After the negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa commenced in 1990, the nation re-joined the Olympic movement.

[2] General Piet Cronjé, Len Taunyane, and Jan Mashiani, all Boer War veterans who had been taken prisoner by the British at St. Helena after the Battle of Paardeberg and had reenacted battle scenes at the fair, participated in the men's marathon.

[2] Although the four British colonies of Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Transvaal, and Orange River did not form the Union of South Africa until 1910, they fielded a combined South Africa team at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, where Reggie Walker won its first gold medal.

[2] The first South African woman in the Olympics was swimmer Barbara Nash in 1920, and the first women to win medals were the 1928 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay quartet, who came third.

[2] South Africa first entered the Winter Olympics in 1960, and that summer's games in Rome would be its last till the end of apartheid.