Joburg & Cape Town Summer Combo

History of the Country

The first humans are believed to have inhabited South Africa more than 100,000 years ago.[1] South Africa's prehistory has been divided into two phases based on broad patterns of technology namely the stone age and iron age. After the discovery of hominins at Taung and australopithecine fossils in limestone caves at Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, and Kromdraai these areas were collectively designated a World Heritage site.[2] The first inhabitants of South Africa are collectively referred to as the indigenous Khoisan people, some were absorbed by the darker skinned Africans during the Bantu expansion from Western and Central Africa while majority became known as Coloureds. [3] European exploration of South Africa began in the 13th century when Portugal committed itself to discover a new silk road route to China. These explorers created detailed maps as they pressed down the African Coast and in 1488 they rounded the Cape of Good Hope.[4] The Dutch East India Company established a trading post in Cape Town under the command of Jan van Riebeeck in 1652, [5] European workers who settled at the Cape became known as the Free Burghers and gradually established farms in the Dutch Cape Colony.[6] Following the Invasion of the Cape Colony in 1795 and 1806, mass migrations collectively known as the Great trek occurred during which the Voortrekkers established several Boer settlements on the interior of South Africa.[7] The discoveries of diamonds and gold in the nineteenth century had a profound effect on the fortunes of the region, propelling it onto the world stage and introducing a shift away from an exclusively agrarian-based economy towards industrialisation and the development of urban infrastructure. The discoveries also led to new conflicts culminating in open warfare between the Boer settlers and the British Empire, fought essentially for control over the nascent South African mining industry. Following the defeat of the Boers in the Anglo-Boer or South African War (1899–1902), the Union of South Africa was created as a self-governing dominion of the British Empire on 31 may 1910 in terms of the South Africa Act 1909, which amalgamated the four previously separate British colonies: Cape Colony, Natal Colony, Transvaal Colony, and Orange River Colony. The country became a fully sovereign nation state within the British Empire, in 1934 following enactment of the Status of the Union Act. The monarchy came to an end on 31 May 1961, replaced by a republic as the consequence of a 1960 referendum, which legitimised the country becoming the Republic of South Africa. A republican constitution was adopted. From 1948–1994, South African politics were dominated by Afrikaner nationalism. Racial segregation and white minority rule known officially as apartheid, an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness”, came into existence in 1948 and became an official law of segregation when South Africa became a republic (it was an extension of segregationist legislation enacted in 1960). On 27 April 1994, after decades of armed struggle, terrorism and international opposition to apartheid, during which military and political support was provided primarily by the Soviet Union to the racial African National Congress (ANC), the ANC achieved victory in the country's first democratic election in which all races could vote. Since then, the African National Congress has controlled the politics of South Africa, in an uneasy alliance with the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions.