South Africa

H

International Organizations

With the end of South Africa’s international isolation in 1994, the country resumed participation in many international organizations from which it was excluded in the final years of apartheid. The most important organization is the United Nations, in which South Africa reclaimed its seat in June 1994. In the same month the country became the 51st member of the Commonwealth of Nations after an absence of 33 years. South Africa is also a member of the African Union and the Southern African Development Community.

VII

History

The early history of South Africa dates nearly 3 million years to Australopithicus africanus, one of the earliest human ancestors. Archaeological evidence indicates that people resembling the San (bush people) and the Khoikhoi inhabited southern Africa thousands of years ago. The San were traditionally hunters and gatherers while the Khoikhoi were nomadic and herded cattle. Centuries before whites settled in South Africa, Bantu-speaking groups migrated from west central Africa and settled in a fertile region between the Drakensberg Mountains and the Indian Ocean. These early Bantu people are thought to be the ancestors of the modern Nguni, a people comprising the Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, and other groups.

A

Arrival of Europeans and the Mfecane

In 1652 Dutch East India Company official Jan van Riebeeck arrived at the Cape of Good Hope with orders to establish a fort and provision station for company ships on long journeys around Africa to Asia. Below Table Mountain, Cape Town eventually grew out of the first settlements around the Dutch fort. The original inhabitants Riebeeck encountered were the San and the Khoikhoi. At first, company officials bartered with them for cattle and set up gardens to grow fresh produce. By 1657 it became evident that the company’s farming efforts were inadequate, so a small number of company employees were released from their contracts and given land to work as independent farmers supplying the company’s needs. Khoikhoi livestock also proved insufficient for the needs of ships that stopped at the Cape, so the independent farmers, called free burghers, began raising livestock as well.

By the 1660s pressure on the Khoikhoi and the San increased as more of their land was taken by European farmers. The Dutch East India Company encouraged Dutch, German, and French Huguenot immigration between 1680 and 1707 to what later became known as the Cape Colony. The colonists, mostly farmers and cattle herders, became known as Boers (Dutch for “farmers”) or Afrikaners. They developed their own distinctive culture and language (Afrikaans) and practiced their own form of Calvinism, a Protestant religion. During the second half of the 17th century slaves were imported from Asia and other parts of Africa. By the early decades of the 18th century, after two short wars, the Khoikhoi had lost most of their lands to the European settlers; large numbers of them had died as a result of newly introduced diseases such as smallpox, and many of those who remained were placed in positions of servitude. In the same period the San were forced north by the colonists and many were eliminated for cattle raiding. Sexual relations between members of these ethnic groups resulted in the emergence of a distinct group that became known as the Cape Coloureds.

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In the 1770s the European settlers encountered Bantu-speaking peoples, who were ending several thousand years of migration. Nguni Bantu groups settled along the eastern coast of what is now South Africa while Sotho groups occupied the interior north of Cape Colony. In the early 19th century competition for land led to a period of conflict and forced migration among Bantu-speaking peoples known as the mfecane (Nguni for 'the crushing'). It is estimated that hundreds of thousands died during the wars, entire groups disappeared, and centralization resulted in the creation or strengthening of several Bantu states, including the Zulu, Swazi, and Sotho kingdoms.

The mfecane fundamentally altered the political and social configuration of the entire region. It was set in motion by one of the great military geniuses of the 19th century, Shaka, who ruled the Zulu kingdom. He introduced a type of spear with a long blade called an assegai, organized a regimental system based on age groups, and introduced new strategies of warfare. The kingdoms, or states, that emerged from the mfecane came into direct conflict with white expansion in the 19th century.

A

1

Early British Settlement

British forces twice occupied the Cape region, in 1795 and in 1806; in 1814 Britain was granted the Cape Colony in a treaty drawn up at the Congress of Vienna, at which European powers negotiated the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815). After 1820 thousands of British colonists arrived in South Africa and demanded that English law be imposed. English became the official language in 1822, Khokhoi workers were given protection under new labor laws in 1828, and slavery was abolished in 1833.

These measures were bitterly resented by Afrikaners and resulted in the Great Trek, in which thousands of Afrikaners migrated northward, some settling in Natal and others continuing east across the Orange River and north across the Vaal River. From 1835 to the early 1840s, between 12,000 and 15,000 Afrikaner families, accompanied by slaves and servants, left the Cape Colony because changes introduced by the British were intolerable.

A

2

Cape Frontier Wars

As settlers moved across the country they encountered resistance from the Bantu-speaking people, and in particular from the well-armed Xhosa, who had been moving slowly south and southwest for hundreds of years and were also in search of land. The Afrikaners and the Xhosa clashed along the Great Fish River, and in 1781 the first of nine frontier wars took place. For nearly 100 years, the Xhosa fought the Cape Colony settlers, first the Afrikaners and later the British. The British also encroached on Xhosa lands, precipitating several of these bloody wars. In the Fourth Frontier War, which lasted from 1811 to 1812, the British forced the Xhosa back across the Great Fish River and set up forts along this boundary.

In 1818 differences between two Xhosa leaders, Ndlambe and Ngqika, ended in Ngqika’s defeat, but the British continued to recognize Ngqika as the paramount chief. He appealed to the British for help against Ndlambe, who retaliated by attacking Grahamstown in 1819 during the Fifth Frontier War. The Xhosa prophet Maqana Nxele emerged at this time and promised “to turn bullets into water.” He led the Xhosa armies in several attacks, including the one on Grahamstown in 1819, and was subsequently captured and imprisoned on Robben Island. After this war the British made a futile attempt to declare the area between the Great Fish River and the Keiskamma River neutral territory. More fighting took place, however, until eventually all Xhosa territories were incorporated into the Cape Colony.

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