The History Of The San And Khoekhoe People In South Africa

According to SouthAfrica.info (2016) the oldest known culture located in the southern tip of South Africa were named the San and Khoekhoe people who solely populated the region for thousands of years until the arrival of the Europeans. As a result of disease brought by European settlers and their accompanying slaves, the Khoekhoe have essentially been wiped out of existence. Among the north-eastern and eastern regions of modern-day South Africa lived the Bantu-speaking people. These people lived in this region for hundreds of years prior to the Europeans began to envelope the area. In 1652, Jan van Riebaak of the Dutch East India Company and 90 men landed at the Cape of Good Hope in order to build a fort and develop a vegetable garden in

In the beginning, the relations ship of these people to the Khoekhoe was that of trade. In 1657 nine men were released from their contracts with the Dutch East India Company, were given farm land in the area in order to settle. Later in that year, slaves were introduced to the area and the start of a colony of whites had begun to develop. The descendants of these groups of people are referred to as the “coloured” in today’s society. Over the next hundred years, the Dutch and the British will alternate control of the region, the slaves will be emancipated which will cause emigration, and these settlers to slowly envelope the area while still being mixed in with Bantu-speakers and a few other small tribes. The Cape Colony was then allowed British legislative representation in 1853 and self-government in 1872. 1897 was a time of aggressive British expansion which lead to the incorporation of Zululand into Natal, but the areas became increasingly unstable. The British would lose and gain control of the region again until the area became the Union of South Africa on 31 May 1910. There was still a huge racial divide as blacks were barred from being members of the parliament. Of the approximate 6-million inhabitants over half were