Front of Maropeng at the Cradle of Humankind

South Africa contains some of the oldest archaeological and human-fossil sites in the world.[1][2][3] Archaeologists have recovered extensive fossil remains from a series of caves in Gauteng Province. The area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been branded "the Cradle of Humankind". The sites include Sterkfontein, one of the richest sites for hominin fossils in the world, as well as Swartkrans, Gondolin Cave, Kromdraai, Cooper's Cave and Malapa. Raymond Dart identified the first hominin fossil discovered in Africa, the Taung Child (found near Taung) in 1924. Other hominin remains have come from the sites of Makapansgat in Limpopo Province; Cornelia and Florisbad in Free State Province; Border Cave in KwaZulu-Natal Province; Klasies River Caves in Eastern Cape Province; and Pinnacle Point, Elandsfontein and Die Kelders Cave in Western Cape Province.

These finds suggest that various hominid species existed in South Africa from about three million years ago, starting with Australopithecus africanus,[4] followed by Australopithecus sediba, Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo rhodesiensis, Homo helmei, Homo naledi and modern humans (Homo sapiens). Modern humans have inhabited Southern Africa for at least 170,000 years. Various researchers have located pebble tools within the Vaal River valley.[5][6]

 

Mapungubwe Hill, the site of the former capital of the Kingdom of Mapungubwe

Settlements of Bantu-speaking peoples, who were iron-using agriculturists and herdsmen, were present south of the Limpopo River (now the northern border with Botswana and Zimbabwe) by the 4th or 5th century CE. They displaced, conquered, and absorbed the original Khoisan, Khoikhoi and San peoples. The Bantu slowly moved south. The earliest ironworks in modern-day KwaZulu-Natal Province are believed to date from around 1050. The southernmost group was the Xhosa people, whose language incorporates certain linguistic traits from the earlier Khoisan people. The Xhosa reached the Great Fish River, in today's Eastern Cape Province. As they migrated, these larger Iron Age populations displaced or assimilated earlier peoples. In Mpumalanga Province, several stone circles have been found along with a stone arrangement that has been named Adam's Calendar, and the ruins are thought to be created by the Bakone, a Northern Sotho people.[7][8]

 

Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias planting the cross at Cape Point after being the first to successfully round the Cape of Good Hope.

In 1487, the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias led the first European voyage to land in southern Africa.[9] On 4 December, he landed at Walfisch Bay (now known as Walvis Bay in present-day Namibia). This was south of the furthest point reached in 1485 by his predecessor, the Portuguese navigator Diogo Cão (Cape Cross, north of the bay). Dias continued down the western coast of southern Africa. After 8 January 1488, prevented by storms from proceeding along the coast, he sailed out of sight of land and passed the southernmost point of Africa without seeing it. He reached as far up the eastern coast of Africa as, what he called, Rio do Infante, probably the present-day Groot River, in May 1488. On his return he saw the cape, which he named Cabo das Tormentas ('Cape of Storms'). King John II renamed the point Cabo da Boa Esperança, or Cape of Good Hope, as it led to the riches of the East Indies.[10] Dias' feat of navigation was immortalised in Luís de Camões' 1572 epic poem Os Lusíadas.

 

Charles Davidson Bell's 19th-century painting of Jan van Riebeeck, who founded the first European settlement in South Africa, arrives in Table Bay in 1652

By the early 17th century, Portugal's maritime power was starting to decline, and English and Dutch merchants competed to oust Portugal from its lucrative monopoly on the spice trade.[11] Representatives of the British East India Company sporadically called at the cape in search of provisions as early as 1601 but later came to favour Ascension Island and Saint Helena as alternative ports of refuge.[12] Dutch interest was aroused after 1647, when two employees of the Dutch East India Company were shipwrecked at the cape for several months. The sailors were able to survive by obtaining fresh water and meat from the natives.[12] They also sowed vegetables in the fertile soil.[13] Upon their return to Holland, they reported favourably on the cape's potential as a "warehouse and garden" for provisions to stock passing ships for long voyages.[12]

In 1652, a century and a half after the discovery of the cape sea route, Jan van Riebeeck established a victualling station at the Cape of Good Hope, at what would become Cape Town, on behalf of the Dutch East India Company.[14][15] In time, the cape became home to a large population of vrijlieden, also known as vrijburgers (lit. 'free citizens'), former company employees who stayed in Dutch territories overseas after serving their contracts.[15] Dutch traders also brought thousands of enslaved people to the fledgling colony from Indonesia, Madagascar, and parts of eastern Africa.[16] Some of the earliest mixed race communities in the country were formed between vrijburgers, enslaved people, and indigenous peoples.[17] This led to the development of a new ethnic group, the Cape Coloureds, most of whom adopted the Dutch language and Christian faith.[17]

The eastward expansion of Dutch colonists ushered in a series of wars with the southwesterly migrating Xhosa tribe, known as the Xhosa Wars, as both sides competed for the pastureland near the Great Fish River, which the colonists desired for grazing cattle.[18] Vrijburgers who became independent farmers on the frontier were known as Boers, with some adopting semi-nomadic lifestyles being denoted as trekboers.[18] The Boers formed loose militias, which they termed commandos, and forged alliances with Khoisan peoples to repel Xhosa raids.[18] Both sides launched bloody but inconclusive offensives, and sporadic violence, often accompanied by livestock theft, remained common for several decades.[18]

Great Britain occupied Cape Town between 1795 and 1803 to prevent it from falling under the control of the French First Republic, which had invaded the Low Countries.[18] After briefly returning to Dutch rule under the Batavian Republic in 1803, the cape was occupied again by the British in 1806.[19] Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, it was formally ceded to Great Britain and became an integral part of the British Empire.[20] British emigration to South Africa began around 1818, subsequently culminating in the arrival of the 1820 Settlers.[20] The new colonists were induced to settle for a variety of reasons, namely to increase the size of the European workforce and to bolster frontier regions against Xhosa incursions.[20]

 

Depiction of a Zulu attack on a Boer camp in February 1838

In the first two decades of the 19th century, the Zulu people grew in power and expanded their territory under their leader, Shaka.[21] Shaka's warfare indirectly led to the Mfecane ('crushing'), in which one to two million people were killed and the inland plateau was devastated and depopulated in the early 1820s.[22][23] An offshoot of the Zulu, the Matabele people created a larger empire that included large parts of the highveld under their king Mzilikazi.

During the early 19th century, many Dutch settlers departed from the Cape Colony, where they had been subjected to British control, in a series of migrant groups who came to be known as Voortrekkers, meaning "pathfinders" or "pioneers". They migrated to the future Natal, Free State, and Transvaal regions. The Boers founded the Boer republics: the South African Republic, the Natalia Republic, and the Orange Free State.

The discovery of diamonds in 1867 and gold in 1884 in the interior started the Mineral Revolution and increased economic growth and immigration. This intensified British efforts to gain control over the indigenous peoples. The struggle to control these important economic resources was a factor in relations between Europeans and the indigenous population and also between the Boers and the British.[24]

 

1876 map of South Africa

On 16 May 1876, President Thomas François Burgers of the South African Republic declared war against the Pedi people. King Sekhukhune managed to defeat the army on 1 August 1876. Another attack by the Lydenburg Volunteer Corps was also repulsed. On 16 February 1877, the two parties signed a peace treaty at Botshabelo.[25] The Boers' inability to subdue the Pedi led to the departure of Burgers in favour of Paul Kruger and the British annexation of the South African Republic. In 1878 and 1879 three British attacks were successfully repelled until Garnet Wolseley defeated Sekhukhune in November 1879 with an army of 2,000 British soldiers, Boers and 10,000 Swazis.

The Anglo-Zulu War was fought in 1879 between the British and the Zulu Kingdom. Following Lord Carnarvon's successful introduction of federation in Canada, it was thought that similar political effort, coupled with military campaigns, might succeed with the African kingdoms, tribal areas and Boer republics in South Africa. In 1874, Henry Bartle Frere was sent to South Africa as the British High Commissioner to bring such plans into being. Among the obstacles were the presence of the independent states of the Boers, and the Zululand army. The Zulu nation defeated the British at the Battle of Isandlwana. Eventually Zululand lost the war, resulting in the termination of the Zulu nation's independence.

 

The Battle of Majuba Hill was the last decisive battle during the First Boer War, and saw the British defeated by the Boers after 2 hours of fighting.

 

Boer women and children in a British concentration camp during the Second Boer War.

The Boer republics successfully resisted British encroachments during the First Boer War (1880–1881) using guerrilla warfare tactics, which were well-suited to local conditions. The British returned with greater numbers, more experience, and new strategy in the Second Boer War (1899–1902) and, although they suffered heavy casualties through attrition, they were ultimately successful. Over 27,000 Boer women and children died in the British concentration camps.[26]

South Africa's urban population grew rapidly from the end of the 19th century onward. After the devastation of the wars, Dutch-descendant Boer farmers fled into cities from the devastated Transvaal and Orange Free State territories to become the class of the white urban poor.[27]

Anti-British policies among white South Africans focused on independence. During the Dutch and British colonial years, racial segregation was mostly informal, though some legislation was enacted to control the settlement and movement of indigenous people, including the Native Location Act of 1879 and the system of pass laws.[28][29][30][31][32]

Eight years after the end of the Second Boer War and after four years of negotiation, the South Africa Act 1909 granted nominal independence while creating the Union of South Africa on 31 May 1910. The union was a dominion that included the former territories of the Cape, Transvaal and Natal colonies, as well as the Orange Free State republic.[33] The Natives' Land Act of 1913 severely restricted the ownership of land by blacks; at that stage they controlled only 7% of the country. The amount of land reserved for indigenous peoples was later marginally increased.[34]

In 1931, the union became fully sovereign from the United Kingdom with the passage of the Statute of Westminster, which abolished the last powers of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to legislate on the country. Only three other African countries—Liberia, Ethiopia, and Egypt—had been independent prior to that point. In 1934, the South African Party and National Party merged to form the United Party, seeking reconciliation between Afrikaners and English-speaking whites. In 1939, the party split over the entry of the union into World War II as an ally of the United Kingdom, a move which the National Party followers strongly opposed.

 

"For use by white persons" – apartheid sign in English and Afrikaans

In 1948, the National Party was elected to power. It strengthened the racial segregation begun under Dutch and British colonial rule. Taking Canada's Indian Act as a framework,[35] the nationalist government classified all peoples into three races (Whites, Blacks, Indians and Coloured people (people of mixed race)) and developed rights and limitations for each. The white minority (less than 20%)[36] controlled the vastly larger black majority. The legally institutionalised segregation became known as apartheid. While whites enjoyed the highest standard of living in all of Africa, comparable to First World Western nations, the black majority remained disadvantaged by almost every standard, including income, education, housing, and life expectancy.[37] The Freedom Charter, adopted in 1955 by the Congress Alliance, demanded a non-racial society and an end to discrimination.

On 31 May 1961, the country became a republic following a referendum (only open to white voters) which narrowly passed;[38] the British-dominated Natal province largely voted against the proposal. Elizabeth II lost the title Queen of South Africa, and the last Governor-General, Charles Robberts Swart, became state president. As a concession to the Westminster system, the appointment of the president remained an appointment by parliament and was virtually powerless until P. W. Botha's Constitution Act of 1983, which eliminated the office of prime minister and instated a unique "strong presidency" responsible to parliament. Pressured by other Commonwealth of Nations countries, South Africa withdrew from the organisation in 1961 and rejoined it in 1994.

Despite opposition to apartheid both within and outside the country, the government legislated for a continuation of apartheid. The security forces cracked down on internal dissent, and violence became widespread, with anti-apartheid organisations such as the African National Congress (ANC), the Azanian People's Organisation, and the Pan-Africanist Congress carrying out guerrilla warfare[39] and urban sabotage.[40] The three rival resistance movements also engaged in occasional inter-factional clashes as they jockeyed for domestic influence.[41] Apartheid became increasingly controversial, and several countries began to boycott business with the South African government because of its racial policies. These measures were later extended to international sanctions and the divestment of holdings by foreign investors.[42][43]

 

F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela shake hands in January 1992

The Mahlabatini Declaration of Faith, signed by Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Harry Schwarz in 1974, enshrined the principles of peaceful transition of power and equality for all, the first of such agreements by black and white political leaders in South Africa. Ultimately, F.W. de Klerk opened bilateral discussions with Nelson Mandela in 1993 for a transition of policies and government.

In 1990, the National Party government took the first step towards dismantling discrimination when it lifted the ban on the ANC and other political organisations. It released Nelson Mandela from prison after 27 years of serving a sentence for sabotage. A negotiation process followed. With approval from the white electorate in a 1992 referendum, the government continued negotiations to end apartheid. South Africa held its first universal elections in 1994, which the ANC won by an overwhelming majority. It has been in power ever since. The country rejoined the Commonwealth of Nations and became a member of the Southern African Development Community.

In post-apartheid South Africa, unemployment remained high. While many blacks have risen to middle or upper classes, the overall unemployment rate of black people worsened between 1994 and 2003 by official metrics but declined significantly using expanded definitions.[44] Poverty among whites, which was previously rare, increased.[45] The government struggled to achieve the monetary and fiscal discipline to ensure both redistribution of wealth and economic growth. The United Nations Human Development Index rose steadily until the mid-1990s[46] then fell from 1995 to 2005 before recovering its 1995 peak in 2013.[47] The fall is in large part attributable to the South African HIV/AIDS pandemic which saw South African life expectancy fall from a high point of 62 years in 1992 to a low of 53 in 2005,[48] and the failure of the government to take steps to address the pandemic in its early years.[49]

 

Supporters watching the 2010 FIFA World Cup with vuvuzelas in the township of Soweto, a suburb of Johannesburg

 

March in Johannesburg against xenophobia in South Africa, 23 April 2015

In May 2008, riots left over 60 people dead.[50] The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions estimated that over 100,000 people were driven from their homes.[51] The targets were mainly legal and illegal migrants, and refugees seeking asylum, but a third of the victims were South African citizens.[50] In a 2006 survey, the South African Migration Project concluded that South Africans are more opposed to immigration than any other national group.[52] The UN High Commissioner for Refugees in 2008 reported over 200,000 refugees applied for asylum in South Africa, almost four times as many as the year before.[53] These people were mainly from Zimbabwe, though many also come from Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia.[53] Competition over jobs, business opportunities, public services and housing has led to tension between refugees and host communities.[53] While xenophobia in South Africa is still a problem, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2011 reported that recent violence had not been as widespread as initially feared.[53] Nevertheless, as South Africa continues to grapple with racial issues, one of the proposed solutions has been to pass legislation, such as the pending Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill, to uphold South Africa's ban on racism and commitment to equality.[54][55]

By 2020, numerous warnings have been issued that South Africa is heading towards failed state status [56][57][58] with unsustainable government spending, high unemployment, high crime rates, corruption, failing government owned enterprises and collapsing infrastructure.[59][60][61] In 2022, the World Economic Forum said that South Africa risks state collapse and identified five major risks facing the country.[62] The Director-General of the South African Treasury, Dondo Mogajane, has said that, "SA is showing the signs of a failing state more common in countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia".[63] Former minister Jay Naidoo has said that South Africa is in serious trouble and is showing signs of a failed state, with record unemployment levels and the fact that many young people will not find a job in their lifetime.[64] Efficient Group chief economist Dawie Roodt said the country is in deep trouble, "South Africans have been getting poorer for a decade". He said he is very concerned because "32 million people get an income from the state. The state cannot afford this anymore".[65] Neal Froneman, CEO of Sibanye-Stillwater, said that crime is out of control, with 'mafia-style shakedowns' for procurement contracts becoming the norm. "Government leadership has created this problem and they are doing nothing. The government can't deal with it because it goes against their ideology."[66] Professor Eddy Maloka, from the Institute of Risk Management, "The ANC has left us in a mess. They've turned their crisis into ours... Government has collapsed in areas across the country. We are seeing inner-cities collapse and degenerate".[67] Professor David Himbara said that "South Africa is a classic case of a de facto one-party state with mismanaged institutions and endemic crime and corruption".[68] In May 2023, the Executive Chairman of Sygnia, Magda Wierzycka, said that "warnings of South Africa becoming a failed state are lagging reality – we are already there" [69].