The Republic of South Africa (1 ' 127 ' 000 km2) is placed at the margins of the Black Africa as well by its southern geographical location as by an economy developed on a African scale, and especially by the persistent effects of an social organization based on the racial segregation, apartheid - “separate development” - which a long time sat the authority of a power resulting from the white minority: the political change is too recent so that this economic and social construction, but so geographical, is unobtrusive.
First inhabitants
The first inhabitants of South Africa were the nonNegroid populations hunters-gatherers San, and Khoi, also stockbreeders, whom one often gathers under the name of Bushmen or Hottentot. The Bantu migration reached Transvaal at the beginning of the Christian era and continued towards the south mainly along the Eastern coast: to the XIV E or the XV E century, the black settlement covered the same surface appreciably as today. The discovery then the colonization of this area by Europeans opened the era of a difficult cohabitation.
European establishment
In 1487, the Portuguese forwarding of Bartolomeu Dias reaches the Cape of Good Hope, called course of the Storms then. in 1652, the Dutchman Jan Van Riebeeck establishes the first European counter in South Africa, in Table Bay (today Capetown), to be used as stopover with the ships of the East India Company Eastern. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 caused a French emigration Huguenot. Their arrival coincided with the beginning of the slavery of the Blacks, while the Europeans, pushed by the lack of grounds, gained the interior of the country.
The Dutch pioneers (called later Boers, of a word Dutch who means country, or Afrikaner, which speaks Afrikaans) are established thus in the east, where they face the Bantus. A war bursts in 1779 (the first war kaffir) close to Great Fish River between the Dutchmen and Xhosas, who continued their movement towards the South.
A share of the Dutch colonists quickly was in conflict with the English, with which it Congress of Vienna had, in 1815, allotted the colony of the Cape. Boers reproach them a policy considered to be too favorable to the Blacks, in particular the abolition of slavery in 1833. In order to preserve their lifestyle, this irreconcilable fraction started as from 1834 a movement towards the interior of the country, the Large Trekking, which they brought closer to the biblical exodus. Penetrating without difficulty in emptied interior regions of their population by warlike forwardings of the Zulus, they ran up against those in the area of Native, but managed to control the interior and to constitute there the republics independent of the free Orange state (1854) and of Transvaal (1852), kinds of pastoral patriarchates, with the infrastructures of most summary.
At the end of the XIX E century, the discovery of diamond and gold mines attracts in these republics of the immigrants, in particular British, towards the interior of the country, where conflicts burst about the property of the ground. Paul Kruger, president of Transvaal, oppose the British claims on the area, and in particular Cecil Rhodos, Prime Minister for the colony of the Cape and creator of British South Africa Company (1889), which sought to control Transvaal. The failure of the British raid of Doctor Jameson, in 1896, did nothing but worsen one increasing tension. in 1899 burst the war anglo-boer of Transvaal, which, after a hardness campaign extreme, was completed in 1902 by a British victory and the disappearance of the independent republics.
Birth of a country
The South African Union, British dominion, were made up in 1909 by the regrouping of the old British colonies of the Cape and Native and of the two overcome republics boers. Its participation in the First World War made of it a recognized international partner who accepted in 1920 a mandate of the League of Nations to manage the German African South-west, of which it tended to make a fifth province.
Within this framework, the Afrikaner ones, defeated militarily, economically dominated by the anglophone minority, harnessed themselves with the conquest of the political power. The first governments, consisted an alliance of the english-speaking and the Afrikaner moderate ones had to face a hostile opinion boer with Great Britain and the opposition of “small White” which claimed economic and social privileges because of their race. The government of South African Party of the Smuts general thus had to militarily repress, in 1922, the strike of the white minors claiming that the qualified jobs are reserved to them.
United Party of Barry Hertzog, arrived at the power in 1924 represented the Afrikaner base best and reinforced the color bar. The economic crisis of the years 1930, very hard, led to a bringing together between these two political clouts, which could not dam up the rise of a more radical political clout, the national Party of Doctor Malan.
The mode of apartheid
Arrived at the power in 1948, the national Party undertook to systematize a policy of apartheid, or “separated development”, by giving strict geographical contents to a policy of racial discrimination appeared right from the start. The Act Land of 1913, already, limited to 13% of the country the areas where the Blacks could acquire grounds: the “reserves” defined for each “tribe” or “nation” constituted a kind of horseshoe à on the peripheries of the country, with north (Tswana in particular) and especially with the east (Zulu, Xhosa).
Though less harshly struck by this policy, Asiatiques and Mongrel they lost also the essence of their mean advantages. Group Areas Act of 1950 aimed in particular to the elimination of the “black spots” resulting from purchases operated by the Blacks before 1913. One undertook to expel “white grounds” the “surpluses” of black population, tenants and squatters, to support a modernization of European agriculture: between 1960 and 1983, approximately 2 ' 600 ' 000 Blacks were driven out “white” rural areas and were returned in the reserves where Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 - by organizing an autonomous system of administration of the reserves - prepared the institution of the Bantustans. Those were in the long term to become politically independent, though they were economically nonviable: four of them (Transkei, Bophutatswana, Venda and Ciskei) accepted between 1976 and 1981 an independence that the international community did not recognize.
foreigners in their own country, the Blacks could more and more with difficulty go to reside in the cities, where one sought to reduce to the maximum their number: only those could come there which justified of a work contract: the step, interior passport imposed on the Blacks since 1923, allowed the control of the migrations. The racial segregation was systematized in the districts, at the cost of multiple destruction and expulsions and of the construction of townships for the populations of color.
One endeavoured, without much success, to create industries in edge of the Bantustans, but many workers had outward journey to work in the white cities while lying in the reserves, at the cost of great daily displacements. The opposition to the system of apartheid was broken: since 1950, the Communist party, multiracial, was prohibited. National African Congress (ANC) and the Side Africanist Congress were it in 1960 after the demonstrations against the system of the step, which led to the massacre of Sharpeville. The leaders of the ANC, and in particular Nelson Mandela were condemned to the life imprisonment in 1964. South Africa was detached from the outside world: in 1961, it left the Commonwealth, opposite with apartheid, and the republic (Republic of South Africa) was proclaimed on on May 31st.
The new mode
That could not be enough to stop the protest movement of the Blacks against apartheid; the establishment of the state of emergency (September 1984 - June 1986) could not be effective any more. To preserve essence, president Botha had to finish some with “petty apartheid”, to liberalize the installation of the Blacks downtown, and to try to associate with the political power the groups Asian and mongrel, which, in 1987, profited from a Room at the Parliament. To divide the Blacks, it supported Inkatha Freedom Party, of Mangosuthu Buthelezi, at tribal base Zulu. These half-measures not satisfying anybody and thus increasing the disorder, P.W. Botha had in 1989 to resign of the presidency to the profit of Frederik Willem de Klerk.
This one, to preserve the white presence in South Africa, and support of the great powers and the international financial institutions, made the choice of a difficult negotiation with the ANC, which was legalized, releasing in 1990 its charismatic leader, Nelson Mandela. in 1991, apartheid was officially abolished by the Parliament. In spite of confrontations violent one between the ANC and Inkatha, supported in writing pad by a fraction of the police force, in spite of the resistance of the white mediums extremists, the political process went in its term: a new Constitution, temporary, were adopted in December 1993 by a referendum in which only the White took part.
The first multiracial elections of April 1994, in which Inkatha finally agreed to take part, ensured the victory of the ANC, with 60% of the votes. The national Party of Frederik De Klerk continued like the second force of the country (20%), rejoining not only the majority of the White but also that of the Indians, the Mongrels and Inkatha, and kept the control of Native, Zulu country. On May 9th, the 400 deputies of the new Parliament carried Nelson Mandela to the presidency of the Republic, Thabo Mbeki and Frederik De Klerk becoming vice-presidents. National party and Inkatha entered a coalition government. At the conclusion of the organized general elections in June 1999, the African National congress (ANC) collected more than 66 % of the votes cast, that is to say 266 of the 400 seats to the National Assembly, and the designated successor of Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, was elected in charge of the state by the Parliament lately made up.