South Africa

South Africa's famed mineral wealth rests on a history of racial domination. The discovery of diamonds and gold sparked a transformation that turned a marginal frontier territory into a booming industrial economy. However, South Africa's success came at the expense of black workers. Whites stripped Africans of their land and forced them to work at starvation wages. The systematic oppression of blacks allowed whites to enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the developed world. Today, South Africa is struggling to redress the inequity between black poverty and white wealth.

Racial conflict began in the 1590s, when European ships first stopped to trade with Khoi herders at the Cape of Good Hope. The ships needed fresh meat, and the Khoi were willing to trade sheep and cattle for tobacco and iron goods. In many cases, however, sailors stole the animals. In retaliation, the Khoi raised prices, refused to trade, or attacked whites.

When trade with the Khoi became too unreliable, the Dutch East India Company established a settlement at the cape in 1652 to supply their ships. By 1700 a small class of wealthy wheat and wine producers dominated the colonial economy. Cape Town held few opportunities for poorer whites, and many settlers decided to take their slaves and cattle and trek east. The settlers, or trekboers, lived by farming and herding. The trekboers sold a few head of cattle to buy guns or gunpowder, but otherwise they had little contact with the colonial economy. As they pushed eastward, the trekboers came into conflict with Xhosa communities, leading to war in 1779.

By the 1790s Britain had become concerned about the risk that Dutch control of the cape posed to British imperial trade. If the Dutch let the French establish a naval base at Cape Town, the French could disrupt the sea route to India. The threat grew as war with France became more likely, and Britain captured the Cape Colony in 1806 to secure access to India. British rule resulted in several economic changes for the colony. Wool became the colony's most important export. African demand for cheap British metal goods and cotton cloth increased, leading to the development of new towns on the eastern frontier. More important were the British laws that tried to create free and fair relations between black workers and white masters. The slave trade was ended in 1807, and slavery was abolished in 1833. New laws protected black workers from being abused and cheated by their white masters, but black workers were prevented from leaving their employers before their terms of employment were fulfilled.

Dutch settlers resented the British government's interference, and in the early 1830s, many settlers decided to leave the colony rather than conform to the new laws. They moved north and east, coming into conflict with the Zulu and Sotho kingdoms. After twenty years of fighting, the white settlers established the South African Republic in 1852 and the Orange Free State in 1854. Britain founded the colony of Natal directly east of the cape to prevent Dutch settlers from gaining access to the Indian Ocean.

Despite the newly claimed lands, the settler economy stagnated. British settler farmers could not compete with Australian wool, French wines, or Brazilian sugar, and the Dutch republics had nothing to trade but ivory.

The discovery of diamonds in 1867 changed everything. Speculators flocked to the diamond fields of Kimberley, a small town on the cape's northeastern border. At first, anyone with a pick and shovel could dig for diamonds, but the cost of mining increased as the shafts went deeper. Individuals sold their claims to mining companies, and smaller companies sold out to bigger conglomerates. By 1889 Cecil Rhodes's DeBeers Consolidated Mining Company had taken control of the colony's diamond production and the world diamond market. The consolidation of the mining industry undermined the gains that African workers had made. The demand for labor had driven African wages up in the 1860s, but as the small miners were driven out, the mining companies agreed to hold wages down. The companies forced African workers to remain in the company compound for the entire period of their contracts. Life inside the compounds was hard: rations consisted mainly of maize meal and bad meat; workers' beds were simply concrete slabs. Beatings and abuse were commonplace.

The compound system lowered the mining companies' labor costs and raised their profits. Consequently, when the Rand gold fields were discovered in the South African Republic in 1886, companies applied the lessons learned in the diamond mines. A Chamber of Mines was formed to set wages, and employers housed workers in company compounds. Despite the low wages and the hardships of compound life, wages on the Rand were higher than anywhere else in southern Africa, and workers came from as far away as Angola, Mozambique, and the Congo. One hundred thousand Africans were working in the gold mines by 1900, and the mining companies had become the dominant economic force in Africa.

The mining companies chafed under the control of the trekboer government, and they pushed the British government into a war with the northern republics in 1899. The British army won the war, but the British government lost the peace. When the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, the Dutch settlers—or Afrikaners, as they called themselves—were a majority of the white population, and because only whites could vote, Afrikaners took control of the colonial government.

Afrikaner governments ensured a high standard of living for their white constituents. A "colour bar" reserved high-wage skilled jobs for white workers, and the Native Lands Act of 1913 set aside 93 percent of the land in the country for white ownership. New industries were established to produce steel, military arms, and other goods, to create more jobs for whites, and to reduce South Africa's dependency on foreign trade. Apartheid, or "apartness," was introduced in 1948 to enforce the economic domination of whites over blacks, Indians, and "coloureds."

Because the ratio of gold ore to quartz overburden is low on the Rand, extracting the gold is a labor-intensive operation. However, because white politicians and mine owners kept African wages artificially low, the South African mines could earn high profits. The African standard of living fell to one of the lowest in the industrialized world, whereas the white standard of living was one of the highest.

The international community took notice of South Africa's racial situation in 1960, when white police fired on African protesters in Sharpeville, killing sixty-nine people. Sixteen years later, police killed more than 300 protesters in Soweto. The United Nations General Assembly and other groups called for economic sanctions against South Africa. Some countries, including Britain and the United States, urged an alternate policy of "constructive engagement," and called on multinational companies to provide equal job, housing, and educational opportunities for black South Africans. Opposition to the Afrikaner regime mounted during the 1980s, forcing the white government to step down in 1994. The vote was extended to all South Africans in the same year, leading to the country's first truly democratic election. The African National Congress formed South Africa's first majority-rule government. Since then, the government has worked to redistribute South Africa's wealth equitably while maintaining economic growth.

SEE ALSO Africa, Labor Taxes (Head Taxes); Africa, Native Lands Acts; Amsterdam; Anglo American Corporation; Angola; Arms, Armaments; Boycott; Coen, Jan Pieterszoon; Corn Laws; DeBeers; East India Company, Dutch; Empire, British; Empire, Dutch; Ethnic Groups, Africans;Ethnic Groups, Gujarati; Gama, Vasco da; Gold Rushes; Gold and Silver; International Labour Organization; Imperialism; International Monetary Fund (IMF); Indonesia;Laborers, Coerced;Laborers, Contract;Nationalism;Rhodes, Cecil;Unilever;Wheat and Other Cereal Grains;Zimbabwe.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Denoon, Donald, and Nyeka, Balam. Southern Africa Since 1800, 2nd edition. London and New York: Longman, 1984.

Freund, Bill. The Making of Contemporary Africa: The Development of African Society Since 1800, 2nd edition. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998.

Hall, Martin. Farmers, Kings, and Traders: The People of Southern Africa, 200–1860. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Hanlon, Joseph. Beggar Your Neighbours: Apartheid Power in Southern Africa. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986.

Minter, William. King Solomon's Mines Revisited: Western Interests and the Burdened History of Southern Africa. New York: Basic Books, 1986.

Sampson, Anthony. Black and Gold. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987.

Shillington, Kevin. A History of Southern Africa. Burnt Mill, U.K.: Longman, 1987.

Van Onselen, Charles. Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witswatersrand, 1886–1914. Vol. 1: New Babylon; Vol. 2: New Nineveh. New York: Longman, 1982.

Worger, William. South Africa's City of Diamonds: Mine Workers and Monopoly Capitalism in Kimberley, 1867–1895. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.

INTERNET RESOURCES

"Government's Programme of Action." South Africa Government Online Batho Pele: Putting People First. 2004. Available from http://www.info.gov.za/issues/poa/index.html.

Leslie Bessant