INTRODUCTION
This post discusses the political history of South Africa starting from the early times and history, during colonization, apartheid history, free and fair election and the current political state of South Africa.
THE EARLY POLITICAL HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA:
South Africa’s first known inhabitants have been referred to as the Khoisan, the Khoekhoe and the San. Starting in about 1,000 BCE, these groups were then joined by people who migrated from Western and Central Africa during what is known as the Bantu expansion southwards through Africa. While some maintained separateness, others were grouped into a category known as Coloureds, a multiracial ethnic group legally defined by apartheid authorities. The definition included people with shared ancestry from two or more of these groups: Khoisan, Bantu, English, Afrikaners, Austronesians, East Asians and South Asians.
In the AD 100s Bantu-speaking people migrated into today’s South Africa from the north, displacing other tribes of hunter-gatherers. South Africa was “discovered” in 1488 by the Portuguese Vasco da Gama; in the following the Cap of good hope became an important trade-station for European ships und their route to Asia.
POLITICAL HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA DURING COLONIZATION:
When Jan van Riebeeck in 1652 founded a Point of support for the ships of the East-India Company, South Africa was still inhabited by Bantu-speaking people, like the Hottentots or other bush-people.
In the same year Dutch settler founded a colony at Cape Town. At the end of the 18th century merely 15000 people lived in the European colonies. But Cape Town quickly increased to a melting pod of Dutch, German and French people, who suppressed the bush-people and made them slaves. The descendants of the white settlers called themselves “Boers” and spoke a Dutch dialect, known as Afrikaans.
In 1795 they tried to establish their own independent republic, but were defeated by the British. Towards the end of the Napoleonic wars (1814) the Britain gained control of most of South Africa. As a result of this occupying, the old “population” in 1835 started a trek to the north and east into African tribal territory, where they established their new republics of the Transvaal and The Orange Free State. In 1843 Britain annexed Natal. In 1852 the Transvaal became independent, followed by the Orange Free State two years later. In 1879 the British forces defeated the Zulu.
When the first founds of Diamonds and gold in 1867 and 1876 became public, the British Empire after a Great War (Boer War) from 1899 to 1902 also annexed Transvaal and Orange Free State. This led in 1910 to the “Union of South Africa,” which consisted of Transvaal, Orange Free State, Natal and Cape. This year was also the beginning of Apartheid, although the word was officially introduced in 1948.
In 1912 the African Nation Congress (ANC) was founded to fight against the unjust policy of government. During World War One South African troops seized German colonies. South Africa kept Namibia the former Afrika after the war.
In 1931 South Africa gained full independence as a full member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Jan Christiaan Smuts led the nation into World War Two on the allied side against national opposition; in 1945 South Africa became a Charta member of the UN, but declined to sign the universal declaration of Human rights.
APARTHEID HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA
Apartheid, in South Africa the term meant any non-white person, dominated domestic policy as the Nationalists gained power and imposed greater restriction on Bantus, Asians and coloured people. “Deutsch-Süd-West In the fifties the Apartheid became official policy of South Africa. African voters were removed from the voter rolls in 1936. The ANC declared South Africa to be property of all of its inhabitants and headed for the abolishment of Apartheid. The government in 1960 prohibited the ANC, along with all other black African organizations; Trigger for this was the armed resistance of the black movements. Africa hostility to Britain triumphed on May 31st in 1961 with the declaration of the “Republic of South Africa.”
In 1962 the government released the so-called Law which punished most forms of political engagement. As the result of this law the ANC and PAC (Pan- Africanist Congress) decided to use armed resistance as the main tool against regime.
In 1964 Nelson Mandela, leader of the ANC, was accused of sabotage and betrayal and condemned life-long.The army tore down riots, when 10000s of pupils demonstrated against Apartheid in Soweto in 1976. The results of the elections of 1984, which “Sabotage-Law”
Nelson Mandela was won by President Botha, who had a policy of limited reforms, indicated a strong conservative reaction on his policy. 1988 South Africa agreed to allow Namibia to become an independent country; stroke led Botha to step down as leader of his party in 1989 in favor of F.W. De Klerk. De Klerk accelerated the pace of reform; He removed the ban from the African National Congress, the principal anti-apartheid organization, and released Nelson Mandela, the ANC president, after 27 years of imprisonment. Negotiations between the government and the ANC commenced.
On June 5th 1991 Apartheid was abolished by the parliament. Two weeks later the Parliament scrapped the law for Population Registration Act of 1950, which classified all South Africans at birth by race. In February 1999 the ANC approved a plan that would allow minority parties to participate in the government for five years after the end of white rule. In the same month the first non-whites entered the cabinet. Also in 1999 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nelson Mandela and De Klerk.
CURRENT SOUTH AFRICA
Mandela led the ANC to victory in South Africa’s first free elections and became president. The new government included six ministers from the National Party and three from the Inkatha Freedom Party.
In 1997, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Desmond Tutu, began hearings regarding human rights violations between 1960 and 1993. The commission promised amnesty to those who confessed their crimes under the Apartheid system. Even the two former presidents, De Klerk and Botha, and some leaders of the ANC appeared before the commission, and the nation continued to grapple with its enlightened but often painful and divisive process of national recovery. Nelson Mandela, whose term as president cemented his reputation as one of the world’s most enlightened statesmen, retired in 1999. On June 2nd 1999, Thabo Mbeki, the pragmatic deputy president of South Africa and leader of the African National Congress, was elected president in a landslide; having already assumed many of Mandela’s governing responsibilities