The history of South Africa

South Africa holds some of the oldest evidence of human ancestors and of modern human behaviour anywhere on earth. For tens of thousands of years it was the land of San hunter-gatherers, joined about two thousand years ago by Khoikhoi herders and, from the early first millennium CE, by Bantu-speaking farmers who built chiefdoms and, at Mapungubwe, a trading kingdom. Dutch settlement at the Cape from 1652, British conquest, the Boer republics and the discovery of diamonds and gold turned the region into an industrial economy built on African labour and land dispossession. From 1948 the National Party enforced that order as apartheid, until resistance at home and isolation abroad forced negotiations that brought Nelson Mandela to power in the democratic election of 1994.

The limestone caves north-west of Johannesburg, now called the Cradle of Humankind, have produced a long series of fossils of early hominins. The Taung Child, identified by Raymond Dart in 1924, was the first known Australopithecus africanus, and Sterkfontein has yielded the skeleton known as Little Foot and many other australopithecines more than two million years old. In 2015 researchers described Homo naledi, a small-brained species from the Rising Star cave system that lived far more recently than its anatomy had suggested.

The southern coast is just as important for the story of Homo sapiens. At Klasies River and Pinnacle Point people were eating shellfish well over 100,000 years ago, and at Blombos Cave they made pieces of ochre engraved with cross-hatched lines and pierced shell beads, among the earliest known signs of symbolic thought. Border Cave on the Eswatini frontier preserves a long record of tools and burials.

The descendants of these early populations were the San, hunter-gatherers whose languages are known for their click consonants. They lived in small mobile bands across the whole subcontinent and left tens of thousands of rock paintings and engravings, especially in the Drakensberg and the Cederberg, showing eland, rain animals and trance rituals. About two thousand years ago some groups in the north-west took up sheep and later cattle herding, and these pastoralists, the Khoikhoi, spread down the western and southern coasts. Their larger herds and chiefly lineages gave them more organised societies than the San, though the two peoples often mixed, and Europeans later lumped them together as Khoisan.

From around the third or fourth century CE, farming communities who spoke Bantu languages crossed the Limpopo River, part of the long Bantu expansion from west-central Africa. They brought iron-working, cattle, sorghum and millet, and they settled the better-watered eastern half of the country, as far south as the Great Kei River on the coast. The terracotta Lydenburg Heads, from around 500 CE, are among the oldest sculptures of the region. Cattle were the measure of wealth and the currency of marriage and tribute, and over the centuries two broad language groups emerged: the Nguni along the coastal belt, ancestors of the Xhosa, Zulu, Swazi and Ndebele, and the Sotho-Tswana on the interior highveld.

In the Limpopo valley, trade with the Indian Ocean coast drew some communities into a more ambitious politics. Around 1000 CE herders and farmers settled at Bambandyanalo, also called K2, and exchanged ivory and gold for glass beads and cloth brought by Swahili and Arab traders to the coast of what is now Mozambique. Around 1220 the ruling elite moved to the flat summit of Mapungubwe Hill, separating themselves from commoners living below, a sign of the sacred kingship that marked the state. At its height Mapungubwe may have had about 5,000 people in the capital and controlled some 30,000 square kilometres. Its royal graves held gold foil objects, including the famous golden rhinoceros. The site was abandoned around 1300, and its role passed north to the Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe in present-day Zimbabwe. Later Venda and Shona-related settlements such as Thulamela, in today's Kruger Park, carried on the stone-walled tradition.

By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the highveld held large Sotho-Tswana towns such as Kaditshwene, home to many thousands of people who smelted iron and copper, while the Pedi built a powerful kingdom in the north-east. Along the coast, Xhosa chiefdoms extended to the Fish River, and in the north the Mthethwa and Ndwandwe were consolidating rival confederacies.

Portuguese sailors were the first Europeans to reach the region. Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, and Vasco da Gama passed on his way to India in 1497, but the Portuguese Empire made no settlement on this coast. The Dutch East India Company, the trading arm of the Dutch Republic, sent Jan van Riebeeck to Table Bay in 1652 to set up a station where ships could take on fresh food. This was the beginning of Cape Town and of the Cape Colony.

The company soon released some employees to farm as free burghers, and Khoikhoi herders, whose grazing land was taken, fought the settlers in wars in 1659 and 1673 to 1677. Defeat, the loss of cattle and a smallpox epidemic in 1713 destroyed Khoikhoi society in the south-west, and most survivors became labourers on settler farms. The company also imported enslaved people from Indonesia, India, Madagascar and Mozambique, and by the eighteenth century slaves outnumbered free settlers in the colony. French Huguenot refugees arrived in 1688. From the mixing of Europeans, Khoikhoi and slaves came the community later classed as Coloured, and from the Dutch spoken at the Cape grew Afrikaans.

Settler cattle farmers, the trekboers, pushed far into the interior during the eighteenth century, hunting down San bands who resisted. By the 1770s they met the Xhosa near the Fish River, and the first of nine frontier wars broke out in 1779. These conflicts would continue for a hundred years.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Britain seized the Cape in 1795 to keep it from France, handed it back to the Batavian Republic in 1803 and took it again in 1806, keeping it permanently. Under the British Empire, English became the language of government, several thousand British settlers were landed on the eastern frontier in 1820, and missionaries spread Christianity and schooling. A law of 1828 freed Khoikhoi from pass restrictions, and slavery was abolished in 1834, with a period of forced apprenticeship ending in 1838.

The British fought repeated frontier wars against the Xhosa and annexed their land in stages. In 1856 and 1857, after the prophecies of a young woman named Nongqawuse that killing cattle would bring the dead back and drive out the settlers, Xhosa communities destroyed their herds and crops. Some 40,000 people died of hunger, and the colonial government used the catastrophe to take more land and push survivors into labour.

In the early nineteenth century the north-eastern coast saw the rise of a new kind of state. Shaka, a son of the Zulu chief Senzangakhona, made his name as a commander in the Mthethwa army of Dingiswayo and became Zulu chief with Dingiswayo's support in 1816. He organised all young men into age regiments that served the king for years before they could marry, used a short stabbing spear for close combat alongside throwing spears, and perfected the encircling "horns" formation. After Dingiswayo's death Shaka defeated the Ndwandwe and absorbed the Mthethwa, and by the mid-1820s the Zulu Kingdom ruled over 100,000 people with a large standing army. He was assassinated in 1828 by his half-brothers Dingane and Mhlangana, and Dingane succeeded him.

The wars and migrations of this period are called the mfecane, "the crushing", in Nguni, and the difaqane in Sotho. Refugee groups spread far beyond the region: Zwangendaba's Ngoni went as far as Tanzania, Soshangane founded the Gaza kingdom in Mozambique, and Mzilikazi led the Ndebele first onto the highveld and later into present-day Zimbabwe. Other leaders built new kingdoms by gathering refugees, among them Moshoeshoe, who founded the Basotho nation from his mountain stronghold at Thaba Bosiu in what became Lesotho, and Sobhuza, founder of the Swazi state that became Eswatini. Historians once blamed the upheaval on Shaka alone. Since the 1980s many have argued that drought, competition for trade at Delagoa Bay, slave raiding and pressure from the Cape frontier all played a part, though the extent of each is still debated.

From 1835 several thousand Dutch-speaking farmers, resentful of British rule, the end of slavery and the frontier settlement, left the Cape with their wagons in what came to be called the Great Trek. In Natal the Zulu king Dingane had the leader Piet Retief and his party killed in February 1838, and on 16 December 1838 a Voortrekker force defeated a large Zulu army at the Ncome River, which they named Blood River. Their republic of Natalia was annexed by Britain in 1843, and Natal became a British colony that later imported indentured labourers from India to work its sugar plantations from 1860.

On the highveld the trekkers fought Mzilikazi's Ndebele and other African states and founded two republics that Britain recognised: the South African Republic, or Transvaal, in 1852 and the Orange Free State in 1854. Both restricted citizenship to whites. The Free State fought a series of wars with Moshoeshoe between 1858 and 1868 and took much of the fertile Caledon valley before Britain made Basutoland a protectorate in 1868.

The discovery of diamonds near Kimberley in 1867 and of a vast gold reef on the Witwatersrand in 1886 transformed the region. Britain annexed the diamond fields in 1871, and Cecil Rhodes built De Beers into a monopoly. The gold rush created Johannesburg almost overnight, and deep-level mining needed huge capital and armies of migrant African workers, housed in closed compounds and controlled by passes.

The new wealth sharpened British ambitions during the Scramble for Africa. Britain annexed the Transvaal in 1877, and in 1879 it invaded the Zulu kingdom. A Zulu army destroyed a British column at Isandlwana in January 1879, but the British won at Ulundi in July, exiled King Cetshwayo and broke the kingdom into thirteen chiefdoms. The same year British forces conquered the Pedi. The Transvaal Boers rebelled in 1880 and won independence back after defeating the British at Majuba in 1881. By the end of the century almost every African polity in the region had been conquered, and Basutoland, Bechuanaland, now Botswana, and Swaziland had become British protectorates.

Tension between the Transvaal and the British, sharpened by the failed Jameson Raid of 1895 to 1896 and by the treatment of foreign miners on the Rand, led to war in October 1899. The Boers won early victories and besieged Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking, and a young war correspondent, Winston Churchill, was captured and escaped. Britain poured in troops, took Pretoria in 1900 and then fought a long guerrilla war, burning farms and herding Boer families and black Africans into concentration camps. About 26,000 Boer women and children died in the camps, mostly of disease, and many thousands of black internees died in separate camps. The war ended with the Treaty of Vereeniging in May 1902, which annexed the republics but promised them self-government and left the question of African voting rights aside.

On 31 May 1910 the Cape, Natal, the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony joined as the Union of South Africa, a self-governing dominion with Louis Botha as prime minister. Only in the Cape could some black and Coloured men vote, under a property qualification. In response, African leaders founded the South African Native National Congress in Bloemfontein in 1912, renamed the African National Congress in 1923. The Natives Land Act of 1913 confined African land ownership to reserves covering about 7 percent of the country, later raised to about 13 percent. Mahatma Gandhi, who lived in South Africa from 1893 to 1914, developed his method of non-violent resistance in campaigns against laws aimed at Indians.

In World War I South Africa put down a rebellion by Afrikaners who sympathised with Germany and then conquered German South West Africa, the colony of the German Empire that it later ruled under a League of Nations mandate as present-day Namibia. Over 600 members of the South African Native Labour Corps died when the troopship Mendi sank in the English Channel in 1917.

Between the wars governments under J. B. M. Hertzog and Jan Smuts built a system of segregation: job reservation for whites after the white miners' Rand Revolt of 1922, urban pass laws, and the removal of black voters in the Cape from the common roll in 1936. Afrikaner nationalism grew among poor whites driven off the land, organised through the secret Broederbond and the cultural movement that celebrated the Great Trek. In World War II South Africa fought for the Allies in East Africa, North Africa and Italy, and Smuts helped draft the preamble of the United Nations Charter. Wartime industry drew many Africans into the cities, and miners struck in 1946.

The National Party, led by D. F. Malan, won the 1948 election on a programme of apartheid, "separateness". Over the next decade it turned segregation into a comprehensive legal system. The Population Registration Act of 1950 classified every person as White, Coloured, Indian or Native (later Bantu), the Group Areas Act assigned each group to separate residential areas, marriage and sex across colour lines were banned, and Bantu Education from 1953 gave African children a deliberately inferior schooling. Pass laws controlled where Africans could live and work, and hundreds of thousands were arrested under them every year. Coloured voters were removed from the common roll in the 1950s.

The ANC, joined by Indian, Coloured and white allies, answered with mass non-violent campaigns: the Defiance Campaign of 1952 and the Freedom Charter of 1955, which declared that South Africa belonged to all who lived in it. The state charged 156 leaders with treason in 1956, though all were eventually acquitted. On 21 March 1960 police at Sharpeville opened fire on a crowd protesting against the pass laws, killing 69 people. The government banned the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress, and both turned to armed struggle. In 1961 South Africa became a republic and left the Commonwealth, and Nelson Mandela helped found the armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe, which began a sabotage campaign. Arrested, Mandela and other leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivonia trial in 1964 and sent to Robben Island.

Under Hendrik Verwoerd, apartheid's chief architect, the government pursued "grand apartheid", assigning Africans to ethnic homelands that were meant to become separate states, so that black South Africans would lose their citizenship. Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei were declared independent between 1976 and 1981, though no other country recognised them. More than three million people were forcibly removed from their homes in towns and on white-owned farms and dumped in resettlement areas. On 16 June 1976 police fired on schoolchildren in Soweto marching against the compulsory use of Afrikaans in schools, and the uprising that followed left hundreds dead across the country. The Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko died after beatings in police custody in 1977.

During the Cold War the government presented itself as a bulwark against communism, since the ANC was allied with the South African Communist Party and backed by the Soviet Union. South African forces fought in Angola and Namibia, raided neighbouring states and secretly built six nuclear weapons, later dismantled. P. W. Botha, prime minister from 1978, introduced a tricameral parliament in 1983 that gave Coloured and Indian South Africans separate chambers but excluded the African majority. This provoked a nationwide revolt in the townships, led by the United Democratic Front, which the state met with states of emergency, mass detentions and death squads, while violence between ANC supporters and the Zulu nationalist Inkatha movement killed thousands. Sanctions, a debt crisis and sports and cultural boycotts deepened the country's isolation, though the governments of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan resisted the strongest measures.

F. W. de Klerk, who replaced Botha in 1989, announced on 2 February 1990 that the ANC, the PAC and the Communist Party were unbanned, and Mandela walked free on 11 February after 27 years in prison. Negotiations between 1991 and 1993 were shaken by political killings, including the assassination of the Communist leader Chris Hani in April 1993, but produced an interim constitution. Mandela and de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. On 27 April 1994 South Africans of all races voted together for the first time, the ANC won almost 63 percent, and Mandela was inaugurated as president in May at the head of a Government of National Unity.

The new state adopted a constitution in 1996 with one of the world's most extensive bills of rights, eleven official languages and a powerful constitutional court. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, heard testimony from victims and perpetrators from 1996 and offered amnesty in exchange for full disclosure. Its 1998 report described apartheid as a crime against humanity and also found the ANC responsible for abuses. The ANC government extended electricity, water and housing to millions and built a welfare system of social grants, but it chose market-friendly economic policies, and inequality remained among the highest in the world.

Thabo Mbeki, president from 1999 to 2008, presided over steady growth but was widely criticised for questioning the science of HIV and AIDS while the epidemic killed hundreds of thousands. Jacob Zuma, president from 2009, was dogged by allegations that private interests had captured state institutions. In August 2012 police shot dead 34 striking miners at Marikana. Mandela died in December 2013. Zuma resigned under party pressure in 2018 and was succeeded by Cyril Ramaphosa, and an official inquiry led by Judge Raymond Zondo later documented extensive corruption during his presidency. When Zuma was jailed for contempt of court in July 2021, riots and looting in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng left more than 300 people dead.

In the general election of May 2024 the ANC fell to about 40 percent of the vote and lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since 1994. Ramaphosa was re-elected president by parliament and formed a Government of National Unity with the Democratic Alliance, which came second, and several smaller parties. The country has the largest and most industrialised economy in Africa and remains a member of the BRICS group, but it continues to face very high unemployment, at over 33 percent in 2026, persistent poverty and violent crime, after a long electricity crisis that brought years of rolling power cuts eased in 2024.