South Africa has had a tumultuous history, achieving effective independence from Great Britain in 1931 as the Union of South Africa, leaving the British Commonwealth in 1961 to become the Republic of South Africa, and re-joining the renamed Commonwealth of Nations in the mid-1990s.
Racial segregation, introduced by Dutch and British colonizers and later known as apartheid, was not abolished until 1993 when the African National Congress (ANC), under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, assumed control of the government, which it has maintained since.
The World Bank classified South Africa as an upper-middle-income economy, however it has a mixed economy with a high rate of poverty and low GDP per capita. Unemployment is extremely high and South Africa is ranked in the top 10 countries in the world for income inequality.
"The country has a well-developed heavy industrial production sector, which includes motor vehicles and parts, railway rolling stock, synthetic fuels, and mining equipment and machinery. It is also a major exporter of precious metals. Agriculture accounts for only 2.5 percent of its economy, with major crops in citrus and deciduous fruits, corn, wheat, dairy products, sugarcane, tobacco, wine and wool"