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The Republic of South Africa

Before the arrival of Europeans in the mid-17th century, the country known as South Africa today had been home to Black African peoples since ancient times.

Dutch Europeans began arriving in 1652. They were later joined by the French and Germans in the 18th century in what became known as Cape Colony. They were the ancestors of present-day Afrikaners.

Wars were fought between European settlers and native Africans. By late 18th century the wars had intensified. The British arrived in the 19th century and by 1814 had wrestled political control of the Cape region from the Afrikaners, who began migrating further inland. For nearly 100 years the European colonists warred constantly with native Africans. Afrikaners, trying to escape British control, made land-grab wars against native Africans. With the approval of the British government they established two Afrikaner colonies, the Transvaal Territories and the Orange Free State between 1852 and 1854. The discovery of diamonds in the Transvaal in 1867 revived British expansionist ambitions. By 1877 Britain had annexed the Afrikaner-held territory.

In 1899 Afrikaner leader, Paul Kruger, declared war against the British. Two and a half years later, the Boer War was over. The Treaty of Vereeniging, signed May 31, 1902, made the Transvaal territories and the Orange Free State British crown colonies.

Through all these events, the Africans suffered more than anyone else, both as war casualties and from the deliberate policies of the Afrikaners and the British. Those policies were turning South Africa into a highly unequal race-based class society. English and Afrikaner speaking Europeans were equal rivals; the Coloreds -- people of mixed African and European heritage -- and Indians, who had been imported as indentured laborers, were next in the pecking order of this unique cast system. Black Africans brought up the bottom. The Natives Land Act of 1913 prevented most Blacks (about 80% of the population) from buying land outside so-called reserves that constituted only 7% of all South African lands.

After 1948, the National Party (NP), an Afrikaner political vehicle, came into power and passed into law the policy of racial separation called apartheid. African suffering sky-rocketed. Native Africans could not vote. They could not live or work anywhere in the country, except in the reserves or "homelands" or by special permission. They had to carry a pass every where outside the reserves or other designated areas.

The African National Congress (ANC) and other organizations resisted apartheid for more than 79 years. Through the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) a compromise between the NP and the ANC was reached in December 1991 and on November 13, 1993, an agreement was reached to institute a nonracial, nonsexist, unified, and democratic South Africa based on the principle of “one person, one vote.”

On April 27, 1994, the first nonracial democratic election was held and the ANC won 63 percent of the nearly 20 million votes cast. Nelson Mandela -- imprisoned by the apartheid regime for 27 years for anti-apartheid activities -- became the first African president of the Republic of South Africa.