South+Africa's+History


 * General Information || Geography || History || Culture || Political Systems || Economics || Activities || Teacher's Page ||

The Early Settlers and European Discovery

The earliest known settlers of South Africa were the San and Khoekhoe peoples. Both resided in the southern tip of the continent for thousands of years before its written history began with the arrival of Europeans. It is also known that before this time, modern human beings had lived here for more than 100,000 years. The country is definitely an archaeological treasure chest. The hunter-gatherer San peoples ranged widely over the area while the pastoral Khoekhoe lived in well-watered areas, mainly along the southern and western coastal strips, where adequate grazing was to be found. These were the people that the European settlers first came into contact with. As a result of this meeting, diseases such as smallpox imported by the Europeans, have caused the Khoekhoe people to vanish as an identifiable group.

 Other long-term inhabitants of the area were the Bantu-speaking people who had moved into the north-eastern and eastern regions from the north hundreds of years before European settlers came. The Thulamela site in the northern Kruger National Park is estimated to have been first occupied in the 13th century. The ruins of Mapungubwe are the remains of a large trading settlement thought to stretch back to the 12th century. A story about these ruins is shared below.

"One thousand years ago, Mapungubwe in Limpopo province was the center of the largest kingdom in the subcontinent, where a highly sophisticated people traded gold and ivory with China, India and Egypt. The Iron Age site, discovered in 1932 but hidden from public attention until only recently, has been declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco). Internationally, there are 812 World Heritage sites, in 137 countries. Africa has 65 sites and South Africa a total of seven - three cultural, three natural and one mixed. Mapungubwe was added to the World Heritage List in July 2003. Mapungubwe and Makapane's Valley, also in Limpopo province, were declared national heritage sites by the South African Heritage Resources Agency in 2001 - the first two sites to be declared under the 1999 National Heritage Resources Act, which replaced the old National Monuments Act. Mapungubwe is an area of open savannah at the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe Rivers and abutting the northern border of South Africa and the borders of Zimbabwe and Botswana. It thrived as a sophisticated trading center from around 1220 to 1300. In its statement on the listing, Unesco describes Mapungubwe as the center of the largest kingdom in the sub-continent before it was abandoned in the 14th century. 'What survives are the almost untouched remains of the palace sites and also the entire settlement area dependent upon them, as well as two earlier capital sites, the whole presenting an unrivalled picture of the development of social and political structures over some 400 years', Unesco said. Mapungubwe was home to an advanced culture of people for the time – the ancestors of the Shona people of Zimbabwe. They traded with China and India, had a flourishing agricultural industry, and grew to a population of around 5,000. Mapungubwe is probably the earliest known site in southern Africa where evidence of a class-based society existed" (Mapungubwe: SA's lost city of gold, n.d.).

In 1652, Dutch traders landed at the southern tip of modern day South Africa. These traders established a stopover point on the spice route between the Netherlands and the Far East, founding the city of Cape Town. However, the British seized the Cape of Good Hope area in 1806, and at this time, many of the Dutch settlers (the Boers) journeyed north to found their own republics. The discovery of diamonds and gold increased wealth and immigration and it also intensified the control of the native inhabitants.

 The British wanted to extend their rule farther north into the area that the Boers had settled. The Boers initially resisted the British, but were eventually defeated in the Boer War in 1899-1902. The Boers then became known as the Afrikaners, and they ruled along with the British beginning in 1910 under the Union of South Africa. This became a republic in 1961 after a whites-only referendum. In 1948, the National Party was voted into power and instituted a policy of apartheid, which favored the white minority at the expense of the black majority. The African National Congress (ANC) led the opposition to apartheid. Famously known Nelson Mandela was one of the top leaders in this party. Protests and boycotts by Western nations led to a peaceful transition to majority rule. The first multi-racial elections in 1994 brought an end to apartheid.

Resources:  A short history of South Africa. (n.d.). SouthAfrica.info. Retrieved December 1, 2010, from http://www.southafrica.info/about/history/history.htm <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 80%;"> Mapungubwe: SA's lost city of gold. (n.d.). SouthAfrica.info. Retrieved December 1, 2010, from http://www.southafrica.info/about/history/mapungubwe.htm <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 80%;"> The World Factbook. (n.d.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved December 1, 2010, from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/