South Africa's human history stretches back further than almost anywhere on Earth — the San and Khoikhoi peoples lived across the region for millennia before Bantu-speaking farming communities migrated south roughly 2,000 years ago.
European settlement began in 1652, when the Dutch East India Company established a supply station at the Cape. Britain seized the Cape in 1806, and in the 1830s many Boer (Afrikaner) settlers trekked inland to found their own republics, including the Transvaal and Orange Free State. The discovery of diamonds at Kimberley in 1867 and gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 transformed the economy and triggered mass immigration — and, ultimately, the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), which Britain won. In 1910 the four territories were united as the Union of South Africa.
In 1948 the National Party came to power and formalised apartheid, a system of institutionalised racial segregation that defined the country for over four decades despite growing internal resistance and international pressure. Nelson Mandela, imprisoned in 1962, was released in 1990 as apartheid laws began to be dismantled under President F.W. de Klerk. On 27 April 1994, South Africa held its first fully democratic elections; Mandela became the country's first Black president, and the current flag was adopted that year. Since then, South Africa has been a constitutional democracy — often called the "Rainbow Nation" for its remarkable cultural and ethnic diversity.