PAKISTANI CULTURE& HISTORY

SOUTH AFRICA culture

SOUTH AFRICA HISTORY

South Africa declared itself a republic in 1961 and severed its ties with the Commonwealth, which strongly objected to the country's racist policies. The white supremacist National Party, which had first come to power in 1948, would continue its rule for the next three decades.

In 1960, 70 black protesters were killed during a peaceful demonstration in Sharpsville. The African National Congress (ANC), the principal antiapartheid organization, was banned that year, and in 1964 its leader, Nelson Mandela, was sentenced to life imprisonment. Black protests against apartheid grew stronger and more violent. In 1976, an uprising in the black township of Soweto spread to other black townships and left 600 dead. Beginning in the 1960s, international opposition to apartheid intensified. The UN imposed sanctions, and many countries divested their South African holdings.

Apartheid's grip on South Africa began to give way when F. W. de Klerk replaced P. W. Botha as president in 1989

asian culture & history pictures

asian culture

asian history

The history of Asia can be seen as the collective history of several distinct peripheral coastal regions such as, East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East linked by the interior mass of the Eurasian steppe.

The coastal periphery was the home to some of the world's earliest known civilizations, with each of the three regions developing early civilizations around fertile river valleys. These valleys were fertile because the soil there was rich and could bare lots of root crops. The civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Vally, and China shared many similarities and likely exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel. The northern part of the continent, covering much of Siberia was also inaccessible to the steppe nomads due to the dense forests and the tundra. These areas in Siberia were very sparsely populated.