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One historical legacy that nearly all of 
Africa shares is that of colonization:

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big European empires coming in, 
throwing down arbitrary borders,

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and exploiting the indigenous Africans in 
their quest for continental domination.

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And, yeah, when the map looked like this
in the 1900s, it’s pretty hard to not

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picture those imperialist scenes in your mind.
But as with most things in Africa,

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big sweeping characterizations obscure
much more complex realities.

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There are myriad corners of the map 
where the relationship between native

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and newcomer was far more complex,
and few places where that dynamic had

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bigger long-term implications than South Africa.
Home to an astonishingly bustling web of narratives

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in the past few centuries, the southern end of 
the continent is a prime example of how Africans

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have taken and retaken the reins of their story.
Now, before I spend any more time pontificating

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in this intro, I have a lot of ground
to cover, so let’s do some history!

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Recognizably human settlement in southern 
Africa is about half a million years old, with

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anatomically modern Homo Sapiens evolving around 
200,000 years ago, during the Middle Stone Age.

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Eventually, and we’re talking about human 
evolution here so that is a long “eventually”,

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there was some new technology in town, as the 
first or second century BC saw the arrival of

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agriculture into southern Africa, and the 
early centuries AD brought ironworking!

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In the southwest, semi-nomadic pastoralists 
domesticated livestock and cultivated small

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plants, while the east saw larger and more 
permanent settlement after the arrival

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of the Bantu peoples from central Africa.
These groups brought with them the handy

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knowledge of how to make and use iron, which made 
farming significantly easier, and helped their

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urban settlements sustain hundreds of people.
By the medieval period, it was several thousands,

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as the Mapungubwe kingdom in the Limpopo valley 
became a huge commercial hub in the 11 and 1200s,

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with strong links to trading centers
on the Indian Ocean coast.

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Mapungubwe and the Limpopo valley later came under 
the umbrella of Great Zimbabwe, but that is a tale

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for another time. So by the middle of the second 
millennium, southern Africa was rocking a variety

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of different ethnic and linguistic groups…
but that diversity was of slim concern to

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the Europeans who would make their way 
into Africa over the next few centuries.

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In 1487, Portuguese sailors crossed southern 
Africa to pass into the Indian Ocean,

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and for the next century and a half, they 
simply treated the south coast as a rest-stop.

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Not so after 1652, when the Dutch 
officially founded Cape Colony

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and set about a much bigger operation.
From their port in Table Bay, they traded

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European and Asian goods with the local Khoekhoe 
people to get provisions for passing sailors.

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The port was built primarily for use by 
the Dutch East India Company, but was also

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open to foreign ships, for a price.
Keen to min-max this business model,

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colonists ventured beyond Table Bay in 
order to do some of the farming themselves.

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EZ Money. 
The problem was that the Khoekhoe

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were slightly nomadic, moving around seasonally
just as the early pastoralists in the region had done.

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But when Dutch farmers (or Boers) wandered onto a 
nice plot of land that wasn’t occupied right this

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very second, they assumed it was "finders keepers".
When the Khoekhoe politely informed them that the

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land was, in fact, theirs, the Dutch 
revised their initial statement to

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"conquerors keepers" and fought two wars 
between 1659 and 1677 to assert their claim.

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This would start a bit of a trend, as Boers pushed 
further inland with the specific intent to stay.

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The accidental importation of smallpox 
in 1713 hit the Khoekhoe especially hard,

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and significantly widened the 
opening for the Boers to step into.

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By the latter 1700s, the Khoekhoe 
weren’t widely enslaved or exported

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like West Africans had been for the Atlantic 
Triangle trade, but they were definitely

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suppressed into a servile working class.
That said, there were chattel slaves in the

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Cape Colony, but they just weren’t South African.
Dutch sailors had actually imported slaves

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from the Indian Ocean, mostly Muslims, which 
further stratified the racial class system.

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Keep that in mind, ‘cause it’ll show up later.
But soon, even the Dutch would no longer be

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atop the pyramid, because some 
European geopolitical slapstickery...

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(it’s a Napoleon thing) resulted in Britain 
annexing the Cape Colony for themselves in

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the early 1800s, sending their own 
settlers to Port Elizabeth in 1820.

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They also sent tax collectors and 
abolished slavery, and this is where

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the colonial dynamic starts to get weird
— because the Boers had been living in

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southern Africa for a century and a half, in which 
time they’d incorporated French and Germans

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and now, beyond just Dutch colonists, they considered 
themselves Afrikaners, a local population that,

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after the arrival of the British, was 
now being oppressed by alien invaders.

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That, my friends, is one heck of a swerve.
But they were serious, so they adopted the

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not-uncommon strategy of Running Away 
From Britain, leaving the Cape Colony

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in the mid-1830s to trek northeast, and 
establish the Oranje Vrystaat and the

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Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek by the early 1850s.
As we noted earlier, this land was very much

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inhabited, so let’s hop eastward to 
see what the Bantu groups were up to.

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As it happens: lots. Since the late 
1700s, the entire structure and

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demography of their societies were changing.
With new approaches to militarization,

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small states were consolidating under stronger 
kings to form large states and confederations

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to better compete for Indian Ocean trade.
By far, the biggest player in this process was

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the Zulu kingdom under the leadership of Shaka.
Much to the enjoyment of biographers everywhere,

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Shaka was an intricate and unusual character.
Exiled from the royal family at a young age and

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treated horribly by his peers, he came back 
determined, bordering on cruel sometimes,

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he never married or had any recognized children, and 
his most trusted advisor was his mother. Good son!

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At a young age, Shaka proved himself as a warrior 
for the neighboring Mtethwa confederation,

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and with their support, he became leader of 
the Zulu after his father’s death in 1816.

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And when the Mtethwa king died 
two years later, Shaka became

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the dominant player in that confederation.
From there, it was Go Time, and the Zulu expanded

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rapidly, fighting hard but working to incorporate 
conquered kingdoms into the new Zulu state.

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Still, many were not fans, and migrated away 
from the conflict, which led to huge demographic

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redistribution, with some displaced groups like 
the Lozi and Ngoni going almost 1,000 miles north.

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But Shaka wouldn’t live to see the longer-term 
success of his kingdom, as he was assassinated

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in 1828 by one of his half-brothers.
Still, the Zulu kingdom stayed strong,

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and ran up against the Afrikaner 
Voortrekkers in the mid-1850s.

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And this is where our two plotlines 
converge, and the resulting frontier

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zone between Afrikaner and British and Zulu 
and other Bantu groups is, whoo! Complex.

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This frontier, like many, saw trade and cultural 
exchange as well as conflict, with alliances

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forming and ending based on pure circumstance.
So even though the map in the 1800s was already

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a giant checkerboard, it’s important 
to note that even within all of those

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states was a dynamic cast of players —
The southern coasts didn’t just turn

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Oops! All British after they started pushing inland.
Many of the absorbed groups were able to carry on

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more or less as they had been, such as the Basotho 
up in the Drakensberg mountains, who had formed

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an alliance in the wake of the Zulu conquests, and 
became an autonomous British Protectorate in 1868.

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The Zulu, however, weren’t about to take that 
offer, and rather preferred to kick the pants off

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of anyone who tried to muscle in on their land.
Unfortunately, Britain took that as a challenge.

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In 1879 they invaded Zululand but suffered 
a fierce defeat at Isandlwana, losing 2/3

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of their soldiers and instantly making “Zulu” a 
worldwide byword for valor and strength against

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colonial aggression, with even the British army
holding them in a kind of dreaded reverence.

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Later that year, Britain returned 
with five times the soldiers,

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leaving absolutely nothing to chance.
By the summer, the Zulu had been defeated,

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their kingdom partitioned, and the 
last major Bantu state conquered.

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From there, the last obstacle to dominating 
the subcontinent were the Boers in the north,

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who had just made the literally earth-shattering 
discovery of diamonds and gold in the

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Orange Free State and Transvaal.
So, naturally, Britain did the

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shooty-shoot grabby-grab. First failing in 1881, 
and then succeeding in 1902, with the help of half

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a million soldiers from across the empire.
In 1910, the disparate British colonies

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were reorganized into the Union of 
South Africa, and it wasted precisely zero time

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restructuring the mines for peak efficiency.
What began as a simple resource-rush now

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developed into a highly-organized and ultimately 
nation-defining industry, with no piece of South

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Africa untouched by the consequences of mining.
The almost inconceivable power of these

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mining enterprises was largely a product of 
control: over the outbound supply of diamonds

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so that the prices would stay high,
and over the wages, workspace,

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and even living conditions of the 
miners who dug and refined it all.

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This was especially hard on black South 
Africans from outside the posh city centers,

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who left their rural families to do dangerous, 
labor-intensive goldmining work for extremely low

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pay because even that was still the best option.
And it was probably harder on the women,

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who had to take care of the 
entire family and do the farming.

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In the early 1900s, South Africa was definitely 
not being subtle about the unequal distribution

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of land, the rampant wage discrimination, 
or the white monopoly on political power.

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This wasn’t slavery, but it was a 
very robust system of discrimination,

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which history has come to know as apartheid.
This overtly white-supremacist ideology

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became official policy after the Afrikaner 
Nationalist Party won the elections of 1948,

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but the economic, social, and political 
mechanisms that enabled apartheid were already

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hard at work in the decades prior.
What changed here was their intensity,

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and the rigid legal framework intended 
to make this system permanent.

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Inter-ethnic marriage was outlawed, schools taught 
black people they were inferior to whites,

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blacks needed special permission to go anywhere, 
and every conceivable public and private amenity

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was segregated down to the damn STAIRS!
While depriving black people of power,

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resources, or the simple ability to enjoy 
public life, the Nationalist Party knew they

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needed black labor to sustain the economy —
so when black civil rights and labor groups

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recognized this and began campaigning against 
apartheid, the government responded viciously:

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banning the African National Congress, arresting 
their political and paramilitary leaders,

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firing into crowds of protesters at 
Sharpeville and Soweto, and killing

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the prominent activist Steve Biko in 1977.
Biko was beloved by South Africans for his

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leadership in the Black Consciousness Movement, 
which shattered the apartheid fallacy that

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black people were inherently lesser.
After his activism and his murder,

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black South Africans were rightly furious, 
but also recognized that Biko was right:

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that it didn’t need to be like this, and 
some of the Afrikaners noticed it too.

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During the 1980s, the government and economy 
were under pressure from persistent civilian

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unrest and paramilitary action, the 
growing strength of black labor unions,

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widespread sympathy abroad, and targeted 
international economic sanctions.

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Enter Nelson Mandela. Well, not really “enter”,
he had been imprisoned since 1962, but

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while still jailed he was cultivating potential
reformers from within the National Party,

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looking to convince pliable Afrikaners to let
this broken system go and build something new.

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In 1990, F.W. de Klerk became President, and he 
and Mandela negotiated on a series of reforms,

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such as legalizing all political parties, 
freeing political prisoners, and holding

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South Africa’s first multi-racial election —
which, in 1994, a newly-liberated Mandela

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won by a landslide. He finished 
de Klerk's process of dismantling

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apartheid and set South Africa on a course
to becoming a proudly multiracial democracy.

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Almost 3 decades later, there’s 
still plenty of work to be done,

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but with institutional racism no longer official 
policy, it’s now possible to do that work.

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Like most places on the African continent, South 
Africa has been through an absolute wringer of

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a history in the past few centuries —
between migration, commerce, disease,

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colonization, convergence, exploitation,

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oppression, resistance and liberation.
And all of the ethnic and cultural groups that

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call South Africa home were playing an integral 
part, and it’s already my great regret that I

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wasn’t able to discuss them all in this video.
But this grand diversity is a real treasure

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that rewards every little bit of inquiry 
with a new perspective on this story,

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and it’s the reason that South Africa is so 
deserving of its epithet: “The Rainbow Nation”.

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Thank you so much for watching! As I hope 
I’ve shown, this history is fascinating in

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its own right, but as an American, the story was 
especially intriguing because of how many direct

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points of comparison and of contrast there are 
between the American and South African narratives.

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But that’s part of the joy of 
Black History Month! Learning

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anything in one area can illuminate other 
aspects of the global black experience.

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And to help this video serve as a springboard 
for you to discover more about Black History,

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I’ve linked some cool resources down in the 
description below. I really hope you check 'em out.