𝐀𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐛𝐢𝐜 𝐒𝐀

01/09/2022

https://www.gov.za/about-sa/history

European contactConflictOccupationThe mineral revolutionGoldUnion and oppositionThe rise of apartheidRepressionSeparate developmentDefianceStruggle daysReformApartheid's last daysDemocratic government Modern humans have lived at the southern tip of Africa for more than 100 000 years and their ancest...

01/09/2022

Between 1948 and 1994, South Africans lived under a racist system of laws called apartheid. The men and women who created, opposed, maintained, resisted, and dismantled apartheid are the subject of this book. Some people in South Africa have belonged to ethnic groups present in the area for centuries or even millennia; others trace their genealogy to Holland and England and other parts of Europe, while others arrived from Southeast Asia, the majority as slaves, and still others from South Asia, more than a century ago. A long period of colonial rule and the recent decades of apartheid helped determine how all of these groups conceive of their identities as well as the identities of others. This history has shaped the way they see themselves and the way they see people of other identity groups.

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THE FIRST SOUTH AFRICANS

People have lived in southern Africa for many millennia. In fact, remains of some of the earliest human ancestors have been found there, in an area known as “the Cradle of Mankind.” Early humans migrated from this region, and migration has remained a major factor in the formation of identities in southern Africa. Over the centuries, people from other parts of Africa, from Europe, and from Asia have migrated into what is today South Africa.

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The diversity of the population has presented a challenge for how different groups live together. Conflict between the groups has never been inevitable; at times, diverse groups lived together peacefully. But as the territory became increasingly prosperous, with lush farmland and the mining of diamonds and gold, some groups sought to keep the country’s wealth for themselves by controlling and excluding other groups. The history of struggle for control and for resources shaped how groups came to understand their own identities.

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Prior to the arrival of European colonists, a variety of ethnic and linguistic groups lived in the southernmost region of the African continent. The earliest known inhabitants were the Khoisan peoples. The more egalitarian San lived by fishing, hunting, and gathering, while the more hierarchical Khoikhoi (“men of men”) were primarily herders. For centuries, they lived in small communities of 20 to 80 families related by blood and marriage; a male leader was marked by a degree of wealth, distinctive clothing, and in some cases several wives. While these groups once occupied much of what is today South Africa, newcomers migrating from other parts of Africa gradually displaced them. Over thousands of years, the newcomers integrated many San and Khoikhoi into their communities and pushed the remaining San to the most arid regions of the interior and the remaining Khoikhoi to the territory’s southwestern edge.

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The new arrivals were mostly farmers and herders who spoke languages from a large African language group known as Bantu. As the migrants settled in various parts of the territory, people living in close proximity gradually developed distinct languages and cultures, creating new ethnic groups. For example, the modern Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, and Swazi ethnic groups all trace their origins to an earlier group, known as the Nguni, and their languages today remain mutually understandable.

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Over time, many smaller groups gradually merged into larger political communities, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes by force. The process of group formation remained fluid until relatively recently. For example, until the late 1700s, the Zulu were a small group in the east. Under the leadership of several powerful kings, especially Shaka Zulu, who came to power in 1816, the Zulu conquered a number of neighboring groups. Those who would not submit to Zulu rule had no choice but flight, and some moved as far north as modern-day Zimbabwe. Today, South Africa includes ten large African ethnic groups and a number of smaller groups. Together these African ethnic groups constitute over 80% of South Africa’s population.

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The arrival of Europeans in South Africa and their gradual conquest of African peoples, the establishment and exercise of colonial control over Africans, and, later, apartheid all had major impacts on group identity formation and change. European colonial practices, wars between the Dutch and the Koi, and Dutch “hunting raids” over time caused the disappearance of the Khoikhoi as a distinct ethnic group as they lost control of their land to white colonists or fled colonial control and were incorporated into other ethnic groups, particularly the neighboring Xhosa.

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NEW ARRIVALS IN SA
The arrival of Jan van Riebeeck, a Dutch navigator and colonial administrator, at Table Bay (Cape of Good Hope) marked the beginning of permanent European settlement in the region.

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Dutch colonists, known as Boers (the Dutch word for “farmers”), settled in the Cape of Good Hope region beginning in 1652 to provide fresh food and water for ships passing from Europe to Asia. They lived the hard frontier life of settlers, supporting themselves through farming, ranching, and hunting. They developed an outlook of self-sufficiency and independence, at the center of which was their strict Calvinist Protestant faith. The Boer population expanded when French Calvinist Protestants fled Europe to escape persecution after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

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As the number of Dutch-speaking colonists grew, they began to push farther inland and up the coast, forcibly taking over land for their farms and causing a great deal of conflict with indigenous African peoples. Although white South Africans historically portrayed their settlement of South Africa as a peaceful process, in fact the European occupation of the territory involved considerable violence and is better understood as colonial conquest. One of the groups the Europeans sought to displace, the Xhosa of the Eastern Cape, put up successful resistance to the European invasion for a number of decades, but the Dutch-speaking colonists possessed better weaponry that they used to subdue the Xhosa and drive many of them off their land. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, many of the original African inhabitants had been dispossessed of most of their land and were forced into positions of servitude as laborers on the farms of the European settlers. The Boers employed many local people in exploitative arrangements, and they also imported slaves from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Madagascar, people who eventually came to be known collectively as “Cape Malays” and were considered part of the “coloured” population, along with people of mixed ancestry. Exploitative economic practices enabled the Boers to dominate the region until they gradually lost power to a second group of colonists: the British.

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In 1795, as part of a large conflict between Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and other European states, the British dispatched troops to the Cape, which its merchants trading with India had long relied on for supplies. They captured Cape Town after six weeks of fighting. John Barrow, an Englishman who founded the Royal Geographical Society, traveled to southern Africa two years later. In An Account of Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa, he declared that the Dutch had neglected their responsibility to humanity by treating black South Africans (whom he described as “mild, rational, and in some degree civilized”) as objects. Barrow and others who followed were interested in possessing the Cape, and they made a moral justification for colonialism by arguing that British colonialism was more humane. In 1803, the Cape Colony was briefly returned to the Dutch, but in 1806, during the Napoleonic Wars, the British took permanent control.