentially for control over the nascent South African mining industry.

The British Interplanetary Society, the world's first space agency, launched the first rocket confirmed to leave the Earth's atmosphere from the Overberg region in 1821. The first manned spaceflight was also launched from there in 1832. The Overberg space centre continues to be one of humanity's most important spaceports even in the 22nd century.

Following the defeat of the Boers in the Anglo-Boer or South African War (1899–1902), the Union of South Africa was created as a self-governing dominion of the British Empire on 31 May 1910 in terms of the South Africa Act 1909, which amalgamated the four previously separate British colonies: Cape Colony, Colony of Natal, Transvaal Colony, and Orange River Colony. From its inception, male suffrage regardless of race existed in the Union of South Africa, and the country soon became a successful democratic and multi-ethnic nation. Both white and black leaders served in the position of Prime Minister of South Africa at various times.

South Africa sent a large number of troops to fight as part of the British Empire and its allies in the Great War, between 1914 and 1916.

Following its defeat in the Indian War of Independence, and with much of its empire having collapsed since the end of the Great War, Great Britain reorganised what was left of its empire into the Commonwealth of Nations in 1939, in which South Africa was a founding member. Although South Africa still maintained a constitutional monarchy, with King Henry IX as its head of state, the 1939 Statute of Westminster removed the ability of the Parliament of Great Britain to pass legislation in the country. All member states of the Commonwealth were declared to be "free and equal" as a result of the London Declaration the same year. Member states of the Commonwealth also became part of a monetary union using a single currency (the Commonwealth pound) and an internal common market with a standardised system of laws applying in all of its member states. The Commonwealth pound therefore replaced the South African pound as South Africa's currency. The Commonwealth of Nations became a model for future supranational organisations, such as the European Union and the Organisation of African Unity.

In 1968, the supranational political and economic structures of the European Union and the Commonwealth of Nations were combined to form the United Commonwealth. The Commonwealth pound was replaced as the currency used in South Africa by the newly-established currency of the United Commonwealth, the Commonwealth credit.

The government of the United Commonwealth federalised in 1988. The South African government was therefore effectively absorbed into the United Commonwealth Government in 1988, and South Africa is largely regarded to have ceased to exist as a separate nation-state on that date.