Satellite image of Cape peninsula,
Courtesy of NASA
(larger image)
Bartolomeu Dias rounding the
Cape of Good Hope

The Cape Colony, Natal and the two Boer republics unified in 1910 as the Union of South Africa.

Map of South Africa

The African National Congress was the most active black-run organisation to oppose apartheid, and after two decades of repression and economic troubles, apartheid was dismantled under F.W. de Klerk in 1992. The first multi-racial vote in South African history was held in 1994, making Nelson Mandela the President. South Africa now is a multi-racial democracy.

Beginning around 2,500 years ago, some Bushman groups acquired livestock from further north.

Gradually, hunting and gathering gave way to herding as the dominant economic activity as the Bushmen tended to small herds of cattle and oxen.

Map showing the provinces and districts (numbered) of South Africa

¦¦ Northern Cape ¦¦ North West ¦¦ Gauteng ¦¦ Limpopo ¦¦ Mpumalanga	¦¦ KwaZulu-Natal ¦¦ Eastern Cape ¦¦ Free State ¦¦ Western Cape (larger image)

The pastoralist Bushmen, known as Khoikhoi ("men of men"), began to move further south, reaching as far as the cape now known as the Cape of Good Hope. Along the way they intermarried with the hunter-gatherer Bushmen,

whom they referred to as San, to the point where drawing a clear line between the two groups became impossible (prompting the use of the term Khoisan).

Over time the Khoikhoi established themselves along the coast, while small groups of Bushmen continued to inhabit the interior.

At about this time, Bantu-speaking peoples also began arriving in South Africa. Originally from the Niger Delta area in west Africa, they had started to make their way south and eastwards in about 1000 BC, reaching present-day KwaZulu-Natal Province by 500 AD. The Bantu speakers not only had domestic animals, but also practised agriculture, farming wheat and other crops. They also displayed skill in working iron, and lived in settled villages. The Bantu arrived in South Africa in small waves, rather than in one cohesive migration. Some groups, the ancestors of today's Nguni peoples (the Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, and Ndebele), preferred to live near the coast. Others, now known as the Sotho-Tswana peoples (Tswana, Pedi, and Basotho), settled in the Highveld, while today's Venda, Lemba, and Shangaan-Tsonga peoples preferred to live in the northeastern areas of South Africa.

Bantu-speakers and Khoisan mixed, as evidenced by rock paintings showing the two different groups interacting. The type of contact is not known, although there is linguistic proof of integration, as several Bantu languages (notably Xhosa and isiZulu) incorporated the click consonant characteristic of earlier Khoisan languages. Numerous Khoisan artifacts have also been found at the sites of Bantu settlements

Satellite picture of South Africa

(larger image)

Although the Portuguese basked in the nautical achievement of successfully navigating the cape, they showed little interest in colonization. The area's fierce weather and rocky shoreline posed a threat to their ships, and many of their attempts to trade with the local Khoikhoi ended in conflict. The Mozambican coast was more attractive, with appealing bays to use as waystations, prawns, and links with gold ore in the interior.

The Portuguese had little competition in the region until the late 16th century, when the English and Dutch began to challenge them along their trade routes. Traffic around the continent's southern tip increased, and the cape became a regular stopover for scurvy-ridden crews. In 1647, a Dutch vessel got wrecked in the present-day Table Bay at Cape Town. The marooned crew, the first Europeans to attempt settlement in the area, built a fort and stayed for a year until they were rescued. Shortly thereafter, the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC) decided to establish a permanent settlement. The VOC, one of the major European trading houses sailing the spice route to the East, had no intent of colonizing the area, but only wanted to establish a secure base camp where passing ships could shelter, and where hungry sailors could stock up on fresh supplies of meat, fruit, and vegetables. To this end, a small VOC expedition under the command of Jan van Riebeeck reached Table Bay on April 6, 1652.

While the new settlement traded out of necessity with the neighbouring Khoikhoi, one could hardly describe the relationship as friendly, and there were deliberate attempts to restrict contact. Partly as a consequence, VOC employees found themselves faced with a labour shortage. To remedy this, they released a small number of Dutch from their contracts and permitted them to establish farms, with which they would supply the VOC settlement from their harvests. This arrangement proved highly successful, producing abundant supplies of fruit, vegetables, wheat, and wine; they later raised livestock. The small initial group of free burghers, as these farmers were known, steadily increased and began to expand their farms further north and east into the territory of the Khoikhoi.

Robert Moffat
(21 December 1795 – 9 August 1883)
was a Scottish Congregationalist
missionary to Africa.

(larger image)

In addition to establishing the free burgher system, van Riebeeck and the VOC also began to import large numbers of slaves, primarily from Madagascar and Indonesia. These slaves often married Dutch settlers, and their descendants became known as the Cape Coloureds and the Cape Malays. With this additional labour, the areas occupied by the VOC expanded further to the north and east, with inevitable clashes with the Khoikhoi. The beleaguered Khoikhoi were driven from their traditional lands, decimated by introduced diseases, and destroyed by superior weapons when they fought back, which they did in a number of major wars and with guerrilla resistance which continued into the 19th century. Most survivors were left with no option but to work for the Europeans in an exploitative arrangement that differed little from slavery. Over time, the Khoisan, their European overseers, and the imported slaves mixed, with the offspring of these unions forming the basis for today's Coloured population.

The best-known Khoikhoi groups included the Griqua, who had originally lived on the eastern coast between St Helena Bay and the Cederberg Range (see Republic of South Africa). In the late 18th century, they managed to acquire guns and horses and began trekking northeast. En route, they were joined by other groups of Khoisan, Coloureds, and even white adventurers, and rapidly gained a reputation as a formidable military force. Ultimately, the Griquas reached the Highveld around present-day Kimberley, where they carved out territory that came to be known as Griqualand.

As the burghers, too, continued to expand into the rugged hinterlands of the north and east, many began to take up a semi-nomadic pastoralist lifestyle, in some ways not far removed from that of the Khoikhoi they displaced. In addition to its herds, a family might have a wagon, a tent, a Bible, and a few guns. As they became more settled, a mud-walled cottage would be built, frequently located, by choice, days of travel from the nearest European. These were the first of the Trekboers (Wandering Farmers, later shortened to Boers), completely independent of official controls, extraordinarily self-sufficient, and isolated. Their harsh lifestyle produced courageous individualists, who knew the veld and nature intimately, and based their life on their main source of guidance, namely the Bible.

As the 18th century drew to a close, Dutch mercantile power began to fade, and the British moved in to fill the vacuum. They seized the Cape in 1795 to prevent it from falling into rival French hands, then briefly relinquished it back to the Dutch (1803), before finally garnering recognition of their sovereignty of the area in 1814.

At the tip of the continent the British found an established colony with 25,000 slaves, 20,000 white colonists, 15,000 Khoisan, and 1,000 freed black slaves. Power was restricted to a white élite in Cape Town, and differentiation on the basis of race was deeply entrenched. Outside Cape Town and the immediate hinterland, isolated black and white pastoralists populated the country.

Like the Dutch before them, the British initially had little interest in the Cape Colony, other than as a strategically located port. As one of their first tasks they tried to resolve a troublesome border dispute between the Boers and the Xhosa on the colony's eastern frontier. In 1820, about 5,000 middle-class British immigrants, mostly traders and businesspeople, were persuaded to leave England behind and settle on tracts of land between the feuding groups with the idea of providing a buffer zone. The plan was singularly unsuccessful. By 1823, almost half of the settlers had retreated to the towns, notably Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth, to pursue the jobs they had held in Britain.

While doing nothing to resolve the border dispute, this influx of settlers solidified the British presence in the area, thus fracturing the relative unity of white South Africa. Where the Boers and their ideas had before gone largely unchallenged, European Southern Africa now had two language groups and two cultures. A pattern soon emerged whereby English speakers were highly urbanised, and dominated politics, trade, finance, mining, and manufacturing, while the largely uneducated Boers were relegated to their farms.

The gap between the British settlers and the Boers further widened with the abolition of slavery in 1833, a move that the Boers generally regarded as against the God-given ordering of the races. Yet, the British settlers' conservatism and sense of racial superiority stopped any radical reforms, and in 1841, a Masters and Servants Ordinance was passed perpetuating white control. Meanwhile, British numbers increased rapidly in Cape Town, in the area east of the Cape Colony (present-day Eastern Cape Province), in Natal and, after the discovery of gold and diamonds, in parts of the Transvaal, mainly around present-day Gauteng.

Against this backdrop the stage became set for a time of immense upheaval and suffering amongst the African peoples of the region. This period is known as the difaqane ("forced migration") in Sotho, and the mfecane ("crushing") in isiZulu.

The roots of the difaqane remain in dispute, although certain events stand out. One of the most significant was the rise of the powerful Zulu kingdom. In the early 19th century, Nguni tribes in KwaZulu-Natal began to shift from a loosely organised collection of kingdoms into a centralised, militaristic state. The driving force behind this shift was Shaka Zulu, son of the chief of the small Zulu clan. At first something of an outcast, Shaka proved himself in battle and was gradually able to consolidate power in his hands. He built large armies, shocking others in the clan by placing the armies under the control of his own officers rather than the hereditary chiefs. Shaka then set out on a massive programme of conquest and terror: those who stood in his way were either enslaved or decimated. Even his impis (warrior regiments) were subjected to similar rigours: failure in battle meant death.

Not surprisingly, tribes in the path of Shaka's armies turned on their heels and fled, becoming in their turn aggressors against their neighbours. This wave of disruption and terror spread throughout Southern Africa and beyond, leaving death and destruction in its wake. It also accelerated the formation of several states, notably those of the Sotho (present-day Lesotho) and the Swazi (now Swaziland).

In 1828, Shaka met an untimely end when his half-brothers Dingaan and Umthlangana killed him. The weaker and less-skilled Dingaan became king, relaxing military discipline while continuing the despotism. Dingaan also attempted to establish relations with the British traders on the Natal coast, but events were unfolding that were to see the demise of Zulu independence.

Meanwhile, the Boers had started to grow increasingly dissatisfied with British rule in Cape Colony. The British proclamation of the equality of the races was a particularly sharp thorn in their side. Beginning in 1836, several groups of Boers, together with large numbers of Khoikhoi and black servants, decided to trek off into the interior in search of greater independence. North and east of the Orange River which formed the Cape Colony's frontier, these Boers or Voortrekkers ("Pioneers") found vast tracts of apparently uninhabited grazing lands. They had, it seemed, entered their promised land, with space enough for their cattle to graze and their culture of anti-urban independence to flourish. Little did they know that what they found—deserted pasture lands, disorganised bands of refugees, and tales of brutality—were the result of the difaqane, rather than the normal state of affairs.

With the exception of the more powerful Ndebele, the Voortrekkers encountered little resistance among the scattered peoples of the plains. The difaqane had dispersed them, and they lacked horses and firearms. Their weakened condition also solidified the Boers' belief that European occupation meant the coming of civilisation to a savage land. However, the mountains where King Moshoeshoe I was forging the Basotho nation that would later become Lesotho and the wooded valleys of Zululand were a more difficult proposition. Resistance here was strong, and the Boer incursions set off a series of skirmishes, squabbles, and flimsy treaties that were to litter the next 50 years of increasing white domination.

View of the Drakensberg mountains, the highest mountain range in South Africa.

(larger image)

After this victory, which resulted from superior weapons, the Boers felt that their expansion really did have a long-suspected stamp of divine approval. Yet their hopes for establishing a Natal republic were short-lived. The British annexed the area in 1843, and founded their new Natal colony at present-day Durban. Most of the Boers, feeling increasingly squeezed between the British on one side and the African populations on the other, headed north, adding yet another grievance against the British.

The British set about establishing large sugar plantations in Natal, but found few inhabitants of the neighbouring Zulu areas wil;ling to provide labour. They turned to India to resolve this labour shortage, and in 1860 the SS Truro arrived in Durban harbour with over 300 people on board. Over the next 50 years, 150,000 more indentured Indians arrived, as well as numerous free "passenger Indians", building the base for what was to become the largest Indian community outside of India. As early as 1893 when Mahatma Gandhi arrived in Durban, Indians outnumbered whites in Natal.

The Boers meanwhile plugged on with their search for land and freedom, ultimately establishing themselves at Transvaal and the Orange Free State. For a while, it seemed that these republics would develop into stable states, despite having thinly spread populations of fiercely independent Boers, no industry, and minimal agriculture. Then the Boers' world was turned on its head in 1869 with the discovery of diamonds near Kimberley. The diamonds were found on land belonging to the Griqua, but to which both the Transvaal and Orange Free State laid claim. Britain quickly stepped in and resolved the issue by annexing the area for itself.

The discovery of the Kimberley diamond-mines unleashed a flood of European and black labourers into the area. Towns sprang up in which the "proper" separation of whites and blacks was ignored, and the Boers were angry that their impoverished republics were missing out on the economic benefits of the mines.

Long-standing Boer resentment turned into full-blown rebellion in the Transvaal, and the first Anglo-Boer War, known by Afrikaners as the "War of Independence", broke out in 1880. The conflict ended almost as soon as it began with a crushing Boer victory at Battle of Majuba Hill in early 1881. The republic regained its independence as the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek ("South African Republic"), or ZAR. Paul Kruger, one of the leaders of the uprising, became President of the ZAR in 1883. Meanwhile, the British, who viewed their defeat at Majuba as an aberration, forged ahead with their desire to federate the Southern African colonies and republics. They saw this as the best way to come to terms with the fact of a white Afrikaner majority, as well as to promote their larger strategic interests in the area.

In 1879, Zululand came under British control. Then in 1886, an Australian prospector discovered gold in the Witwatersrand, accelerating the federation process and dealing the Boers yet another blow. Johannesburg's population exploded to about 100,000 by the mid-1890s, and the ZAR suddenly found itself hosting thousands of uitlanders, both black and white, with the Boers squeezed to the sidelines. The influx of Black labour was particularly disturbing for the Boers, many of whom were going through hard times and resented the black wage-earners.

The enormous wealth of the mines soon became irresistible for British imperialists. In 1895, a group of renegades lead by Captain Leander Starr Jameson entered the ZAR with the intention of sparking an uprising on the Witwatersrand and installing a British administration, in what became known as the Jameson Raid. The scheme ended in fiasco, but it was obvious to Kruger that it had at least the tacit approval of the Cape Colony government, and that his republic was in danger. He reacted by forming an alliance with Orange Free State.

The situation peaked in 1899, when the British demanded voting rights for the 60,000 foreign whites on the Witwatersrand. Until that point, Kruger's government had excluded all foreigners from the franchise. Kruger rejected the British demand and called for British troops to be withdrawn from the ZAR's borders. When the British refused, Kruger declared war. This Second Anglo-Boer War was more protracted and the British were better prepared than at Majuba Hill. By June 1900, Pretoria, the last of the major Boer towns, had surrendered. Yet resistance by Boer bittereinders continued for two more years with guerrilla-style battles, which in turn were met by scorched earth tactics by the British. By 1902, 26,000 people had died of disease and neglect in concentration camps. On 31 May, 1902, a superficial peace came with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging. Under its terms, the Boer republics acknowledged British sovereignty, while the British in turn committed themselves to reconstruction of the areas under their control.

The system left Blacks and Coloureds completely marginalised. Harsh taxes were imposed, wages were reduced, and the British caretaker administrator encouraged the immigration of thousands of Chinese to undercut any resistance. Resentment was given full vent in the Bambatha Rebellion of 1906, in which 4,000 Zulus lost their lives after protesting onerous tax legislation. The British meanwhile moved ahead with their plans for union. After several years of negotiations, the 1910 Act of Union was signed, bringing the republics of Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal, and Orange Free State together as the Union of South Africa. Under the provisions of the act, the Union was still a British territory, with home-rule for Afrikaners. The British High Commission Territories of Basotholoand (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. Despite a major campaign by blacks and Coloureds, the voter franchise remained as it was in the pre-Union republics and colonies, and only whites could be elected to parliament.

The new Union had no place for Blacks, despite their constituting over 75 percent of the population. Under the Act of Union, they were denied voting rights in the Transvaal and Orange Free State areas, and in Cape Colony they were granted the vote only if they met a property ownership qualification.

Black and Coloured opposition began to coalesce, and leading figures such as John Jabavu, Walter Rubusana, and Abdullah Abdurahman laid the foundations for new non-tribal black political groups. Most significantly, a Columbia University-educated attorney, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, called together representatives of the various African tribes to form a unified, national organisation to represent the interests of blacks, and to ensure that they had an effective voice in the new Union. Thus there originated the South African Native National Congress, known from 1923 on as the African National Congress (ANC). Parallel to this, Mahatma Gandhi had been working with the Indian populations of Natal and the Transvaal to fight against the ever-increasing encroachment on their rights.

The international recession which followed World War I put pressures on mine-owners, and they sought to reduce costs by recruiting lower-paid, black, semi-skilled workers. White mine-workers saw this as a threat and in 1922 rose in the armed Rand Rebellion, supported by the new Communist Party of South Africa under the slogan "Workers of the World, unite and fight for a white South Africa". Smuts suppressed the rising violently, but the failure led to a convergence of views between Afrikaner nationalists and white English-speaking trade unionists. The Communists saw the failure as having resulted from a lack of mobilisation by black workers and reoriented their recruitment.

In 1924, the NP, under Hertzog, came to power in a coalition government with the Labour Party, and Afrikaner nationalism gained greater hold. Afrikaans, which had previously been regarded only as a low-class dialect of Dutch, replaced Dutch as an official language of the Union, and the so-called swart gevaar (black threat) became the dominant issue of the 1929 election. In the mid-1930s, Hertzog joined the NP with the more moderate SAP of Jan Smuts to form the United Party; this coalition fell apart at the start World War II when Smuts took the reins and, amid much controversy, lead South Africa into war on the side of the Allies. However, any hopes of turning the side on Afrikaner nationalism were dashed when Daniel François Malan led a radical break-away movement, the Purified National Party, to the central position in Afrikaner political life. The Afrikaner Broederbond, a secret Afrikaner brotherhood that had been formed in 1918 to protect Afrikaner culture, soon became an extraordinarily influential force behind both the NP and other organisations designed to promote the volk ("people", the Afrikaners).

Due to the booming wartime economy, black labour became increasingly important to the mining and manufacturing industries, and the black urban population nearly doubled. Enormous squatter camps grew up on the outskirts of Johannesburg and (though to a lesser extent) outside the other major cities. Conditions in the townships were appalling, but poverty was not only the providence of the blacks; wartime surveys found that 40 percent of white schoolchildren were malnourished.

In 1948, the pre-existing system of segregation and denial of rights became formalized and extended into the legal system of apartheid, which lasted until 1990-1994. Although many important events occurred during this period, apartheid was the central fact around which most of the historical issues of this period revolved.

Following the elections, focus turned to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1994–1999), which worked to expose crimes of the apartheid era under the dictum of Archbishop Desmond Tutu: "Without forgiveness there is no future, but without confession there can be no forgiveness." The commission heard many stories of horrific brutality and injustice and offered some catharsis to people and communities shattered by their past experiences.

The Commission operated by allowing victims to tell their stories and perpetrators to confess their guilt, with amnesty on offer to those who made a full confession. Those who chose not to appear before the commission would face criminal prosecution if the authorities couls prove their guilt. Yet, while some soldiers, police, and ordinary citizens confessed their crimes, few human-rights criminals who gave the orders and commanded the police presented themselves. PW Botha himself is a famous no-show, and it has proven difficult to gather evidence against them.

In 1999, South Africa held its second democratic elections. In 1997, Mandela had handed over ANC leadership to his deputy, Thabo Mbeki, and there was speculation that the ANC vote might therefore drop. In fact, it increased, putting the party within one seat of the two-thirds majority that would allow it to alter the constitution.

The NP, restyled as the New National Party (NNP), lost two-thirds of its seats, as well as official opposition status to the Democratic Party (DP). The DP had traditionally functioned as a stronghold of liberal whites, with new force from conservatives disenchanted with the NP, and from some middle-class blacks. Coming in just behind the DP was the KwaZulu-Natal Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), historically the voice of Zulu nationalism. While the IFP lost some support, its leader, Chief Buthelezi, held onto power as the national Home Affairs minister.

While the ANC grassroots hold Mbeki in far less affection than the beloved "Madiba" (Mandela), he has proven himself a shrewd politician, maintaining his political pre-eminence by isolating or co-opting opposition parties. In 2003, Mbeki manoeuvred the ANC to a two-thirds majority in parliament for the first time, giving it the power to rewrite the constitution if it chooses.

Yet it has not been all clear sailing. In the early days of his presidency, Mbeki's effective denial of the HIV crisis invited global criticism, and his conspicuous failure to condemn the forced reclamation of white-owned farms in neighbouring Zimbabwe unnerved both South African landowners and foreign investors (see also AIDS).

Non-political crime has increased dramatically since the end of apartheid. According to a report by Sibusiso Masuku, in the seven years between 1994 and 2001, "violent crime increased by 33%". The Economist reports that approximately 1,500 white farmers have been killed in nonpolitical attacks since 1991. Interpol figures showed that, in 2002, South Africa experienced 114.8 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, the world's highest murder rate and around five times higher than that of the second-highest country, Brazil. As of 1998, South Africa led the world, although by a smaller margin, in reported murders and robberies. A 2001 report by the Institute for Security Studies concluded that "South Africa has high but manageable levels of property crime but an extraordinary high level of violent crime. It is South Africa’s high level of violent crime which sets the country apart from other crime ridden societies."

In 2004 the government of South Africa published statistics showing a decrease in crime, although some observers cast doubt on their veracity. In 2003, Interpol reported murder levels nearly double those given in government statistics. Mbeki has accused his critics in this regard of racism. Others note that variant statistics can be explained by varying rates of crime reporting by victim and by the difficulties in interpreting crime data for nations involved in active military conflicts.

According to The Economist, an estimated 250,000 white South Africans have emigrated since 1994. Other whites have responded to the new integrated society by moving into private, gated communities where they have little contact with blacks.

In the coming years commentator expect attention to focus overwhelmingly on crime, economic inequality, overhauling the educational system and especially HIV. With an estimated 4.5 million South Africans affected, this scourge threatens to eclipse all of South Africa's other problems.

An example of the Xhosa written language is the first section of the national anthem of South Africa:

Nkosi, sikelel' iAfrika;
Malupakam'upondo lwayo;
Yiva imithandazo yethu
Usisikelele.

translation:
Lord, bless Africa;
May her horn rise high up;
Hear Thou our prayers And bless us

more information about the Xhosa language

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• A collection of published articles on the May 2008 pogroms

Further reading

• A History of South Africa, Third Edition. Leonard Thompson. Yale University Press. 1 March 2001. 384 pages. ISBN 0-300-08776-4.
• Emerging Johannesburg: Perspectives on the Postapartheid City. Richard Tomlinson, et al. 1 January 2003. 336 pages. ISBN 0-415-93559-8.
• Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, Segregation and Apartheid. Nigel Worden. 1 July 2000. 194 pages. ISBN 0-631-21661-8.
• Religion and Politics in South Africa. David Hein. Modern Age 31 (1987): 21–30.
• South Africa: A Narrative History. Frank Welsh. Kodansha America. 1 February 1999. 606 pages. ISBN 1-56836-258-7.
• South Africa in Contemporary Times. Godfrey Mwakikagile. New Africa Press. February 2008. 260 pages. ISBN 978-0-9802587-3-8.
• The Atlas of Changing South Africa. A. J. Christopher. 1 October 2000. 216 pages. ISBN 0-415-21178-6.
• The Politics of the New South Africa. Heather Deegan. 28 December 2000. 256 pages. ISBN 0-582-38227-0.
• Twentieth-Century South Africa. William Beinart Oxford University Press 2001, 414 pages, ISBN 0-19-289318-1
• The Diamond Mines of South Africa. Gardner F. Williams, General Manager De Beers, Buck & Co, 1905, 845 pages, Vol I and II. Online full text version: Diamond Mines Vol. I and Diamond Mines Vol. II