Transvaal

Transvaal, former province in northeastern South Africa. Europeans named the region Transvaal, or “across the Vaal River,” because it was located north of the Vaal River. In April 1994, at the time of South Africa's first free elections, Transvaal was divided into four provinces: Northern Province (now Limpopo Province), Mpumalanga, North-West Province, and Gauteng.

Remains of Australopithecus africanus, an ancestor of Homo sapiens (humans), dating back 2.5 million to 3 million years have been discovered in the territory north of the Vaal River. Bantu-speaking people first arrived in the region around 500 ad, and evidence of Sotho-Tswana peoples, a branch of Bantu-speakers, in the Transvaal area dates to around the 13th century. In the 18th century a group of Sotho formed the Pedi kingdom. At the beginning of the 19th century, southern African peoples experienced a period of forced migrations called the mfecane, caused largely by the expanding Zulu empire in the Natal region. A group of Ndebele people broke off from the Zulu empire under the leadership of Mzilikazi and invaded the Transvaal, attacking the Tswana, the Pedi, and other Ndebele groups already occupying the region. Many Tswana fled west toward the Kalahari Desert. Beginning in 1835, Afrikaners, or Boers (people of Dutch and French Huguenot descent), left the Cape Colony (see Cape Province) on the Great Trek in order to escape British rule, and many of them traveled north to the Transvaal. The arrival of these Afrikaners, along with the continued pressure of the Zulu empire, pushed Mzilikazi's Ndebele across the Limpopo River, leaving open large expanses of land for the Afrikaners.

For a time the British extended their rule to the Transvaal, but in 1852 they permitted the Afrikaners in the territory to manage their own affairs. In the late 1850s the Afrikaners established the Transvaal as the South African Republic. The neighboring Orange Free State was granted independence as an Afrikaner republic in 1854. By the mid-19th century the Pedi kingdom in the eastern Transvaal had gained strength and engaged in several confrontations with Afrikaners interested in Pedi land. In 1877 the British annexed the South African Republic, which was politically unstable at the time. In 1879 British regiments conquered the Pedi (now also known as Northern Sotho), who subsequently lost most of their land and were forced to work for the Afrikaners. The Afrikaners—led by Paul Kruger, their commandant general—fought the British at Majuba in 1881. The British were defeated, and the South African Republic regained self-government under nominal British authority. In 1883 Kruger was elected president.

The beginning of gold mining in the Witwatersrand area in 1886 brought a sudden influx of immigrants, mostly British, who soon outnumbered the Afikaners. To maintain their supremacy, the Afrikaners did not permit the foreigners (Uitlanders, in Afrikaans) to share in the government of the South African Republic. Eventually, the immigrants, backed by Cecil Rhodes, prime minister of the Cape Colony, plotted a rebellion. In 1895 they were joined by an armed force from the Cape Colony, led by Sir Leander Starr Jameson, but their uprising ended in failure. The Uitlanders continued to agitate for political freedom, and in 1899 they petitioned Queen Victoria of Britain for aid. The British government intervened on their behalf, but the negotiations that followed resulted in the Afrikaners rejecting British control altogether. The South African Republic and the Orange Free State mobilized their troops, and the Boer War began. The British were victorious. The Transvaal and the Orange Free State became British crown colonies from 1902 until 1907, when both states were granted self-government. In 1910 the Transvaal joined with the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, and Natal to form the Union of South Africa (since 1961, the Republic of South Africa).

From 1948 until 1994, South Africa was racially segregated under a system known as apartheid (Afrikaans for “separateness”). In the 1950s all black South Africans were divided according to ethnicity and assigned to certain territories called bantustans, or black homelands. Most of these bantustans were made up of many fragmented pieces of land. The bantustans of Gazankulu, KaNgwane, KwaNdebele, Lebowa, and Venda, as well as parts of the bantustan of Bophuthatswana, were established in Transvaal. (The other parts of Bophuthatswana were within the boundaries of Cape Province and the Orange Free State.) In 1994 all of the bantustans were dissolved and incorporated into the new provinces.