The evolution of modern South Africa was a complex and dramatic process which is quite difficult to reduce into a linear narrative. Indeed, it is often told from the perspective of European expansion eastwards and not the resistance of indigenous populations westwards. However, while the history of the indigenous inhabitants of this Southern tip of Africa goes back for thousands of years,the processes that created the modern state that we know as South Africa really unfolded when Europeans took interest in the region’s position along sea routes.
Portuguese sailor Vasco da Gama reached Durban’s Bay on Christmas Day of 1497, called it ‘Rio de Natal’, and from that time on, this bay was a busy port-of-call for sailors and merchants. However, more permanent European settlement of South Africa began with the arrival of Dutch commander Jan van Riebeeck and his 90 men, who landed in 1652 at the Cape of Good Hope under instructions by the Dutch East India Company to build a fort and develop a refreshment station for ships on the Eastern trade route.
As this settlement expanded, so too did its need for labour. When the company failed to draw sufficient wage labourers from independent Khoi-khoi pastoral societies within the region, it turned to Eastern shores and imported thousands of slaves into the Cape from as far as Indonesia from 1658. This fast changing and growing Cape society would extend its reach beyond the Table Bay and transform the social, economic and political character of what would become South Africa.
From the early 1700s, members of the Dutch East India Company who sought their independence from their Dutch employers established farms in the Cape but many moved on eastwards into the interior. These early trekboers’ demand for land, livestock and labour brought about major conflicts with hunter-gatherer San and Khoi-khoi pastoralists. These indigenous groups were ill-equipped for the full force of gun warfare and by the mid-1700s many were defeated, impoverished and forced to turn to the Cape to seek out employment.
Furthermore, British annexation of the Cape in 1806 was to intensify European expansion into the interior. British policy aimed to secure the eastern frontier through military force, a strategy which would precipitate almost 100 years of warfare with agriculturally-based Xhosa polities for control of what is today known as the Eastern Cape.
The 19th Century was undoubtedly the most critical period in the carving out the geographic and political boundaries of our modern state. It was an era of massive internal upheavals and migrations; the emergence of powerful centralised and militarised African states at an unprecedented scale; the influx of European immigrants seeking opportunity; the introduction of new forms of trade and warfare; and major transformations in religious beliefs and cultural practices.
Some notable geo-political processes of the first half of the 19th Century were the rise and consolidation of Zulu supremacy along the north-eastern seaboard under Shaka from about 1810; the formation and defence of the Sotho kingdom under Moshoeshoe in what is today’s Lesotho, the emergence of the Griqua state north of the Cape; the arrival of British settlers in 1820 in the Grahamstown area, deepening conflict and the progressive north-eastward trek of Afrikaners in what came to be known as the Great Trek. The outcome of the latter was the creation of three new territories – the colony of Natal (1845), and the Boer Republics of the Transvaal (1852) and the Orange Free State (1854).
The latter half of the 19th century saw the decline of powerful Nguni polities across the region from the Xhosa subjugation in the Cape Colony to the final capitulation of Pedi and Zulu in the north-east. It also saw the arrival of indentured labourers from India and China to work on sugar cane plantations, gold mines and railways. However, contests for power between British colonists and Afrikaner republics due to the discovery of mineral wealth in 1867 would draw southern African populations into two major wars in 1880-1881 and 1899-1902, which would ultimately culminate in the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910.
The 20th Century dawned with a unitary South Africa state geared towards white interests. Increasingly, racial definitions of society would direct government policies leading to the enactment of a barrage of laws promoting racial discrimination with regard to the franchise, employment, land ownership and the social segregation of people according to ‘race’. Key acts, which had a profoundly adverse impact on people of colour, were the Colour Bar Act of 1911 and Native Trust and Land Act of 1913, which reserved only 13% of land to Africans.
The first few decades of the 20th Century were also a period of fierce protest and resistance by various groups. In the first decade, black women who felt the hardships of discrimination when they could not feed their families were amongst the first to take their grievances to the streets, often clashing violently with the police. Workers unions, both black and white, had confrontations with the state in the bids to advance their constituencies interests.
However, after 1948, racial discrimination and state suppression of people of colour would only intensify with the introduction of apartheid. Political organisations, which had up to that point opposed the state through non-confrontational methods would shift tactics. Resistance against apartheid took on a more defiant mode in the form of the civil disobedience campaigns led by various movements. Key organisations in the campaigns were the African People’s Organisation (est. in 1902 for Coloureds) African National Congress (est. for Africans in 1912), and the South African Indian Congress (est. in 1919 on behalf of Indians). As conditions worsened for Black, Coloured and Indian South Africans, these organisations decided to come together and work under the Congress Alliance, which would adopt the now famous Freedom Charter in 1955 at Kliptown.
But the political situation took a turn for the worse when in 1960, a march led by the Pan Africanist Congress in Sharpville turned into a massacre that shocked the world when 69 peaceful marchers were killed by the police. In 1961, in the aftermath of Sharpville, South Africa was declared an independent republic, no longer obligated to Britain; it left the Commonwealth due growing criticism over apartheid. Heavy repression and state brutality characterised the next three decades of South African society. This repression in turn led to the uptake of armed resistance and fomented mass resistance beginning with the Soweto students’ uprisings in 1976 and exploding in the mass movements of the 1980s as resistance overwhelmed the state even as it declared punishing states of emergency. Worldwide, condemnations of apartheid grew louder and South Africa came to be viewed as a pariah state.
Throughout the 1980s, the apartheid state had been holding talks with major political leaders in Robben Island and in exile. But change would only become possible in 1989. The country was going up in flames, and its economy was in the worst state it had been in three decades. In order to pave the way for negotiation and transition then President, F.W. De Klerk, announced the unbanning of all political parties and the release of political prisoners. The most famous prisoner of them all being Nelson Mandela who was released on 11 February 1990 from Victor Verster prison where he had served the latter of the life sentence he had begun on Robben Island. De Klerk and Mandela were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
The first free and fair democratic elections were held on 26 and 27 April in 1994, the ANC won with an overwhelming majority. On 10 May 1994 Nelson Mandela was sworn in as South Africa’s first black president, and his example as a leader continues to be celebrated as a symbol for hope and triumph of social justice all around the world.
