History History

Often called San, the "Bushmen" in English or "Bushmen" in French, are considered the first people of Africa. These small brown men, hunter-gatherers, formerly nomadic, were already living in southern Africa 40,000 years ago, according to certain cave paintings. These primitive peoples seem to have occupied a large part of East Africa, before moving southwards under the pressure of the black Bantu peoples from southern Chad.

Today, anthropologists speak of the Khoisan, a collective name for the Bushmen or San and the Hottentots or Khoi. The former are the descendants of the hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari in Namibia and speak the click language. The latter settled 2,500 years ago, raising sheep and cattle, and have been assimilated into the Cape population. About 100,000 hunter-gatherers still inhabit the Kalahari Desert today.

In 1434, in Europe, the Portuguese navigator Gil Eannes ventured beyond the Cape of Bojador, and in January 1486, Diego Cao reached present-day Namibia. No one ever saw him again. Portugal did not give up. The following year, Bartolomeu Dias de Novaes, pushed by the winds, missed the tip of the continent and reached the mainland at Mossel Bay. Surrounded by their livestock, small wrinkled men awaited the visitors. Meat is exchanged for junk, the tone rises and finally there is a fight. When Bartolomeu Dias set sail for Europe, he finally came upon the Cape Peninsula, which he named Cabo de Boa Esperança, because the strong winds and currents put ships at risk there. In 1497, Vasco da Gama left to conquer the Indies. He sailed around the cape and then along the southeast coast, which he called "Terra do Natal" on Christmas Day.

As early as 1550, the Dutch sent ships on the spice and porcelain route. Between Europe and Asia, a port of call was needed, which had to offer water and fresh food. In the name of the Dutch East India Company, the VOC, Cape Town was chosen as the port of call in 1651. Jan Van Riebeeck was not yet forty years old and was about to write the first chapter in the history of a country that did not yet exist: South Africa. The Hottentots had to be spared by exchanging goods for cattle. In 1657, nine men were given a piece of land and the title of freeburghers. These "free citizens" established farms east of the Cape in the fertile areas of the Berg Valley. In October 1679, the new governor, a Mauritian named Simon Van der Stel, decided to encourage European immigration to domesticate this territory. The first burghers were joined by former VOC officials and demobilized soldiers in search of an Eldorado. Whole ships arrived with Germans, Danes, Swedes and Dutch.

In 1661, Louis XIV took power. The Huguenots quickly understood that they would have to recant in order to live and hundreds of thousands of Protestants fled to Holland, where they were warmly welcomed. At the same time, Governor Van der Stel found the colony's wine "terribly bitter". The French were in demand, "especially those who knew how to cultivate vines and make wine, vinegar, and distill brandy," according to official documents. Of the 60,000 Huguenots who took refuge in Holland, about 200 answered the call to Africa, and 175 arrived alive. Simon Van der Stel, following the recommendations of the Company, settled the new arrivals in the Berg Valley, where there were already 23 farms run by Dutchmen. Between Paarl and Stellenbosch, a village was named Franschhoek, "the French corner". Today, about 500,000 South Africans bear a name of French origin, that is 30% of Afrikaners.

Between 1681 and 1749, many Islamic religious leaders from South-East Asia were deported to South Africa despite Van der Stel's opposition. They were called Malays, but these slaves came from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Ceylon or Madagascar. It was also at this time that a new entity appeared, which apartheid would turn into a race: the coloured people. From the beginning, marriages took place between the colonists and emancipated Christian slaves or Khoisan women, but the sexual exploitation of women took precedence over marriages. European women, it is true, were few in number: one for every ten men on average. The governor was ordered to forbid such alliances, but nature was stronger.

The children of the Cape burghers go far inland, trying to escape the administration. Those who are now called trekboers devote themselves to animal husbandry. They live in covered wagons, pulled by four pairs of oxen. This is the trek. During their long march, the trekboers reached the Orange River in 1779. On the other front, a group of trekboers came up against the first Xhosa herdsmen in 1775, 1,500 km from the Cape. These are two worlds that meet without understanding each other. Dutch was abandoned in favour of a new language, Afrikaans.

In 1807, at the same time in London, the slave trade was banned throughout the British Empire. However, abolition did not take place until August 1833. In 1809, the Khoisan were proclaimed subjects of Her Gracious Majesty.

During the winter of 1794-1795, the French revolutionary armies overthrew the Dutch government. The Cape was placed under British protection. The British landed and a century and a half of VOC sovereignty came to an end. In Europe, Napoleon's France was defeated at Trafalgar. On 7 January 1806, 61 ships of the Royal Navy entered Table Bay without any resistance. The new territory was immense, with no clearly established limits, and was inhabited by a very disparate population of 26,000 Europeans, 30,000 slaves and about 20,000 Khoisan. In London, the Colonial Office was pleased to finally have a "Gibraltar of the Indian Ocean" to lock the route to India.

Born around 1787, Shaka was a son of Heaven, a Zulu. Persecuted because of his illegitimate birth, chased by his own father for having let a sheep be eaten by a wild dog, the young boy found refuge with the Mthethwa, whose troops he soon commanded. In 1818, he became the head of the Nguni confederation. In 1824, 15,000 warriors were under his command. Shaka had all those who could one day constitute a threat executed. Only the women are allowed to live, to become mothers of Zulu children. The bloodthirsty despot controls Natal and subdues all the clans between the south of the Tugela River and the Drakensberg. Shaka was assassinated in 1828 by his half-brother Dingaan. The Shaka myth still animates the Zulu nation today.

The sixth frontier war, in 1834, triggered the Great Trek. 10,000 Xhosa crossed south of the Kei River. The Afrikaners will have to leave towards the north, abandoning these dangerous regions to the 5,000 British settlers who landed in 1820.

Between 1835 and 1837, dozens of convoys went into the interior of the country to the north. But the territory was already well occupied: between the Vaal and Orange rivers by the Griqua, Khoisan half-breeds, armed with guns and speaking Afrikaans; in present-day Natal by the Zulu, stronger than ever with Dingaan at their head; towards the north, on the Transvaal highlands, the dissident Zulu Mzilikazi controls 800,000 km² with 20,000 Ndebele warriors; towards the west are the Tswana; and finally, behind their stone curtain of Maluti, the Basotho.

In the autumn of 1836, the Boers, armed with firearms, killed 400 Ndebele warriors for only two dead in their ranks. In October 1837, the first Boers reached Port Natal, a trading post of English traders and adventurers renamed Durban in honour of the governor of Urban

The new chief, a wealthy farmer, Andries Pretorius, crushed the Zulu godlessness which counted 3,000 dead in its ranks. Since then, the Buffalo River has become the Blood River, the blood of vengeance. December 16, the day of "reconciliation" according to the country's new authorities, is still a South African national holiday.

In 1843, Governor Napier proclaimed the annexation of Natal. Slavery was henceforth illegal and all racial discrimination abolished. The Boers did not accept the Anglo-Saxon humanist diktats, and set off again in search of land. The second Trek started in the direction of the Transvaal and the Orange.

In 1852, Great Britain recognized the independence of the South African Republic, located north of the Vaal River. The capital, Pretoria, honours the memory of the Blood River victor, Pretorius. In February 1854, a second Boer territory, the Orange Free State, was created. From then on, the Boers were responsible for their republics, without having to answer to the Crown.

The Cape Constitution, which remained in force until 1910, allowed blacks to stand for election or vote provided they earned at least 50 pounds a year, on the same basis as the British. In Natal, when sugar cane requires labour, Indians are solicited. On the other hand, among the Boers, in the Orange Free State "only whites are citizens of the Republic", and in the Transvaal "the nation does not recognize any equality between whites and natives".

Since 1877, Governor Shepstone used the Pedi rebellion as a pretext to annex the South African Republic and its capital Pretoria. After a first Anglo-Boer war in 1880, Paul Kruger went to London to extract concessions from the British. As a result, the convention of 27 February 1884 definitively reinstated the South African Republic.

But one of his opponents dreams of empire. The billionaire Cecil Rhodes embodied British imperialism. He was elected Prime Minister in Cape Town in 1890 and decided on a coup de force against the proud South African Republic of Kruger. In 1895, the Anglo-Boer war was declared: on one side 30,000 Afrikaner fighters, on the other 27,000 British. The latter had the military superiority, while the Boer nationalists had the advantage of the terrain.

The peace treaty was signed in 1902 when, exhausted, the Boers gave up on the independence of their republics. On the ground, the toll was terrible: more than 7,000 dead among the British and more than 6,000 in the Boer ranks. The British adopted a scorched earth policy: 30,000 farms were destroyed, the vast majority of livestock was slaughtered, 120,000 whites and 43,000 blacks were deported to concentration camps

Chinese and Mozambican labourers were brought in to work the mines and the amount of gold extracted doubled. In 1907, Louis Botha and Abraham Fisher became Prime Ministers of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State respectively. In Durban, an agreement was reached on the constitution of a Crown dominion, the South African Union, which federated the four colonies of the Cape, Natal, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. Bloemfontein will be the judicial capital of the Union, Cape Town the parliamentary and legislative capital, and Pretoria the administrative centre where the executive will sit, with each region retaining its own vote in force.

On 8 January 1912, a small group of intellectuals founded the South African Natives National Congress (SANNC) in Bloemfontein, which became the African National Congress (ANC) in 1923. At the end of the founding meeting, all the delegates stood and sang Nkosi Sikelel'iAfrika, 'God Bless Africa', which became the South African national anthem in April 1994. In June 1913, the Native Land Act was passed, which granted only 7.3% of the Union territory to blacks.

Afrikaans, the only Boer heritage, replaced Dutch as the second official language and the Union chose a flag. Reverend Daniel Malan founded the Purified National Party on the basis of Afrikanerdom, the Afrikaner ideology.

Several fascist organisations spearheaded the reconquest and all the elements were in place for the establishment of apartheid. In reaction, for the first time since the creation of the Union, all the black, Indian and mixed-race groups met together: it was the All-African Convention in 1935 in Bloemfontein, on the initiative of Pixley Seme, the president of the ANC. In 1936, the Representation of Natives Act deprived blacks in the Cape Province of the right to vote, which they had enjoyed since 1853.

On 26 May 1948, the United National Party won the general elections and Malan became Prime Minister. From 1949, the government banned intermarriage and condemned sexual relations between people of different races. The Population Registration Act required all South Africans to be of one of three defined "races": white, mixed race or indigenous.

A "pass" is created for Blacks. Black presence is limited to 72 hours in white cities.

The ANC radically changes its orientation: immediate and active boycott, strike, civil disobedience, refusal to cooperate.

This day is a symbolic date. As Afrikaners celebrate the tercentenary of Jan Van Riebeeck's arrival in Cape Town, the ANC launches a massive campaign of civil disobedience. Thousands of blacks enter places reserved for whites. There are 8 000 arrests. Albert Luthuli takes over the leadership of the Congress, which now has more than 100 000 members. Nelson Mandela, now his deputy, opens a law firm with Oliver Tambo in Johannesburg. On 25 June 1955, nearly 3,000 delegates met in a vacant lot near Klipton to proclaim the Freedom Charter. Immediate response from the authorities: 156 people are charged with "high treason". In the meantime, Robert Sobukwe created the Pan-African Congress, the police fired on a crowd of demonstrators, killing 69 people in Sharpeville (March 21, 1960, now a public holiday) and Hendrik Verwoerd, "the great architect of apartheid", became Prime Minister. He was to be the father of independence since, on his initiative, the Republic of South Africa was proclaimed on 31 May 1961.

Verwoerd declares the ANC illegal. Nelson Mandela founded "Umkhonto we Sizwe", or "Spear of the Nation", and went underground. In early 1962, Nelson Mandela left the country clandestinely for an international awareness-raising tour. Like a head of state, he crossed Africa and was seen by all as a symbol.

On August 5, he set off for Johannesburg, but had been betrayed: the police were waiting for him. He was 44 years old and would spend 27 years and 190 days behind bars.

A few months later, on October 9, 1963, the now famous "Rivonia Trial" opened at the Pretoria courthouse. Among the nine defendants were Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and Ahmed Kathrada. Before being condemned to silence, Mandela stood up and spoke: "I fought against white domination, and I fought against black domination. My dearest ideal has been that of a free and democratic society in which all would live in harmony and with equal opportunities. I hope to live long enough to achieve it. But if necessary, it's an ideal I'm prepared to die for." All will be sentenced to life imprisonment. The UN presents a resolution sanctioning the apartheid regime. France abstains.

Here we are in the bloody 1970s. Opposite Cape Town, on Robben Island, Nelson Mandela works barefoot in a stone quarry. In the interior of the country, the townships are ablaze. On June 16, 1976, 20,000 schoolchildren demonstrate in the streets of Soweto against the imposition of Afrikaans as the language of instruction. The police shootings officially kill 618 people and injure 1,500. Most of them are under 17 years old. Hector Peterson, 13, was the first to fall and became a martyr. A wave of very brutal repression fell on the protesters.

Pieter Botha succeeded Vorster and wanted to make the country a regional giant. Dominated by the personality of the Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize winner, the United Democratic Front (UDF) organized demonstrations in the black ghettos. In January 1985, Botha reiterated his proposal to Nelson Mandela: freedom in exchange for his renunciation of political violence. "Only a free man can negotiate," he replied. On the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre, the police kill 19 people. A state of emergency was declared. Before the National Party Congress, Botha admits full South African citizenship for blacks, abolishes the "pass" system, puts an end to reserved jobs and authorizes mixed marriages. The "old crocodile" does not change residential segregation and racial groups.

De Klerk, reputedly conservative, replaces Botha as head of the party and then of the state. However, it was he who closed the book on apartheid. Frederik de Klerk announced his intention to prepare a new constitution that would allow for the "peaceful cohabitation of all the peoples of South Africa". Newly legalized, the ANC and the Communist Party come out of thirty years of clandestinity. Nelson Mandela was released on 11 February 1990. He is a living myth who declares on his arrival in Cape Town: "I still cherish the ideal of a free democratic society, where all will live together, with equal opportunities. I hope to live to realize that ideal. But if I have to, I am ready to die for it. "Virtually word for word, this was the last sentence uttered at his trial in 1964! On 6 August, the ANC suspended its armed struggle: a page was turned. Mandela returns from a long tour abroad. In 1991, Frederik de Klerk keeps his promises by abolishing all apartheid legislation. Parliament voted to abolish the Native Land Act, the law on land which concentrated 75% of the population - blacks - on 13% of the territory, the Group Areas Act on separate housing, and the Population Registration Act, the law classifying "races". Nelson Mandela was elected president of the ANC and, on 20 December, almost all the players in the South African political game sat around the table of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa.

The year is 1992. Frederik de Klerk, obsessed by the rise of the extreme right, wants to take the pulse of the white population one last time in the form of a referendum: yes or no to democratic reforms. The "yes" vote won with 68.73% of the votes. In July, the negotiators set a date for the first multiracial elections on 27 April 1994. In mid-October, Nelson Mandela and Frederik de Klerk are jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On 18 November, the main political parties agree on the text of the interim constitution.

In 1994, the election campaign began. The incumbent president, Frederik de Klerk, was photographed here in traditional Swazi garb or, in Soweto, surrounded by smiling blacks. Nelson Mandela visits the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, before donning an ethnic shirt for a popular rally. In March in Mmabatho, blood was spilled, some Afrikaners dreamed of a white state and Johannesburg trembled under the bombs of fanatics. The elections of 27 April finally yielded their verdict: 62.65% of the votes for the ANC, 20.39% for the National Party and 10.54% for Inkata. Nelson Mandela was declared elected head of state by Parliament.

Mandela proposes to form a government of national unity, the GNU. Frederik de Klerk's National Party and Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha accepted the seats offered to them by the ANC. Together, the former enemies will implement the Reconstruction and Development Programme, which is to lead the new South Africa. The task is immense. The expectations of the black community for housing, jobs, health and education must be met without frightening whites who, worried about their future, could cause a capital flight that would damage the country's fragile balance. To this end, the authorities have created the "Truth and Reconciliation" commission. Its aim was to promoteubuntu, an African concept that favours forgiveness rather than punishment. On April 9, 1996, this body, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, began hearings of victims of human rights violations.

In 2008, a wave of xenophobic violence hit the townships in the country's major cities. Implicated in corruption cases involving Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki announced his resignation on September 21, 2008, after being disowned by his party. The ANC then appointed the party's deputy president, Kgalema Motlanthe, as interim president until the elections. At the same time, Mbeki resumed the legal offensive against Zuma, joining the Attorney General's appeal to the Constitutional Court to challenge the ruling that had ended the corruption trial against his rival. After another large ANC victory in the general elections in April 2009, Zuma was elected President of the Republic with 65.9% of the vote for a five-year term.

Africa's first World Cup was inevitably historic, not only for its symbolism but also for the hopes of growth and dynamism it was to inspire. The national team's Bafana Bafana galvanized and united South Africans during the games, and the event was an opportunity to celebrate across colour and social lines. 2.1 billion, despite the fact that the country fulfilled its contract by delivering all its major projects on time. In addition, South Africa spent lavishly on oversized stadiums, the upkeep of which is still costly today.

34 striking miners are killed by the police who open fire without warning on the crowd during a demonstration for higher wages in Marikana, near Rustenburg, in the north of the country. It is the shock, these exactions outrage the public opinion and the international community. Worse still, the 80 injured and 270 miners arrested during the demonstration were prosecuted for murder by the South African justice system. Almost 30,000 employees went on strike despite the explicit threat of dismissal. Tension was at its highest in all the country's mines for several months, until the 300 to 400 miners imprisoned for "murder" were finally released but still prosecuted for "public violence and prohibited assembly".

Since Nelson Mandela left us on 5 December 2013, plunging the country into historic national mourning, the page of the anti-apartheid revolution has been turned. However, great tensions remain in the country. At the time of reckoning, the corruption that gangrene the state, the economic crisis that affects the emerging countries of the BRICS and especially South Africa, the increasingly sharp social inequalities between rich and poor create an explosive situation. In December 2012, Zuma was re-elected as head of the ANC against Kgalema Motlanthe. Tensions are very high. In January 2014, in the township of Mothotlung on the edge of the Rustenburg mining basin, police officers (some of whom had been involved in the Marikana massacre) killed four people during a demonstration to demand running water. This did not prevent Jacob Zuma from being re-elected President of the Republic on 21 May 2014, to the dismay of a very large part of the population. Despite his conviction by the Constitutional Court on 31 March 2016 for using €15 million of public funds to renovate his private residence, and despite immense public pressure, Zuma apologised but categorically refused to resign. Under pressure from his party, which threatened him with impeachment, Zuma stepped down as ANC president at the end of 2017 and eventually resigned on 14 February 2018. He was immediately replaced by Cyril Ramaphosa, who was elected President of the Republic by Parliament on 15 February 2018.

General elections are held in May 2019 to elect members of the National Assembly, who in turn elect the President of the Republic for a 5-year term. The ANC, the anti-apatheid ruling party, wins with 57.5%, but achieves the lowest score in its history. Unsurprisingly, incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa was re-elected by his party's MPs, who retained their majority. However, the president did not show his credentials, and an investigation was opened against him for receiving money from a company during his campaign for the ANC presidency. In February 2020, he took over the presidency of the African Union for a year. That same month, he allegedly intimidated thieves who found 3.8 million euros on one of his estates. A complaint was lodged against him in June 2022 for "kidnapping" and "corruption". In November of the same year, a parliamentary commission ruled that there were grounds for debating the impeachment of the president. But in March 2023, the Public Defender ruled that Cyril Ramaphosa had not committed any abuse in the Phala Phala affair. But the presidency is not claiming victory, as several points remain to be clarified and other investigations are underway.