SOUTH AFRICA, HISTORY OF

history of the area from prehistoric times to the present. The prehistory and history of South Africa span nearly the entire known existence of humans and their ancestorssome three million years or moreand include the wandering of small bands of hominids through the savanna, the inception of herding and farming as ways of life, and the construction of large urban centres. Through this diversity of human experience, several trends can be identified: technological and economic change, shifting systems of belief, and, in the earlier phases of humanity, the interplay between physical evolution and learned behaviour, or culture. Over much of this human career, South Africa's past is also the past of a far wider area, and it is only in the past few centuries that this southernmost country of Africa has had a history of its own. Additional reading Broad coverage of South Africa's history is provided in Monica Wilson and Leonard Thompson (eds.), The Oxford History of South Africa, 2 vol. (196971), the only general reference work to make a serious attempt to record the history of all the peoples of South Africa; C.W. De Kiewiet, A History of South Africa, Social & Economic (1941, reprinted 1978); Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa (1990), fluent and elegantly written; T.R.H. Davenport, South Africa: A Modern History, 4th ed., updated and rev. (1991); and Paul Maylam, A History of the African People of South Africa: From the Early Iron Age to the 1970s (1986), an overview for the nonspecialist of the history of African societies in South Africa. Cherryl Walker (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (1990), discusses the changing status of women in the past 100 years.Early history to 1770 is explored in Richard Elphick, Kraal and Castle (1977; also published as Khoikhoi and the Founding of White South Africa, 1985), a detailed study of the interactions between the Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope and the Khoikhoi chiefdoms of the region; Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds.), The Shaping of South African Society, 16521840 (1989), essays that review the history comprehensively from the first years of Dutch settlement; and S. Daniel Neumark, Economic Influences on the South African Frontier, 16521836 (1957). David Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson, Images of Power: Understanding Bushman Rock Art (1989), is an introduction to the rock paintings of southern Africa. There is still no good published overview account of the period 17701870 in South African history, and there are still enormous gaps in knowledge. Nevertheless, the following titles are useful: Clifton C. Crais, White Supremacy and Black Resistance in Pre-industrial South Africa: The Making of the Colonial Order in the Eastern Cape, 17701865 (1992); Ben MacLennan, A Proper Degree of Terror: John Graham and the Cape's Eastern Frontier (1986), a study of the colonial invasion of the Zuurveld in 181112; W.M. MacMillan, Bantu, Boer, and Briton: The Making of the South African Native Problem, rev. and enlarged ed. (1963, reprinted 1978), a classic, still useful for the period 182040; Peter Delius, The Land Belongs to Us: The Pedi Polity, the Boers, and the British in the Nineteenth-Century Transvaal (1983); Robert Ross, Cape of Torments: Slavery and Resistance in South Africa (1983); Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (1985); Nol Mostert, Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa's Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People (1992); Julian Cobbing, The Mfecane as Alibi: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo, Journal of African History, 29(3):487519 (1988), arguing that the Mfecane is a species of colonial mythology; R. Kent Rasmussen, Migrant Kingdom: Mzilikazi's Ndebele in South Africa (1978), to the 1830s; J.B. Peires, The House of Phalo: A History of the Xhosa People in the Days of Their Independence (1981), up to the 1840s, and The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 18567 (1989); Colin Bundy, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry, 2nd ed. (1988), on the emergence of the African peasants after the 1840s; Jeff Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom: The Civil War in Zululand, 18791884 (1979), mainly on the British invasion of 1879 and its aftermath; and Shula Marks and Anthony Atmore (eds.), Economy and Society in Pre-industrial South Africa (1980), essays on the pre-1900 period.The period 18701930 is dealt with in H.J. Simons and R.E. Simons, Class and Colour in South Africa, 18501950 (1969, reprinted 1983); William H. Worger, South Africa's City of Diamonds: Mine Workers and Monopoly Capitalism in Kimberley, 18671895 (1987), a history of diamond mining, paying particular attention to questions of labour recruitment and the rise of the De Beers Mining Company; Shula Marks and Richard Rathbone, Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African Class Formation, Culture, and Consciousness, 18701930 (1982), a collection of essays exploring some of the consequences of an industrial revolution for the country's African population; Frederick A. Johnstone, Class, Race, and Gold (1976, reprinted 1987), an influential Marxist study of how racial discrimination was institutionalized in the gold-mining industry; T.R.H. Davenport, The Afrikaner Bond: The History of a South African Political Party, 18801911 (1966); Charles Van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 18861914, 2 vol. (1982), a fine social history; Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War (1979), a highly readable, well-researched popular history; Peter Warwick (ed.), The South African War (1980); Shula Marks and Stanley Trapido, Lord Milner and the South African State, History Workshop, 8:5080 (Autumn 1979), an important article that led to the reevaluation of Milner's role in South Africa; Leonard Thompson, The Unification of South Africa, 19021910 (1960); David Yudelman, The Emergence of Modern South Africa: State, Capital, and the Incorporation of Organized Labor on the South African Gold Fields, 19021939 (1983); Peter Walshe, The Rise of African Nationalism in South Africa: The African National Congress, 19121952 (1970); Helen Bradford, A Taste of Freedom: The ICU in Rural South Africa, 19241930 (1987); Gail M. Gerhart, Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology (1978); and Ken Luckhardt and Brenda Wall, Organize or Starve!: The History of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (1980).South African history since 1930 is chronicled in numerous books. Syntheses of value include William Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa (1994); and Nigel Worden, The Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, Segregation, and Apartheid (1994). Jonathan Crush, Alan Jeeves, and David Yudelman, South Africa's Labor Empire: A History of Black Migrancy to the Gold Mines (1991), deals with the ways in which the history of the region has been connected through labour migrancy. Francis Wilson, Labour in the South African Gold Mines, 19111969 (1972), describes the dependence of South Africa's premier industry on African migrant workers and shows how the mining groups held down miners' wages so that they were lower in 1969 than in 1911. T. Dunbar Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid, and the Afrikaner Civil Religion (1975), shows how an Afrikaner civil religion, with antecedents going back to the 19th century, contributed to the political victory of the Afrikaner National Party in 1948. Leonard Thompson, The Political Mythology of Apartheid (1985), shows with specific examples how the mythology of the Afrikaner nationalist movement was originally a mythology of liberation from British colonialism, but as British power waned it legitimated the oppression of the black people of South Africa. Heribert Adam and Hermann Giliomee, Ethnic Power Mobilized: Can South Africa Change? (1979), finds the roots of apartheid not in ideological racism or prejudiced Calvinism but in the entrenchment of Afrikaner power and privilege, mobilized against both black competitors and imperial foreign capital. Dan O'Meara, Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital, and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism, 19341948 (1983), provides a useful account of a crucial period. Merle Lipton, Capitalism and Apartheid: South Africa, 191084 (1985), explores, from a conservative perspective, the interaction of racial politics and economic interests in South Africa, especially in the years 196085, showing how capitalists who opposed apartheid became more influential after 1960. Shula Marks and Stanley Trapido (eds.), The Politics of Race, Class, and Nationalism in Twentieth-century South Africa (1987), collects essays by the revisionist or Marxist school of African historians emphasizing class conflict and capital accumulation. The essays in Hermann Giliomee and Lawrence Schlemmer (eds.), Up Against the Fences: Poverty, Passes, and Privilege in South Africa (1985), describe the forces leading to the massive migration of Africans from the reserves to the cities and show that the government was failing to stop it. David Pallister, Sarah Stewart, and Ian Lepper, South Africa Inc.: The Oppenheimer Empire, rev. and updated ed. (1988), describes the global reach of the great industrial and financial conglomerate centred in the Anglo-American Corporation and the De Beers diamond cartel. Joseph Hanlon, Beggar Your Neighbours: Apartheid Power in Southern Africa (1986), details how, during the 1980s, South African economic, political, and military power was used to destabilize other countries in southern Africa. William Minter, King Solomon's Mines Revisited: Western Interests and the Burdened History of Southern Africa (1986), offers a radical critique of the involvement of Britain, the United States, and other Western powers and financial interests in the exploitation of the black people of southern Africa. Tom Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa Since 1945 (1983), is the basic history of black protest movements since World War II, with detailed examinations of specific campaigns and episodes. Thomas Karis and Gwendolen M. Carter, From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 18821964, 4 vol. (197277), is useful especially for its elaborate introductions; vol. 4 contains biographical sketches of major black politicians. Sebastian Mallaby, After Apartheid: The Future of South Africa (1992), explores the options. David Ottaway, Chained Together: Mandela, De Klerk, and the Struggle to Remake South Africa (1993), traces the common commitment of the white and black leaders to the transformation of South Africa. Jacklyn Cock, Colonels & Cadres: War & Gender in South Africa (1991; also published as Women and War in South Africa, 1993), explores the link between war and gender in South Africa in the final apartheid years. Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley, The Opening of the Apartheid Mind: Options for the New South Africa (1993), provides a cogent analysis of the complex forces that operate in the new South Africa. Martin Hall Julian R.D. Cobbing Colin J. Bundy Leonard Monteath Thompson Shula E. Marks The economy In the years since World War II, South Africa has experienced highly variable growth rates, including some years when its growth rate was among the highest in the world. Its gross domestic product (GDP) is the largest in Africa. Foreign capital has been extensively invested in South Africa, but the level of foreign investment declined in the period of slower growth and antiapartheid activity in the late 1970s and '80s. South Africa's economy long was dependent on agriculture and mining and on the export of commodities and import of manufactured goods. Since World War II the country has built a well-developed manufacturing base, though it continues to import manufactured goods and remains dependent on the export of primary products. The high value of the precious metals that form the core of South Africa's mineral exports has enabled the country to maintain a high and stable positive balance of trade. The economy is essentially based on private enterprise, but the state participates in many ways. Through the Industrial Development Corporation, it set up and has controlled several public corporations, including the South African Coal, Oil, and Gas Corporation, which produces oil from coal and which was subsequently privatized. ISCOR, the major iron and steel producer, was also formerly controlled by the government; the Electrical Supply Commission (ESKOM), the major electricity utility, still is. The government also owns the railways, the national airline, harbour facilities, fuel pipelines, and telecommunications. By means of a range of official and quasi-governmental bodies, the government encourages the development of industry, consultations on tariff protection, and export promotion and research; it also maintains a bureau of standards. The Development Bank of Southern Africa is a quasi-governmental company created to promote development projects, while the South African Housing Trust is a joint venture between the government and the private sector intended to provide low-cost housing. Central government taxation consists primarily of income taxes on individuals and businesses and a value-added tax on transactions. Provincial governments depend mainly on transfer payments from the central government, while property taxes and levies on businesses provide the main support for local governments. Economic policy has been aimed primarily at sustaining economic growth and achieving a measure of industrial self-sufficiency. Since the early 1970s, high rates of inflation and declining investment have complicated the economic situation. Trade sanctions imposed by many countries in response to the government's apartheid policies exacerbated these problems. Economic policy is the subject of ongoing debate between those favouring market forces and the advocates of substantial state intervention, and there is debate between those favouring export-led or inward-looking industrial policy. Until the early 1970s the labour movement in South Africa was dominated by white trade unions, which supported the reservation of the highest-skilled jobs for whites only. With a wave of strikes in 197374, a militant black trade union movement emerged, and numerous strike waves followed later. The most important trade union federation is the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), a nonracial but mainly black body that includes the country's largest unions, among them the National Union of Mineworkers. Other federations include the National Council of Trade Unions and the mainly white Federation of South African Labour. Resources Diamonds and gold are the best-known and, together with coal, historically the most important minerals, but there are many others of importance, including iron ore, platinum, manganese, chromium, copper, uranium, silver, beryllium, and titanium. No commercially exploitable deposits of oil have been found, but natural gas in moderate quantities exists off the southern coast, and oil is made from coal at two large plants in the northern Free State and Mpumalanga Highveld. Known coal deposits are large, mostly at easily mined depths beneath the Mpumalanga and northern Free State Highveld. South Africa has vast deposits of platinum-group and chromium minerals, located mainly in the Bushveld north of Pretoria. There are major deposits of iron ore and manganese, particularly in Northern Cape; titanium-bearing sands are common on the eastern seaboard. Agriculture is of major importance to South Africa, especially as an employer, but land and water resources are generally poor. There are areas of exception, however, such as the well-watered, fertile soils of the Western Cape river valleys, the KwaZulu/Natal coast, and the Highveld of Mpumalanga and Free State, which offer good conditions for extensive cereal cultivation. There are also some dry areas in which irrigation allows the soils to become productive, such as in the Fish River valley of Eastern province. Timber resources are minimal, but the small percentage of land under indigenous forest has been supplemented by substantial areas under plantation in the wetter parts of the east and southeast. Hydroelectric potential is limited, though the government has developed projects on a number of rivers; more significant are the projects to import electricity from stations on the Zambezi at Cahora Bassa, Mozambique, and on rivers in the Lesotho Highlands. The land Relief A plateau that covers the largest part of the country dominates the topography. It is separated from surrounding areas of generally lower elevation by the Great Escarpment. The plateau consists almost entirely of very old rock of the Karoo (Karroo) System, which formed from the Late Carboniferous Epoch (320 to 286 million years ago) to the Late Triassic Epoch (230 to 208 million years ago). The plateau is generally highest in the east, dropping from elevations of 8,000 feet (2,440 metres) in the basaltic Lesotho region to 2,000 feet in the sandy Kalahari in the west. The central part of the plateau comprises the Highveld, which is between 4,000 and 6,000 feet in elevation. South of the Orange River lies the Great Karoo region. The Great Escarpment, known by a variety of local names, forms the longest continuous topographic feature in South Africa and provides scenery of great beauty. It runs southward from the far northeast, where it is generally known as the Transvaal Drakensberg (berg and berge in Afrikaans means mountains). Farther south it forms the boundary first between KwaZulu/Natal and Free State and then between KwaZulu/Natal and Lesotho. There it reaches heights up to nearly 11,000 feet, including some of the country's highest peaks, such as Mont aux Sources (10,823 feet [3,299 metres]); it is known both as Khahlamba (in Zulu) and as the Natal Drakensberg. The mountainous escarpment continues southwestward, dividing Lesotho from the Transkei region of Eastern province. At lesser altitudes of 5,000 to 8,000 feet, it runs westward across Eastern province, where it is known as the Stormberg. Farther to the west, with names such as the Nuweveld Range and the Roggeveld Mountains, it forms the approximate boundary between Northern Cape and Western Cape provinces. At its western extreme, in the vicinity of Mount Bokkeveld and Mount Kamies (5,600 feet), the escarpment is not well defined. An area of very old folded mountains with altitudes between 3,000 and 7,600 feet lies in the southwest of the country; it includes ranges such as the Tsitsikama, Outeniqua, Great Swart, Lange, Seder, Drakenstein, and Hottentots Holland Mountains, as well as Table Mountain and its associated features at Cape Town. Both above and below the Great Escarpment, the topography tends to be relatively broken. Open plains are relatively rare, occurring mainly in northwestern Free State and farther to the west and in smaller areas such as the Springbok Flats north of Pretoria. Ridges, mountains, and deeply incised valleys are common, mainly left by the erosion of very old landforms. Between the escarpment and the sea there is little genuine coastal plain, with exceptions in northern KwaZulu/Natal, where it reaches 50 miles in width, and in parts of Western Cape. For most of its 1,836-mile length, the coastline is characterized by fairly steep slopes rising rapidly inland. Most of the coastline has experienced uplift or falling sea levels in the recent geologic past, with the result that few flooded river valleys or natural harbours occur. Exceptions include the Knysna Lagoon in Western Cape and the Buffalo River at East London. Long stretches of beach are common. In KwaZulu/Natal, longshore drift over many centuries has created spits and bluffs from beach sand; in a number of places these features have enclosed bays, which have provided both remarkable sanctuaries for wildlife (as at the St. Lucia estuary) and, when mouths are dredged, good harbours (as at Durban and Richard's Bay). Drainage The greater part of the country (about 329,000 square miles) is drained to the Atlantic Ocean by the Orange River, which rises in the Lesotho Highlands, and its tributaries. Chief among the latter are the Caledon and the Vaal. North of the Witwatersrand ridge, the plateau is drained to the Indian Ocean by the Limpopo system, with major tributaries in the Krokodil, Mogalakwena, Luvuvhu, and Olifants rivers. South of the Olifants River, the area between the escarpment and the sea is drained by a large number of other river systems, such as the Komati, Pongola, Mfolozi, and Mgeni, the largest of which is the Tugela, draining much of KwaZulu/Natal and ranking as the largest river by volume in the country. To the south the Mkhomazi, Mzimvubu, Great Kei, Great Fish, Sundays, and Gourits rivers drain significant areas; the Western Cape fold mountain region is drained mainly by the Bre, Berg, and Olifants rivers. All South African rivers are highly seasonal in flow, and few offer enough gradient and volume to allow navigation by even small craft for more than a few miles from the river mouths. The people Ethnic distribution Government-determined racial and ethnic classification, embodied in the Population Registration Act in effect from 1950 to 1991, was crucial in determining the status of South Africans in all areas of life. The act divided South Africans at birth into four racial categoriesBlack, White, Coloured, and Asianthough these classifications were largely arbitrary, based on considerations such as family background and cultural acceptance as well as on appearance. The original Khoikhoi and San peoples of South Africa scarcely exist as distinct groups inside the country today. Other African peoples entered the country several hundred and even thousands of years ago, and their descendants today constitute about three-fourths of South Africa's population. The African population is heterogeneous, composed mainly of four linguistic groups. The largest is the Nguni, including various Ndebele, Swazi, Xhosa, and Zulu peoples, who constitute more than half the African population of the country and form the majority in many eastern and coastal regions. The second largest is Sotho-Tswana, which includes numerous Sotho, Pedi, and Tswana peoples and forms a majority in many Highveld areas. The last two are the Tsonga, or Shangaan, concentrated in Northern and Mpumalanga provinces, and the Venda, concentrated in Northern province. White South Africans consist of two main language groups. More than half of them are Afrikaans speakers, the descendants of mostly Dutch, French, and German settlers. Most of the remainder are English-speaking, mainly the descendants of British colonists, with a sizable minority of Portuguese origin and smaller groups of Italians and others. Immigration from Europe exceeded 20,000 people per year during the late 1960s and early '70s, but in the late '70s and '80s the number of whites leaving South Africa tended to exceed the new arrivals. The white population is highly urbanized. The population formerly classified as Coloured is composed of mixed-race descendants of Africans, Indians and other Asians, and Europeans. Several distinct ethnic groups can be identified, such as the Malays, largely descended from Islamic slaves brought from Indonesia under Dutch rule, and the Griquas, who can trace their origins to Khoikhoi communities beyond the border of the Cape Colony in earlier centuries. Varying in skin colour, most of this population speaks Afrikaans or, to a lesser extent, English and in many respects cannot be distinguished culturally from the white population. Those formerly classified as Coloured are concentrated in the western half of the country, particularly in Western and Northern Cape and the westernmost parts of Eastern Cape province, where they form a majority in most districts. South Africans of Indian descent, classified under apartheid as Asian, form a large minority, which originated with immigrant traders and indentured workers in the second half of the 19th century. Today the large majority live in KwaZulu/Natal and to a lesser extent in Gauteng, Northern, and Mpumalanga. Almost all Indian South Africans live in urban areas. Small communities of other ethnic Asians, including Chinese, live in some of the cities. Religion The largest category of religious affiliation is to independent African Christian churches, which vary in size from small groups to millions of members. The largest established Christian denominations, drawing members from all ethnic groups, are the Methodist, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Dutch Reformed churches. The other major religions are Hinduism, among the majority of Indians; Islam, among many Indians and Malays; and Judaism, among a significant minority of the white population. Andries Nel David Frank Gordon Alan S. Mabin