Cape Province

Cape Province, former province in southern and western South Africa, occupying the southern tip of Africa. In April 1994, at the time of South Africa's first free elections, Cape Province was divided into three provinces: Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, and Western Cape.

By around ad 1000 the Khoikhoi and San people occupied the western region of what is now South Africa. Before ad 1600 the Xhosa, a Nguni people, established a chiefdom in the southeastern region, which later came to be known as the Transkei. The chiefdom continued to grow until the Xhosa were finally defeated by Europeans in the 19th century. European colonization of the region began in 1652, when the Dutch East India Company established a settlement called the Cape Colony on Table Bay, near present-day Cape Town.

Beginning in the 1650s the Dutch brought people from Asia and from other parts of Africa to work as slaves in the Cape Colony. The Khoikhoi were never officially enslaved because their trade in cattle was valuable to the Dutch East India Company. Eventually, however, the Khoikhoi had too few cattle and too little land to continue their herding lifestyle, and they became servants of the Dutch farmers. As the Dutch expanded their territory, they fought the Khoikhoi in two wars. The first, from 1659 to 1660, was initiated by the Khoikhoi; the second, from 1673 to 1677, was initiated by the Dutch. The Dutch emerged as victors in both conflicts. Then in 1713 a smallpox epidemic, which started in Cape Town and spread inland, decimated the Khoikhoi. Some remaining Khoikhoi fled north; those who stayed intermarried with the Asian as well as the white population and became part of a group of people of mixed origin known as Coloureds. The San, on the other hand, existed on the fringes of colonial society. Unable to hunt as they had in the past, they raided cattle. The Europeans practically wiped out the male San population and took San women and children into forced labor. Some San escaped and traveled north to the regions that are now Namibia and Botswana.

Dutch immigration to the colony increased during the 18th century. In the late 18th century Trekboers, Dutch farmers who moved inland and then east from the Cape, fought two wars with the Xhosa, but neither side won a decisive victory. In 1795 British military forces seized the Cape Colony. It was returned to Dutch control in 1803 but was ceded to the British in 1806 and formally became a colony of Britain in 1814. The British instituted various reforms, including the abolition of slavery in 1833. The first few decades of British rule, however, were marked by a series of wars with the Xhosa, which ultimately led to European possession of almost all of the Xhosa's land.

The British also encountered antagonism from the Afrikaners, or Boers (descendants of the Dutch and French Huguenot settlers), who felt increasingly oppressed under British rule. In 1835 many Afrikaners began the Great Trek, eventually establishing two republics: the Orange Free State, north of the Orange River; and the South African Republic, located further north, in the Transvaal region. In 1867 the discovery of diamonds in Griqualand West (then part of the Transvaal) brought renewed hostility between the Afrikaners and the British. The Cape Colony annexed Griqualand West in 1871. The next year the Cape Colony was granted responsible self-government by the British government, except in foreign and economic affairs. In 1877 the colony annexed the entire South African Republic but withdrew in 1881 after meeting fierce resistance. Cecil Rhodes became prime minister of the Cape Colony in 1890, and relations between the British and the Afrikaners deteriorated yet again. Rhodes resigned in 1896; three years later the Boer War began. During the war, the British gained control over the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, which became crown colonies. In 1910 the four British colonies in South Africa united as the Union of South Africa (now the Republic of South Africa), and the Cape Colony became Cape Province.

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. These bantustans were almost all made up of multiple fragments of land. The bantustan of Ciskei, most of the bantustan of Transkei, and parts of the bantustan of Bophuthatswana were established in Cape Province. In 1994 all of the bantustans were dissolved and incorporated into the new provinces.