South Africa, the rise of a nation

Before the Suez Canal was built, European ships sailing to and from India and the Far East had to round the south-west point of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope. In 1652 the Dutch founded today’s Cape Town. There the ship’s crew could get food and fresh water for their long voyages. A lot of farmers arrived from the Netherlands and the Dutch soon began to expand, claiming more and more land. This is why people in South Africa speak Afrikaans, a dialect of Dutch.

South Africans speak English too, because at the end of the 18th centuary the British occupied the Cape and turned it into a colony. Farmers were shipped in from Britain, and English was declared the official language. They abolished slavery, but the Boers, as the Dutch settlers called themselves, didn’t like this. So, they moved inland and up north. There they created two republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. 

When diamond and gold fields were discovered during the second half of the 19th centuary, both the British and the Dutch wanted their share. The Boer War broke out in 1899 and lasted three long years. It had a devastating effect on the country.  It wasn’t until 1910 that the Union of South Africa was formed, made up of the different provinces.

Eventhough the black people were in majority they had no part in the negotiations to form the union, no democratic rights at all. So the blacks formed their own organisation, the African National Congress (ANC). They tried to convince the government that they should be treated as equals. But instead the situation got worse and worse.

The 1960s and 70s stand out as a very dark period in the South African history. The government created the apartheid system: black people, for example, were not allowed to visit beaches or public buildings like libraries. Even the benches in the parks had signs saying:” Whites only”! Wherever black people went, they had to show their identity documents. They couldn’t work where they wanted to, and they couldn’t own land. Black children weren’t allowed in white schools and mixed marriages were forbidden.

The blacks protested of course – mostly through the ANC – and in the riots in Sharpeville in 1960, 69 blacks were killed. Afterwards the ANC was banned and its leader, Nelson Mandela, was put in prison.

It wasn’t until the new president, F.W. de Klerk, lifted the ban on the ANC in 1990, that Nelson Mandela was released – after 28 years in prison. Then things happened quickly. During the elections of 1994, the first election where blacks were allowed to vote, the ANC won a landslide victory. Nelson Mandela became president. The”new” Republic of South Africa was born.

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