South Africa

Southern Africa is one of the great theatres of human origins. In the dolomitic caves at Sterkfontein, Swartkrans and Kromdraai north-west of Johannesburg — collectively the Cradle of Humankind, inscribed by UNESCO in 1999 — palaeontologists have recovered an extraordinary record of early hominins, including the celebrated Australopithecus africanus skull known as Mrs Ples and the near-complete skeleton called Little Foot. These finds, spanning millions of years, helped establish Africa as the birthplace of humanity.

The oldest enduring inhabitants of the region are the San, hunter-gatherers whose ancestors have lived in southern Africa for tens of thousands of years and whose rock art adorns shelters across the subcontinent. Around two thousand years ago they were joined by the Khoekhoe (Khoikhoi), pastoralists who herded sheep and cattle and moved seasonally in search of grazing. Together often called the Khoisan, these peoples shared the land long before any farming societies or European ships arrived.

From the early centuries of the Common Era, Bantu-speaking farmers — ancestors of today's Nguni, Sotho-Tswana, Venda and Tsonga peoples — spread southward into the eastern, better-watered half of the region, bringing iron-working, cattle and crops such as sorghum and millet. By the second millennium they had built substantial societies. The most striking was the kingdom of Mapungubwe near the Limpopo, which flourished from about 1220 to 1300 as southern Africa's first state-level society, trading gold and ivory to the Indian Ocean coast and leaving behind exquisite gold artefacts such as a small gold-foil rhinoceros.

Turning points

1. Deep prehistoryFormation

   The Cradle of Humankind

   The Sterkfontein and Swartkrans caves preserve hominin fossils spanning millions of years, including Mrs Ples and Little Foot, marking southern Africa as a key site of human origins; the area was inscribed by UNESCO in 1999.

   [2] [1] [4]

2. c. 1st millennium BCEPeoples & Migration

   San and Khoekhoe of the subcontinent

   The San, hunter-gatherers present for tens of thousands of years, were joined around two thousand years ago by the herding Khoekhoe, together forming the long-established Khoisan societies of the region.

   ↗See the data

   [1] [4]

3. early centuries CEPeoples & Migration

   Bantu-speaking farmers spread south

   Bantu-speaking communities bringing iron-working, cattle and cultivated crops settled the eastern half of southern Africa, ancestors of the region's Nguni, Sotho-Tswana, Venda and Tsonga peoples.

   ↗See the data

   [1] [4]

4. c. 1220–1300Formation

   The kingdom of Mapungubwe

   Near the Limpopo, Mapungubwe rose as southern Africa's first state-level society, trading gold and ivory to the Indian Ocean coast and producing famed gold artefacts before its decline around 1300.

   [3] [1]

Figures of the era

On 6 April 1652 a small Dutch East India Company (VOC) expedition under Jan van Riebeeck landed at the foot of Table Mountain and built a fort to supply passing ships with fresh produce on the long voyage between Europe and Asia. What began as a victualling station soon became a colony of settlement. Company employees were released as free burghers to farm, and from 1657 the colony expanded inland, encroaching on the grazing lands of the Khoekhoe.

Settlement brought conflict and catastrophe for the indigenous peoples. The Khoekhoe lost land and cattle to the expanding colony and were devastated by warfare and by a smallpox epidemic in 1713 that shattered their societies. To meet its demand for labour, the VOC imported enslaved people from across the Indian Ocean world — from Madagascar, East Africa, India and the Indonesian archipelago — whose descendants, together with the Khoekhoe and incoming Europeans, formed the diverse population of the western Cape and shaped its language and culture.

Over the eighteenth century the colony's frontier pushed eastward and northward as semi-nomadic cattle farmers, the trekboers, sought new pastures. By the 1770s they had reached the Great Fish River, where they collided with the Xhosa, beginning a long series of frontier wars. A society of settler farmers, enslaved labourers, dispossessed Khoekhoe and indigenous African peoples thus took shape under Company rule, riven by the inequalities that would echo through South African history.

Turning points

1. 6 April 1652Colonisation

   Van Riebeeck founds the Cape station

   Jan van Riebeeck landed at Table Bay and established a Dutch East India Company refreshment station, the beginning of permanent European settlement in South Africa.

   ↗See the data

   [5] [6] [1]

2. from 1658Peoples & Migration

   Slavery at the Cape

   The Company began importing enslaved people from Madagascar, East Africa, India and the Indonesian archipelago, founding a slave society whose labour underpinned the colony for nearly two centuries.

   ↗See the data

   [7] [1]

3. 1713Catastrophe

   Smallpox devastates the Khoekhoe

   A smallpox epidemic introduced by passing ships killed great numbers of Khoekhoe, accelerating the loss of their land, herds and independence as the colony expanded.

   ↗See the data

   [1] [7]

4. 1779War & Rupture

   First Cape Frontier War

   As trekboers reached the Great Fish River they clashed with the Xhosa, beginning a century-long series of frontier wars along the colony's eastern edge.

   ↗See the data

   [1]

Figures of the era

Britain occupied the Cape in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars and retained it permanently, ushering in a new colonial order. British rule brought the English language, the 1820 Settlers, and reforms that unsettled the established Dutch-speaking colonists — above all the banning of the slave trade and the abolition of slavery itself across the British Empire, which took effect at the Cape on 1 December 1834. Many Boer farmers resented these changes and the colony's eastern-frontier policies.

In the same era the interior was transformed by the Mfecane (in Sesotho, the Difaqane), a period of widespread warfare, migration and state formation in the 1810s and 1820s. Its central engine was the rise of the Zulu kingdom under Shaka, who from about 1816 forged a powerful centralised state and a reorganised army that subjugated neighbouring chiefdoms. The resulting wars and displacements rippled across the subcontinent, founding new kingdoms such as the Ndebele, Sotho and Swazi even as they brought great suffering.

From 1836 thousands of disaffected Boers — the Voortrekkers — left the Cape Colony on the Great Trek, seeking land and independence beyond British control. Moving into the highveld and Natal, they clashed with African kingdoms; at the Battle of Blood River on 16 December 1838 a Voortrekker commando defeated a large Zulu force. Over the following years the trekkers established the independent Boer republics of the Transvaal (South African Republic) and the Orange Free State, which Britain recognised in the 1850s, fracturing the region into competing British colonies, Boer republics and African kingdoms.

Turning points

1. 1806Colonisation

   Britain seizes the Cape

   British forces occupied the Cape Colony during the Napoleonic Wars, beginning lasting British rule confirmed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

   ↗See the data

   [1] [7]

2. c. 1816–1828War & Rupture

   Rise of the Zulu kingdom and the Mfecane

   Shaka built the Zulu into a powerful centralised kingdom with a reorganised army; the wars and migrations of the Mfecane reshaped the political map of southern Africa.

   ↗See the data

   [8] [9] [10]

3. 1 December 1834Politics & Power

   Abolition of slavery at the Cape

   Slavery was abolished across the British Empire, freeing enslaved people at the Cape and deepening Boer discontent that helped spark the Great Trek.

   [7] [1]

4. from 1836Peoples & Migration

   The Great Trek

   Thousands of Voortrekkers left the Cape Colony for the interior, seeking independence from British rule and founding new Boer communities on lands occupied by African peoples.

   ↗See the data

   [11] [1]

5. 16 December 1838War & Rupture

   Battle of Blood River

   A Voortrekker commando under Andries Pretorius defeated a large Zulu army at the Ncome (Blood) River, a battle long mythologised in Afrikaner nationalism and preceding the rise of Boer republics.

   ↗See the data

   [11] [1]

Figures of the era

The discovery of diamonds near Kimberley in 1867 and of vast gold reefs on the Witwatersrand in 1886 set off a mineral revolution that remade the region. Mining drew immense foreign capital, swelled new cities such as Johannesburg, and created a migrant-labour system that pulled Black workers into the mines under harsh, segregated conditions — laying economic foundations for the racial order to come. The Transvaal's gold made the Boer republics the richest prize in the subcontinent and intensified British imperial designs.

Tensions between Britain and the Boer republics over the goldfields and the rights of immigrant uitlanders erupted into the South African War (Anglo-Boer War) of 1899 to 1902. After early Boer successes, Britain poured in nearly half a million troops; the Boers turned to guerrilla warfare, and the British responded with farm-burning and a system of concentration camps in which tens of thousands of Boer and Black civilians died of disease and malnutrition. The war ended with the Treaty of Vereeniging on 31 May 1902, bringing the republics under the British Crown.

Reconstruction and reconciliation between British and Afrikaner whites led to political union. A National Convention drafted a constitution, enacted by the British Parliament as the South Africa Act of 1909, and on 31 May 1910 the Cape, Natal, Transvaal and Orange River colonies were joined into the self-governing Union of South Africa, with Louis Botha as first prime minister. The Union was a white settlement: the franchise was overwhelmingly reserved for whites, and the Black majority was excluded from the new state's political life — a grievance that prompted the founding of the South African Native National Congress, later the ANC, in 1912.

Turning points

1. 1867Economy & Trade

   Diamonds discovered at Kimberley

   The discovery of diamonds near the Vaal and Orange rivers triggered a rush to Kimberley, beginning the mineral revolution and drawing capital and migrant labour into the region.

   ↗See the data

   [12] [13]

2. 1886Economy & Trade

   Gold found on the Witwatersrand

   The discovery of the world's largest goldfield on the Witwatersrand created Johannesburg, transformed the Transvaal's wealth, and entrenched a segregated migrant-labour system.

   ↗See the data

   [12] [13]

3. 1899–1902War & Rupture

   The South African War

   War between Britain and the Boer republics featured guerrilla campaigns and British concentration camps in which tens of thousands of Boer and Black civilians died.

   ↗See the data

   [14] [15] [16]

4. 31 May 1902Politics & Power

   Treaty of Vereeniging

   The peace signed at Pretoria ended the South African War, bringing the Transvaal and Orange Free State under British sovereignty with promises of eventual self-government.

   [16] [15]

5. 31 May 1910Formation

   Union of South Africa

   The four British colonies were united into the self-governing Union of South Africa under the South Africa Act, a white-controlled state that excluded the Black majority from political power.

   [17] [18] [1]

Figures of the era

In 1948 the National Party won power and began to construct apartheid, a sweeping legal architecture of racial separation and white supremacy. The Population Registration Act of 1950 classified every person by race; the Group Areas Act of 1950 carved cities into racial zones and drove millions from their homes through forced removals; pass laws controlled the movement of Black South Africans; and the Bantustan system stripped Black citizens of national rights by assigning them to nominally self-governing 'homelands'. Apartheid degraded the dignity and shattered the lives of the Black majority and of Coloured and Indian South Africans across every sphere of existence.

Resistance was sustained and courageous, and it was met with brutal repression. The African National Congress launched the Defiance Campaign in 1952 and, with allies, adopted the Freedom Charter in 1955. On 21 March 1960, police opened fire on a peaceful crowd protesting the pass laws at Sharpeville, killing at least 69 people, many shot in the back; the Sharpeville massacre shocked the world, brought the banning of the ANC and Pan Africanist Congress, and turned the struggle toward armed resistance. Nelson Mandela and other leaders were imprisoned for life at the Rivonia Trial in 1964. On 16 June 1976, the Soweto uprising — sparked by protest against compulsory teaching in Afrikaans — saw schoolchildren shot down by police, galvanising a new generation of resistance.

Through the 1980s, mass township revolt, trade-union militancy, the United Democratic Front, and an intensifying campaign of international sanctions and isolation made apartheid unsustainable. Faced with deepening crisis, President F. W. de Klerk in February 1990 unbanned the ANC and other organisations and, on 11 February 1990, freed Nelson Mandela after more than 27 years in prison. Negotiations, though shadowed by violence, produced an interim constitution and a date for the country's first democratic election — the formal end of apartheid.

Turning points

1. 1948Politics & Power

   National Party institutes apartheid

   The National Party won the 1948 election and began enacting apartheid, including the Population Registration Act and Group Areas Act of 1950, codifying racial classification, segregation and forced removals.

   [19] [20]

2. 21 March 1960Politics & Power

   Sharpeville massacre

   Police fired on a peaceful anti-pass-law protest at Sharpeville, killing at least 69 people and wounding scores more; the atrocity drew global condemnation and led to the banning of the ANC and PAC.

   [21] [22] [28]

3. 1964Politics & Power

   Rivonia Trial imprisons Mandela

   Nelson Mandela and fellow leaders of the ANC's armed wing were convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment, beginning Mandela's 27 years behind bars.

   [23] [24]

4. 16 June 1976Politics & Power

   Soweto uprising

   Student protests against compulsory instruction in Afrikaans were met with police gunfire in Soweto, killing many, including children, and igniting nationwide resistance.

   [19] [13] [28]

5. 11 February 1990Politics & Power

   Mandela freed and the ANC unbanned

   President F. W. de Klerk unbanned the ANC, PAC and other organisations and released Nelson Mandela from prison, opening the way to negotiations that would dismantle apartheid.

   [23] [24] [19]

Figures of the era

The first democratic, non-racial election was held over several days in late April 1994, with the principal voting day on 27 April — now commemorated as Freedom Day. Some twenty million people voted, an 86.9 percent turnout, and the African National Congress won decisively with about 62.65 percent of the vote. On 10 May 1994 Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the first president of a free and democratic South Africa, a moment watched around the world as the symbolic end of apartheid and three centuries of white minority rule.

The young democracy built durable institutions. A final Constitution, signed into law in December 1996 and effective in February 1997, enshrined a justiciable bill of rights and is widely admired as one of the world's most progressive. To confront the crimes of the past, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, held public hearings from 1996, recording testimony from victims and offering conditional amnesty to perpetrators who fully disclosed politically motivated crimes — a distinctive, contested model of transitional justice.

In the decades since, the ANC has governed continuously, presiding over the extension of housing, water, electricity and social grants to millions, even as South Africa has remained one of the most unequal societies in the world, burdened by high unemployment, persistent poverty, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and corruption scandals. The 2024 election, in which the ANC lost its parliamentary majority for the first time and entered a government of national unity, marked a new chapter in the country's still-evolving democracy.

Turning points

1. 26–29 April 1994Independence

   First democratic election

   South Africans of all races voted together for the first time; the ANC won about 62.65 percent of the vote on an 86.9 percent turnout, ending apartheid rule. The main polling day, 27 April, is marked as Freedom Day.

   ↗See the data

   [25] [26] [1]

2. 10 May 1994Politics & Power

   Mandela inaugurated as president

   Nelson Mandela was sworn in as the first president of a democratic South Africa, leading a Government of National Unity and symbolising reconciliation across the country's racial divide.

   [23] [24]

3. 1996Politics & Power

   Truth and Reconciliation Commission

   Chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the TRC began public hearings into apartheid-era human rights abuses, offering conditional amnesty in exchange for full disclosure as a model of transitional justice.

   [27] [28]

4. signed 10 December 1996Politics & Power

   A new Constitution

   South Africa's final Constitution, with its justiciable Bill of Rights, was signed into law in 1996 and took effect in February 1997, widely regarded as among the most progressive in the world.

   [29] [1]

5. 2024Politics & Power

   ANC loses its majority

   In the 2024 general election the ANC lost the outright parliamentary majority it had held since 1994, leading to a multiparty government of national unity and a new phase of coalition politics.

   [1]

Figures of the era