An Account of the Events that led to the Establishment of White Settlement in Africa

The South African Topography & Its Peoples 

The South African topography readily culminates in an eyes gratifying scenery. Marked with touches of slopes connecting valleys to mountains and rivers such as the Limpopo confluencing to finally flow into the Atlantic Ocean.

The climatic variances in its environments present each community with conditions that readily complement the others. Succinctly put, South Africa presents to the geographer an area of natures completeness.

The original indigenes of the South African society are the Bushmen (or SAN), the Hottentots (or Khoi-Khoi) and the Bantu speaking peoples.

The Bushmen are credited to have been the earliest known human inhabitants of South Africa. They are from historical records described as crude, in lifestyle and fierce in social relations even within their own circle. They posed a great threat to the trekboers and the Hottentots who later had to diminish their numbers through incessant fightings roused by the struggle for control of economic resources, mainly land.

The Hottentots on the other hand, were more advanced in their socio-economic way of life, having structured judicial and family systems. They unlike the dominantly nomadic Bushmen were partly nomadic. They usually had clashes over grazing lands for their stock.

The Bantu speaking people are majorly grouped into the Nguni Sotho, Herero and Ovambo sub tribes. They are the most recent of the major tribes of South Africa. Though different in characteristics and features, they were mainly Negroes and spoke a common language – the Bantu.

1. They also had a very developed political and judicial system. The smallest social unit is the family. The Bantu, like the Khoisans perform the initiation rights for young boys and girls only with little variations in manner of ceremony.    

The South African Economy 

It serves the purpose of clarity to discuss the economy of the native people of South Africa before the coming of the white settlers. This would enable the reader understand what would have drawn the interest of the settlers to the economy of the aborigines.

The mainstay of the natives’ economy had been grazing land, livestock, water, fish, forest resources.

The personal estates of each group were based on the dominant lifestyle. Personal properties ranged from pots, arrows, bows, mats, fishing nets, etc. The mode of trade until the coming of the British was by barter. Each community exchanged its products for its neighbours products in other to satisfy it needs.

The nature of the South African economy explains why the Dutch East Indian Company must have established a stopping station in the Cape to replenish the food and water supplies of its ship going to and coming from the West Indies.

This is also helpful in helping the scholar conclude that the Southern African soil is fertile and its rivers rich in resources. The supplies were initially sufficient to sustain the barter trade between the Hottentots and the Dutch.

If we then accept that the products supplied to the Dutch were satisfactory, the Dutch were then stimulated to cultivate the fertile land for their own purpose alone. At least temporarily, the aborigines saw no harm in this.

The satisfaction derived from this “social consummation” must have made the Dutch conclude in establishing ports at the Cape and to drawing the Policy of Confinement, believing that all things being equal, the Cape would only be cultivated to serve their consumption and refueling needs, and that this would in no way cause any form of socio-political intermingling with the Hottentots.

However, as the story of man from inception has been premised on economics which studies the behaviour of man, in relationship to scarce means which have alternative uses. Man’s insatiable wants would make him ask for more and more and more. This singular concept when put into motion among and between the Dutch and the natives snowballed into events that forever reshaped the history of Southern Africa.

The White Incursion in South Africa

In sequential order, the Dutch, the French and the British are the main invaders and later settlers of South Africa. The Dutch were the first settlers, while the British, who are the last were the longest colonists and the largest settlers in the area. However, it should be noted that there was no intention by the Dutch to settle in South Africa until 1652.

Through various events dating back to the Middle Ages (AD 1100 – AD 1400), the quest among major European powers for expansionism coupled with the war for the domination of religious ideology between Christians and Muslims had resulted in manning of trade routes due to aggravated hostilities.

This event had led the warring powers to seek alternative trade routes especially to India. In the forefront of the quest for new lands and resources were Spain and Portugal. The Western spheres of the world had been allotted by the Pope to Spain while Portugal was to explore the East.

Portugal, especially with the pioneer works of Henry the Navigator had opened the way for further successes in discovering the East coast of Africa. In 1489, Calicut, an alternative trade route to India had been discovered by Vasco Da Gama.

Though Spain and Portugal exerted an iron-fist control over the trade routes. England successfully moved to question the authority of Spain over the trade routes and the Dutch seized this opportunity to expand international trades. In 1682, the Dutch East Indian Company was established and after replacing the Portuguese, they further established trading posts along the route to India.

A trading post specifically intended for a refreshment station, where ships could harbor to get fresh foods and undergo repairs after hazardous journeys to and from the East was established, hence the first contact between the white and the native South Africans (the Hottentots). The head of the Dutch East Indian Company was Jan Van Riebeeck.

On arrival at the Cape, Riebeeck encouraged the cultivation of some land stretching for about eight miles from Cape Bay to Whynberg. This encroachment on the lands largely occupied by the Hottentots served as the genesis of conflicts.

Though, the Dutch East Indian Company hoped to operate on the basis of its Policy of Confinement, aiming to shun any form of settlement that could bring about political, social and economic relationship with the natives, the realization of the situation on ground made a joke of the policy engendering the creation of the Assisted Immigration Policy.

Among those who came as freed slaves with the Dutch were the Burghers (who were later to become the Trek Boers). The Burghers played a significant role in initiating events that led to greater conflicts which drew the whites further into the interiors seeking land and other economic resources and instigating the Kaffir wars (the wars against the Bantu speaking peoples).

The Burghers were at the forefront of dominating the natives and brought about forms of organized warfare by creating the “Commando” against the native guerrillas. When the Burghers moved to the interior (as they later became farm and cattle owners), they laid claims to land and moved away for independence from the company. Due to the nature of their endless movement, they got the name Trek Boers.

The Trek Boers defeated the Hottentots and other native groups including the Bushmen met on their journeys into the interior and constantly brought them under some form of acceptance of the superiority of the whites. This was however, not in totality.

Events into the mid 17th century and into the 18th centuries saw the Dutch getting further enmeshed in political and economic struggles against the natives who put up a vehement front against the Trek Boers, whose ways of life was a total irritation and taboo for them (the natives).

With so much hostility going on in the interiors and the exteriors, the Government attempted boundaries between the natives and the Boers such as the Fish River but failed. Coupled with a dissatisfied population of Boers and an helpless government that had lost popularity with the white populace, the French came in.

The French’s appearance on the Cape was initially for military purposes. A French regiment had been stationed at the Cape due to the ongoing Anglo-Franco war in which the Dutch fought on the side of the French. The presence of French regiments on the Cape created a larger market where the colonists sold their products and made relative profits. This served as a transient measure to attain some calm, but with the exit of the regiments after the war, the colonists resumed hostilities with the natives on a larger scale again.

The Dutch East Indian company had failed, especially with the introduction of the unpopular taxes, to win the confidence on the white settlers it was to govern, the British, UNDER Admiral Elphinstone seized the opportunity to attack Dutch ships, creating more socio-economic problems for the company and finally invaded and took over the Cape in 1795 till 1803.

The British though still had to hand over control of the Cape to the Dutch, they finally gained control of the Cape in 1814 after defeating Napoleon who had the Dutch as allies.

The British carried out many reforms, which won the hearts and confidence of the colonists.

By this time in there had been inter-marriages among the whites and natives. These union had produced offspring of mixed colou. The offspring are responsible for the various colour people in South Africa till date. Also, the whites had established permanent settlements in the choice areas of South Africa. These settlements exist till date.

However, the whites had heavily the burden of white supremacy over blacks; this ideology comes to form the crux for Apartheid rule in South Africa.  

About the Author

Nelson Oluwabukola Michael is Nigerian. Born into the family of the Nelsons in the year 1983 on the 12th of April.

He has a National Diploma in Mass Communication and a Professional Diploma in Public Relations from the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR).

He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of The Precision Newspaper, a community Newspaper that is committed to sensitizing the man at the grassroot on the occurences in his environment.

Also, he was the Editor-in-Chief, LASPOTECH Watch, a campus magazine he headed during his National Diploma studies at the prestigious Lagos State Polytechnic in Nigeria.
He currently works as Assistant Public Relations Officer.

He is committed to contributing to the growth of businesses through offering professional; advise on communication and relationships.

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