WEBVTT 00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:04.480 One historical legacy that nearly all of  Africa shares is that of colonization: 00:00:04.480 --> 00:00:08.000 big European empires coming in,  throwing down arbitrary borders, 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:11.680 and exploiting the indigenous Africans in  their quest for continental domination. 00:00:11.680 --> 00:00:17.040 And, yeah, when the map looked like this in the 1900s, it’s pretty hard to not 00:00:17.040 --> 00:00:20.960 picture those imperialist scenes in your mind. But as with most things in Africa, 00:00:20.960 --> 00:00:24.960 big sweeping characterizations obscure much more complex realities. 00:00:24.960 --> 00:00:28.160 There are myriad corners of the map  where the relationship between native 00:00:28.160 --> 00:00:32.000 and newcomer was far more complex, and few places where that dynamic had 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:37.520 bigger long-term implications than South Africa. Home to an astonishingly bustling web of narratives 00:00:37.520 --> 00:00:41.760 in the past few centuries, the southern end of  the continent is a prime example of how Africans 00:00:41.760 --> 00:00:46.400 have taken and retaken the reins of their story. Now, before I spend any more time pontificating 00:00:46.400 --> 00:00:50.320 in this intro, I have a lot of ground to cover, so let’s do some history! 00:00:50.320 --> 00:00:54.480 Recognizably human settlement in southern  Africa is about half a million years old, with 00:00:54.480 --> 00:00:58.960 anatomically modern Homo Sapiens evolving around  200,000 years ago, during the Middle Stone Age. 00:00:58.960 --> 00:01:02.960 Eventually, and we’re talking about human  evolution here so that is a long “eventually”, 00:01:02.960 --> 00:01:07.440 there was some new technology in town, as the  first or second century BC saw the arrival of 00:01:07.440 --> 00:01:11.360 agriculture into southern Africa, and the  early centuries AD brought ironworking! 00:01:11.360 --> 00:01:15.680 In the southwest, semi-nomadic pastoralists  domesticated livestock and cultivated small 00:01:15.680 --> 00:01:19.280 plants, while the east saw larger and more  permanent settlement after the arrival 00:01:19.280 --> 00:01:22.560 of the Bantu peoples from central Africa. These groups brought with them the handy 00:01:22.560 --> 00:01:27.200 knowledge of how to make and use iron, which made  farming significantly easier, and helped their 00:01:27.200 --> 00:01:31.600 urban settlements sustain hundreds of people. By the medieval period, it was several thousands, 00:01:31.600 --> 00:01:36.640 as the Mapungubwe kingdom in the Limpopo valley  became a huge commercial hub in the 11 and 1200s, 00:01:36.640 --> 00:01:39.440 with strong links to trading centers on the Indian Ocean coast. 00:01:39.440 --> 00:01:44.720 Mapungubwe and the Limpopo valley later came under  the umbrella of Great Zimbabwe, but that is a tale 00:01:44.720 --> 00:01:48.960 for another time. So by the middle of the second  millennium, southern Africa was rocking a variety 00:01:48.960 --> 00:01:53.760 of different ethnic and linguistic groups… but that diversity was of slim concern to 00:01:53.760 --> 00:01:57.280 the Europeans who would make their way  into Africa over the next few centuries. 00:01:57.280 --> 00:02:01.440 In 1487, Portuguese sailors crossed southern  Africa to pass into the Indian Ocean, 00:02:01.440 --> 00:02:05.440 and for the next century and a half, they  simply treated the south coast as a rest-stop. 00:02:05.440 --> 00:02:09.600 Not so after 1652, when the Dutch  officially founded Cape Colony 00:02:09.600 --> 00:02:13.600 and set about a much bigger operation. From their port in Table Bay, they traded 00:02:13.600 --> 00:02:17.920 European and Asian goods with the local Khoekhoe  people to get provisions for passing sailors. 00:02:17.920 --> 00:02:21.760 The port was built primarily for use by  the Dutch East India Company, but was also 00:02:21.760 --> 00:02:25.920 open to foreign ships, for a price. Keen to min-max this business model, 00:02:25.920 --> 00:02:29.760 colonists ventured beyond Table Bay in  order to do some of the farming themselves. 00:02:29.760 --> 00:02:32.000 EZ Money. The problem was that the Khoekhoe 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:36.880 were slightly nomadic, moving around seasonally just as the early pastoralists in the region had done. 00:02:36.880 --> 00:02:41.520 But when Dutch farmers (or Boers) wandered onto a  nice plot of land that wasn’t occupied right this 00:02:41.520 --> 00:02:45.920 very second, they assumed it was "finders keepers". When the Khoekhoe politely informed them that the 00:02:45.920 --> 00:02:49.680 land was, in fact, theirs, the Dutch  revised their initial statement to 00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:55.280 "conquerors keepers" and fought two wars  between 1659 and 1677 to assert their claim. 00:02:55.280 --> 00:03:00.480 This would start a bit of a trend, as Boers pushed  further inland with the specific intent to stay. 00:03:00.480 --> 00:03:05.280 The accidental importation of smallpox  in 1713 hit the Khoekhoe especially hard, 00:03:05.280 --> 00:03:08.160 and significantly widened the  opening for the Boers to step into. 00:03:08.160 --> 00:03:11.840 By the latter 1700s, the Khoekhoe  weren’t widely enslaved or exported 00:03:11.840 --> 00:03:15.440 like West Africans had been for the Atlantic  Triangle trade, but they were definitely 00:03:15.440 --> 00:03:19.680 suppressed into a servile working class. That said, there were chattel slaves in the 00:03:19.680 --> 00:03:24.160 Cape Colony, but they just weren’t South African. Dutch sailors had actually imported slaves 00:03:24.160 --> 00:03:28.800 from the Indian Ocean, mostly Muslims, which  further stratified the racial class system. 00:03:28.800 --> 00:03:33.120 Keep that in mind, ‘cause it’ll show up later. But soon, even the Dutch would no longer be 00:03:33.120 --> 00:03:36.720 atop the pyramid, because some  European geopolitical slapstickery... 00:03:37.570 --> 00:03:41.520 (it’s a Napoleon thing) resulted in Britain  annexing the Cape Colony for themselves in 00:03:41.520 --> 00:03:45.280 the early 1800s, sending their own  settlers to Port Elizabeth in 1820. 00:03:45.280 --> 00:03:49.040 They also sent tax collectors and  abolished slavery, and this is where 00:03:49.040 --> 00:03:52.800 the colonial dynamic starts to get weird — because the Boers had been living in 00:03:52.800 --> 00:03:57.110 southern Africa for a century and a half, in which  time they’d incorporated French and Germans 00:03:57.110 --> 00:04:02.800 and now, beyond just Dutch colonists, they considered  themselves Afrikaners, a local population that, 00:04:02.800 --> 00:04:07.120 after the arrival of the British, was  now being oppressed by alien invaders. 00:04:07.120 --> 00:04:12.800 That, my friends, is one heck of a swerve. But they were serious, so they adopted the 00:04:12.800 --> 00:04:16.640 not-uncommon strategy of Running Away  From Britain, leaving the Cape Colony 00:04:16.640 --> 00:04:20.800 in the mid-1830s to trek northeast, and  establish the Oranje Vrystaat and the 00:04:20.800 --> 00:04:26.000 Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek by the early 1850s. As we noted earlier, this land was very much 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:30.080 inhabited, so let’s hop eastward to  see what the Bantu groups were up to. 00:04:30.080 --> 00:04:34.080 As it happens: lots. Since the late  1700s, the entire structure and 00:04:34.080 --> 00:04:37.920 demography of their societies were changing. With new approaches to militarization, 00:04:37.920 --> 00:04:42.160 small states were consolidating under stronger  kings to form large states and confederations 00:04:42.160 --> 00:04:46.480 to better compete for Indian Ocean trade. By far, the biggest player in this process was 00:04:46.480 --> 00:04:50.880 the Zulu kingdom under the leadership of Shaka. Much to the enjoyment of biographers everywhere, 00:04:50.880 --> 00:04:55.760 Shaka was an intricate and unusual character. Exiled from the royal family at a young age and 00:04:55.760 --> 00:05:00.560 treated horribly by his peers, he came back  determined, bordering on cruel sometimes, 00:05:00.560 --> 00:05:05.760 he never married or had any recognized children, and  his most trusted advisor was his mother. Good son! 00:05:05.760 --> 00:05:09.920 At a young age, Shaka proved himself as a warrior  for the neighboring Mtethwa confederation, 00:05:09.920 --> 00:05:14.240 and with their support, he became leader of  the Zulu after his father’s death in 1816. 00:05:14.240 --> 00:05:16.960 And when the Mtethwa king died  two years later, Shaka became 00:05:16.960 --> 00:05:21.840 the dominant player in that confederation. From there, it was Go Time, and the Zulu expanded 00:05:21.840 --> 00:05:26.400 rapidly, fighting hard but working to incorporate  conquered kingdoms into the new Zulu state. 00:05:26.400 --> 00:05:31.520 Still, many were not fans, and migrated away  from the conflict, which led to huge demographic 00:05:31.520 --> 00:05:36.960 redistribution, with some displaced groups like  the Lozi and Ngoni going almost 1,000 miles north. 00:05:36.960 --> 00:05:41.040 But Shaka wouldn’t live to see the longer-term  success of his kingdom, as he was assassinated 00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:45.520 in 1828 by one of his half-brothers. Still, the Zulu kingdom stayed strong, 00:05:45.520 --> 00:05:49.040 and ran up against the Afrikaner  Voortrekkers in the mid-1850s. 00:05:49.040 --> 00:05:53.200 And this is where our two plotlines  converge, and the resulting frontier 00:05:53.200 --> 00:06:00.000 zone between Afrikaner and British and Zulu  and other Bantu groups is, whoo! Complex. 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:05.120 This frontier, like many, saw trade and cultural  exchange as well as conflict, with alliances 00:06:05.120 --> 00:06:09.840 forming and ending based on pure circumstance. So even though the map in the 1800s was already 00:06:09.840 --> 00:06:13.360 a giant checkerboard, it’s important  to note that even within all of those 00:06:13.360 --> 00:06:17.920 states was a dynamic cast of players — The southern coasts didn’t just turn 00:06:17.920 --> 00:06:22.320 Oops! All British after they started pushing inland. Many of the absorbed groups were able to carry on 00:06:22.320 --> 00:06:26.720 more or less as they had been, such as the Basotho  up in the Drakensberg mountains, who had formed 00:06:26.720 --> 00:06:31.680 an alliance in the wake of the Zulu conquests, and  became an autonomous British Protectorate in 1868. 00:06:31.680 --> 00:06:36.080 The Zulu, however, weren’t about to take that  offer, and rather preferred to kick the pants off 00:06:36.080 --> 00:06:40.960 of anyone who tried to muscle in on their land. Unfortunately, Britain took that as a challenge. 00:06:40.960 --> 00:06:46.640 In 1879 they invaded Zululand but suffered  a fierce defeat at Isandlwana, losing 2/3 00:06:46.640 --> 00:06:51.360 of their soldiers and instantly making “Zulu” a  worldwide byword for valor and strength against 00:06:51.360 --> 00:06:55.840 colonial aggression, with even the British army holding them in a kind of dreaded reverence. 00:06:55.840 --> 00:06:58.880 Later that year, Britain returned  with five times the soldiers, 00:06:58.880 --> 00:07:02.960 leaving absolutely nothing to chance. By the summer, the Zulu had been defeated, 00:07:02.960 --> 00:07:06.480 their kingdom partitioned, and the  last major Bantu state conquered. 00:07:06.480 --> 00:07:10.400 From there, the last obstacle to dominating  the subcontinent were the Boers in the north, 00:07:10.400 --> 00:07:14.480 who had just made the literally earth-shattering  discovery of diamonds and gold in the 00:07:14.480 --> 00:07:18.960 Orange Free State and Transvaal. So, naturally, Britain did the 00:07:18.960 --> 00:07:24.640 shooty-shoot grabby-grab. First failing in 1881,  and then succeeding in 1902, with the help of half 00:07:24.640 --> 00:07:29.280 a million soldiers from across the empire. In 1910, the disparate British colonies 00:07:29.280 --> 00:07:33.740 were reorganized into the Union of  South Africa, and it wasted precisely zero time 00:07:33.740 --> 00:07:38.400 restructuring the mines for peak efficiency. What began as a simple resource-rush now 00:07:38.400 --> 00:07:43.920 developed into a highly-organized and ultimately  nation-defining industry, with no piece of South 00:07:43.920 --> 00:07:48.480 Africa untouched by the consequences of mining. The almost inconceivable power of these 00:07:48.480 --> 00:07:53.040 mining enterprises was largely a product of  control: over the outbound supply of diamonds 00:07:53.040 --> 00:07:56.320 so that the prices would stay high, and over the wages, workspace, 00:07:56.320 --> 00:07:59.280 and even living conditions of the  miners who dug and refined it all. 00:07:59.280 --> 00:08:03.120 This was especially hard on black South  Africans from outside the posh city centers, 00:08:03.120 --> 00:08:07.680 who left their rural families to do dangerous,  labor-intensive goldmining work for extremely low 00:08:07.680 --> 00:08:11.920 pay because even that was still the best option. And it was probably harder on the women, 00:08:11.920 --> 00:08:14.800 who had to take care of the  entire family and do the farming. 00:08:14.800 --> 00:08:19.920 In the early 1900s, South Africa was definitely  not being subtle about the unequal distribution 00:08:19.920 --> 00:08:24.320 of land, the rampant wage discrimination,  or the white monopoly on political power. 00:08:24.320 --> 00:08:28.480 This wasn’t slavery, but it was a  very robust system of discrimination, 00:08:28.480 --> 00:08:33.040 which history has come to know as apartheid. This overtly white-supremacist ideology 00:08:33.040 --> 00:08:37.920 became official policy after the Afrikaner  Nationalist Party won the elections of 1948, 00:08:37.920 --> 00:08:42.720 but the economic, social, and political  mechanisms that enabled apartheid were already 00:08:42.720 --> 00:08:46.560 hard at work in the decades prior. What changed here was their intensity, 00:08:46.560 --> 00:08:50.480 and the rigid legal framework intended  to make this system permanent. 00:08:50.480 --> 00:08:55.120 Inter-ethnic marriage was outlawed, schools taught  black people they were inferior to whites, 00:08:55.120 --> 00:08:59.920 blacks needed special permission to go anywhere,  and every conceivable public and private amenity 00:08:59.920 --> 00:09:04.080 was segregated down to the damn STAIRS! While depriving black people of power, 00:09:04.080 --> 00:09:08.320 resources, or the simple ability to enjoy  public life, the Nationalist Party knew they 00:09:08.320 --> 00:09:12.640 needed black labor to sustain the economy — so when black civil rights and labor groups 00:09:12.640 --> 00:09:17.280 recognized this and began campaigning against  apartheid, the government responded viciously: 00:09:17.280 --> 00:09:21.360 banning the African National Congress, arresting  their political and paramilitary leaders, 00:09:21.360 --> 00:09:25.040 firing into crowds of protesters at  Sharpeville and Soweto, and killing 00:09:25.040 --> 00:09:30.000 the prominent activist Steve Biko in 1977. Biko was beloved by South Africans for his 00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:33.600 leadership in the Black Consciousness Movement,  which shattered the apartheid fallacy that 00:09:33.600 --> 00:09:37.600 black people were inherently lesser. After his activism and his murder, 00:09:37.600 --> 00:09:42.720 black South Africans were rightly furious,  but also recognized that Biko was right: 00:09:42.720 --> 00:09:47.600 that it didn’t need to be like this, and  some of the Afrikaners noticed it too. 00:09:47.600 --> 00:09:51.760 During the 1980s, the government and economy  were under pressure from persistent civilian 00:09:51.760 --> 00:09:55.520 unrest and paramilitary action, the  growing strength of black labor unions, 00:09:55.520 --> 00:09:59.440 widespread sympathy abroad, and targeted  international economic sanctions. 00:09:59.440 --> 00:10:05.540 Enter Nelson Mandela. Well, not really “enter”, he had been imprisoned since 1962, but 00:10:05.540 --> 00:10:09.630 while still jailed he was cultivating potential reformers from within the National Party, 00:10:09.630 --> 00:10:14.320 looking to convince pliable Afrikaners to let this broken system go and build something new. 00:10:14.320 --> 00:10:20.000 In 1990, F.W. de Klerk became President, and he  and Mandela negotiated on a series of reforms, 00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:24.000 such as legalizing all political parties,  freeing political prisoners, and holding 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:29.040 South Africa’s first multi-racial election — which, in 1994, a newly-liberated Mandela 00:10:29.040 --> 00:10:32.560 won by a landslide. He finished  de Klerk's process of dismantling 00:10:32.560 --> 00:10:36.800 apartheid and set South Africa on a course to becoming a proudly multiracial democracy. 00:10:36.800 --> 00:10:39.760 Almost 3 decades later, there’s  still plenty of work to be done, 00:10:39.760 --> 00:10:45.440 but with institutional racism no longer official  policy, it’s now possible to do that work. 00:10:45.440 --> 00:10:50.400 Like most places on the African continent, South  Africa has been through an absolute wringer of 00:10:50.400 --> 00:10:54.400 a history in the past few centuries — between migration, commerce, disease, 00:10:54.400 --> 00:10:56.800 colonization, convergence, exploitation, 00:10:56.800 --> 00:11:01.120 oppression, resistance and liberation. And all of the ethnic and cultural groups that 00:11:01.120 --> 00:11:06.000 call South Africa home were playing an integral  part, and it’s already my great regret that I 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:10.800 wasn’t able to discuss them all in this video. But this grand diversity is a real treasure 00:11:10.800 --> 00:11:15.360 that rewards every little bit of inquiry  with a new perspective on this story, 00:11:15.360 --> 00:11:20.400 and it’s the reason that South Africa is so  deserving of its epithet: “The Rainbow Nation”. 00:11:21.120 --> 00:11:25.040 Thank you so much for watching! As I hope  I’ve shown, this history is fascinating in 00:11:25.040 --> 00:11:29.520 its own right, but as an American, the story was  especially intriguing because of how many direct 00:11:29.520 --> 00:11:34.560 points of comparison and of contrast there are  between the American and South African narratives. 00:11:34.560 --> 00:11:37.680 But that’s part of the joy of  Black History Month! Learning 00:11:37.680 --> 00:11:42.080 anything in one area can illuminate other  aspects of the global black experience. 00:11:42.080 --> 00:11:45.920 And to help this video serve as a springboard  for you to discover more about Black History, 00:11:45.920 --> 00:11:50.400 I’ve linked some cool resources down in the  description below. I really hope you check 'em out.