Developments in South Africa (1867–2020)

Diamonds near the Orange River (1867) and gold on the Witwatersrand in the Transvaal (1886).

Afrikaans term meaning "foreigners" — mainly British migrants who flooded into the Transvaal for gold mining and had no vote despite paying heavy taxes.

Cecil Rhodes, through De Beers Consolidated Mines — small diggers were bought out because deep-level mining needed huge capital.

The small group of powerful financiers who came to dominate Witwatersrand gold mining, needing huge capital for deep, low-grade gold deposits.

Colonial taxes (like hut tax) and the need for cash wages pushed African men to leave rural homesteads; labour agents recruited them, often from far away, to work under contract in the mines.

Housing African miners in fenced, guarded compounds near the mine, isolated from surrounding towns and their own families.

A rule, informal then legal, reserving skilled and supervisory mining jobs for white workers while confining Africans to low-paid, unskilled labour.

British/Uitlanders: taxation without representation was unjust and Kruger's government was corrupt. Boers: fast enfranchisement would let outsiders vote away Transvaal independence.

Economic (control of goldfields/Randlord interests), political/strategic (British "paramountcy" over the region), and the Uitlander rights question used as the immediate trigger.

Farms were burned to deny guerrillas support, and over 100,000 Boer civilians were interned in camps where roughly 26,000 died from disease and poor conditions; thousands of Africans in separate camps also died.

The Boer republics surrendered their independence to Britain, in exchange for a promise of eventual self-government and no immediate political rights for Africans.

The suffering in the concentration camps deepened resentment of Britain and hardened a more defensive Afrikaner nationalism, which later shaped the politics that produced apartheid in 1948.

A law banning Black South Africans from buying or renting land outside small reserves, restricting them to about 7% of the country.

It promised apartheid — total legal racial separation — appealing to white voters (especially Afrikaners) fearful of losing jobs and land to Black South Africans.

Petty Apartheid = everyday segregation (benches, buses, entrances). Grand Apartheid = large-scale laws restructuring land, citizenship and education (Group Areas Act, Bantu Education, Bantustans).

Classified every South African at birth into a racial category, which then determined where they could live, work and go to school.

A declaration adopted by the ANC and allies at the Congress of the People, stating 'South Africa belongs to all who live in it' and demanding equal rights and land reform.

Police shot dead 69 people protesting the pass laws; it led to the ANC and PAC being banned and pushed the ANC toward armed struggle.

The ANC's armed wing, formed in 1961 with Nelson Mandela as first commander, which used sabotage against property to avoid civilian casualties.

Nelson Mandela and other ANC/MK leaders were tried after a raid on their Rivonia headquarters; Mandela gave his famous dock speech and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

That Black South Africans needed to overcome psychological oppression and build pride ('Black is beautiful') before political liberation was possible; Biko co-founded SASO in 1968.

Student protests against a rule forcing Afrikaans as a teaching language in Black schools; police opened fire, and unrest spread nationwide for months.

He was arrested in August 1977 and died in police custody after being beaten and driven while injured, becoming an international symbol of apartheid's brutality.

It shifted from ANC petitions, to the 1952 Defiance Campaign (civil disobedience), to armed struggle after 1960, to Black Consciousness and mass township uprisings from the 1970s–80s.

A Commonwealth agreement to discourage sporting contact with apartheid South Africa.

1986 US law imposing tough sanctions on South Africa; Congress overrode President Reagan's veto to pass it.

Foreign banks stopped renewing loans after 1985, causing a real economic crisis and pushing business leaders to demand political change.

It removed apartheid's anti-communist justification for Western support, and cut the ANC's Soviet-bloc backing, pushing both sides toward negotiation.

Neighbouring African countries (e.g. Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zimbabwe) that gave the ANC bases, training and diplomatic support.

De Klerk unbanned the ANC, PAC and Communist Party; Mandela was released 9 days later after 27 years in prison.

Convention for a Democratic South Africa — multi-party talks from 1991 that negotiated South Africa's new democratic constitution.

Mandela chose reconciliation over revenge and kept the ANC united behind negotiation; de Klerk took the political risk of unbanning liberation movements and accepted white minority rule had no future.

South Africa's first multiracial elections; the ANC won about 62% of the vote and Mandela became the first Black president.

A body led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1995–2003) that let perpetrators of apartheid-era crimes confess publicly in exchange for amnesty, aiming to expose truth rather than punish.

Many victims' families felt granting amnesty for confession was unjust, letting perpetrators go unpunished.

Persistent racial economic inequality (land/wealth still concentrated with white South Africans), plus later corruption and unemployment undermining ANC promises.