A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA
Adapted from www.southafrica.info See also the article - Apartheid Facts and Figures
Early Days
The earliest settlers in South Africa were the San and Khoekhoe peoples. Both were resident in the southern tip of the continent for thousands of years before its written history began with the arrival of European seafarers. Other long-term inhabitants of the area that was to become South Africa were the Bantu-speaking people who had moved into the north-eastern and eastern regions from the north, many hundreds of years before the arrival of the Europeans.
The existence of these people was of little importance to Jan van Riebeeck and the 90 men who landed with him in 1652 at the Cape of Good Hope, under instructions from the Dutch East India Company to build a fort and develop a vegetable garden for the benefit of ships on the Eastern trade route. The settlers’ relationship with the Khoekhoe was initially one of bartering, but a mutual animosity developed over issues such as cattle theft – and the growing realisation on the part of the Khoekhoe that Van Riebeeck's outpost was becoming a threat to them.
Colonial expansion: two republics and two colonies
As more settlers, particularly from Britain and Holland, arrived in the Cape and began to move inland, together with their slaves from other parts of Africa and the east, the Xhosa-speaking people living in the region now known as the Eastern Cape also came under pressure. Control of the Cape changed hands frequently: the British took the Cape over from the Dutch in 1795; seven years later the colony was returned to the Dutch government, only to come under British rule again in 1806.
The disenchantment of the Dutch (Boers) increased in the 1830s when slaves were freed as a result of intense lobbying by missionaries, and the British tightened their grip on the Cape colony. About 12,000 Boers began the ‘great trek’ north and east, towards Natal and the Transvaal, in search of more peaceful surroundings and better pastures. They endured great hardship along the way and many died. Losing some of their European identity along the way, these trekkers became the Afrikaner ‘nation’, establishing the republics of ‘South Africa’ (also known as the Transvaal) and the Orange Free State, both farming areas and then relatively poor compared with the Cape.
The Cape colony run by Cecil Rhodes (who made his fortune from Kimberley diamonds) was meanwhile taking tentative steps towards political equality among the races. Participation in civic affairs was based on economic qualifications, non-racial in theory but excluding the vast majority of African and coloured people in practice. Among those who did qualify many became politically active across colour lines. The promise existed of progress towards full political inclusion of the population.
The Colony of Natal, however, was developing along somewhat different lines. Reserves were created under traditional African law for refugees from Zulu incursions; outside those reserves British law held sway. As almost all blacks were deemed to fall under the rule of the chiefs in the reserves, almost none had any chance of political rights outside their borders.
Economically, Natal had the advantage of being ideal for the cultivation of sugar cane. The consequent labour requirements led to the importation of indentured labourers from India, many of whom - in spite of discrimination - remained in the country after their contracts had expired: the forebears of today's significant and influential Indian population.
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. Under King Cetshwayo, they delivered resounding proof at Isandhlwana in 1879 that the British army was not invincible. However, they were defeated in the following year, leading to Zululand eventually being incorporated into Natal in 1897.
One territory that was to retain independence was the mountain stronghold of Basotholand where King Moshoeshoe had forged a nation by offering refuge to tribes fleeing the conflicts. He asked Britain to annex Basotholand, which was done in 1868. Known today as Lesotho, this country is entirely surrounded by South Africa but has never been a part of it.
Diamonds, gold and the Boer War
The discovery of diamonds in 1867 and gold nineteen years later on the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) brought a massive influx of outsiders into the republics and spurred Cape colony prime minister Cecil Rhodes to plot the annexation of the Transvaal, which was by then Afrikaner controlled. Rhodes’ vision was of a federation of British-controlled states. However his military strategy involving a contrived rebellion that he would then quash misfired in 1895, forcing him to resign.
Tensions between the Afrikaners and the British expansionists continued. A military alliance between the Boers of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal was forged, and the “inevitable” war with the British eventually broke out on Oct. 11, 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. The Boers took control of some key British towns including Kimberley, Mafikeng and Ladysmith, while the British seized Johannesburg, Pretoria and Bloemfontein. Thousands of Boer women and children, as well as black and coloured people, died in concentration camps, and the war finally ended in 1902 with a peace treaty.
The treaty led in 1910 to the Union of South Africa, composed of four provinces: the two former republics, and the old Cape and Natal colonies. Louis Botha, a Boer, became the first prime minister. Organized political activity among Africans started about the same time with the establishment of the African National Congress in 1912.
Union and the ANC
Many blacks saw the British victory as the hoped-for opportunity to put all four colonies on an equal and just footing, but the ex-Boer republics retained the whites-only franchise. In 1909 a delegation appointed by the South African Native Convention went to London to plead the case of the country's black population. But when the Union of South Africa came into being on 31 May 1910 the only province with a non-racial franchise was the Cape, and blacks were barred from being members of parliament.
The South African Party, a merging of the previous Afrikaner parties, held power under the premiership of General Louis Botha. Repressive measures to entrench white power were not long in coming - the Masters and Servants Act, the reservation of skilled work for whites, pass laws, the Native Poll Tax and the 1913 Land Act which reserved 90% of the country for white ownership.
By the time this act was passed, the African National Congress (ANC) had come into being on January 8 1912, in Bloemfontein, in an act of unity joining an educated elite, the rural classes and tribal structures. There was a second unsuccessful delegation to London, this time to protest the land grab.
Resistance started to assume a more outspoken and militant form, especially when several hundred black women marched in Bloemfontein to protest against being forced to buy passes every month. Similar protests were held in other places, and participants arrested. The women were harshly treated in jail.
The Indian community were also suffering under viciously racist treatment - in 1891 they had been expelled from the Orange Free State altogether. Mohandas Gandhi, then a young lawyer who had arrived in South Africa in 1892, had become a leading figure in Indian resistance. The struggle against the £3 Indian poll tax in Natal involved a mass strike in which a number of Indians were killed, but achieved success when the tax was removed in 1914 - the year Gandhi, then known as Mahatma, left the country.
While official (white) South Africa was taking its place in the wider world as a result of the First World War, the ANC was beginning to see itself as part of the wider African efforts against colonialism in Africa. In its 1918 constitution it referred to itself as a "Pan African Association" and the organisation attended the second congress of the international Pan African Movement in 1921. In April 1944 the ANC Youth League was formed. Its first president was AM Lembede; Nelson Mandela was its secretary.
South Africa became a charter member of the United Nations in 1945, but refused to sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Apartheid—racial separation—dominated domestic politics as the Nationalists gained power and imposed greater restrictions on non-white people. Black voters were removed from the voter rolls in 1936. The ideals of the United Nations cast a spotlight on the country's racial inequity and the first of many attacks on the country in the General Assembly came from the Indian government in 1946.
The Nationalist Party, however, was gathering strength and, in a surprise result, gained power in the 1948 election - power that it would not relinquish until 1994. Apartheid became official government ideology. Over the next half-century, the nonwhite population of South Africa was forced out of designated white areas. The Group Areas Acts of 1950 and 1986 forced about 1.5 million Africans to move from cities to rural townships, where they lived in abject poverty under repressive laws.
The gathering storm
The "50s were to bring increasingly repressive laws against black South Africans and its obvious corollary - increasing resistance. The main reaction came in the form of the mass mobilisation of the Defiance Campaign, starting in 1952. Based on non-violent resistance, it nevertheless led to the jailing of thousands of participants. The result was to increase unity among resistance groups with the forming of the Congress Alliance, which included black, coloured, Indian and white resistance organisations as well as the South African Congress of Trade Unions. In 1954 a campaign against the deliberately inferior Bantu Education System was launched.
The following year saw two of the most significant events of the decade.
One established how far the Apartheid government was willing to go to pursue its aims. Unable to gain the two-thirds majority required by the 1910 constitution to remove coloured people from the common voters' roll, the government changed the composition of the Senate by increasing its size (and consequently Nationalist majority) to give it the required majority in a joint sitting of the Senate and the House of Assembly.
The second watershed moment came when, after an ANC campaign to gather mass input on freedom demands, the Freedom Charter - based on the principles of human rights and non-racialism - was signed on June 26 1955 at the Congress of the People in Soweto.
Reaction was swift: the following year 156 leaders of the ANC and its allies were charged with high treason. The longest trial in South African history was to lead to the acquittal of all accused in 1961.
Three decades of crisis
A turning point came at Sharpeville on March 21 1960 when a PAC-organised passive anti-pass campaign came to a bloody conclusion with police killing 69 unarmed protesters. A State of Emergency was declared: detention without trial was introduced and the ANC, PAC and other organisations were declared illegal. The resistance groups went underground.
A new stage of international pressure began when the UN General Assembly called on its members to institute economic sanctions against South Africa. Mandela, in the meanwhile, had 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 on the Rivonia farm Lilliesleaf 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. After an election in September, De Klerk released Walter Sisulu and seven other political prisoners.
The death of apartheid
On February 2 1990, De Klerk lifted restrictions on 33 opposition groups, including the ANC, the PAC and the Communist Party, at the opening of Parliament. On February 11 Mandela, who had maintained a tough negotiating stance on the issue, was released after 27 years in prison.
The piecemeal dismantling of restrictive legislation began. Political groups started negotiating the ending of white minority rule, and in early 1992 the white electorate endorsed De Klerk's stance on these negotiations in a referendum.
Violence continued unabated, a massacre at the township of Boipatong causing the ANC to withdraw temporarily from constitutional talks. In 1993, however, an agreement was reached on a Government of National Unity which would allow a partnership of the old regime and the new. At the end of the year an interim constitution was agreed to by 21 political parties.
South Africa's first democratic and multiracial election was held on April 26-29 1994, with victory going to the ANC in an alliance with the Communist Party and Cosatu. 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. In 1997 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Desmond Tutu, began hearings regarding human rights violations between 1960 and 1993. Nelson Mandela, whose term as president cemented his reputation as one of the world's most far-sighted and magnanimous statesmen, retired in 1999. On June 2, 1999, Thabo Mbeki, the pragmatic deputy president of South Africa and leader of the ANC, was elected president in a landslide, having already assumed many of Mandela's governing responsibilities.