Timeline
The history and development of Southern Africa should be understood in the context of important events, but relative to international events that shaped the ideas, morals, and standards of its time.
A short overview of our history
The Dutch East India Trading Company (VOC) established a resupply outpost at what is today Cape Town, in 1652. The Cape was sparsely inhabited by the nomadic Khoi, San and Strandloper peoples. ​The dry areas of the Kalahari, Namib desert, Karoo and the Cape Peninsula were never settled by the Bantu peoples in great numbers.
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During the Napoleonic Wars, England seized the Cape Colony from the Dutch and proclaimed the Cape Colony's citizens, subjects of the British Crown. In 1836 a large number of Afrikaner Voortrekkers left the Cape Colony to escape English rule in what became known as the "Great Trek" and established several independent Republics North of the Orange River.
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Diamonds and gold were discovered in the Boer Republics, prompting England to invade and conquer these independent republics and in the process killing ~ 25% of the woman and children in concentration camps burning down farms and destroying all livestock.
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Britain consolidated the Cape Colony, Natal, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State and proclaimed the Union of South Africa in 1910, Initially governed partially by a pro-English local government. The National Party won elections for the first time on a platform of Afrikaner nationalism in 1948 that led to policy of separate development (Apartheid).
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After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international community pressured the National Party into a new political dispensation of equal suffrage. An interim constitution was negotiated whereby minority rights were protected, guaranteeing a non-racial society. The African National Congress regime implemented its own version of racial discrimination and persecution of minorities leading to the crisis we face today.
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