I am going to attempt to give you readers a summary of South African history, as we have done for all the other countries we have visited. If you feel like a good read, get yourself a cup of tea and continue reading. My original plan was to do a ‘brief’ South African history, but have realized that this is an impossible task – the history of South Africa is SO extensive, SO hectic and involves so many players that I almost had to resort to a two part blog! I have managed to cut out most of the fluff and squeeze it into one without losing too much of the story. Enjoy…
South Africa is a stunning land and very multilingual with 11 officially recognised languages: isiZulu 23.8%, isiXhosa 17.6%, Afrikaans 13.3%, Sepedi 9.4%, and English and Setswana each at 8.2%. With so many proud and culturally diverse groups living within such a small area, it is no wonder that the history of this wonderful land is marred by conflict, racism and violence.
The Hottentots and Bushmen people had been resident in the southern tip of the continent for thousands of years before its written history began with the arrival of European seafarers. In 1652, the Dutch arrived at the Cape to build a fort and develop a vegetable garden for the benefit of ships on the Eastern trade route. In the early 1700’s hundreds more settlers started to arrive and spread eastwards, encountered the Xhosa-speaking people living in the region that is today’s Eastern Cape. A situation of uneasy trading and more or less continuous warfare began to develop. By this time, the second half of the 18th century, the colonists – mainly of Dutch, German and French Huguenot stock – had begun to lose their sense of identification with Europe. The Afrikaner nation was coming into being.
Between 1795 and 1806, the Cape was traded back and forth three times between the English and Dutch, finally settling under British rule due of the alliance between Holland and Napoleon. The British began to exert its influence on the developing Afrikaaner nation, causing huge discord between the two groups and precipitating the “Great Trek”, an emigration north and east of about 12 000 discontented Afrikaner farmers, or Boers. These people were determined to live independently of colonial rule and what they saw as its unacceptable racial egalitarianism. The boers encountered little resitance from the people of the plains on the way up to lands of Natal (Eastern Cape). They settled in what they thought was an uninhabited land, but was actually an area temporarily left by the Zulu’s.
As the great Trek probed deeper into the Zulu lands, the Afrikaaners started to meet resitance. Piet Retief, the leader of the Afrikaans, went to set up a treaty with Dingaan of the Zulu’s and was slaughtered. In the war that followed, the Boers won victory at the Battle of Blood River. They began to settle in Natal, but the British annexed the area as Port Natal. The Boers, feeling more and more squeezed by the British, moved inland and formed the Orange Free State.
About 10 years before the Cape Colony was granted self-government in 1872, diamonds were discovered in Kimberly, affecting the economic and political balance of this budding nation. As a British territory, it was a perfect proving ground for the young Cecil John Rhodes, one of the many thousands to be attracted by the diggings, and one who made his fortune there. Tensions rose as the ownership of the rich lands was debated. The late 19th century was an area of aggressive colonial expansion, and the Zulus were bound to come under pressure. But they were not to prove easy pickings, defeating the British at Isandhlwana in 1879. They were defeated in the following year, leading to Zululand eventually being incorporated into Natal in 1897.
In late 1800’s Britain lost control over its Southern African colony after an Akriaaner rebellion, resulting in the granting of qualified independence in 1881 and full internal autonomy in 1884, with the pro-Afrikaner Paul Kruger had been elected president of the restored, but financially strapped, republic. In the late 1800s, Gold was dicovered in the Johannesburg area and the South African Repulic experienced a huge financial turnaround. The British, still in control of the Cape, filtered to get their piece of the pie and tensions began to build between the pro-British Cecil John Rhodes (prime minister) in the Cape and Kruger in the North.
The Anglo-Boer/South African War began in October 1899. Up to half a million British soldiers squared up against some 65 000 Boers; black South Africans were pulled into the conflict on both sides. Again, Britain’s military reputation suffered a blow as the Boers set siege to Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking. Under Kitchener, however, the British offensive gained force and by 1900, and Kruger fled for Europe. The Boer reply was to intensify guerilla war – General Jan Smuts led his troops to within 190km of Cape Town – and in response Kitchener adopted a scorched-earth policy and set up racially separate civilian concentration camps in which some 26 000 Boer women and children and 14 000 black and coloured people were to die in appalling conditions.
The war ended in Boer defeat at the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902. Many blacks saw the British victory as the hoped-for opportunity to put all colonies on an equal and just footing. The South African Party, a merging of the previous Afrikaner parties, introduced repressive measures to entrench white power. By this time, African National Congress (ANC) had come into being on 8 January 1912. Resistance started to assume a more outspoken and militant form, resulting in harsh repurcussions from the Government. The Indian community were also suffering under viciously racist treatment. Mohandas Gandhi, became a leading figure in Indian resistance.
The number of treaties, and power struggles between the British, the Boers and the minority groups in the mid 1900’s boggle the mind. There were numerous large strikes in the mines of Johannesburg, firstly around pay, and second as the whites violent reaction to blacks being allowed to partake in skilled labour. In April 1944 the ANC Youth League was formed with Nelson Mandela as secretary. It was a time of rapid industrial expansion but skilled work remained the domain of whites. On the other hand, the black influx into urban areas combined with the continuing repression strengthened black resistance.
The Nationalist Party gained power in the 1948 election, and Apartheid became official government ideology. The 1950s were to bring increasingly repressive laws against black South Africans, resulting in the UN General Assembly calling on its members to institute economic sanctions against South Africa. South Africa’s increased its isolation in 1961 by withdrawing from the Commonwealth. Mandela, in the meanwhile, travelled through Africa making contact with numerous leaders. Going underground on his return, he was arrested in Natal in August 1962 and received a three-year sentence for incitement.
In July 1963 a police raid led to the arrest of several of Mandela’s senior ANC colleagues, including Walter Sisulu. They were charged with sabotage, Mandela being brought from prison to stand trial with them. All were sentenced in 1964 to life imprisonment and taken to Robben Island.
The first half of the next decade was marked by increasing repression, increasing militancy in the resistance camp, and extensive strikes. The moment of truth came on June 16 1976, when the youth of Soweto marched against being taught in the medium of Afrikaans. Police fired on them, precipitating a massive flood of violence that overwhelmed the country. A new movement known as Black Consciousness had become increasingly influential. The death as a result of police brutality of its charismatic founder, Steve Biko, shocked the world in 1977.
1989 was the year in which the logjam started to break up. Negotiations had been entered into between Mandela and PW Botha, but these were secret. Dissension within the Nationalist Party, in combination with Botha’s ill health, led to his resignation, and he was replaced by FW de Klerk, who released Walter Sisulu and seven other political prisoners.
On February 2 1990, De Klerk lifted restrictions on 33 opposition groups. On February 11 Mandela was released after 27 years in prison. The piecemeal dismantling of restrictive legislation began.
Violence continued unabated, a massacre at the township of Boipatong causing the ANC to withdraw temporarily from constitutional talks. Nelson Mandela was sworn in as President on May 10 with FW de Klerk and the ANC’s Thabo Mbeki as Deputy Presidents. Mandela’s presidency was characterised by the successful negotiation of a new constitution; a start on the massive task of restructuring the civil service and attempts to redirect national priorities to address the results of apartheid; and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up primarily to investigate the wrongs of the past.