Ancient history

M odern humans have lived in what is today South Africa for over 100 000 years,

and their ancestors

for some 3,3 million years. Not surprisingly,
palaeoan-
thropology thrives in this country. One site which
is
particularly rich in fossil remains, the area around
the
Sterkfontein Caves near Johannesburg and
Pretoria, is
justifiably called the Cradle of Humankind.
More recent evidence of early man are the
many vivid
rock paintings which were created by small bands
of
Stone Age hunter-gatherers, the ancestors of the
Khoe-
khoen and San of historical times.
Some 2 000 years ago the Khoekhoen (the
Hottentots
of early European terminology) were pastoralists
who
had settled mostly along the coast, while the San
(the
Bushmen) were hunter-gatherers spread across
the
region. At this time, Bantu-speaking agro-
pastoralists
began arriving in southern Africa, spreading from
the
eastern lowlands to the highveld.

13
 At several archaeological sites there is evidence
of
sophisticated political cultures, based in part on
contact
with the East African trading economy.

European contact
The first European settlement in southern Africa
was
established by the Dutch East India Company in
Table
Bay (Cape Town) in 1652. Created to supply
passing
ships, the colony grew quickly as Dutch farmers
were
settled to grow produce. Shortly after the
establishment of the colony, slaves were
imported from East Africa, Madagascar
and the East Indies, their labour and
skills facilitating the growth of the
colony which, by the early 1700s was
spreading into the hinterland.
From the 1770s, colonists came into contact
and
inevitable conflict with Bantu-speaking chiefdoms
some
700 km east of Cape Town. A century of
intermittent
warfare ensued during which the colonists gained

ascendancy over the Xhosa-speaking chiefdoms.

At approximately this time, in the areas beyond
the
reach of the colonists, a spate of state-building
was being launched. The old order was upset
and the Zulu kingdom emerged as a highly
centralised state. In the 1820s, the
celebrated Zulu leader Shaka established
sway over a vast area of southeast Africa.
As groups splintered from Shaka’s Zulu
nation conquered and absorbed
communities
in their paths, the region experienced a
fundamental disruption. Substantial
states, such as Moshoeshoe’s
Lesotho and other Sotho-Tswana
chiefdoms, were established,
partly for reasons of defence. This
temporary disruption of life on the
highveld served to facilitate the
expansion northwards of the original
Dutch

14 Pocket Guide to South Africa

 settlers’ descendents, the Boer Voortrekkers, from
the
1830s.
In 1806, Britain occupied the Cape, integrating
it into
the international trading empire of industrialising
Britain. Slavery was abolished in 1838.
Throughout the 1800s, the boundaries of
European
influence spread eastwards. From the port of
Durban,
Natal settlers pushed northwards, further and
further
into the land of the Zulus.
From the mid-1800s, the Voortrekkers coalesced in

two land-locked, white-ruled republics, the South

African Republic (Transvaal) and the Orange Free
State.
Natal’s economy at this time was boosted by the
development of sugar plantations in the
subtropical
coastal lowlands, a development for which large
num-
bers of Indian indentured labourers were imported.

The mineral revolution

The discovery of diamonds north of the Cape in
the
1860s brought tens of thousands of people to the
area
around the modern city of Kimberley. In 1871,
Britain
annexed the diamond fields. The fact that the
mineral
discoveries coincided with a new era of
imperialism and
the scramble for Africa brought imperial power
and
influence to bear on southern Africa as never
before.
Independent African chiefdoms were
systematically
subjugated and incorporated. The most dramatic
example was the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, which
saw
the Zulu state brought under imperial control, but
only
after King Cetshwayo’s impis inflicted a
celebrated
defeat on British forces at Isandlwana.
The discovery of the Witwatersrand gold-fields
in 1886
was a turning point in the history of South Africa.
The
demand for franchise rights for English-speaking
immigrants working on the fabulously rich new
gold-
fields was the pretext Britain used to go to war
with the
Transvaal and Orange Free State in 1899.
The Boers initially inflicted some heavy defeats
on the
British but eventually the might of imperial Britain
told

15
 on the guerrilla bands and the war ended in 1902.

Britain’s scorched-earth policy included farm

burnings
and the internment of Boer women and children
as well
as black people in the path of war. Many
thousands died
in the concentration camps.

Union and opposition

In 1910, the Union of South Africa was created
out of
the Cape, Natal, Transvaal and Free State. It was
to be
essentially a white union in terms of political
rights and
powers.
Black opposition was inevitable,
the
African National Congress (ANC)
being founded in 1912 to protest the

exclusion of blacks from power. In

1921, the Communist Party came
into being at a time of heightened
militancy.
Yet, in the face of a groundswell
of opposition to racially defined
government, the Natives Land Act
was legislated in 1913. This defined
the remnants of black ancestral lands for African
occupation. The homelands, as they were
subsequently
called, eventually comprised about 13% of South
Africa’s land. More discriminatory legislation –
particularly relating to job reservation favouring
whites,
and the disenfranchisement of coloured voters in
the
Cape – was enacted. Meanwhile, Afrikaner
nationalism,
fuelled by job losses arising from worldwide
recession,
was on the march.

The rise of apartheid

After the Second World War, in 1948, the pro-
Afrikaner
National Party (NP), came to power with an
ideology
that was to become infamous: apartheid, an even
more
rigorous and authoritarian approach than the
segrega-
tionist policies of previous governments.

16 Pocket Guide to South Africa

 While white South Africa was cementing its
power,
black opposition politics was undergoing a sea
change.
In 1943, a younger, more determined political
grouping
came to the fore with the launch of the ANC
Youth
League, a development which was to foster the
leader-
ship of figures such as Nelson Mandela, Oliver
Tambo
and Walter Sisulu.

Repression
In 1961, the NP Government under Prime Minister
HF
Verwoerd declared South Africa a republic after
winning
a whites-only referendum on the issue.
A new concern with racial purity was apparent in
laws
prohibiting interracial sex and in provisions for
popu-
lation registration requiring that every South
African
be assigned to one racial category or another.
Residential segregation was enforced,
with whole communities being uprooted

and forced into coloured ‘group areas’.

At a time when much of Africa was on

the verge of independence, the

South African Government was
devising its policy of separate
development, dividing the African
population into artificial ethnic ‘nations’,

each with its own ‘homeland’ and the prospect of

‘independence’. The truth was that the rural
reserves
were by this time thoroughly degraded by
overpopu-
lation and soil erosion.
Forced removals from ‘white’ areas affected
some 3,5
million people, and vast rural slums were created
in the
homelands. The pass laws and influx control were

extended and harshly enforced.

The introduction of apartheid policies coincided
with
the adoption by the ANC in 1949 of its Programme
of
Action, expressing the renewed militancy of the
1940s.
The Programme embodied a rejection of white
domination and a call for action in the form of
protests,
strikes and demonstrations.

17
Defiance
The Defiance Campaign of the early 1950s
carried mass
mobilisation to new heights under the banner of
non-
violent resistance to the pass laws. In 1955, a
Freedom
Charter was drawn up at the Congress of the
People in
Soweto. The Charter enunciated the principles of
the
struggle, binding the movement to a culture of
human
rights and non-racialism.
Matters came to a head at Sharpeville in March
1960
when 69 PAC anti-pass demonstrators were killed.
A state
of emergency was imposed, and detention
without trial
was introduced. The mass-based organisations
including
the ANC and the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC)
were
banned.

Struggle
Leaders of the black political organisations at this
time
either went into exile or were arrested. In this
climate,
the ANC and PAC abandoned their long-standing
commitment to non-violent resistance and turned
to
armed struggle, waged from the independent
countries
to the north.
Top leaders still inside the country, including
members of the ANC’s newly formed military
wing
Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), were
arrested
in 1963. At the ‘Rivonia trial’, Mandela, Sisulu,
Ahmed
Kathrada and others, convicted of sabotage
(instead of
treason, the original charge), were sentenced to
life
imprisonment.
While draconian measures kept the lid on
activism for
much of the 1960s, the resurgence of resistance
politics
in the early 1970s was dramatic.
The year 1976 marked the beginning of a
sustained
anti-apartheid revolt. In June, school pupils in
Soweto
rose up against apartheid education, followed by
youth
uprisings all around the country. Strong, legal
vehicles for
the democratic forces tested the state whose
response
until then had been invariably heavy-handed
repression.

18 Pocket Guide to South Africa

 Developments in neighbouring states in the
face of
mass resistance to white-minority role and
colonial rule,
left South Africa exposed to the last bastion of
white
supremacy.

Apartheid’s last days

Shaken by the scale of protest and opposition, the

Government embarked on a series of reforms in

the early
1980s, an early example being the recognition of
black
trade unions.
In 1983, the Constitution was reformed to allow
the
coloured and Indian minorities limited
participation in
separate and subordinate Houses of Parliament, a

development which enjoyed limited support.

In 1986, the pass laws were
scrapped. At
this time the international
community
strengthened its support for the anti-
apartheid cause. Sanctions and
boycotts were instituted by
individual
countries and through the United
Nations.
In February 1990, newly elected
President FW de Klerk announced the
unbanning of the liberation movements and the
release of political prisoners, notably Mandela.

The birth of democracy

After a tortuous negotiation process, South Africa
held
its first democratic election in April 1994 under an

interim Constitution.
The ANC emerged with a 62% majority. South
Africa,
now welcomed back into the international
community,
was divided into nine new provinces in place of
the four
provinces and 10 ‘homelands’ that existed
previously. In
terms of the interim Constitution, the NP and
Inkatha
Freedom Party participated in a Government of
National
Unity under Mandela, South Africa’s first
democratically
elected president.

19
 The ANC-led Government embarked on a
programme
to promote the reconstruction and development
of the
country and its institutions.
The second democratic election in 1999, saw
the ANC
increasing its majority to a point just short of two-
thirds
of the total vote. South Africa was launched into
the
post-Mandela era under the presidency of Thabo
Mbeki.

20 Pocket Guide to South Africa