Talk:South Africa: Difference between revisions

	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

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I think it is necessary to have a separate apartheid era South Africa country page due to the many differences between the modern day government of South Africa and the apartheid era government. It’s like this for Rhodesia and I find it it surprising that this isn’t the case here. I wasn’t sure to to put this, but I think here was good. ErickTheMerrick (talk) 18:51, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See this 192.145.141.214 (talk) 20:30, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I still feel strongly that it would be beneficial to split the pages. Another discussion could possibly be useful ErickTheMerrick (talk) 15:58, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You haven’t stated which text you would want to split from this article. CMD (talk) 02:36, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Adding a government page on the republic of south africa (1961-1994) with details of how the govwrnment functioned, apartheid, etc. I was actually quite surprised it didn’t already have its own page. ErickTheMerrick (talk) 08:24, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t think there is much to split from this article on that. It may be better to look at Apartheid. CMD (talk) 09:15, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest developing an article on History of South Africa (1948–1994) – at the moment that is a redirect to apartheid but I can see the argument for an article which covers that period of history more broadly as well as talking about apartheid. 1961 is not very useful as a dividing year; SA went from a dominion to a republic, by substituting a figurehead president in place of a figurehead monarch, but practically nothing else changed about the government. The constitution of 1983 actually made much bigger changes to the government, with the tricameral parliament and the executive presidency, but I think we all recognise that SA was the same country before and after 1983. htonl (talk) 19:47, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that would actaully work well. Kinda like how Rhodesia’s wiki page is. The redirect to apartheid on my many pages when referring to apartheid era South Africa just doesn’t sit well with me at all. ErickTheMerrick (talk) 15:01, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would like this discussion to continue into an actual result and would like to hear other opinions on this matter. ErickTheMerrick (talk) 01:04, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the easiest thing to do with be remodelling the Union of South Africa page to simply be “Apartheid South Africa”, including both its first dominion iteration and then later republican form. Similar to the existing Rhodesia page which includes both its commonwealth and republican form. Remikipedia (talk) 21:18, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with you. Despite the fact that the system of apartheid was officially instituted in 1948, the Union from its very founding in 1910 still enforced discriminatory laws. However, since the pre-1948 regulations weren’t as systemized as the post-1948 apartheid regulations were, in my opinion it would be largely incorrect to include the pre-1948 Union into a page dedicated specifically to South Africa during the Apartheid. Schwartz7887 (talk) 17:07, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, apartheid has a lot of potential content, it should be a separate page of it’s own. GreatCmsrNgubane (talk) 05:17, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I also agree, while having a History of Apartheid South Africa article would be good, a benefit of having a former country article at Apartheid South Africa would be that it can have all the other conventional sections. We have separate articles for Zaire, Derg, and Rhodesia (although on the contrary we have History of Libya under Muammar Gaddafi and don’t have separate articles for many dictatorships). As has been said, the comparison with Rhodesia seems the most apt, the only difference is it got a name change while South Africa didn’t. Kowal2701 (talk) 21:30, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, apartheid South Africa was a VERY different South Africa from what we see today KeysofDreams (talk) 23:31, 10 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not to mention despite South africa being formed in 1961 their were still 32 years that the Republic of south africa was under minority rule. While there is a Union of South Africa There is not one about the 32 years South Africa was under minority rule. Freedom759 (talk) 19:57, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article states that the country has an official name in all 12 official languages. The citations correctly state that South African Sign Language is an official language, but the country’s official name in SASL is not included anywhere in the article. 20:23, 5 June 2025 (UTC) MoHaG (talk) 20:23, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The amendment does not seem to contain the country name in SASL either. MoHaG (talk) 20:25, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In the apartheid sub-section, it says that people were split into three races, but 4 are listed

“… the nationalist government classified all peoples into three races (Whites, Blacks, Indians and Coloured people (people of mixed race)) …”

Can someone correct this, or explain why this is the case? TheSpicySalmon (talk) 11:08, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The redirect South-African has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 July 26 § South-African until a consensus is reached. ArthananWarcraft (talk) 05:08, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]