The Surprising History of South Africa
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA, ITS PEOPLES AND HISTORY SINCE 1652
BRIAN G. FIRTH, MB, CHB, D.PHIL, FRCP, FACC, FAHA, MBA. S.A.- AT-LARGE AND EXETER, 1972
The history of Africa, and South Africa in particular, is much more complicated than is appreciated by outsiders not familiar with the history of the colonization and partitioning of Africa by the European Great Powers. It is certainly not a simple black-white story as many in the USA have deduced because they try to draw a simple parallel with race relations in the USA. At the Berlin Conference in 1884-5, chaired by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the “European Great Powers” were each allotted portions of Africa, generally based on where they had a foothold on a coastal enclave. For purposes of this discussion, it is worth noting that Britain was allocated all of the territory in red that stretched from Cape to Cairo except for German East Africa (Tanganyika, now Tanzania) 15 years before the Anglo-Boer War. Hence, Rhodes’ ambition to build a railway from Cape to Cairo over British soil. In fact, at that time, South Africa as it would become after the Boer war, consisted of two British Colonies (Cape Colony and Natal) and 2 independent Boer (Afrikaner) Republics, the Orange Free State and the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek or ZAR (later Transvaal Province).
WHY START THE STORY IN 1652
Well, one has to start somewhere if one does not want to go back all the way to the origins of the human species in south and central Africa (Australopithecus, Zinjanthropus, Homo Habilis, Home Erectus, Neanderthal man etc.) Southern Africa has a very credible claim to having been “the cradle of human civilization.” There is a museum to support that claim in a cave situated between Johannesburg and Pretoria.
The Portuguese seafarers Vasco da Gama and Bartholomew Diaz rounded the southern tip of Africa in the late 1400s and early 1500s, when the Portuguese empire was at its zenith (think Brazil). However, they did not really establish a major foothold on the African continent. They were followed by the Dutch who became a great seafaring nation in the 1600s. The Dutch East India Company sailed around the Cape in search of spices and traveled all the way to the “East Indies” i.e. Malaysia, Indonesia etc. and in fact established a major foothold and colony in Indonesia. However, on the long journey from the Netherlands to the East Indies, half the sailors died from scurvy, caused by a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables that contain Vitamin C. Therefore, in 1652 Jan van Riebeeck, was commissioned to establish a ”refreshment station” about halfway through the journey. Thus, they established a garden and built a fort (the castle, in Cape Town) to provide passing ships with fresh fruit and vegetables.
The Hottentots traded with the settlers, and white men had offspring from Hottentot women, which produced a new ethnic group in the Cape, namely, the Cape Coloured population. This is a large group in the Cape who predominantly adopted the Christian religion and Dutch language. It is estimated that about 8.5% of the current South African population falls into this category (about the same as the white population). They are NOT a black/white ”colored” population as it is understood in the USA. In addition, there is a separate group of “Cape Malays”. This is really a misnomer since they were not necessarily from Malaysia but probably mostly from Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Madagascar. Their unique identifying feature is that they are Muslims and are almost totally confined to the greater Cape Town area, while the Cape coloured population is widespread throughout the current western Cape Province extending up to Namibia, across the great Karoo and all the way to Kimberley 600 miles north, and beyond.
FIRST AND SECOND BRITISH OCCUPATIONS OF THE CAPE
During the period from about 1680 to 1700, the union of William of Orange of the Netherlands and Queen Mary of Britain brought the Dutch and British Thrones under one roof and led to an alliance that lasted through the 1700s, as far as I can tell. As the power of the Netherlands was fading the power of Britain as a seafaring nation was on the ascendancy. The years 1806 and 1812 saw the First and Second British Occupations of the Cape by the British, who then ruled over the Dutch-speaking people, who called themselves “Boere” (literally ”farmers”). The anglicized version of that is “Boers” (pronounced Boors). By 1836 the Boers had had enough of British rule and set about moving (“Trekking”) north to get away from British rule and taxes. The mass migration, known as The Great Trek was at its peak from 1836-1838 as they moved north to establish the two Boer Republics that became the Orange Free State and the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek or ZAR (later Transvaal), respectively. They also established some lesser republics like the republic of Natalia (Vryheid) over the Drakensberg, as well as Stellaland and Goshen, in the far north of the “Cape Colony”, as it was now known.
In 1820/21, after the Napoleonic wars, there was a shortage of work in Britain and so Britain shipped off large contingents of people to its colonies, first the Cape and then in the 1830s to New Zealand. (British convicts were first sent to Australia in 1788 followed by free settlers in the 1790s). The 1820 Settlers settled in the area of the Eastern Cape about 500-600 miles up the east coast from Cape Town in the vicinity of the present-day cities of East London, Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown and KingWilliamstown. My forebears on my mother’s side were part of this group of British settlers.
Britain also established a foothold in the region of Port Natal (Durban) in the early 1830s, which would ultimately become the Province of Natal.
THE BLACK TRIBES OF SOUTHERN AFRICA
I have said nothing about the black/Bantu/negro people of South Africa yet. Why so? I will use the ethnic term Bantu peoples for simplicity. The reason is that chronologically, there were no real contacts between the “whites” in the Cape and any of the Bantu tribes until about the 1770s when the Boers who had migrated up the east coast encountered the front or southern end of the Xhosa migration, and in the 1820s when the British settlers encountered them. For a period of time Britain maintained a neutral zone between the settlers and the Xhosa to avoid conflict. There were border skirmishes, mainly cattle raids, but no major wars, unlike what happened with the Zulus.
What about the Boers who migrated north up the middle of the Cape Colony? They first encountered Sotho/Tswana people once they crossed the Orange and Vaal Rivers some 600 miles from Cape Town. They first had to cross The Great Karoo which covers some 35-40% of present- day South Africa’s surface area of 470,000 square miles (1.7X Texas) and is only fit for raising sheep … think of Utah or Arizona. Hence it was largely devoid of people and certainly had no Bantu people.
The Bantu people in South Africa are all believed to have migrated down from the great lakes region of east Africa. They belong to two broad groups: the Nguni speaking people (Zulus, Xhosas and Swazis), who all have something like 6 click sounds in their languages (think of Miriam Makeba and her “click song”), who migrated down along the coast east of the Drakensberg range, and the Sotho/Tswana people down the center of South Africa. Think of the Nguni languages as being related to each other as Spanish is to Italian. I am told that none of the west African tribal languages incorporate clicks and only one in East Africa. According to a Professor of Zulu that I met many years ago, this was probably because of their association with Bushmen in the Drakensberg range over generations. We were taught that this migration only occurred in the 1600s, but others maintain it was a lot earlier. In either event, the group that migrated furthest down the east coast were the group who refer to themselves collectively as Xhosa. However, they comprise several different clans (Thembu, Fingo, Galeka, Pondo etc.) and are not a cohesive force like the Zulus. Their total population is only slightly exceeded by that of the Zulus.
The Zulus, on the other hand did not migrate down the coast as far as the Xhosas. They were united under Shaka in 1816 until he was assassinated by his half-brothers Dingane and Mhlangane in 1828. In this short period he made the Zulus into a formidable fighting force organized into regiments with large shields and short stabbing spears. For generations skirmishes between tribes had consisted of throwing spears at each other and using small protective shields. Once his opponents had done this, his warriors (“impis”) would move in for the kill with their short, broad-bladed stabbing spears and finish them off. His military genius has been recognized by others and what he practiced, e.g. his horn and pincer movements, were quite unique. The net result is that the Zulus terrorized other tribes and established their dominance over present day Kwazulu Natal province.
Mzilikaze, the founder of the Matabele nation that occupy the southwestern half of Zimbabwe, was a Zulu general under Shaka who fled, after a particularly successful raid, over the Drakensberg mountains with all of his booty in the early 1820s to the area north of Pretoria in the ZAR. He was pushed out of this area across the Limpopo river by the Boers sometime after 1838, and well before the 1860s, to his new base at Bulawayo, in what became Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). That is where Rhodes encountered his heir and successor Lobengula. My family also had extensive trading interactions with both Mzilikazi and then Lobengula in the 1860s and reported that the Matabele had enslaved the Shonas, who had founded the Shona empire of Monomotapa, one of the few great African kingdoms!
BLACK WHITE CLASHES IN THE 1800s
I have noted that there were skirmishes with some of the Xhosa tribes and mainly British settlers in the eastern Cape area after the 1820s. As noted above, the Matabele were driven out of the Transvaal area in the mid-1800s by the Boers assisted by Cape Coloured groups under Coenraad de Buys. However, there were no major “wars” reported associated with this. In contradistinction, there were major clashes with the Zulus. The first occurred in 1838 when the Zulus under Dingane massacred Boers under the leadership of Piet Retief in the Boer republic of Natalia (Vryheid or “freedom”). This was followed by a very bloody battle on December 16, 1838 at what is known as the Battle of Blood River, where the Boers took their revenge. This day has been commemorated as “the Day of the Vow.” The British migrated inland from Port Natal and in turn suffered a horrendous defeat at the hands of the Zulus at the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879: 1300 British troops died and only 50 survived. This was the worst defeat that Britain had ever suffered from an indigenous people. This defeat was avenged soon after at the Battle of Rorke’s drift where the British defeated the Zulu warriors.
The Sotho /Tswana people who inhabit Botswana, most of the original Transvaal province and Orange Free State, and Lesotho, are related groups with multiple different clans e.g. Barolong, Batlapin, Bavarutsi, Bamangwato, Sesoto. Unlike the Nguni peoples, they have NO clicks in their vocabulary and are thus ethnically completely distinct. There has been racial tension between the various groups, with fear of the Zulu being part of the mix, because of their history as a warrior nation who would not easily be subjugated by the white colonists. In fact, when the British started growing sugarcane in Natal, they had to import “coolies” from India to work on the sugar cane plantations because the Zulus refused to do so!
I go into this detail to help others understand the different dynamics that existed, as well as the different nature of the various Bantu groups in Southern Africa.
WHAT WAS THE BOER WAR ALL ABOUT?
The so-called 2nd Anglo-Boer War was a war between the British and the Boers who occupied the two major Boer Republics, the Orange Free State and the ZAR. It lasted from 1899 to 1902. At the height of the war, the British had some 250,000 soldiers in the veld (field) while the Boer forces, which were all volunteers, never exceeded 25,000. That the Boers were able to put up a resistance for so long is a testament to their knowledge of the terrain, being able to live off the veld, and being excellent marksmen on horseback. When Britain could not defeat the Boers in a guerilla war, they resorted to a scorched earth policy (like Peter the Great had done vs Charles XII), burning the fields and placing the women and children into “concentration camps”. It is said that more women and children died in these camps (about 26,000) than men on the battlefield.
The antecedents to this war are multiple. Diamonds had been discovered in 1868 near the town of Kimberley in the northern Cape Colony (British). This led to an influx of foreigners from Europe, including a large number of Jews, mainly from Lithuania. Some of the great fortunes on the diamond fields were made by Jewish mining magnates such as Sammy Marks, Barney Barnato, and Alfred and Otto Beit. In 1886, gold was discovered in the vicinity of present- day Johannesburg, 300 miles northeast of Kimberley in the ZAR (Transvaal, a Boer Republic). Many of those who had made money on the diamond fields left for the goldfields. This represented a huge influx of foreigners whose common language, if any, was English and not Dutch. The ZAR Government under President Paul Kruger met this challenge by requiring that these immigrants (“uitlanders” or “outlanders) not have voting rights until they had been resident for 14 years. This was cited by the British as a major injustice and a reason to intervene. In truth, Britain’s war on the Boer republics, which banded together, was more about the goldfields and the riches they could bring to Britain.
Before the actual war, there was an abortive raid led by Leander Starr Jameson, a friend and confidant of Rhodes, who was employed by Rhodes as a colonial administrator in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). It involved 500 British South Africa Police from Rhodesia invading the ZAR over the New Year’s weekend 1895/6, which lasted only 3 days, and was a huge failure. The premise was that they would be able to stimulate an uprising among the immigrants to overthrow the ZAR.
After the Boer War, the two British Colonies, namely the Cape and Natal and the two former Boer Republics were amalgamated into the Union of South Africa in 1910. The first Prime Minister was General Louis Botha, who had commanded the Boer troops, and his deputy was General Jan Smuts, a brilliant Cape Afrikaner who was educated at Cambridge and was a Field Marshall and a member of the British Imperial War Cabinet, and Churchill confidant, in both World War I and II.
WHERE DOES CECIL JOHN RHODES (1853- 1902) FIT INTO ALL OF THIS?
Cecil Rhodes was the son of the vicar of Bishops Stortford, an Anglican priest. In 1871, the 17 year-old Cecil Rhodes sailed to Natal to join his brother Frank who was trying to grow cotton in Natal. However, diamonds had been discovered in Kimberley only 3 years before and Rhodes found himself on these diamond fields by the time he was 21. He must have made some money fairly quickly because he left for Oxford in 1873 and for the next 8 years until 1881 spent part of each year on the diamond fields and part of the year in Oriel College, Oxford. He left the running of his business to his partner Rudd while he was away. He was elected to the Cape Colony parliament in 1881 (at 28) and became Prime Minister from 1890 -1896. During this time, the railway was laid from Cape Town to Kimberley and then on via Botswana (Bechuanaland) to Bulawayo, which enabled him to travel back and forth much faster than by coach. Rhodes established 3 companies during this period: de Beers Diamond Mining Company, the Consolidated Goldfields Company and the British South Africa Company (BSA) based in “Rhodesia” (present Zimbabwe). Our own Mike Tselentis was elected as a Rhodes Scholar from Rhodesia in 1973, as it was still known then. Like many other Rhodesians, he chose to study at the University of Cape Town. The BSA basically administered Rhodesia following treaties that Rhodes had signed with King Lobengula of the Matabeles. What is generally known about that interaction is that Rhodes effectively incorporated Rhodesia as a British colony and administered it as a British colony. At the same time, it seems that he was held in high regard by the Matabeles. He was allowed to be buried in the Matopo hills outside Bulawayo on a granite rock in a place sacred to the Matabeles. His casket was conveyed by train from the Cape to Bulawayo for the funeral, at which there were 2,000 Matabele impis (warriors) chanting “Bayete”, the royal salute that was reserved for Zulu and Matabele kings. He was the first white man ever to be accorded that tribute.
The botched Jameson raid with which Rhodes’ name was associated clearly blotted his copybook and probably led to him stepping down as Prime Minister of the Cape in 1896 at the age of 43. It is noteworthy that in the Cape the Cape Coloureds were on the common white voters’ roll. There was movement afoot to remove them, but Rhodes was strongly against this. In fact, it did not happen until after 1949 when the National Party was in power in South Africa. There were very few Bantu (Xhosas) in the Western Cape at the time as they slowly migrated down from the Eastern Cape in the middle of the 20th century. Hence, they were never really a part of the common voters’ roll. Also noteworthy is the fact that Rhodes stated in his will “No student shall be qualified or disqualified for election to a Scholarship on account of his race or religious opinions”.
WHAT ABOUT THE ANC?
The African National Congress was founded in 1912. Three of the four original founders were Zulus. One of the last Presidents of the ANC was Chief Albert Luthuli (1952 -1967) during which time it was banned. He too was of Zulu descent on his mother’s side. Until the time of Luthuli, the ANC was a largely pacifist movement that opposed the “apartheid” or segregation practiced in South Africa. In fact, before the Afrikaners (Boers) coined the phrase and codified it, the British had practiced it in essentially all of their colonies, including India.
It became clear that a pacifist ANC was getting nowhere and sporadic acts of arson and violence against whites were occurring. In order to control this, the ANC established a militant wing to co-ordinate acts of arson and violent protest. This wing was named Umkhonto we Sizwe (or MK for short) meaning “the spear of the nation”. Nelson Mandela was named to head this organization in 1960 after the bloody Sharpeville riots, that occurred about 30 miles outside Johannesburg, in which about 249 blacks were killed and 180 injured. MK was responsible for many acts of arson blowing up government buildings. Mandela ultimately went into hiding, was captured and he and his compatriots went to trial in the so-called Rivonia Treason Trials. Mandela, a trained lawyer, conducted his own defense. The details are to be found in one of his autobiographies “Statement from the Dock” (the other being “A Long Walk to Freedom”). He was sentenced to life Imprisonment for treason and sent to Robben Island, about 6 miles off the coast of Cape Town, that was reserved for political prisoners. He spent most of 27 years in a small cell, but worked on limestone quarries during the day with other prisoners. Near the end of this time, he became the leader of the ANC. Nelson Mandela was a Xhosa, a member of the Thembu royal family (see earlier for the clans). In the first election held that was open to all races, the ANC won the majority and Nelson Mandela became the first black President of South Africa in 1994. It is worth noting that there was also a strong, separate Zulu faction known as the Inkatha Freedom Party under Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi. Thus, only some of the Zulus supported the ANC. Buthelezi, a Zulu Chief, whose family were Prime Ministers to the Zulu king, served in parliament under both Mandela and his successor, Thabo Mbeki, as a cabinet minister from 1994-2004. This extraordinary man passed away recently at the age of 94.
Thabo Mbeki, another Xhosa, was educated as a lawyer in England, where he lived in exile for 30 years until 1990 when the ANC was unbanned. He succeeded Mandela as the head of the ANC and served as President from 1999 - 2007, when he was forced to step down because he lost the support of the other members of the ANC’s tripartite alliance with the SA Communist party and COSATU (the Council of South African Trade Unions). Mbeki’s tenure was generally uneventful except that he refused to recognize the link between HIV and AIDS with horrendous consequences in terms of the spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa.
Jacob Zuma, the leader of the Zulu section of the ANC, who had the support of the other members of the tripartite alliance, was elected to succeed Mbeki in 2007.Unlike his predecessors mentioned above, Zuma had no more than a 6th grade education. His tenure was an absolute disaster for all except those that he favored. He created 50 cabinet positions and placed many unqualified Zulus into positions from which they continue to wield power. In addition, the level of corruption increased exponentially during his tenure. He was ultimately forced out as head of the ANC because of over 100 charges of corruption involving his family and the Indian Gupta family, now in exile in the Persian gulf. Zuma has been subpoenaed to appear before the Supreme Court several times but manages to claim life-threatening illness that requires treatment in Russia or Cuba!
Cyril Ramaphosa, the current leader of the ANC, is a Venda. This is a small tribe with only 3 -4 million members, in the far north of South Africa, so he has no tribal power base. He served as a union leader and was one of the lead negotiators on behalf of the ANC when the change of power took place in South Africa in 1994. The hope that he would be able to deal with the institutionalized corruption, as well as the massive deterioration in the infrastructure since the ANC took power almost 30 years ago, has not materialized and things in South Africa have gone steadily downhill under his tenure. This includes a railway system that does not work because railway tracks have been cut up for scrap metal, a postal service that is non-functional, a bankrupt and non-functioning South African Airways, and a power grid that has planned blackouts for 2 hours at a time several times each day. Nelson Mandela must be turning in his grave!
WHAT ABOUT SLAVERY IN SOUTH AFRICA?
As has been noted elsewhere, slavery was rampant on the east coast of Africa. The center of the slave trade was Zanzibar where the Arab Sultan of Muscat held sway. Arab slave-traders employed one African tribe to round up members of other tribes for this purpose. For example, in Malawi (formerly the British colony of Nyasaland) Arabs used the Yao tribe to round up members of the Chewa tribe, sail them across lake Malawi in dhows, then march them in chain gangs across Tanganyika (now Tanzania) to Dar es Salaam ( the so-called “haven of peace”!), from whence they sailed the short distance to the island of Zanzibar. They likewise used members of tribes in Ruanda and Burundi to raid deep into the Congo and again walk slaves across Tanganyika to Dar es Salaam and on to Zanzibar. These slaves were shipped to various countries in the Arabian peninsula and south-east Asia. Furthermore, as already noted, African tribes themselves enslaved other tribes, as happened to the pygmies in the Congo, the clashes between the Hutu and Tutsi in Ruanda and Burundi, and the Matabele and Shona in Rhodesia. Before that, the Shona enslaved the Bushmen (San in Rhodesia) and had them work in the “Bushman pits” or early goldmines.
The slave trade on the east coast of Africa did not extend down as far as South Africa. The only actual slaves, as understood in the American context, were the slaves brought from the East Indies in the early days of the Cape (“Cape Malays”). On some of the old wine farms in the Cape that date from the 1680s, slave bells can still be seen as these structures have remained intact for centuries.
SUMMARY
In summary, this is my attempt at providing a little background to some of the questions that have been posed. I am a cardiologist and businessman, not a professional historian, but one who has taken a keen interest in history for many years. I also have the benefit of the fact that my family was intimately involved with some of the figures mentioned. My Scots paternal great-grandfather, Thomas Spence Leask, started a trading station in 1876 in what later became the town of Wolmaransstad, 150 miles northeast of the Kimberley diamond fields, just 8 years after the first diamonds were discovered. When gold was discovered in 1886 near Johannesburg, they found themselves conveniently situated on the coach route half-way between the diamond fields and the gold fields. This meant that they knew people like Cecil Rhodes, President Paul Kruger, and Generals Jan Smuts and Louis Botha as house guests. As a child, I was regaled with stories of these encounters by my great aunt who remembered meeting many of them.
My great-grandmother supposedly said of Cecil Rhodes that he was the sort of man who, if he was seated at the one end of the table and you were at the other end, and he wanted to talk to you, might not necessarily walk around the table to get to you. He might just walk over the table! I told the Rhodes scholarship selection committee for the first South-Africa-at-Large Rhodes Scholarship, which was open to candidates from all four South African provinces at the time as well as Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, this family story in 1971. I think this broke the ice and it helped me to win. You have to know when to take the gap!
Rhodes was certainly a man in a hurry. When he was dying at the age of 48 in his cottage in St. James/Muizenberg south of Cape Town, he is reported to have said: “So little done, so much to do” Let history be the judge of that statement.