Talk:South Africa/GA1

GA Review

Preliminary Review

Unfortunately, I do not believe this article is yet ready for GA status. The main reason for the fail is because the sections are severely under-referenced. Any other information that cannot be verified and cited should be removed. Please provide adequate references as required by Wikipedia:Verifiability. Along with those changes, check out comparison articles such as Australia, which is considered to be a prime example of how country pages should look or at Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries. I will leave the article up on the GAN page so that other editors can have the opportunity to add their own comments. Best, Epicadam (talk) 20:33, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Editors should use the following comments as a guide to improve the article to the GA status aside from the reference issues.

Overall

• While not a hard and fast rule, citations typically go after punctuation marks. For example:

Good: The cow jumped over the moon.

Bad: The cow jumped over the moon.

Worst: The cow jumped over the moon.

• There are currently too many subsections. Make sure the article follows the proper outline as suggested in Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries:
  • Lead
  • History
  • Government/Politics
  • Subdivisions
  • Geography
  • Economy
  • Demographics
  • Culture
  • Any other topics
    • As for sections on "Health" and "Crime", I'm not sure how to best handle these subjects. Normally, I would say they should be included under a larger topic, but in the case of South Africa, where they are such major issues, they may qualify as their own. Input from other editors would be appreciated especially on this point.
• Websites should be part of external links
• Use a citation checker to verify all links are working properly.
• Article can be better Wikified to supply internal links.
• Make sure that in-text external links like this are avoided. If there is material that needs to be referenced, it should be done so properly using citations.

Lead

• "Due to this it is the most socially, economically and infrastructurally developed country on the continent." This is a pretty lofty claim that I do not think is supported by the material provided, especially about the country being the most "socially-developed".
• "South Africa has experienced a different history from other nations in Africa because of early immigration from Europe and the strategic importance of the Cape Sea Route." Not sure what a "different history" means? I'm sure all countries have different histories. Other countries in Africa do also have European immigration, though not as much, and other countries also have extremely significant trade routes, Egypt for one.
• Ensure that information present in the lead is repeated later in the article.
• "South Africa is often called the "Rainbow Nation", a term coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and later adopted by then President Nelson Mandela. Mandela used the term "Rainbow Nation" as a metaphor to describe the country's newly developing multicultural diversity after segregationist apartheid ideology. By 2007, the country had joined Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, and Spain in legalising same-sex marriage." Not sure this belongs in the lead.

History

• Subsections are unnecessary, they are not present in other GA-status country articles.
• The following sentences are long and/or awkward. Revisions would be best to ensure flow:
  • Sentence starting: "Settlements of Bantu-speaking..."
  • Sentence starting: "The southernmost group was the Xhosa people..."
  • Sentence starting: "When he returned to Lisbon carrying news of the discovery..."
  • Sentence starting: "A long period of harsh suppression by the government..."
• "Along with the accounts of the very early navigators, the accounts of shipwreck survivors provide the earliest written accounts of Southern Africa. In the two centuries following 1488, a number of small fishing settlements were made along the coast by Portuguese sailors, but no written account of these settlements survives." Why does the topic sentence introduce "written accounts" but then the next sentence says that there are none?
• "Cape Malay mosques in District Six were spared, and now serve as monuments for the destruction that occurred around them." How does that relate to anything else being discussed in the paragraph?
• "The Boers successfully resisted British encroachments during the First Boer War (1880–1881) using guerrilla warfare tactics, much better suited to local conditions." The Boers are a rather important group in SA history... perhaps best to explain who they are first? There's no mention of Boers nor the Boer republics before then.
• "(See also the article on the History of South Africa in the apartheid era.)" Use the {{seealso}} or {{main}} tags to provide such links.

Government

• Law can probably be merged in here.

Provinces, districts and municipalities

• The populations of each province is best left to the demographics section. No need for a table here, just list the states and say what their status is in relation to the national government.

Geography

• "South Africa is located at the southernmost region of Africa, with a long coastline that stretches more than 2,500 kilometres (1,550 mi) and across two oceans (the Atlantic and the Indian)." I think "across" is the wrong word here... perhaps "along"?
• Information about flora and fauna can be moved here.

Economy

• Information from the tourism section should be moved here.
• Split: "By UN classification South Africa is a middle-income country with an abundant supply of resources, well-developed financial, legal, communications, energy, and transport sectors, a stock exchange (the JSE Limited), that ranks among the top twenty in the world, and a modern infrastructure supporting an efficient distribution of goods to major urban centres throughout the entire region."
• This seems more like demographic info: "South Africa has one of the highest rates of income inequality in the world. A decade of continual economic growth has helped to lower unemployment, but daunting economic and social problems remain. The average South African household income decreased considerably between 1995 and 2000. As for racial inequality, Statistics South Africa reported that in 1995 the average white household earned four times as much as the average black household. In 2000 the average white household was earning 6 times the average black household. [3] The implementation of affirmative action policies have seen a rise in black economic wealth and an emerging black middle class.[11] Other problems are crime, corruption, and HIV/AIDS."
• The sentence starting "With high unemployment levels amongst poorer South Africans..." is too long.
• Agriculture is a part of Economy, merge there.

Demographics

• Merge religion and languages into this section.
• "Even though South Africa's population has increased in the past decade[25][27] (primarily due to immigration), the country had an annual population growth rate of −0.501% in 2008(CIA est.)" This is supposed to say had an "annual natural population growth rate of -0.501% in 2008", correct?
• "Despite high emigration levels, a high level of non-South African white immigrants have settled in the country, in particular from countries such as Britain and Zimbabwe. For example, by 2005, an estimated 212 000 British citizens were residing in South Africa. Since 2003, the numbers of British expats coming to South Africa has rose by 50%. An estimated 20 000 British expats moved to South Africa in 2007. The reasons cited by many expats are South Africa's family values, the weather and a better quality of life. South Africa recently overtook New Zealand as the 6th most popular destination amongst the British expat community." First off, just because somebody is from the UK does not mean that he or she is white. Second, according to the article, many of those British subjects are retirees who are looking for alternate places to retire (and where their pensions will go much further) or are native South Africans who wanted to return home (most often their British spouses). That should be made clear.
• "The major part of the Asian population of the country is Indian in origin (see Indian South Africans), many of them descended from indentured workers brought in the nineteenth century to work on the sugar plantations of the eastern coastal area then known as Natal." Earlier in the history section it says this, "To ease Cape labour shortages slaves were brought from Indonesia, Madagascar, and India. Furthermore, troublesome leaders, often of royal descent, were banished from Dutch colonies to South Africa." So were the Indians slaves or indentured servants? It makes a difference and highlights the need for proper sourcing.

Culture

• "South African cuisine is heavily meat-based and has spawned the distinctively South African social gathering known as a braai, or barbecue." The description of a "braai" doesn't sound any different than a barbecue that takes place anywhere else...
• "South Africa has also developed into a major wine producer, with some of the best vineyards lying in valleys around Stellenbosch, Franschoek, Paarl and Barrydale.[43]" Probably better off in the economy or even geography sections.
• "White and Coloured South African singers are historically influenced by European musical styles including such western metal bands such as Seether (formerly Saron Gas)." What is this nonsense?
• Move to demographics:

"The country's black majority still has a substantial number of rural inhabitants who lead largely impoverished lives. It is among these people, however, that cultural traditions survive most strongly; as blacks have become increasingly urbanised and westernised, aspects of traditional culture have declined. Urban blacks usually speak English or Afrikaans in addition to their native tongue. There are smaller but still significant groups of speakers of Khoisan languages which are not included in the eleven official languages, but are one of the eight other officially recognised languages. There are small groups of speakers of endangered languages, most of which are from the Khoi-San family, that receive no official status; however, some groups within South Africa are attempting to promote their use and revival.

The middle class lifestyle, predominantly of the white minority but with growing numbers of Black, Coloured and Indian people,[44] is similar in many respects to that of people found in Western Europe, North America and Australasia. Members of the middle class often study and work abroad for greater exposure to the world's markets.

Asians, predominantly of Indian origin, preserve their own cultural heritage, languages and religious beliefs, being either Christian, Hindu or Sunni Muslim and speaking English, with Indian languages like Hindi, Telugu, Tamil or Gujarati being spoken less frequently, but the majority of Indians being able to understand their mother tongue. The first Indians arrived on the famous Truro ship as indentured labourers in Natal to work the Sugar Cane Fields. There is a much smaller Chinese community in South Africa, although its numbers have increased due to immigration from Republic of China (Taiwan)."

Military

• This is just a suggestion, but military is usually part of a larger section that also deals with foreign policy.

International Rankings

• I'm not sure if these should be present. Relevant rankings are typically available on the main country factbox template. Perhaps a main page for south africa rankings with a link should be provided?

2nd opinion by Nikki

I agree that this article isn't yet up to GA standards. Here are some suggestions for improvement (which may or may not overlap with the above, as I haven't read through it completely):

• Per WP:LEAD, the lead should be up to four paragraphs, not more.
• Definitely take care of citation in every section that was tagged as needing them.
• In the image captions, only add a period if the caption is a complete sentence.
• Several of the references need to be formatted using Template:cite web.
• There are a few paragraphs containing only one or two sentences. These should be expanded or merged into the surrounding paragraphs.
• A copyedit or two wouldn't hurt either, as I saw some comma and grammar problems in the article.

Good luck with improving the article. Nikki311 02:45, 13 June 2008 (UTC)