Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: When did South Africa become an independent country?
Following the defeat of the Boers in the Anglo-Boer or South African War (1899–1902), the Union of South Africa was created as a dominion of the British Empire in terms of the South Africa Act 1909, which amalgamated the four previously separate British colonies: Cape Colony, Natal Colony, Transvaal Colony, and Orange River Colony. The country became a self-governing nation state within the British Empire, in 1934 following enactment of the Status of the Union Act. The dominion came to an end on 31 May 1961 as the consequence of a 1960 referendum, which legitimised the country becoming a sovereign state named Republic of South Africa. A republican constitution was adopted.
In 1966 the United Nations General Assembly declared the League of Nations Mandate terminated and required that South Africa withdraw from Namibia immediately. There followed a protracted struggle for independence by the South-West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) with the territory finally achieving independence as the Republic of Namibia in 1990. As a result, when the Lions played South-West Africa in 1968, 1974 and 1980 they were technically playing an independent nation that should have been called Namibia, but a nation that was yet to come into existence. 
see:
1955 British Lions tour to South Africa
1962 British Lions tour to South Africa
1968 British Lions tour to South Africa
1974 British Lions tour to South Africa
1980 British Lions tour to South Africa
By 1977 European colonial rule in mainland Africa had ended. Most of Africa's island countries had also become independent, although Réunion and Mayotte remain part of France. However the black majorities in Rhodesia and South Africa were disenfranchised until 1979 in Rhodesia, which became Zimbabwe-Rhodesia that year and Zimbabwe the next, and until 1994 in South Africa. Namibia, Africa's last UN Trust Territory, became independent of South Africa in 1990.
"We condemn the senseless killing of Peter Julius Moi in what has become a deadly year for journalists in South Sudan. More and more independent voices are being silenced in South Sudan at this critical time in the country's history, when the public desperately needs impartial information."- Tom Rhodes, CPJ's East Africa representative
In March 1961, Verwoerd visited the Imperial Conference in London to discuss South Africa becoming a republic within the Commonwealth, presenting the Republic of South Africa's application for a renewal of its membership to the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth had earlier declined to predict how republican status would affect South Africa's membership, it did not want to be seen to be meddling in its members' domestic affairs. However, many of the Conference's affiliates (prominent among them the Afro-Asia group and Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker) attacked South Africa's racial policies and rebuffed Verwoerd's application; they would go to any lengths to expel South Africa from the Commonwealth. In the UK, numerous anti-apartheid movements were also campaigning for South Africa's exclusion. Some member countries warned that, unless South Africa was expelled, they would themselves pull out of the organisation. Verwoerd discarded the censure, arguing that his Commonwealth cohorts had no right to question and criticise the domestic affairs of his country. On this issue, he even had the support of his parliamentary opposition.
In 1981, Sinatra performed in Sun City, South Africa, at a time when he believed that Bophuthatswana was an independent country. He was heavily criticized for performing there, and the official from the National Congress of South Africa was quoted in saying "He is trying to pretend that he's going to a separate state, which it is not. We don't recognize Bophuthatswana as a separate state of South Africa, and our policy is the same as if he agreed to perform in South Africa. He is saying that black people of South Africa should be living on 13% of the land."
However, many white South Africans, including some Afrikaners, did not share Hertzog's hostility towards what he called "the little black box". When Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the Moon in 1969, South Africa was one of the few countries unable to watch the event live, prompting one newspaper to remark, "The moon film has proved to be the last straw… The situation is becoming a source of embarrassment for the country." In response to public demand, the government arranged limited viewings of the landing, in which people were able to watch recorded footage for 15 minutes.
The Bahá'í Faith in South Africa began with the holding of Bahá'í meetings in the country in 1911. A small population of Bahá'ís remained until 1950 when large numbers of international Bahá'í pioneers settled in South Africa. In 1956, after members of various tribes in South Africa became Bahá'ís, a regional Bahá'í Assembly which included South Africa was elected. Later each of the constituent countries successively formed their own independent Bahá'í National Spiritual Assembly. Then in 1995, after a prolonged period of growth and oppression during Apartheid and the homelands reuniting with South Africa, the Bahá'í National Spiritual Assembly of South Africa was formed. Following the end of Apartheid the South African Bahá'í community continued to grow; currently there are around of 250,000 Bahá'is in South Africa.
New Zealand has a long history of sporting contact with South Africa, especially through rugby union. Until the 1970s this resulted in discrimination against Māori players, since the apartheid political system in South Africa for most of the twentieth century did not allow people of different races to play sport together, and therefore South African officials requested that Māori players not be included in sides which toured their country. Despite some of New Zealand's best players being Māori, this was agreed to, and Māori were excluded from tours of South Africa. Some Māori always objected to this, but it did not become a major issue until 1960, when there were several public protests at Māori exclusion from that year's tour. The protest group Halt All Racist Tours was formed in 1969. Although this was an issue in which Māori were central, and Māori were involved in the protests, the anti-tour movement was dominated by .
Student affairs did not become a unitary profession in South Africa until the end of apartheid in 1994. As in other countries of sub-Saharan Africa, South African universities have broadly followed an American model of student affairs administration. Difficulties in the implementation of student affairs principles from developed countries has been characterized as due to South Africa's status as a developing country.
Membership of the Commonwealth is by common assent of the existing members, and this principle applies equally to territories gaining independence from the UK and to outside territories requesting membership. Until 2007, Commonwealth members that changed their internal constitutional structure to that of a republic had to re-apply for membership. Widespread objection to the racial policies in South Africa resulted in that country deciding not to pursue a re-application for Commonwealth membership when it became a republic in 1961. South Africa was subsequently readmitted as a member of the Commonwealth after democratic elections in 1994. Fiji and the Maldives also did not apply for continued membership after becoming republics (Fiji was likely to be suspended in any case, since a coup had overthrown the democratically elected government), and thus their membership lapsed too.
At the brink of the country's independence in 1964, there were roughly 70,000 Europeans (mostly British) in Zambia (Northern Rhodesia before independence), making up roughly 2.3% of the 3 million inhabitants at the time. Zambia had a different situation compared to other African countries. It included segregation, similar to South Africa, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and South-West Africa (Namibia); but as the Europeans constituted a smaller fraction of the population they did not dominate politics. There were a few cities in Northern Rhodesia that had British place names, but all except one (Livingstone) were changed when the country became independent or soon after. These included:Guy Scott served as acting president of Zambia after the death of Michael Sata.
Anxiety increased when the UN Council for South-West Africa was declined admission, and steepened still further when South Africa indicted 35 South-West Africans and then found them guilty of terror campaigns. The UN reproached South Africa and declared that South-West Africa would thenceforth be known as Namibia. At the New York Accords in 1988, South Africa finally signed the agreement that granted the country its independence.
When talks following the South African Border War culminated in independence for Namibia in March 1990, the band were invited to perform at Namibia's celebration concert. The event took place at Independence Stadium in Windhoek the Saturday after Namibian independence day; Namibian and South African bands played to nearly 20,000 people. In 1994 they played in Namibia again in celebration of the integration of Walvis Bay and the Penguin Islands into Namibia. (Namibia's cessation from South Africa did not originally include these territories. South Africa finally ceded them on 1 March 1994.) The Walvis Bay integration concert was the first time Mango Groove performed "Let Your Heart Speak" to a live audience. They did not play in Namibia again until 1998, when they preceded their South African tour with a show at the Windhoek Country Club.
A variety of causes have been blamed for Africa's political instability, including Cold War conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union, over-reliance on foreign aid, decades of corruption and mismanagement by socialist leaders, as well as the policies of the International Monetary Fund. When a country became independent for the first time, it would often align itself with one of the two superpowers in order to get support. Many countries in Northern Africa received Soviet military aid, while many in Central and Southern Africa were supported by the United States, France or both. The 1970s saw an escalation, as newly independent Angola and Mozambique aligned themselves with the Soviet Union, and the West and South Africa sought to contain Soviet influence by funding insurgency movements. There was a major famine in Ethiopia, when hundreds of thousands of people starved. Some claimed that Marxist/Soviet policies made the situation worse. The most devastating military conflict in modern independent Africa has been the Second Congo War; this conflict and its aftermath have killed an estimated 5.5 million people.[66] Since 2003 there has been an ongoing conflict in Darfur which has become a humanitarian disaster. Another notable tragic event is the 1994 Rwandan Genocide in which an estimated 800,000 people were murdered. AIDS in post-colonial Africa has also been a prevalent issue.
Before independence in 1990, when the country was under South African administration, it formed part of that country's post code system, but following independence, use of post codes was discontinued.
South West Africa, including the enclave of Walvis Bay, was allocated the number range 9000–9299. 
The UN attempted to compel South Africa to let go of the mandate, and, in 1960, Liberia and Ethiopia requested that the International Court of Justice announce that South Africa's management of South West Africa was illegitimate. They argued that South Africa was bringing apartheid to South-West Africa, too. South Africa was formally accused of maladministration, and the lawsuit, commencing in November 1960, lasted almost six years. The International Court's verdict astonished the UN: it ruled that Liberia and Ethiopia had no right to take issue with South Africa's deeds in South-West Africa. The Court did not, however, pass judgement on whether or not South Africa still had a mandate over the region. The UN declared that the mandate was indeed concluded, and a council of the UN was to run the state until its independence in 1968. South Africa rebuffed the resolution, but declared its ostensible intention to ready South-West Africa for independence.
Namibia–South Africa relations refers to the current and historical relationship between Namibia and South Africa. South Africa conquered the area now known as Namibia from Germany during World War I and occupied it until 1990, when it gained independence. During those 75 years, thousands of South Africans settled in Namibia and South Africa treated the area as an internal province rather than occupied foreign entity, imposing apartheid laws in Namibia as it did in South Africa. Although Pretoria's power has receded in the last decades, the relation is still hierarchical.
Vorster's attitude towards other African countries was not so much a modification of strategy as a continuance of Verwoerd's approach. Vorster's forerunner had already become aware of the fact that cordial dealings with as many black states as possible was of paramount importance. As more and more African states acquired statehood from their colonial rulers, bitterness towards the South African apartheid system increased. If South Africa did not wish to become completely cut off from the rest of the African continent, she had to sustain associations with it, starting, of course, with mutual economic support. Vorster persisted with this strategy and built good relationships with a number of independent African states.
Sudan, before the separation of South Sudan, was Africa's largest country by land area and is a large supplier of oil.
On January 9, 2011, the population of the southern states of Sudan voted to become formally independent of the North. 98% of the approximate eight-million voters chose to become independent.
On August 9, 1965, Singapore was expelled from Malaysia and became an independent state. However, due to the apartheid policy, it did not establish diplomatic relations with South Africa until 1992, when the two countries signed agreements to do so. In 1994, South Africa joined the Commonwealth, resulting in the Embassies of both countries being renamed High Commissions and the Ambassadors becoming High Commissioners.
By the end of the convention, the delegates had drawn up a constitution that would, subject to some amendments by the British government, become the South Africa Act, which was South Africa's constitution between 1910 and 1961, when the country became a republic under the Constitution of 1961.
The Bahá'í Faith in South Africa began with the holding of Bahá'í meetings in the country in 1911. A small population of Bahá'ís remained until 1950 when large numbers of international Bahá'í pioneers settled in South Africa. In 1956, after members of various tribes in South Africa became Bahá'ís, a regional Bahá'í Assembly which included South Africa was elected. Later each of the constituent countries successively formed their own independent Bahá'í National Spiritual Assembly. Then in 1995, after a prolonged period of growth and oppression during Apartheid and the homelands reuniting with South Africa, the Bahá'í National Spiritual Assembly of South Africa was formed. In 2005 Bahá'ís were estimated at about 240,100 adherents.
Under apartheid, South Africa maintained trade missions in neighbouring countries, with which it did not have diplomatic relations, such as Zimbabwe, where, following the country's independence, the "South African Diplomatic Mission" in Salisbury (now Harare) was closed. A trade mission was also established in Maputo, Mozambique, in 1984, nine years after the South African consulate was closed following independence in 1975.
The decolonization of Africa started with Libya in 1951, although Liberia, South Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia were already independent. Many countries followed in the 1950s and 1960s, with a peak in 1960 with the Year of Africa, which saw 17 African nations declare independence, including a large part of French West Africa. Most of the remaining countries gained independence throughout the 1960s, although some colonizers (Portugal in particular) were reluctant to relinquish sovereignty, resulting in bitter wars of independence which lasted for a decade or more. The last African countries to gain formal independence were Guinea-Bissau (1974), Mozambique (1975) and Angola (1975) from Portugal; Djibouti from France in 1977; Zimbabwe from the United Kingdom in 1980; and Namibia from South Africa in 1990. Eritrea later split off from Ethiopia in 1993.