Movement of Peoples History

24 INTRODUCTION modernoverland.com modernoverland.com INTRODUCTION 25 HISTORY the Khoikhoi are not racially different as was once the flat plains of the interior and Highveld. They than the Khoisan were willing to sell. Seeing no thought; the differing terms merely reflected the lived in highly organized farming communities consequences for themselves, many sailors stole Sixty million years before dinosaurs roamed the divergent lifestyles of South Africa’s indigenous and worked primarily as iron and coppersmiths. livestock and sailed away. Khoisan retaliation was earth, prehistoric mammals inhabited the dusty population. Together the San nomads and the Venda-speakers and Tsonga-speakers established meted out against the next unsuspecting ship. In terrain of South Africa’s interior. Proto-human Khoi pastoralists became jointly known as the themselves in the northeastern part of the country the eyes of the Europeans, trade in the Cape soon remains found at the Cradle of Humankind Khoisan, or by the European-imposed terms along the Limpopo River and developed refined became unstable and expensive. World Heritage Site in the Gauteng province are “Bushmen” and “Hottentots.” metalworking skills, specializing in gold sculpture evidence of the hominid ancestors that called the and jewelry. The VOC’s Cape Colony region home nearly two million years ago. But it The Great Bantu Migration Indigenous Khoisan living in the eastern parts In 1652 the Dutch East India Company (VOC) sent wasn’t until roughly 100,000 years ago that our Between 500 and 1200 A.D. a wave of Bantu- of the country were largely absorbed into the a delegation of workers to the Cape to establish stone-age ancestors transformed into modern speaking peoples descended from central Africa migrant societies, their legacy remaining in the a small permanent settlement on the southern Homo sapiens and began walking their way into and settled South Africa in what later became distinct Khoisan clicks heard in the Zulu and Xhosa shores of Table Bay. Their mission was to secure a the future. known as the Great Bantu Migration. These languages. Migration slowed as Bantu-speakers more stable halfway point for their trading vessels OVERVIEW Nomadic San hunter-gatherers are South Bantu-speakers had much darker skin than the opted for the fertile lands in the east and stopped and thereby surpass their competitors. To this end, Africa’s indigenous peoples. Their rock art can indigenous Khoisan and were composed of four short of the dusty southwestern plains, allowing they set out to regularize trade with the resident be found adorning caves and mountainsides distinct language families. The Nguni-speakers, the Khoisan of the present-day Western Cape and Khoisan, grow fresh vegetables to sell to passing OVERVIEW throughout the country from Johannesburg to the largest group, settled in the fertile regions Northern Cape to maintain their distinct culture ships and build a hospital for sailors. Initially, they Cape Town. Some of these paintings date as far east and south of the Drakensburg Mountains. and language. Interaction between the different were not interested in establishing a colony. But back as 30,000 years when the San roamed freely They lived in dispersed farming and cattle herding groups was largely peaceful and based on trade. as the settlement grew, VOC Commander Jan van between South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. communities and are the ancestors of the present- Widespread violence that emerged in later years Riebeeck succumbed to requests to allow workers San that chose the more rooted lifestyle of sheep day Xhosa, Zulu, Ndebele and Swazis. The Sotho- was either a direct result or byproduct of the to expand beyond the confines of Table Bay and and cattle herding were later referred to as speakers, the BaSotho, Tswana and Pedi, settled arrival of Europeans in southern Africa beginning establish small farms to increase production. Khoikhoi, meaning “men of men.” The San and in the Drakensburg Mountains and westward in in the late 1400s. The encroachment of these first free burgher “Boers” (Dutch for famers) on Khoisan grazing land Early European Encounters was not a welcome development. In the first Khoi- Portuguese sailors and explorers had long dreamed Boer War of 1659, the Khoisan had early success of a sea passage to reach the riches of Asia, but the pushing the free burghers back, but they were 500 500 windy southern African tip thwarted early attempts. not strong enough to take the entire fort, which MOVEMENT OF Venda In 1487, Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias resulted in a stalemate. The VOC then capitalized finally rounded the cape, only to be blown ashore on the relative lack of unity between the disparate PEOPLES Northern Tsonga Tswana 500 in a violent storm. He returned to Portugal with clans and a year later defeated the Khoisan. From Sotho Ndebele 1855 stories of the ‘Cabo Tormentoso' (Cape of Storms) then on the free burghers considered all Khoisan and the copper-colored men he saw along the land to be theirs for the taking and continued to Bushmen shore herding cattle. However his princely sponsor, spread deeper into the fertile rolling hills of the 1600 Tswana Henry the Navigator, had a more positive name Western Cape. for the fated cape - it would be called the Cape Life in the Cape Colony was heavily influenced Swazi of Good Hope. Ten years later, Vasco de Gama by the Dutch Reformed Church, a conservative 1850 followed Dias’ route and successfully reached branch of Calvinist Christianity. Most of the original Bushmen Southern Zulu Indians India. The seaway to the Indies was officially open. VOC employees were members of this religion. Sotho Throughout the 1500s, European sailors regularly As the colony grew, the VOC encouraged more rounded the southern tip of Africa on their way European immigration to the Cape, mainly other to trade with the East Indies, modern-day India, Dutch Calvinists, French Huguenot refugees and 1800 Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Cape Town was Germans. However not everyone came to the used as a halfway point to replenish supplies, get new Cape Colony willingly. Within the first 10 fresh water and buy meat from the local Khoisan years of settlement, the VOC began importing Xhosa herdsmen on the slopes of Table Mountain. For slaves to build Cape Town and work as servants Coloureds years the Khoisan had engaged in long-distance or laborers on Boer farms and vineyards. Slaves overland trade with the Tswana and Xhosa in the were mainly imported from the eastern African 1652 east, however they soon preferred the ease of coast including Madagascar and Mozambique, trade with passing ships. But, tensions between the India, Malaysia and Indonesia. In total, over 60,000 local Khoisan and the European traders emerged slaves were imported to the Cape under VOC 1860 when sailors began to demand more meat rule. As a company geared towards profit, VOC Malays 26 INTRODUCTION modernoverland.com modernoverland.com INTRODUCTION 27 considered slaves merely as a labor supply and the Khoisan before them, could in due course Fish River, while Boers applauded British colonial enemies and drove the broken Ndwandwe from was not concerned with the well-being of the slave be absorbed into the growing Xhosa society. expansion and the clearing of new land for the lowlands. They fled across the Drakensburg population. The company therefore did not invest The collision of these two expanding peoples white settlement. But after farther extension of Mountains spreading death and destruction any time into converting their slaves to Calvinism, a exploded into conflict over grazing land and the colony’s boundary in 1835, the British came throughout the Highveld, the Zulu army nipping fact which later allowed Islam to flourish among the cattle in the late 1770s, leading to the outbreak of to realize that they could not just eradicate all at their heels. “Cape Malay” population. the first of nine so-called Frontier Wars that would Xhosa, and probably more importantly, did not ravage the Eastern Cape throughout the 1800s. want the administrative costs of a new province. Difaqane in the Highveld European Expansion Both the Xhosa and the frontier Boers suffered They handed part of the annexed land back to The reverberations of the mfecane were soon felt Cape Colony expansion posed difficulties for tremendously in these early wars. Sore from losses the Xhosa a year later. The relinquished land was throughout the interior, giving rise to the difaqane early European farmers and was often fatal for to the Xhosa, lack of support from the colony and unforgivable in the eyes of the Trekboers, who (Sotho for “the scattering”). In the early 1800s, the resident Khoisan. Owning farmland became resenting heavy VOC taxes, the Boer trekkers packed their wagons and headed north to join numerous Sotho and Tswana chiefdoms populated a status symbol for the Boers and soon wealthy rebelled. They expelled all VOC officials and their Boer brothers in the Great Trek. the Highveld in small, quasi-urban stone-walled whites bought up rich agricultural land in the established short-lived independent governments settlements. Their sophisticated economic and OVERVIEW valleys just beyond Cape Town. Poorer Boers in interior towns such as Swellendam and Graaff- Nguni Kingdoms and Mfecane political organization far outstripped that of their were forced to trek farther into the interior. They Reinet. As the British were solidifying their colonial rule in obtained cattle and sheep from rival Khoisan by the west, warring northern Nguni kingdoms were OVERVIEW either warfare or trading, but lacked the necessary The Brits Take Over vying for dominance in the east. Throughout the labor to work the vast expanses of farmland they British seizure of the Cape Colony from the Dutch 1700s, a number of chiefdoms began to expand, claimed.

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