South Africa - History

Southern Africa was named the country without a past. For many years, its untravelled expanses were supposed from the beginning to have harbored nothing but wild beasts and black men almost as wild, who for ages without number had pursued their path of destruction as they rolled southward from the human reservoir of the north, each wave of them submerging that which preceded it. Even as recently as the mid-19th Century, although the settlers were in daily contact with races entirely different from their own, no reliable information could be obtained of the manners and customs, much less of the early history of these people.

The struggle for existence among the settlers themselves was of too keen and earnest a character to allow of the leisure necessary to carry out such an inquiry systematically, from the constant state of hostility which existed between them, owing to the almost unchecked depredations of the frontier tribes. As was natural, such a condition of affairs fostered a feeling that was altogether antagonistic to the development of that frame of mind which alone can enable dispassionate and impartial judgement of men whose instincts urged them to plunder the colonists, and to glory in the excitement of continuous raids upon the herds of their white neighbors. Thus a state of chronic warfare was entailed upon both parties, with intermittent periods, of greater or less duration, of armed truce.

Under such circumstances, few took sufficient interest in the obnoxious tribes by which they were surrounded to attempt to collect any of the traditionary history connected with them, and the works of those travellers who had visited the country before the war of races had assumed its subsequent proportions and intensity, were at that time unobtainable. The greater number of the missionaries who were then residing among them, and who might have collected many of the traditions which are now lost for ever, considered the past history of a race of savages as a matter of little moment in comparison with making converts to their own special ideas of salvation.

History is a compelling presence in South Africa. Political protagonists often refer to historical events and individuals in expounding their different points of view. The African National Congress (ANC), for example, has as one of its symbols the shield of Bambatha, a Zulu chief who died leading the last armed uprising of Africans against the British in 1906. Mangosuthu (Gatsha) Buthelezi, leader of the former KwaZulu homeland (see Glossary) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), often refers to Shaka Zulu, the first great monarch to arise in South Africa, who created a vast military state in the 1820s.

Afrikaners have frequently called themselves a "chosen people," ordained by God to rule in South Africa. They have argued that their ancestors settled the subcontinent before any African, but that for the past 200 years they have had to fight against the treachery of Africans and the oppression of British imperialists. The study of the history of South Africa, therefore, is a highly contentious arena marked by wide variations of interpretation and infused with politics. South Africa did not exist as a unified self-governing state until 1910. Indeed, before the discovery of minerals--diamonds and gold--in the late nineteenth century, the emergence of such a country appeared unlikely because the early history of the subcontinent was marked by economic and political fragmentation.

People have inhabited southern Africa for thousands of years. Members of the Khoisan language groups are the oldest surviving inhabitants of the land, but only a few are left in South Africa today--and they are located in the western sections. Most of today's black South Africans belong to the Bantu language group, which migrated south from central Africa, settling in the Transvaal region sometime before AD 100. The Nguni, ancestors of the Zulu and Xhosa, occupied most of the eastern coast by 1500.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach the Cape of Good Hope, arriving in 1488. However, permanent white settlement did not begin until 1652 when the Dutch East India Company established a provisioning station on the Cape. In subsequent decades, French Huguenot refugees, the Dutch, and Germans began to settle in the Cape. Collectively, they form the Afrikaner segment of today's population. The establishment of these settlements had far-reaching social and political effects on the groups already settled in the area, leading to upheaval in these societies and the subjugation of their people.

By 1779, European settlements extended throughout the southern part of the Cape and east toward the Great Fish River. It was here that Dutch authorities and the Xhosa fought the first frontier war. The British gained control of the Cape of Good Hope at the end of the 18th century. Subsequent British settlement and rule marked the beginning of a long conflict between the Afrikaners and the English.

Beginning in 1836, partly to escape British rule and cultural hegemony and partly out of resentment at the recent abolition of slavery, many Afrikaner farmers (Boers) undertook a northern migration that became known as the "Great Trek." This movement brought them into contact and conflict with African groups in the area, the most formidable of which were the Zulus. Under their powerful leader, Shaka (1787-1828), the Zulus conquered most of the territory between the Drakensberg Mountains and the sea (now KwaZulu-Natal).

In 1828, Shaka was assassinated and replaced by his half-brother Dingane. In 1838, Dingane was defeated and deported by the Voortrekkers (people of the Great Trek) at the battle of Blood River. The Zulus, nonetheless, remained a potent force, defeating the British in the historic battle of Isandhlwana before themselves being finally conquered in 1879.

In 1852 and 1854, the independent Boer Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State were created. Relations between the republics and the British Government were strained. The discovery of diamonds at Kimberley in 1870 and the discovery of large gold deposits in the Witwatersrand region of the Transvaal in 1886 caused an influx of European (mainly British) immigration and investment. In addition to resident black Africans, many blacks from neighboring countries also moved into the area to work in the mines. The construction by mine owners of hostels to house and control their workers set patterns that later extended throughout the region.

Mineral discoveries in the 1860s and 1880s revolutionized the economic and political settings. Diamonds and gold fueled economic growth in southern Africa, creating both new market opportunities and a great demand for labor. To meet these labor needs, the British conquered most of the African peoples of the region in a rapid series of campaigns in the 1870s and 1880s and subjected the defeated people to controls that persisted practically to the present day: pass laws regulating the movement of people within urban areas and between urban and rural areas; discriminatory legal treatment of blacks compared with whites; and the establishment of "locations," for rural Africans, that were much smaller than the original landholdings of autonomous African societies in the nineteenth century. Boer reactions to this influx and British political intrigues led to the Anglo-Boer Wars of 1880-81 and 1899-1902. British forces prevailed in the latter conflict, and the republics were incorporated into the British Empire. In May 1910, the two republics and the British colonies of the Cape and Natal formed the Union of South Africa, a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. When the Union of South Africa was instituted in 1910, its constitutional provisions reflected a society in which whites had achieved a monopoly on wealth and power. The Union's constitution kept all political power in the hands of whites.

In 1912, the South Africa Native National Congress was founded in Bloemfontein and eventually became known as the African National Congress (ANC). Its goals were the elimination of restrictions based on color and the enfranchisement of and parliamentary representation for blacks. Despite these efforts the government continued to pass laws limiting the rights and freedoms of blacks.

In 1948, the National Party (NP) won the all-white elections and began passing legislation codifying and enforcing an even stricter policy of white domination and racial separation known as "apartheid" (separateness). In the early 1960s, following a protest in Sharpeville in which 69 protesters were killed by police and 180 injured, the ANC and Pan-African Congress (PAC) were banned. Nelson Mandela and many other anti-apartheid leaders were convicted and imprisoned on charges of treason.

The ANC and PAC were forced underground and fought apartheid through guerrilla warfare and sabotage. In May 1961, South Africa abandoned its British dominion status and declared itself a republic. It withdrew from the Commonwealth in part because of international protests against apartheid. In 1984, a new constitution came into effect in which whites allowed coloreds and Asians a limited role in the national government and control over their own affairs in certain areas. Ultimately, however, all power remained in white hands. Blacks remained effectively disenfranchised.

Popular uprisings in black and colored townships in 1976 and 1985 helped to convince some NP members of the need for change. Secret discussions between those members and Nelson Mandela began in 1986. In February 1990, State President F.W. de Klerk, who had come to power in September 1989, announced the unbanning of the ANC, the PAC, and all other anti-apartheid groups. Two weeks later, Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

In 1991, the Group Areas Act, Land Acts, and the Population Registration Act--the last of the so-called "pillars of apartheid"--were abolished. A long series of negotiations ensued, resulting in a new constitution promulgated into law in December 1993. The country's first nonracial elections were held on April 26-28, 1994, resulting in the installation of Nelson Mandela as President on May 10, 1994.