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History and Government
History: Evidence of human and humanoid occupation of South Africa extends back two million years. Stone Age artefacts date from 40,000 years ago, from which time there appears to have been a continuous human culture. This culture has been identified as being related to that of the Khoisan peoples and it lasted until the arrival of the Europeans and the Bantus – who largely absorbed them. The Bantu population of the region arrived as a result of the great southward migrations of Bantu peoples across central and southern Africa, which occurred during the early and middle parts of this millennium. This largely displaced the Bushmen (whose aboriginal culture – still surviving in the Kalahari – is rivalled only in Australia) and the Khoikhoi (‘Hottentots’).
The European discovery of South Africa was roughly contemporaneous – the Portuguese navigator, Bartholomew Dias, discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. In 1652, Dutch settlers, under Commander Jan van Riebeeck, arrived to start a victualling station for the Dutch East India Company. Numbers were swelled by French Huguenots in 1688 and again in 1820, by British settlers, after the British occupation of the Cape. During the 18th and 19th centuries, British and Boer settlers fought a series of wars with the local tribes. Control of the Cape region was also a matter of dispute between the Dutch and the British. The latter finally gained control in 1806 and, dissatisfied with their new rulers, the Boer pioneers, or Voortrekkers, moved northwards to establish the independent republics of the Orange Free State (now Free State) and the Transvaal (now Gauteng), bringing them into contact (and sometimes conflict) with the indigenous Africans – the Sotho and Nguni, in particular.
In 1869, diamonds (and later gold) were discovered in the Transvaal (now Gauteng), attracting huge numbers of fortune hunters, many of them British. President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal (now Gauteng), fearing British domination, invoked strict franchise requirements. Britain’s attempts at intervention resulted in the Anglo-Boer War; the British victory in 1902 eventually resulted in the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910. In 1948, the National Party came to power and cemented the policy of apartheid – officially the separate development of all racial groups but effectively the creation of semi-autonomous ‘homelands’ for non-whites and the preservation of white supremacy elsewhere. Four ‘homelands’ (Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei) were created, comprising 13 per cent of all land in the country. Although officially styled ‘independent’, the ‘homelands’ were not recognised internationally and were entirely dependent politically and economically on South Africa.
The principal black opposition movement was the African National Congress (ANC). The bulk of the ANC’s organisation and resources, including its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, (‘Spear of the Nation’), worked in exile. The most important black political force outside the ANC has been Chief Buthelezi’s Inkatha movement, with a power base in the Zulu areas in the south-eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal. Successive governments dealt with black opposition with simple and brutal repression. Although, in public at least, the international community reacted strongly against apartheid and maintained economic sanctions against South Africa, there was simultaneously extensive and largely clandestine support from the West for the South African government and its economy. The problems for the South Africans started in the mid- to late 1980s.
In February 1989, the hard-line national party president, PW Botha (known as ‘The Great Crocodile’) gave way to his education minister, FW De Klerk, who had an equally uncompromising reputation but in the event turned out to be relatively flexible and pragmatic. The new government faced constant large-scale agitation by the ANC but also growing pressure from the white-dominated business community, who were starting to realise that the apartheid regime had no long-term viable future. The economy had been in near-crisis for some time and South Africa’s foreign creditors were demanding wholesale changes in domestic policy to safeguard their investments. Over the next 12 months, the De Klerk government removed the ban of the ANC, the South African Communist Party and 30 other anti-apartheid groups, and released the jailed ANC leadership including, after 27 years of imprisonment, its leader, Nelson Mandela. Mandela and his ANC colleagues immediately started negotiating a final political settlement with the white government.
The ANC is not a unitary movement but a coalition of numerous diverse interests; Mandela has described it as ‘an African parliament’. More significant was the deep schism that emerged between the ANC and Inkatha, which frequently exploded into violence and threatened to destabilise the entire process. Despite several close calls, all three main parties (the National Party, ANC and Inkatha) entered into a process, which, by the end of 1993, had laid out a blueprint for a new constitutional future for South Africa. De Klerk kept the majority of the whites on board. The most dangerous white racist organisation, the Afrikaner Weerstandbeweging (AWB, Afrikaner Resistance Movement) fortuitously self-destructed following a bizarre incident involving an attempted invasion of the Bophuthatswana ‘homeland’. Since then, occasional attempts have been made to establish ‘white homelands’ in remote parts of the country but these have invariably fallen apart.
The centrepiece of the political settlement was the first genuinely inclusive national election in South Africa, which was held in February 1994. The ANC won 63 per cent of the poll, the National Party 20 per cent and Inkatha 11 per cent. Nelson Mandela became the country’s president with Thabo Mbeki and De Klerk as deputy presidents. The priorities for the new government, which included representatives of all three parties, were straightforward but daunting – to provide decent standards of housing, education, health and other basic services for the great majority of the population whose needs had been ignored under the apartheid regime.
The practical necessity of not alienating domestic industrialists and international financiers has meant that the government has not been able to move as quickly as it might have wished. Demands to right the injustices of the apartheid era have been, for the most part, successfully dealt with through the creation of a ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, which has uncovered much detail about the murkier aspects of that period. Inkatha continues to hold sway in KwaZulu-Natal, where there have been occasional but increasingly infrequent outbreaks of political violence. The ANC dominates the political scene in the rest of the country. The National Party left the government after the introduction of a new constitution in 1996; it has not prospered in opposition and despite a new leadership and a remodelled image, it is now a marginal force. Despite what appear to be genuine attempts to remodel itself as a multiracial opposition party, it carries too much historical baggage to ever be really effective in the new South Africa.
Before the 1999 elections, Mandela announced that he would not stand for a second term and passed the presidential reins to his heir apparent, Thabo Mbeki, who led the ANC to a comfortable victory at the June poll. Inkatha and the National Party were confined to less than ten per cent of the vote. Mbeki’s administration is struggling with two major domestic problems – a huge violent crime wave and an HIV-AIDS pandemic, which afflicts over ten per cent of the adult population. Mbeki’s persistent refusal to come to terms with the true nature of the HIV virus has drawn massive international criticism as well as being the subject of furious arguments between Mbeki and Mandela. The details and ramifications of this are beyond the scope of this brief history but this is undoubtedly the single largest problem facing the whole of Southern Africa.
Abroad, South Africa has pursued an independent foreign policy, dealing with a number of regimes that are out of favour with the West (Iran, Cuba, Libya) but whose support for the ANC during apartheid – when the US, UK, and others were supporting the regime – has not been forgotten. Relations with the USA and the West are nonetheless stable.
In sub-Saharan Africa, Mbeki – under the rubric of the Millennium Africa Plan – has intervened in a number of regional conflicts. These include Ethiopia/Eritrea, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Closer to home, the government has shown a sometimes uncertain touch – a blundering intervention in neighbouring Lesotho in 1998 was followed by inconclusive engagements in Angola and the Republic of Congo. Most recently, Mbeki has been confounded by the increasingly anarchic situation in Zimbabwe. Here again, the historical legacy of mutual support among liberation movements during the dark days of apartheid and UDI has made Mbeki extremely reluctant to take any measures against the Mugabe regime (see Zimbabwe).
Government: Under the terms of the new constitution, which was adopted on 8 May 1996 and entered into force on 4 February 1997, legislative power is vested in a bicameral parliament, comprising a National Assembly and a National Council of Provinces (formerly the Senate). The National Assembly is elected by universal adult suffrage under a system of proportional representation and has between 350 and 400 members. The 90-member National Council of Provinces comprises six permanent delegates and four special delegates from each of the provincial legislatures. The president, who is elected by the National Assembly from among its members, exercises executive power in consultation with the other members of the cabinet.
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