Human history - or prehistory - probably began in South Africa. That, at least, is the story told by recent fossil finds, which show that
Homo sapiens existed along Africa's southern coast over 50,000 years ago. The descendants of these nomadic Stone Age people - ochre-skinned San hunter-gatherers and Khoikhoi herders, still inhabited the Western Cape when the first European seafarers arrived in the fifteenth century. By the time of the first Dutch settlement at the Cape in the mid-seventeenth century, tall dark-skinned people, who had begun crossing the Limpopo around the time of Christ's birth, had occupied much of the eastern half of the country.
The stage was now set for the complex drama of South Africa's modern history, which in crude terms was a battle for the control of scarce and conflicting resources between the various indigenous people, African states and the European colonizers. The twentieth century saw the temporary victory of colonialism, the unification of South Africa and the attempts by whites to keep at bay black demands for civil rights, culminating with the implementation of South Africa's most notorious social invention - apartheid. The century ended with the ultimate victory of multiracialism and democracy
Prehistory
When our ancestors climbed down from the trees, it is quite likely they did it in South Africa - if a growing body of scientific evidence is to be believed. In 1924, the world's oldest hominid remains and the first-ever evidence of human-like...
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The first South Africans
Rock art provides evidence of human culture in the subcontinent dating back nearly 30,000 years and represents southern Africa's oldest and most enduring artistic tradition. The artists were hunter-gathers, sometimes called Bushmen but more commonly...
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Farms and crafts
Around two thousand years ago, tall, dark-skinned people who practised mixed farming - raising both crops and livestock - crossed the Limpopo River into South Africa. San paintings from some time in the intervening period depict small ochre people and...
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The Cape goes Dutch
In the fifteenth century, Portuguese mariners under the command of Bartholomeu Dias became the first Europeans to set foot in South Africa. Marking their progress, they left an unpleasant set of calling cards all along the coast - African men...
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Rise of the Zulus
While in the west of the country white trekboers were migrating from the Cape Colony, in the east equally significant movements were under way. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, descendants of the first Bantu speakers to...
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The Great Trek
In the Cape, many Afrikaners were becoming fed up with British rule. Their principal grievance was the way in which the colonial authorities were tampering with labour relations and destroying what they saw as a divine distinction between blacks and...
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The Anglo-Boer War
During the closing years of the nineteenth century, Britain demanded that the South African Republic grant voting rights to British miners living in the country - a demand that, if met, would have meant the end of Boer political control over their own...
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Migrant labour and the Bambatha Rebellion
Between the conclusion of the Anglo-Boer War and the unification of South Africa, the mines suffered from a shortage of unskilled labour . Most Africans still lived by agriculture, either as tenant farmers on white farms or in reserves created...
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Kick-starting Afrikanerdom
Large numbers of Afrikaners were forced to leave rural areas in the early part of the twentieth century. This was partly due to the aftermath of British scorched-earth tactics during the Anglo-Boer War, but also a result of overcrowding,...
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Africans' claims
Despite having relied on African co-operation for their victory in the Anglo-Boer War and having hinted at enhanced rights for blacks after the war, the British excluded blacks from the cosy deal between Afrikaners and Britain that resulted in the...
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Young Turks and striking miners
In 1944, a young hothead called Nelson Mandela got together with his friends Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu under the leadership of Anton Lembede to form the ANC Youth League . Strict Africanists,...
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The 1950s: peaceful protest
During the 1950s, the National Party began putting in place a barrage of laws that would eventually constitute the structure of apartheid. Some early onslaughts on black civil rights included: the Coloured Voters Act , which stripped coloureds...
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Sharpeville
On March 21, 1960, Sobukwe and thousands of followers left home to present themselves without passes to police stations. Sobukwe gave strict instructions to keep the demonstrations peaceful and not to be provoked by anyone. Across Gauteng and the Western...
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Apartheid: the dark days
With the leadership of the liberation movement behind bars, the Rivonia Trial marked the beginning of the decade in which everything seemed to be going the white government's way. Resistance was stifled, the state grew more powerful and for white South...
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Total strategy
It was becoming clear that Vorster's deployment of the police couldn't solve South Africa's problems, and in 1978 he was deposed by his defence minister Pieter Willem (P.W.) Botha in a palace coup. Under Vorster's premiership, Botha had turned...
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Crisis
In 1986, Botha declared yet another state of emergency and unleashed a last-ditch storm of tyranny. Bannings of people and meetings followed, and shootings by the police were carried out with impunity. There were ...
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Negotiations
The negotiating process which took place between 1990 and 1994 was fragile, and at many points a descent into chaos looked likely. Obstacles included ongoing violence linked to a sinister " Third Force " - elements in the...
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The 1994 election
Despite a last attempt by right-wingers to disrupt the election by bombing Johannesburg International airport, the election of April 27, 1994 passed peacefully. At the age of 76, Mandela, along with millions of his fellow citizens, voted for...
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The Mandela years: 1994-1999
Few people in recorded history have been the subject of such high expectations; still fewer have matched them; Mandela has exceeded them. We knew of his fortitude before he left jail; we have since experienced his extraordinary reserves of goodwill, his...
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The post-Mandela era
One of Mandela's most skilful achievements was to initiate the post-Mandela era while still in office, ensuring a seamless political transition for South Africa as it moved into the twenty-first century. By the middle of Mandela's presidency, his deputy, ...
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