South Africa

History

• Early History

  The prehistory and history of South Africa span nearly the entire known existence of human beings and their ancestors—some three million years or more—and include the wandering of small bands of hominins through the savanna, the inception of herding and farming as ways of life, and the construction of large urban centres. Through this diversity of human experience, several trends can be identified: technological and economic change, shifting systems of belief, and, in the earlier phases of humanity, the interplay between physical evolution and learned behaviour, or culture. 

  The territory of what is now referred to generically as South Africa was one of the important centres of human evolution. It was inhabited by Australopithecines since at least 2.5 million years ago. Modern human settlement occurred around 125,000 years ago in the Middle Stone Age, as shown by archaeological discoveries at Klasies River Caves. The first human habitation is associated with a DNA group originating in a northwestern area of southern Africa and still prevalent in the indigenous Khoisan (Khoi and San). Southern Africa was reached later by the migration of the ethnically different, dark-skinned, Bantu-speaking or African people originating in the northwestern region of southern Africa during the early centuries AD.

  The Blombos cave discovery of 1924 was the first, where the skull of a 2.51 million-year-old found. Following Blombos cave discovery, a new much more robust hominid was discovered in 1938 Paranthropus robustus at Kromdraai, and in 1947 uncovered several more examples of Australopithecus africanus at Sterkfontein. Many more species of early hominid have come to light in recent decades. The oldest is Little Foot, a collection of footbones of an unknown hominid between 2.2 and 3.3 million years old, discovered at Sterkfontein by Ronald J. Clarke. An important recent find was that of 1.9 million-year-old Australopithecus sediba, discovered in 2008. In 2015, the discovery near Johannesburg of a previously unknown species of Homo was announced, named Homo naledi. It has been described as one of the most important paleontological discoveries in modern times.

• San and Khoikhoi tribes and the Bantu People

  The descendants of the Middle Paleolithic populations are thought to be the original San and Khoikhoi tribes. The settlement of southern Africa by the ancestors of the Khoisan corresponds to the earliest separation of the extant Homo sapiens populations altogether. The San and Khoikhoi are grouped under the term Khoisan and are essentially distinguished only by their respective occupations. Whereas the San were hunter-gathers, the Khoikhoi were pastoral herders. Archaeological discoveries of livestock bones on the Cape Peninsula indicate that the Khoikhoi began to settle there by about 2000 years ago.  In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Portuguese mariners, who were the first Europeans at the Cape, encountered pastoral Khoikhoi with livestock. 

  The Bantu expansion was one of the major demographic movements in human prehistory, sweeping much of the African continent during the 2nd and 1st millennia BC. Bantu-speaking communities would have reached southern Africa from the Congo basin by the early centuries AD. The advancing Bantu encroached on the Khoikhoi territory, forcing the original inhabitants of the region to move to more arid areas. Some of the migrant groups, ancestral to today’s Nguni peoples (the Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, and Ndebele), preferred to live near the eastern coast of what is present-day South Africa. Others, now known as the Sotho–Tswana peoples (Tswana, Pedi, and Sotho), settled in the interior on the plateau known as the Highveld, while today’s Venda, Lemba, and Shangaan-Tsonga peoples made their homes in the north-eastern areas of present-day South Africa

  The establishment of the staging post by the Dutch East India Company at the Cape in 1652 soon brought the Khoikhoi into conflict with Dutch settlers over land ownership. Cattle rustling and livestock theft ensued, with the Khoikhoi being ultimately expelled from the peninsula by force, after a succession of wars. The first Khoikhoi-Dutch War broke out in 1659, the second in 1673, and the third 1674–1677. By the time of their defeat and expulsion from the Cape Peninsula and surrounding districts, the Khoikhoi population was decimated by a smallpox epidemic, against which the Khoikhoi had no natural resistance or indigenous medicines. The disease had been brought to the Cape by Dutch sailors.

• The Arrival of the Dutch

  The first Portuguese ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, their occupants intent on gaining a share of the lucrative Arab trade with the East. Over the following century, numerous vessels made their way around the South African coast, but the only direct African contacts came with the bands of shipwreck survivors who either set up camp in the hope of rescue or tried to make their way northward to Portuguese settlements in present-day Mozambique. 

  The Dutch East India Company (in the Dutch of the day: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC) decided to establish a permanent settlement at the Cape. The VOC, one of the major European trading houses sailing the spice route to the East, had colonising the area, and establish a secure base camp where passing ships could shelter and be serviced, and where hungry sailors could stock up on fresh supplies of meat, fruit, and vegetables. 

  In the initial years of Dutch settlement at the Cape, pastoralists had readily traded with the Dutch. However, as the garrison’s demand for cattle and sheep continued to increase, the Khoekhoe became more wary. The Dutch offered tobacco, alcohol, and trinkets for livestock. Numerous conflicts followed, and, beginning in 1713, many Khoekhoe communities were ravaged by smallpox. At the same time, colonial pastoralists—the Boers, also called trekboers—began to move inland beyond the Hottentots Holland Mountains with their own herds. The Khoekhoe chiefdoms were largely decimated by the end of the 18th century, their people either dead or reduced to conditions close to serfdom on colonial farms. The San—small bands of hunter-gatherers—fared no better. Pushed back into marginal areas, they were forced to live by cattle raiding, justifying in colonial eyes their systematic eradication. The men were slaughtered, and the women and children were taken into servitude.

• Colonial British 

  In the 19th century, the infrastructure of the colony began to change: English replaced Dutch as the language of administration; the British pound sterling replaced the Dutch rix-dollar, and newspaper publishing began in Cape Town in 1824. After Britain began appointing colonial governors, an advisory council for the governor was established in 1825, which was upgraded to a legislative council in 1834 with a few “unofficial” settler representatives. A virtual freehold system of landownership gradually replaced the existing Dutch tenant system, under which European colonists had paid a small annual fee to the government but had not acquired land ownership.

  A large group of British settlers arrived in 1820; this, together with a high European birth rate and wasteful land usage, produced an acute land shortage, which was alleviated only when the British acquired more land through massive military intervention against Africans on the eastern frontier. Until the 1840s the British vision of the colony did not include African citizens (referred to pejoratively by the British as “Kaffirs”), so, as Africans lost their land, they were expelled across the Great Fish River, the unilaterally proclaimed eastern border of the colony.

  Long-standing Boer resentment became a full-blown rebellion in the Transvaal and the first Anglo-Boer War, known by Afrikaners as the War of Independence, broke out. It was over almost as soon as it began, with a crushing Boer victory at the Battle of Majuba Hill in 1881, and the republic regained its independence as the ZAR (Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek – South African Republic). 

  During the earlier diamond rush of 1899, the British demanded that voting rights be given to the 60,000 foreign whites on the Witwatersrand. Paul Kruger (ZAR president 1883–1900) refused and demanded that British troops be withdrawn from the republic’s borders, leading to the second Anglo-Boer War.The conflict was more protracted than its predecessor, as the British were better prepared. By mid-1900, Pretoria, the last of the major Boer towns, had surrendered. 

• The Union of South Africa

  The Union of South Africa was established in 1910. The British High Commission Territories of Basotholand (now Lesotho), Bechuanaland (now Botswana), Swaziland and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) continued to be ruled directly by Britain. English and Dutch became the official languages – Afrikaans was not recognised as an official language until 1925. The first government of the new Union was the South African National Party (later known as the South African Party, or SAP). A diverse coalition of Boer groups under General Louis Botha, with General Jan Smuts as his deputy, the party followed a generally pro-British, white-unity line.

  General Barry Hertzog raised divisive issues, championing Afrikaner interests, advocating separate development for the two white groups and independence from Britain. He and his supporters formed the National Party (NP). Soon after the union was established a barrage of repressive legislation was passed. It became illegal for black workers to strike; skilled jobs were reserved for whites; blacks were barred from military service; and pass laws, restricting black freedom of movement, were tightened.

  In 1912, Pixley ka Isaka Seme formed a national democratic organisation to represent blacks. It was initially called the South African Native Congress, but from 1923 it was known as the African National Congress (ANC). In 1913 the Natives Land Act set aside 8% of South Africa’s land for black occupancy. Blacks were not allowed to buy, rent or even become sharecroppers outside their designated areas. Thousands of squatters were evicted from farms and forced into increasingly overcrowded reserves, or into the cities.

  In 1914 South Africa, as a part of the British Empire was drawn into war with Germany and saddled with the responsibility of dealing with German South West Africa (now Namibia). After the war, South West Africa became part of South Africa under ‘mandate’ from the League of Nations.

• Apartheid

  In 1924 Hertzog and the NP came to power in a coalition government, and Afrikaner nationalism gained a greater hold. The dominant issue of the 1929 election was the swaart gevaar (black threat). Although Hertzog’s National Party held a majority of the seats in the House of Assembly and dominated the South African cabinet in the early 1930s, its mismanagement of problems created by the Great Depression led him to form a coalition with his rival Smuts in 1933. Smuts was the leader of the South African Party, whose support came from the major industrialists and which was the party of most of the English-speaking whites (who made up less than half of the white population). In contrast, the National Party derived its main support from Afrikaner farmers and intellectuals. By 1934 the two organizations had merged to form the United Party, with Hertzog as prime minister and Smuts his deputy. The two parties and the two leaders had a common interest in favouring the enfranchised population, nearly all of whom were white, over the unenfranchised, all of whom were black. They agreed to provide massive support for white farmers, to assist poor whites by providing them with jobs protected from black competition, and to curb the movement of blacks from the reserves into the towns.

  The NP, led by DF Malan in a coalition with the Afrikaner Party (AP), won the 1948 election on a platform of establishing Apartheid (literally, the state of being apart). With the help of creative electoral boundaries, the NP held power right up to the first democratic election in 1994. Apartheid was a political and social system in South Africa while it was under white minority rule. This was used in the 20th century, from 1948 to the early 1990s. The word apartheid means “apartness” in Afrikaans. Racial segregation had been used for centuries but when the new policy started in 1948 it was strict and more systematic. In the system, the people of South Africa were divided by their race and the races were forced to live apart from each other. There were laws that kept the racial separation. The system of apartheid in South Africa was banned in 1994. The last president under apartheid was Frederik Willem de Klerk.

• Nelson Mandela

  Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013 was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, political leader, and philanthropist, who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country’s first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by tackling institutionalised racism and fostering racial reconciliation. Ideologically an African nationalist and socialist, he served as President of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997.

  Mandela was born to the Thembu royal family in Mvezo, British South Africa. He studied law at the University of Fort Hare and the University of the Witwatersrand before working as a lawyer in Johannesburg. There he became involved in anti-colonial and African nationalist politics, joining the ANC in 1943 and co-founding its Youth League in 1944. After the National Party’s white-only government-established ‘apartheid’, a system of racial segregation that privileged whites, he and the ANC committed themselves to its overthrow. Mandela was appointed President of the ANC’s Transvaal branch, rising to prominence for his involvement in the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. He was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the 1956 Treason Trial. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the banned South African Communist Party (SACP). Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 and led a sabotage campaign against the government. In 1962, he was arrested for conspiring to overthrow the state and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial.

  Mandela served 27 years in prison, initially on Robben Island, and later in Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. Amid growing domestic and international pressure, and with fears of a racial civil war, President F. W. de Klerk released him in 1990. Mandela and de Klerk negotiated an end to apartheid and organised the 1994 multiracial general election in which Mandela led the ANC to victory and became President. Leading a broad coalition government which promulgated a new constitution, Mandela emphasised reconciliation between the country’s racial groups and created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses. He declined a second presidential term and in 1999 was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela became an elder statesman and focused on combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the charitable Nelson Mandela Foundation.

  Mandela was a controversial figure for much of his life. Although critics on the right denounced him as a communist terrorist and those on the radical left deemed him too eager to negotiate and reconcile with apartheid’s supporters, he gained international acclaim for his activism. Widely regarded as an icon of democracy and social justice, he received more than 250 honours—including the Nobel Peace Prize—and became the subject of a cult of personality. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Xhosa clan name, Madiba, and described as the “Father of the Nation”.