South Africa may be a multicultural country today but the effects of Apartheid can still be felt. Often individual population groups live separately from one another. In addition to the many different indigenous African peoples, South Africa is also home to many German, Dutch, French, Asian and British immigrants, whose forefathers for the most part settled here in colonial times. The end of Apartheid resulted in South Africa having eleven official languages...
 

Economically the country plays a leading role on the South African continent. One reason for this is the wealth of mineral resources such as gold, diamonds, coal, platinum, chrome, iron ore and palladium that since the 1970s have advanced South Africa to a prosperous industrial nation. Wine-growing is another important economic mainstay in many regions of South Africa. The country is one of the world's biggest wine producers.
 

What is more, South Africa has an amazing wealth of vegetation. South Africa may have only a few forests but it is home to more than 20,000 plant species and accounts for around ten percent of all known plant species in the world. This is due in part to the diverse climate which can vary from an extreme desert climate in the northwest to a subtropical climate in the southeast. Overall, it is mostly sunny and dry in South Africa but since it is situated in the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons are exactly the opposite of Europe's. From October to March it is summer and from April to September it is winter. Some regions can get very cold at night even though temperatures during the day rise above twenty degrees Celsius...