Early History of South Africa

South Africa is the first place where Australopithecus fossils were discovered. The Khoisan people are the oldest inhabitants of South Africa and have lived a life of fishing, hunting and gathering for a long time. The cave paintings and rock wall carvings they painted are treasures of primitive human art. From the 3rd to 7th centuries AD, the Bantu people immigrated to the Transvaal and Natal. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Bantu people had established relatively stable agricultural residential areas in the high grassland area, and some of them continued to migrate to the southeastern coast.

The invasion of colonists and the people's struggle In 1652, the Dutch East India Company occupied the Cape Peninsula. In 1657, the first Dutch immigrants invaded Khoi land. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Dutch colonists (Boers) occupied the lands of the Khoi and San people. Some of the Khoi people were driven inland, and some worked as "servants" on the Boer farms. The San people were basically eliminated in South Africa.

In the 1870s, the Boers' colonial expansion expanded to the Fish River area inhabited by the Bantu Xhosa people in the Eastern District of the Cape. The Boers seized pastures and took away livestock. The Xhosa people rose up to defend themselves and fought a century-long war with the colonists, the Kafur War. From 1779 to 1803, the Xhosa people fought three wars with the Boers in order to fight back against the Boers' land occupation. At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Zulu people in northern Natal, under the leadership of Chaka, annexed many surrounding clan tribes and established the Zulu Kingdom. Kingdoms established by the Sotho, Swazi and Tswana people also emerged in the area north of the Orange River.

The British occupied the Cape Colony twice in 1795 and 1806. In 1814, the British occupation was confirmed by the Congress of Vienna. In the early days, the British used Cape as a naval base, and immigration began in 1820. Xhosa people defended their land and fought six anti-invasion wars in more than half a century. In 1853, all the land west of the Mbashe River and the Dakai River was occupied by the British army. The British deprived Africans of their land to the greatest extent in the newly occupied areas, forcing Africans who had lost their land to work as laborers on European farms. The British pioneered the indigenous reserve system in South Africa. White colonists occupied 90% of the land, while Africans only retained 10% of the land. The soil and water in the reservation were poor, and there was little land and many people. Most of the Africans were forced to go out to work for the white people.

The conflict between the British capitalist economic policy and the slave-owning economy of the Boers, together with other political and cultural factors, led to the great migration of the Boers in 1836. The Boers seized large areas of Bantu land north of the Orange River and drove Africans from their homes. Africans put up tenacious resistance to the invading Boer colonists (see Ding Gang and Mo Xiexi). In 1843, the British took over Natal from the Boers. The Boers left Natal in large numbers, concentrated in the Transvaal and Orange, established several small countries, and finally merged into the South African Republic (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State. In order to win over the Boer rebels and deal with the Africans, the British recognized the independence of the two Boer republics in 1852 and 1854 respectively.