The tip of Africa has been home to the Khoisan (collective name for Hottentot (Koi) and Bushmen (San)) people for thousands of years. Their rock art can still be found in many places throughout South Africa. Bantu tribes started expanding into Southern Africa around 2,500 years ago and by around 500 AD the different cultural groups as we know them today had been established in the area.
The first permanent European settlement was built after the Dutch East India Company reached the Cape of Good Hope in April 1652. In the late 1700s, the Boers (the settling farmers) slowly started expanding into the interior. In 1795, Britain took control of the Cape and in 1820, a large group of British Settlers arrived in the region. In 1835, large numbers of Boers started out on the Groot Trek into the interior after becoming dissatisfied with the British rule. In the interior, they established their own republics after a number of bloody conflicts with the local population.
Two wars for control over the region were fought between the Boers and the British in 1880 and 1899. This was when the British contained the Boer population in the first modern concentration camps.
The Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, consolidating the various Boer republics and British colonies. From this, the Republic of South Africa was formed in 1961. Non-Europeans were largely excluded in all these political changes and, even with the creation of the Union, were not given the right to vote. From 1948, additional apartheid laws were introduced to erode the right of the black population further. Since then, South Africa (at least the government itself), became almost synonymous with fascism, racism, and many other pejorative descriptions. In the years to follow, the country, despite having strong economic growth until the 1980s, experienced frequent uprisings and other social disturbances in response to the apartheid laws. Among them: weapons embargoes, being banned from the Olympic Games, and deliberate violations of the laws by black radicals.
In 1992, 68% of the voting white population voted in a referendum to have the apartheid system abolished. This was quickly followed by a new constitution in 1993 and the first fully democratic election in 1994.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about South Africa
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in South Africa - updated Apr 2024
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South Africa Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
