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European Footprints in Southern Africa

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European Footprints in Southern Africa European Footprints in Southern Africa W B (Ben) Vosloo European Footprints in Southern Africa W B (Ben) Vosloo – Wollongong, May 2015 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- INDEX Page Preface iii Introduction 1 Part I : The Colonial Period 12 1. The Portuguese Influence 13 2. The Dutch Influence 20 3. The Influence of the Boer Republics 37 4. The British Influence 48 5. The German Influence 66 Part II : The Post-Colonial Period 74 6. Post-Colonial Old South Africa 75 7. Post-Colonial New South Africa 116 8. Post-Colonial Former BLS Protectorates 134 9. Post-Colonial Former British Central Africa 139 10. Post-Colonial Former Portuguese Africa 150 11. Post-Colonial Former German South-West Africa 158 Part III : Evaluation 162 12. The Plight of Sub-Saharan Africa 163 13. South Africa’s Exceptionalism 175 14. Prospects 188 i ii About the Author Ben Vosloo was born in the Empangeni district, Natal, 4 November 1934. After completing his schooling in Vryheid, he went to the University of Pretoria where he majored in political science and economics taking the BA and MA degrees with distinction. After serving as a teaching and research assistant, he obtained a Ph.D. degree in 1965 at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. On his return to South Africa, Dr Vosloo began his long association with the reform process in the fields of constitutional change, educational reform and economic development. He served as Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Stellenbosch for 15 years. He was inter alia member of two direction- setting Commissions: the Erika Theron Commission concerning constitutional reform and the De Lange Commission on educational reform. He published widely in academic and professional publications in the fields of management science, political science and development issues. He held offices as a founding member of a number of academic and professional associations such as the S A Political Science Association, the S A Institute for Public Administration and the S A Institute of International Affairs. During his academic career, Prof. Vosloo received several meritorious scholarships and academic awards. Ben Vosloo started his “second” career in 1981 when he was appointed as the founding Managing Director of the newly formed Small Business Development Corporation. He steered the SBDC to its successful track record and its unique position of prominence as a private sector led development institution (1981 to 1995). In recognition of his work, Dr Vosloo was made Marketing Man of the Year (1986), Man of the Year by the Institute of Management Consultants of Southern Africa (1989), given the Emeritus Citation for Business Leaders by the Argus Newspaper Group (1990) and the Personnel Man of the Year by the Institute of Personnel Managers (1990), named as one of the Business Times Top Five Businessmen (1993) and by “Beeld” as one of South Africa’s Top 21 Business Leaders in the past 21 years (1995). He acted as co-author and editor of a trend-setting publication Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth (HSRC Publishers, Pretoria 1994) and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Pretoria in December 1995. In 1996 Ben Vosloo started his “third” career. He initially served as a business consultant on strategic policy matters and later became involved in export marketing in the USA, Canada, Europe and Asia. He obtained permanent resident status in Australia in the category “Distinguished Talents” and eventually became an Australian citizen in 2002. He is now retired and resides in North Wollongong, NSW. iii Preface Since pre-historic times communities and societies have been exposed to external influences. It came in the wake of migrations, conquests, trade, cultural exchange and also social and physical integration. For much of recorded history over the past two millennia, forces of imperialism where one tribe, race or nation explicitly by force majeure took control over others, was part of existential socio-cultural reality. It took the form of major movements of people, belief systems and cultural practices. Large parts of the world today bear the traces of past empires – influencing the lives of millions of people. The legacies of empires cover a wide field, ranging from material things like buildings, roads, harbours and railroads to potent immaterial things like religions, languages, frames of mind, systems of law, manners and hobbies, conventions and cultural traditions. The human race itself was subjected to several forms of physical mutation by the imperial experience: mulattos and meztizos, Coloureds, Creoles and Eurasians. Their offspring produced remarkable artists, athletes, geniuses and saintly heroes – but also pirates and thugs. Writing about a specific region, in this case the southern parts of Africa, creates a specific set of challenges: the complexity of the interaction of influences, the kaleidoscopic changeability of events and the choice of a valid frame of reference in terms of which the available information can be interpreted. Economic historians such as David Landes and Niall Ferguson emphasise the importance of the interaction of natural endowments (geography, broadly speaking) and human action (socio-cultural history). This is what Ferguson called “economic history’s version of the nature-nurture debate”. A persuasive case can be made for the importance of such ‘given’ natural factors as the mean temperature, humidity, soil quality, proximity to the sea, latitude and mineral resources. But there is also strong evidence that human factors (socio-cultural traits) play an even more crucial role. Human inputs include such elements as institutions, demography, traditions and cultural ways of doing things like working, governing, building, travelling, playing, courting, raising children, schooling, training and even making war. A major problem facing all analysts of communities and societies is access to reliable information. In some countries reliable, updated demographic or socio-economic statistics are unavailable. Even recorded history may be skewed or incomplete. Then there is the problem of ‘the eye of the beholder’ which brings in an element of ‘selective perception’. John Adams, one of America’s ‘founding fathers’, famously wrote in 1770: “... Facts are stubborn things, and whatever our wishes or our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence”. What kind of information qualifies as facts and how do we distinguish them from opinions? To answer these questions people often reach for statistics or figures. But there are many good reasons to treat statistical information released by politicians, journalists and public agencies with a healthy dose of scepticism. We know that it is very costly to collect reliable statistics on demographic categories such as population size, ethnic composition, education levels, etc. When you throw in macroeconomic data such as GDP, per capita income, unemployment, inflation rates and growth rates it is important to realise that there are huge gaps not only in the iv accuracy of measurement, but also on the reliability of the measures themselves. Economic data series are not only technically complex but difficult to collect. Inflation measures are highly controversial and the measurement of GDP and per capita income does not adequately measure informal sector or ‘unrecorded’ activities. We all know that figures don’t lie but that men figure. It is a challenge to safeguard the presentation or interpretation of facts from spin, misinformation, propaganda, half truths, distortions, bias, etc. It is hard to avoid looking at events and trends from a particular point of view and harder still to present our observations and opinions in a fair and balanced way. Nevertheless, we should continue to strive to respect the objective truth as supported by facts and evidence. Is it important to know about our human history with its emphasis on our cultural legacy? Shouldn’t we limit our focus to natural history with a universal perspective on the past and an emphasis on the story of planet Earth rather than that of humanity? The time scale of natural history covers more than 13 billion years from the ‘big bang’, about 4.5 billion years of the formation of planet Earth, and only a couple of hundred thousand years during which the biological and chemical make-up of homo sapiens evolved. Within such a broad time-scale, human beings are reduced to a minor, undistinguished and essentially marginal role. The further you go back in time, the more insignificant is the role of human beings relative to that of nature. Without negating the importance of understanding the underlying forces of natural history, it is more than crucial to understand the social and cultural context of our lives. To understand our place in the world around us requires not only a better insight into the laws of nature but also a better grasp of the socio-cultural reality within which we have to live our lives. We need to understand the influences from the past that have shaped the lives we live today. We have to select those influences that were sound and good and use them as foundations for building our future. The emergence of European civilisation is a perfect example of the formative effects of cross- cultural building blocks. The importance of its classical heritage on the development of Western civilisation can hardly be over-emphasised. First, is the legacy of the Greek city-states as the cradles of democracy by allowing citizens to govern themselves and pioneering reliance on empirical observation and rational analysis in order to establish truth and validity in the affairs of men and to enhance their understanding of the relationships between material things. Without this frame of mind philosophy and science would have remained in the realm of superstition and ignorance. The ancient Greeks produced some of the first scientists, philosophers and historians and their art and building styles are still copied today.
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