Africa

South Africa

South Africa

• Location– Lies at the southern tip of Africa– Has seacoasts on two oceans

• The Atlantic Ocean• The Indian Ocean

– The country is larger than TX and CA put together

South Africa

• Cultures clash– Ancestors of most of today’s black South

Africans arrived about 2,00 years ago during the Bantu migration.

– Europeans arrived in RSA about 400 years ago– 1652 Dutch settlers set up a colony at Cape Town

on the southern tip of the continent.• They called themselves the Boers. • Later they became Afrikaners.

– British and French settlers also settled in RSA.– For years black settlers battled with the white

settlers.

South Africa

– By 1800 the white settlers had forced the black settlers off of the best land.

– British and Afrikaners also fought each other for control of RSA.

• Afrikaners created their own states to get away from the British.

– Transval– Orange Free State

• Soon diamonds and gold were found in Transval.• British prospectors pushed Afrikaners off their farms.

• The British and Afrikaners fought over the territory for three years

South Africa

• The British won

• White rule in South Africa– White led government of the new country

passed several laws to keep land and wealth in white hands.

• Natives Land Act of 1913, stated that blacks could live in only 8 percent of the country. The rest of the land belonged to the whites.

• 1948 apartheid system—an Afrikaner word meaning separateness.

South Africa

– Apartheid laws placed every South African into a category based on race.

– It was legal to discriminate on the basis of race.– I separated South Africans into four groups:

» Blacks» Whites» Colored» Asians» Colored were people of mixed race» Asians usually meant people from India.

South Africa

– Coloreds and Asians had few rights.– Blacks had no rights at all.

– The Deadly Struggle against Apartheid

South Africa

• In the 1950s and 60s blacks and whites took to the streets in peaceful protest against Apartheid.

• South African police met them with deadly force. Hundreds were killed. Thousands thrown into jail.

South Africa

• Countries around the world joined in the movement against apartheid.

• Many nations stopped trading with RSA or lending it money.

• 1990s RSA President F. W. de Klerk, pushed through laws that tore down apartheid.

• April 1994 South Africans of all colors elected Nelson Mandela, a black man who had spend 28 years in prison for fighting apartheid.

South Africa

– New Challenges• Under Mandela’s government discrimination by

race ended.• Despite all efforts to the opposite, South Africa

remains a divided society.• Whites still control most of the country’s

largest businesses.

South Africa

• Many whites do not like the changes in South Africa.

• Some whites fear their children’s education will suffer in schools attended by all races.

South Africa

– Building a New Nation• All South Africans are struggling to build the

new South Africa.• Mandela took steps to heal RSA

– Truth and Reconciliation Commission—examines the crimes of the apartheid era

– 1998 the commission issued its final report which condemned acts of murder and torture by both white and black South Africans.

South Africa

– The commission also granted amnesty to some peole who committed crimes.

– It withheld amnesty from others which meant they could face trial.

– June 1999, South Africa held its second election open to all races.

– Mandela’s political party remained in power.