[s]Goal: 100,000 New Goal: 200,000[/s] New Goal: 250.000

[Smiley73]

mind you SA isn't very much closer

[Smiley73]

hell the only reason I'm here is because India was even further away

[Smiley73]

a little skrillex makes everything better

[Niniel]

Do you have parents from India?

[Smiley73]

aaaah

[Smiley73]

Do you have parents from India?

 

both my paternal grandparent, but that wasn't my point, Cape Town was first set up as a water and food stop for ships traveling to India for spices. the company (the DUTCH-east India company) colonized Cape Town and more people came down to the new land, mostly dutch, the british got involved later and stuff gets more complicated

[Niniel]

Aha! You learn something new each day.

[Smiley73]

the british came in claimed the land as theirs and started making english the language of the area, some dutch settlers weren't happy with this and other laws Britain would impose so they moved northwards, into unclaimed land, in the Groot Trek (the big journey).

[Smiley73]

the dutch like their land and after fighting off some natives (who weren't too bad at fighting back) settled down in mostly farm-based communities. Two countries then arose, the Orange free state (orange from the orange river that flows through there) and the Transvaal (which covers the north and north eastern parts of SA). The british also expanded their territories and came to like cape town as a port, they even set up a parliament and prime minister.

[Smiley73]

unfortunately, the two places under Boer control held mineral riches, diamonds in Kimberley (The largest diamond in the world was found in Kimberly, I believe it's called the Cullinan and is part of Britains Royal jewels) and gold near Johannesburg. Britain wanted control of the resources so they went to fight. Needless to say the British won, but only by burning farms, salting earth and setting up concentration camps where many woman and children died from malnutrition disease etc. The boers were pretty effective at fighting hit-and-run which worked against even britains large numbers, but they lost ground, were marginilised and eventually gave out openly fighting, even though some boers still resent England

 

by the way boer means farmer, basically just a name for what the dutch settlers became

[Smiley73]

so the british are in control but eventually they let go of SA like most other colonies and the Boers then take the oppurtunity to be in charge of the government since the majority of people (indigenous, black peoples) weren't allowed to attend the talks that took place when SA was handed from the British to the Boers. To keep power of a minority over a majority the Boers institued Apartheid (which I will assume you know about) and that worked for about 50 years

[Smiley73]

until the 1990's when the government eventually folded to what I believe was international pressures and sanctions and boycotts (similar to what are in effect with Zimbabwe today) and then power shifts pretty peacefully, and we can fast forward nearly 20 years to the present day

[Smiley73]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Africa

 

I can't believe I remembered more of that, the link is to wikipedia, which is more detailed than my memory

[Lenlo]

Huh. Never expected a history lesson in here. Yay for learning!

[Smiley73]

rawr

[Smiley73]

Huh. Never expected a history lesson in here. Yay for learning!

 

yay for posts with meaning

[Leelou]

Lots of things can be learned here.

[Aiel Heart]

I taught a Russian lesson here once

[Smiley73]

good night everyone

[Smiley73]

I taught a Russian lesson here once

 

you taught MANY Russian lesson

[Crimson_Ayla]

Hola :)

[Crimson_Ayla]

And nights nights

[Nyanna al'Meara]

Kia ora :P

[Lenlo]

Russian huh? I only know Latin and thats from 2 years of high school language.

Only sentence I remember is 'Puella est in silva'. Became our class moto for some reason.

[Leelou]

Hablamos varios idiomas aquí.