South Africa History To 1840 | South Africa History 1948-Present
As the British were consolidating their power in the Cape in the eastern part of South Africa, a new militaristic state was emerging among the descendants of the Bantu-speaking speaking people in what is now KwaZulu-Natal. Black African chiefdoms had been waging war amongst themselves for control of ever-dwindling pasture for decades and out of these conflicts arose a new powerful chiefdom - the Zulus lead by Shaka.
Attacks by Zulus on their neighbours gave rise to what is known as the difaqane in Sotho and mfeqane in Zulu - a massive dispersal of people whose lands where taken by the Zulus. Out of this confusion new polities emerged as the people brutalized by the Zulus in turn attacked their neighbors or joined forces with other dispossed peoples to gain new land for their herds. The Matabele established a kingdom in what is now Zimbabwe and Moshoeshoe I laid the foundations of the independent state of Lesotho.
As the difaqane was taking place in the east of the country many Boers (known as Voortrekkers) were leaving the Cape region to escape the influence and policies of the British. The Voortrekkers encountered the desolation and emptiness left in the wake of the difaqane and established their first republic near Bloemfontein. Here, following disagreements among the leadership, the Voortrekkers split - with most moving into Natal where they encountered the Zulus. The Vortrekker leader Piet Retief was killed by the Zulus, who were then defeated in the "Battle of Blood River" at Ncome River in Natal in 1838. By the mid-nineteenth century the Boers had established two republics: the South African Republic in Transvaal and the Orange Free State (present-day Free State province). These republics were recognized as independent in the 1850s by the British, who were busy establishing themselves further south on the coast at Durban, bringing in over 150,000 Indian indentured labourers to work their sugar plantations.
The discovery of diamonds near present-day Kimberley in the 1860s and gold on the Witwatersrand in Gauteng near Johannesburg in the 1880s were to change the dynamics of the political and economic situation in South Africa for ever. These twin discoveries were to transform South Africa from a poor rural backwater in to a more urbanized and industrial society. Great fortunes were made by men such as Cecil Rhodes, who encouraged the idea of total British control in Southern Africa to better exploit the newly found sources of wealth. First the British crushed the Zulus in the Zulu War of 1879 and now turned their attention to the two Boer Republics, where the gold and diamonds were to be found.
The British demanded that voting rights be given to British citizens in the republics - a request turned down as the Boers were outnumbered by the British miners and carpet-baggers who had flocked into their territory.
Lord Kitchener and the British army believed the hostilities which began in October 1899 would soon be over - a "teatime war" done and dusted in time for Christmas. In fact, the British suffered early losses against the highly motivated Boer forces of Paul Kruger and responded with a "scorched earth" campaign and concentration camps for Boer families, where over 25,000 women and children were to die.
The war dragged on costing the lives of 22,000 British soldiers and 7,000 Boer commandoes, until the Treaty of Vereeniging in 1902 finally ended the resistance of the bittereinders (bitter enders). In the Union of South Africa of 1910 the two Boer republics became part of the British Empire, as foreign capital moved in to the country to exploit the mines and blacks and coloureds were marginalized and exploited. Only whites could be elected to the new parliament and Afrikaans and English were declared the two official languages. The new government was headed by General Louis Botha with Jan Smuts as his deputy.
Botha and Smuts' South African National Party followed a "white-unity" line, while General Barry Hertzog formed the National Party with a radical pro-Afrikaner and anti-British agenda.
All the elements that were to later produce the Apartheid state were now in place. Blacks and Coloureds made up 75% of the population but were largely disenfranchised. Repressive legislation made it illegal for black workers to strike, run for political office, or join the armed forces. The 1913 Natives Land Act reserved just 8% of the land for South Africa's blacks. In response to such massive state-sanctioned discrimination various groups began to organize and fight back. The South African Native National Congress (later the African National Congress) was founded in Bloemfontein in 1912 by among others Pixley ka Isaka Seme, who had been educated at both Colombia and Oxford Universities, to agitate for black rights. At the same time Gandhi was doing similar organizational work among the Indian population in Durban.
The 1920s saw the election of a right-wing National Party under General Hertzog, who campaigned on the dangers of the swart gevaar (black threat). Behind the scenes a secret Afrikaner brotherhood - the Afrikaner Broederbond - influenced by the fascist movements in Germany, Spain and Italy, wielded considerable power. Men such as Nico Diederichs, John Vorster, Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, Piet Meyer and Daniel François Malan were admirers and followers of fascism and were responsible for the intellectual framework and legal construction of the Apartheid regime. The war years of the 1940s were a difficult time for both black and white South Africans. The mining economy continued to grow but the financial benefits were concentrated in the hands of big business. The black population became more urban with huge "townships" growing up on the outskirts of South Africa's major cities.