Book 3: Migration, Land and Minerals in the Making of South Africa - Introduction

From the book: Book 3: Migration, Land and Minerals in the Making of South Africa commissioned by The Department of Education

The nineteenth century deserves to be called a turning point because of the significant events and the revolutionary changes that took place in the region now called South Africa. Although the sources of African history became relatively more abundant in the nineteenth century, its history has been the subject of much debate. The debate has revolved around several issues. One of the central issues focuses on the causes of the Mfecane. The tendency to explain nineteenth-century South African history in terms of the increasing activities of Europeans has been debated as a problem leading to European-centred explanations of the past. It has also been pointed out that the nineteenth century history of African societies is often only considered as a “curtain-raiser” to the main European activity of colonisation. However, if colonisation is only an episode in the long history of African societies, then the narration of the African past cannot take colonisation and apartheid as the central piece in history.

The historical debates aside, the significant revolutionary changes in the nineteenth century provided the base on which many of the identities of South Africans have been founded. The century witnessed an explosive growth in the number of African and white states, as well as heightened levels of military, political and social conflicts that resulted in massive dislocation of communities. The establishment of the Boer republics and the subsequent hostile relations with African communities in the interior and the British in their coastal colonies laid a foundation of both co-operation and conflict. The extension of British power in the Cape, Eastern Cape and Natal contributed to the pattern of state formations in South Africa.

The use of violence as a means to political and economic power in South African society can be traced to this period. The “violence of empire” is an appropriate description of how the various states were carved up in the nineteenth century. The establishment of political units on the basis of ethnicity can also be traced to this period. The use of ethnicity and ethnic identities for political purposes was clearly adopted by the African states that incorporated many other groups into their societies. The anglicisationof the British colonies, the growth of Afrikaner identity in the interior, and the rise of African politieswith ethnic names all entrenched the use of ethnicity as political labels.

The patterns of settlement based on racial and ethnic differences can be traced to early African, English and Boer settlements all over the country. Inter-racial stereotypes and social relations were also forged by the events of this period. The inter-marriages between blacks and whites in the frontier societies that created the coloured communities tend to receive little attention. The trend of inter-racial marriages and relations as equals did not become widespread in nineteenth century South Africa.

Revolutionary changes in the nineteenth century were easy to trace in the political arena. There is no dispute among historians that African societies were organised into polities that were growing in size and sophistication. Historians agree that by the end of the eighteenth century African societies were settled, stable and associated with defined areas. The large-scale migration of people had come to an end.

Ajayi, a prominent Nigerian historian, once argued that colonialism was an episode in Africa's quest for freedom and independence. Looking at South African history from the vantage point of 2003, nineteenth-century history is an episode in the construction of South African identities that continue to compete for dominance in the present. The history of state building is the history of forging national identities over the years. The history of state building in South Africa is also the history of competing nationalisms. In Chapter 1, Yonah Seleti examines the nature of statehood at the beginning of the century, and traces how nation building proceeded in the nineteenth century. It has been shown that many nation-building experiments were undertaken but few resulted in well-developed states. The chapter examines how the states emerged as well as the causes of state formation. As much as the reasons are important, it is the playing out of these imagined nations that forged the history of this country.

The discovery and exploitation of minerals from the 1870s onwards coincided with the era of imperialism. In Chapter 2, Tim Keegan examines the role of imperialism and the birth of a colonial society. The British attempt to conquer and control all African and Afrikaner states in nineteenth-century South Africa was brutal, destructive and protracted, but inconclusive until 1910. The 1910 Act of Union was a compromise between Afrikaner and British nationalism to the exclusion of others. British nationalism in nineteenth-century South Africa was not homogeneous; it was a blending of the so-called Cape liberal tradition and the non-liberal British colonial nationalism of Natal. The history of nineteenth-century South Africa has been a history of struggles for dominance and resistance to dominance.

Although other nationalisms were suppressed, they were kept alive through resistance politics. This aspect has received attention in these chapters. However, it has to be stressed that in all these colonial societies that emerged, racial discrimination was the order of the day, notwithstanding the claims of “Cape liberal tradition”.

The impact of the mineral revolution also receives attention. In Chapter 3, Drusela Yekela examines how the discovery of minerals in South Africa initiated processes that restructured settlement patterns, as well as social, political and economic relations in the country. It is needless to repeat that the most obvious effects of gold, diamond and coal mining are to be seen in the tremendous growth of African migrant labour, the rapid break-up of the African familial and political system, and the emergence of a poor-white class. The type of society that evolved as a result of the mining industry made the coming into being of the poor-white class inevitable. The most dramatic changes were seen in the rise of towns. While unskilled African migrants received a fraction of the wage of white skilled workers, semiskilled whites could barely survive on an unskilled wage, and often could not acquire any skills to help improve their wages.

Nineteenth-century changes were more rapid and their impact more farreaching than those that had occurred before. School textbooks should begin to reflect a reinterpretation of this period - one that focuses on the forging of new identities and boundaries, that moves beyond Eurocentric frontier history to a conception of new kinds of conflict, interaction and identity formation. This interpretation should emphasise co-operation and inter-dependence as well as violence and subjugation. A study of nineteenth-century state formation not only highlights the African initiative and innovation in state building but also provides us with an insight into their interactions with Europeans before their conquest and dispossession.