Anglo Boer War
During the early 19th century, the Cape was forcibly taken from the Dutch by the British. The advent of Europe's industrial revolution created unemployment in the United Kingdom and forced thousands to seek new lives in 'the colonies'.
The arrival of the 1820 Settlers at the Cape added a new dimension to the colony's developing human tapestry. They were placed along the Cape's troubled eastern frontier, as a buffer against the southward-advancing Xhosa people.
In many ways these settlers had a liberalizing effect on the local political fabric, much as did their kind in North America.
The Dutch farmers at the Cape never took kindly to British domination, particularly their decision to abolish slavery, and trekked first eastwards along the coast, and then northwards as a defiant act of independence.
Finally, in the mid-1830s, thousands of Boer (farmer) families packed their meagre belongings into sturdy ox wagons and headed off into the African hinterland in search of their own 'promised land'.
These Voortrekkers (pioneers), who were the moving spirit in the formation of the Afrikaans-speaking population, were Calvinists of deep conviction. They firmly believed that they were one of God's chosen people, and set off in search of a new Canaan.
But these independent-minded breakaways did nothing to please the British imperialists, especially since they blocked the road for further British colonial expansion into Africa. No sooner had the British forcibly annexed the Boer republic of Natal, than diamonds and gold — in great quantities — were unearthed in land claimed by the Voortrekkers.
By this stage both parties were spoiling for a fight, and when war was officially declared in 1899, each confidently believed that it would defeat the other by Christmas.
In fact, the war lasted for three bitter years, costing the British Empire its heaviest victory ever, and levying from the Boers their land, many of their best men, women and children, and their very dream of freedom and independence.
Still today, the scars from the Anglo-Boer War are evident in the estrangement and mistrust that divides English- and Afrikaans-speaking South Africans.
Difaqane Wars
Up until about thirty years before the Voortrekkers pushed northwards into the African hinterland, most of the northern and eastern interior of southern Africa had been occupied for some centuries by a relatively stable Iron-age culture of black pastoralists.
But, by this time, the ever-expanding populations who occupied the country's principal grazing lands, began to cause tribes to crowd each other. From the beginning of the 19th century powerful warlords emerged among them, conquering and consolidating all the lesser tribes that lived in the interior.
Most significant of these was Shaka founder and first king of the Zulu nation. Shaka was a merciless ruler and a brilliant military tactician, who was dubbed 'the black Napoleon'. By 1820 several prominent warlords faced each other across the grassveld and mountainous expanses.
For a decade their 'impis', or regimented warriors, engaged in ferocious wars that laid waste this once peaceful pastoral area. These Difaqane wars were followed by widespread droughts that contributed to the decimation of the tribes living north and west of the Drakensberg Escarpment.
To the east of the Escarpment lived the highly militarized and proud Zulus, against whom the Voortrekkers waged many bloody battles — gunpowder and lead against stabbing spears and cowhide shields — eventually subduing them at the Battle of Blood River.
But it was only after later wars against the British Army, and later through crippling taxes and land legislation, that the military power of the Zulus was broken. All these events drove the country's black people to seek work on white-owned farms, and later in the mines and supporting industries.
When peace was signed between Boer and Briton in 1902, the Boers managed to delay British plans to extend the voting franchise to all South Africans. When the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, they once again bargained to keep politics an all-white affair.
Slaves and Indentured Workers
Slavery was a fundamental part of the development of the Cape colony. The small number of Hottentots were never willing servants, so the Dutch imported slaves, mainly from East Africa, Madagascar and the Netherlands' territories in the East, to carry out all manual labour.
There was a fair degree of mixing between white colonists, freed slaves, the Khoikhoi and various black people where these cultures met and from these associations were born the country's three million Coloureds, a group of great diversity, although the descendants of those who came from the East Indies, the Cape Malays, have retained a strong identity through their Islamic faith and culture.
After colonization the British settlers turned most of Natal's lush, subtropical coastal bushveld into undulating sugar cane plantations.
To work in the cane fields, they brought in indentured labourers from India. When their contracts were up, the Indians were offered either a free passage home or title to a plot of Crown Land. Most chose to stay, forming the 'Asian' population of South Africa.
Immigrants Welcome
After the two world wars, South Africa welcomed a flood of immigrants from the devastation of war-torn Europe; later, during the decolonization of Africa in the 1960's and '70s, 'sunny South Africa' received a wave of expatriate refugees who chose to remain in Africa rather than return to Europe.
First People
And yet, before the white people, before even the black people lived here, South Africa was inhabited by the San (Bushmen), they who called themselves the 'first people'.
The San had few material possessions and a rich mythical and spiritual life. But these children of nature were essentially hunter-gatherers who roamed the veld taking only what they needed; white farmers could not tolerate their wild ways, and so they were shot like vermin.
First, they were pushed into the Drakensberg mountains, and finally into the western deserts. It is now only in the Kalahari thirstland, beyond South African borders, that San survive in small numbers. But, in the caves that pock the Drakensberg's sandstone base, their shamans painted the walls with animal, human and mythical figures.
This legacy of cave paintings has been called the greatest art gallery in the world. Who lived here before the San, no-one knows, but some of the earliest hominid remains have been found in South Africa.
The history of South Africa is a colourful and diverse one, with stories of struggle for land, the movement of people, and the cultures of a...
In 1787, Senzangakhona, the young chief of the Zulu (which derived its name from one of Malandela's quarrelsome sons), fathered a son out of...