When people ask where I come, a few will say, “I really wish I knew more about South Africa. I feel silly that Nelson Mandela is one of the greatest men of our time but I dont know much else about the place, exept that there was once a thing thing called apartheid. Did I pronounce that right?” Which is cool. At least they’re interested.

Inevitably I watch people pull the standard ‘oh, how unfortunate for you’ face while they ask, “Is the crime really as bad as people say it is? I don’t think I’d want to go there”.
The other day I got asked, “I should probably know this but… is South Africa still segregated?” also, “Aah South Africa! So can you speak Afri-cans? That’s like the language the africans there speak?” and “Do some schools there have electricity?” Oh and my favourite, “Mandela? Hmm no… never heard of it.”
No wait, I take that back. I once met someone in a chatroom who took a look at my profile pic and declared, “Why do you pretend you’re white in your profile when you actually come from South Africa?” Another person told me he’d never heard of South Africa and then asked me where it was.

Now I realise that I’m not from not the World’s Greatest Country and Im not at all surprised that people know so little about it when they’ve never been there and probably only seen one documentary about it on TV… but with sooo many South Africans all over the world (we’re a plague of curious world travellers descending on every country), it won’t be long before you’re being served at the bar by one of us or work across a desk from one… and if she’s cute you’ll want to impress her with your vast knowledge about her silly little country…

So with just a tiny further ado, here are some cool new emeging facts coming from the New South Africa – FYI: the current president who took over from Mandela after he retired is Thabo Mbeki, and the ruling party is the ANC. Also Afrikaans is one of the 11 many official languages of South Africa. Afrikaans is spoken by all races and ethnic groups in South Africa and much has been done in recent years to promote varieties of this language that were suppressed during the years of Apartheid. Close to 6 million speak Afrikaans as their home language out of 40.6 million South Africans.

1. South Africa accounts for almost 45{a9f0d31f6175b3e4775e11a66c07db268fb74408d6095f6b46eeec420c0e9f62} of the GDP of the entire African continent, with an economy three times the size of the second biggest (Egypt)
2. Of the 10 LSM levels ( LSM1=poorest; LSM10 wealthiest ), the average SA family located in LSM6
3. The current police to population ratio is 1:304.
4. South African media ranks 31st out of 167 countries in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2005, higher than any country in Asia, the Middle East or South America, and ahead of Japan, Spain, Italy and the United States.
5. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange was the 7th best performing stock market in 2005, according to the World Federation of Exchanges
6. Home ownership in SA has increased from 64{a9f0d31f6175b3e4775e11a66c07db268fb74408d6095f6b46eeec420c0e9f62} (5,12m households) in 1994 to 78{a9f0d31f6175b3e4775e11a66c07db268fb74408d6095f6b46eeec420c0e9f62} (7,9m households) in 2004, according to a South African Advertising Research Foundation development index
7. The value of South African real estate improved by 30{a9f0d31f6175b3e4775e11a66c07db268fb74408d6095f6b46eeec420c0e9f62} over the past 5 years
8. Since 1994, 500 houses have been built each day for the poor
9. Interest rates are at a 25-year low
10. South Africa is one of only 12 countries with potable tap water
11. The University of South Africa UNISA is a pioneer of tertiary distance education and is the largest correspondence university in the world with 250,000 students
12. In 1991, South Africa became the first country in the world to protect the Great White shark
13. Afrikaans is the youngest official language in the world
14. The South African Rand (ZAR), the world’s most actively traded emerging market currency, has joined an elite club of 15 currencies – the Continuous Linked Settlement (CLS) – where forex transactions are settled immediately, lowering the risks of transacting across time zones
15. The Rand was the best performing currency against the US Dollar from 2002 – 2005, according to the Bloomberg Currency Scorecard
16. South Africa is the best-ranked country in terms of price stability, our fiscal policy is ranked 11th, our international trade competitiveness 21st, and we are the 28th most-attractive destination for foreign direct investment, according to the World Competiveness Yearbook 2005
17. South Africa is the first, and to date only, country to build nuclear weapons and then voluntarily dismantle its entire nuclear weapons programme
18. South African tourism has grown by 116{a9f0d31f6175b3e4775e11a66c07db268fb74408d6095f6b46eeec420c0e9f62} over the last 2 years
19. In the global measure of women in Parliament, South Africa ranks 8th in the world.
20. More facts from South Africa – The Good News