Notes

1) Coloreds: Mixed-race descendants of Africans, Asians, and Europeans, coloreds compose two distinct communities: the Malays (mostly Moslem, descended from Indonesian slaves), and the Griquas, whose origins are from Khoikhoi and white unions. The Coloreds speak Afrikaans and, to a lesser extent, English. They are concentrated in the three Cape provinces. Since the official beginning of apartheid in 1948, they have tended to identify socially with Blacks more and more. Back.

2)  Asians: There are more than 1 million Asians, mainly of Indian descent, in South Africa. Indians originally came as laborers for the sugar plantations of Natal. Most Indians are Hindus, but there are also Moslems, who primarily live in and around Durban, with the rest spread out over Transvaal and Cape Province. Whites afraid of Indian competition agitated against them in the late 1870s and caused government legislation to restrict their political and economic power, and to encourage their mass return to India.

Mohandas K. Gandhi, who would later become best known as the Mahatma and in his role in the independence movement in India, was instrumental in developing Indian responses to this treatment through founding the Natal Indian Congress in the 1890s and serving as editor of Indian Opinion. He returned to India in 1914.

About 60,000 Chinese laborers of Hakka and Cantonese origin arrived from 1902 to work in the gold mines of Johannesburg and the Reef. By 1910, most had been sent home, but approximately 12,000 South African Chinese are descended from these laborers. Most Chinese South Africans live and work in Johannesburg.

A few thousand Cape Malays still exist in the Cape Town area as well, descended from slaves brought by the Dutch from Southeast Asia in the 1650s and 60s. Back.

3) Boers: Calvinist Dutch, Huguenot and German settlers in South Africa. Their language is Afrikaans -- a mixture of Dutch, African and other languages. Speakers of this language are also known as Afrikaners. Back.

4) Mfecane: A series of inter-African wars, dominated by the great Zulu king Shaka circa 1817, that destroyed many African communities and greatly reduced their ability to resist white incursions. One of the latter outcomes of the Mfecane madness was the 1857 mass slaughter of livestock by the Tembu -- a branch of the Xhosa in the Eastern province -- who, boxed into a shrinking territory and pressured from the north by groups fleeing the Mfecane and from the south by expansionist white settlers, gave in to the visions of a young girl who told them that by slaughtering all their cattle -- the mainstay of life and economy -- and destroying their foodstuff, the encroaching whiteman would disappear. The result was mass starvation and death, shattered economy and the transformation of 40,000 people into migrant laborers in white society.

Survivors of the Mfecane were either absorbed by Shaka, dispersed as refugees, reorganize under able leaders (like Sobhuza I, king and founder of Swaziland and Sebetwane, king of the Sotho) in the Zulu fashion. Back.

5) One of the things African resistance against European domination helped preserve was native economic independence. Despite losses in the battlefield, Dingane's settlement with whites after the Battle of Blood River meant that indigenous economies remained intact and Africans had no need to look to the Europeans and their nascent economy for income or livelihood. This would of course change as European administrative control became entrenched. Back.

6) Boer War: Ten thousand Africans fought for the British in the Boer War and both sides used Blacks extensively as laborers. The war took the lives of 14,000 Africans who died in concentration camps, as did about 25,000 Afrikaner women and children, killed by disease and malnutrition. Back.

7) Chinese Labor: "Two rival lines of argument for solving the labor problem were aired in 1903. One... was nicknamed the 'white labor policy'. Its aim was to replace black labor by white... on the argument that a relatively few white artisans with machines could bring up the rock more economically than a much larger number of Blacks without. ...The other line of argument... was to find substitute cheap labor by looking outside southern Africa. Remembering its Natal experience, the government of India responded adversely. But Imperial China agreed to send contract laborers on terms very favorable to the mining companies [and] the importation of Chinese on contract began in 1904, and over 60,000 arrived in the course of the next few years. [Opposition to the use of Chinese came from: British Liberals denouncing 'Chinese slavery'; English-speaking miners afraid of a plot to undermine their jobs; and Transvaal Afrikaners deploring the infusion of yet another racial strain] Contracts imposed on Transvaal Chinese were far more restrictive than those ... on the Natal Indians in 1860. They were rigidly excluded from the performance of skilled work in order to reassure the immigrant white miners; ... strictly housed in compounds to reassure those who feared they might prove lawless; and ... engaged at wage rates even lower than those currently paid to African mineworker - 37s 7d a month in 1905, against an African wage of 51s 9d.

“The Chinese laborers were systematically returned to China on completion of their contracts, after the accession of Botha's Government to power in the Transvaal in 1907.” --- South Africa: A Modern History, 2nd edition, by T.R.H. Davenport U of Toronto Press, Toronto 1978. pp. 357-359. Back.

8) Bantu Education: The 1953 Bantu Education Act gave the government direct control over African education -- based mainly in the development of semiskilled labour. A 1959 law prohibed the admittance of Black students to white universities and the government created five new ethnic university colleges (for Coloureds, Indians, Zulus/Sotho/Tswana and Venda, plus the Fort Hare medical school for Xhosa students). The National Education Policy Act of 1967 broadened the Bantu Education policy. However, the rise of the Black Consciousness movement articulated by Steve Biko fed resistance against Bantu Education and on June 16, 1976, thousands of Soweto school children demonstrated against the government's insistence on African children being taught in Afrikaans rather than in English. Back.

9) Organization: Direct political organization began in the Cape in 1882 when Imbumba yam a Afrika (Union of Africans) was formed. The main objective at this time was to unite the various African groups. In 1884 two more Cape-based organizations were formed: the Native Education Association and the Native Electoral Association. Other active organizations included: Natal Native Congress (formed July 1900); Natal Indian Congress (formed 1894); African People's Organization (formed 1902 in Cape Town); South African Native Congress (formed Eastern Cape 1902); Native Vigilance Association, founded in Orange River Colony, appeared before the SA Native Affairs Commission on September 23, 1904.

Among the several groups to petition England's King Edward VII for a common franchise for all South Africans were: Native United Political Associations of the Transvaal Colony (April 25, 1905); Orange River Colony Native Congress (June 1906); Natal Native Congress (October 1908); Aboriginal natives of South Africa, resident in the Transvaal (October 22, 1908); South African Native Congress (April 10, 1906).  Back

10) In 1950, the ANC in the Transvaal Province participated in the launching of a one-day strike on May Day.  On June 26, the same year, the ANC together with the South African Indian Congress called a national day of mourning in the form of a nationwide strike for the victims of police shootings during the May Day strike and to protest against new repressive legislation. In 1951 the ANC national conference resolved to embark upon a massive Campaign of Defiance of Apartheid laws. On June 26, 1952 together with the South African Indian Congress, the ANC launched the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign, during which over 8,000 volunteers were jailed defying apartheid laws such as the Population Registration Act, Group Areas Act, pass laws and forced removals by doing such things as walking through "Europeans Only" entrances and demanding service at "Whites Only" counters of post offices. Africans broke the pass laws and Indian, Colored and White "volunteers" entered African townships without permission. In 1954, protest of the Bantu Education Act started. Back

11) Other mass protests during this period included a countrywide women’s campaign protesting a 1955 government announcement that women must carry passes. The Beer Hall Boycotts were successfully led by African women, the main proprietors of local-brew beer. Wanting Africans to patronize white-controlled municipal beer halls, the government banned traditional brewing, and police raided homes and destroyed home brewed liquor. In response, women attacked the beer halls and destroyed equipment and buildings. In many areas in the 1950s the ANC directed campaigns against passes for women, forced removals, and the Bantu Authorities Act, which gave the white government the power to remove non-compliant chiefs and replace them with agreeable ones. Back

12) “At the beginning of June 1961, after a long and anxious assessment of the South African situation, I, and some colleagues, came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be wrong and unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the government met our demands with force” -- Nelson Mandela at the Rivonia Trials. Back

13) In June 1976 thousands of Soweto School children demonstrated against the use of Afrikaans rather than English in Black schools. Police responded with gunfire, which caused more riots across the country. Over 1,000 Africans were killed by security forces within the year. Back.

14) A total of 22 million votes were cast. The ANC won 63% of the vote and captured seven of the nine provinces. The NP won 20% and Western Cape. While the Zulu party, Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) won KwaZulu/Natal with 11% of the vote. Other party showings were as follows: Freedom Front 2.2%; Democratic Party 1.7%; Pan Africanist Congress 1.2%; African Christian Democratic Party 0.5%.

Parties with at least 5% of the vote were entitled to a cabinet seat in the Government of National Unity. The ANC received 20 seats, the NP got seven, and Inkatha three. Thabo Mbeki (ANC) and F. W. De Kerk (NP) became deputy presidents to Mandela. There was a National Assembly of 400 members and a Senate of 90 members charged jointly to write a final constitution for the country. Back.

15) The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up under the 1995 Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act to investigate human rights violations under apartheid. Its job was to consider granting amnesty to violators, reparations and rehabilitation to victims.  The Interim Constitution reasoned the Commission's work as a way of advancing reconciliation and reconstruction. "It is the search for truth which can create the moral climate in which reconciliation and peace will flourish."  By the time the TRC finished in July 1998, over 20,000 people had appeared before it. Former president P.W. Botha was convicted and fined R10,000, with a one-year suspended sentence, for refusing to give evidence before the TRC concerning his government's actions. There were also revelations of the apartheid government's attempts to use genetic and chemical weapons against Blacks. Its final five-volume report was submitted in October. Back.

16) A total of 16 million votes were cast in the June 2, 1999 election. The ANC captured 66.4% of the vote and all but one (KwaZulu/Natal, won by IFP) of the provinces. The ANC won 266 seats in the 400 seat Parliament -- one seat short of the two-thirds majority needed to amend the Constitution. The ANC entered a coalition with the one-seat Indian-led Minority Front on June 9, thus gaining the required majority for amending parts of the constitution. The party standings are as follows:

*Abolition of Income Tax and Usury Party (AITUP); Government by the People Green Party (GPGP); Socialist Party of Azania (In order of votes won).  Back.

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Further Information

• The Story of South Africa
• The Roots of Apartheid
• Global Minorities' Resources-South Africa