Route to independence

South Africa and Botswana

 

South Africa:

                South Africa was initially settled by the Dutch East India Company on April 6th, 1652. The area that would become Cape Town was a popular stopping point for merchants travelling to and from India where they could purchase food from the locals and repair their ships that had been battered at sea. Settlers set up farms and trading posts to trade with merchants passing through and traded metals, tobacco, and alcohol with locals in exchange for livestock. Like much of Southern Africa, livestock was originally thought to be South Africa’s only marketable resource. As more Europeans settled in the cape area, they expanded northward and encroached on the territory of the Khoikhoi ethnic group, inciting tensions between the Dutch settlers and the locals. In 1659, the two parties clashed but made amends quickly, that is until 1673 when the settlers and locals clashed again, but with more disastrous results for the Khoikhoi. The Khoikhoi conceded defeat at the cost of several thousand men either dead or imprisoned, with many prisoners sold into slavery. The Khoikhoi also lost fourteen thousand cattle and thirty two thousand sheep to the Dutch colonists. In 1713, an epidemic of smallpox, against which the locals had no defense, drove the Khoikhoi to near extinction. By 1780, approximately ten thousand Europeans had settled in South Africa, pushing the surviving Khoikhoi and other ethnic groups out of the area.

                In 1806, Britain took over the South African colony when the Dutch lost control of it due to their involvement in the Napoleonic Wars. The reason for Britain’s takeover of the colony was not the search for resources, as no valuable resources had yet been discovered in the region. Instead, Britain wanted to ensure that France did not gain control of another colony in Africa due to the ancient rivalry between the two nations. By 1820, the population of the South African colony had exploded to forty three thousand Europeans due to Britain’s poor economic state after the Napoleonic Wars. British settlers saw the trip as an investment, hoping to stake a claim and make money in the colony. As a result of all the British settlers, the original Dutch settlers had now become a minority. The culture and language and form of government they were used to were all gone, thereby creating a tension between the British government and these Afrikaners, as they were called. (They were also known as ‘boer’, the Dutch and Afrikaans word for ‘farmer’, as they were largely a farming people.) One of the drastic changes enacted by the new British government was the abolition of slavery in 1833. The Afrikaners depended greatly on slave labor to maintain their farms, and without slaves they would become poor. As a result, many Afrikaners migrated north and north-west, away from the established British settlement in an effort to keep their slaves. The British ignored these Afrikaners until diamonds were discovered in the land claimed by the Afrikaners in 1867. The British laid claim to the diamonds as they were discovered within their colony, but the Afrikaners saw that they would be robbed of their impending wealth and thus attacked the British, starting the ‘Boer War’. Both the British and Boers utilized black South Africans as soldiers and laborers to aid in their efforts against their opponent, but the British eventually decided to imprison as many as one hundred thousand black South Africans to prevent them from fighting for the Boers. As a result of this mass imprisonment in concentration camps, approximately ten thousand black South Africans died. Ultimately, the British were victorious and set up the South African Union in 1910 in order to better connect the governments of their Southern African colonies, which would help promote trade between them. A stipulation of the South African Union was the autonomy of the colonies within four years of its enactment, a movement aimed towards the white settlers in South Africa and the other Southern African colonies. As a result, the British pushed black South Africans out of the cities into slums. Once the colony gained independence, many black South African moved back towards urban areas to look for work, but the white citizens disliked the influx of blacks into what they saw as their cities and in 1948, Apartheid was instituted by President Daniel Francois Malan following his election. The law set a curfew for black South Africans, after which they were not allowed in the white areas of cities. It was not until 1994 that Apartheid was ended by President Nelson Mandela, following his own election. 

 

Botswana:

Botswana is located north of South Africa, as a result, its colonization began when the Afrikaners were moving away from the original cape settlement in South Africa after the British took over the South African colony. The Afrikaners came into conflict with the local Tswana people who raised livestock in the region. When the Afrikaners attacked the Tswana to take over their land to use for farming, the Tswana requested the aid of the British government to defend themselves. Britain agreed to aid the Tswana under the guise of it being a humanitarian effort, when in reality the British sought to use the area to build roads to their other colonies. Botswana, initially called Bechuanaland, is very flat and is located between many British colonies in Southern Africa. The location and terrain was ideal for building a crossroads for merchants to travel to other colonies as well as to the port cities in South Africa. However, due to its lack of natural marketable resources, the country remained impoverished and depended greatly on South Africa to survive. The colony remained mostly without conflict until its independence in on September 30th, 1966. One year after its independence, diamonds were discovered in Botswana. The DeBeers Corporation set up mines in the country, resulting in an enormous influx of money into the local economy. Most of this money came from the taxes paid by the DeBeers Corporation to the government, totaling 70% of the company’s local revenue. Following the discovery of diamonds, prospectors discovered many other ores and minerals, further increasing the value of the local economy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources:

 

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, and Henry Louis Gates. "Botswana." Encyclopedia of Africa. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. N. pag. Print.

 

 

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, and Henry Louis Gates. "South Africa." Encyclopedia of Africa. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. N. pag. Print.

 

 

"South Africa Profile." BBC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2015\

 

 

"Botswana Profile." BBC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2015.