I know it is still an impoverished country but compared to other african countries it seems much more civilized and developed.
But even more than that it seems like it is much more culturally prominent than other african countries. I never hear about Ghana in casual conversation but I feel like I hear about South Africa more regularly. It has had major historical figures, movies have been set there, people want to travel there. It just seems like it is more out there than the rest of Africa.
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South Africa was somewhat unique as a colony because the goal wasn’t (just) resource extraction, but also maintaining a military grip on the country. There was a long period where the most direct route for trade between the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meant sailing around South Africa, thus whoever controlled South Africa controlled the route. Even after the opening of the Suez Canal, South Africa was still necessary as an “alternative” route just in case someone ever tried to shut down the Suez. The easiest way to maintain that control involved moving a lot of Europeans to South Africa, and investing money and resources to develop the colony. In addition, the Dutch East India Company that controlled the colony initially basically wanted *anyone* willing to live in the colony, and accepted a fair number of political and religious exiles from Europe (e.g. the Huguenots) in order to grow the colony as quickly as possible. All of these various figures ended up bringing a fairly large amount of intellectual and monetary capital with them.
Hence, South Africa had a *lot* of capital injected into it from the outside that many other European colonies in Africa never really got, and that is reflected in the state of the country today.
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