British at the Cape ''—
Cecil Rhodes spanning "Cape to Cairo" In 1787, shortly before the
French Revolution, a faction within the politics of the
Dutch Republic known as the
Patriot Party attempted to overthrow the regime of
stadtholder William V. Though the revolt was crushed, it was resurrected after the
French invasion of the Netherlands in 1794/1795 which resulted in the stadtholder fleeing the country. The Patriot revolutionaries then proclaimed the
Batavian Republic, which was closely allied to revolutionary France. In response, the stadtholder, who had taken up residence in England, issued the
Kew Letters, ordering colonial governors to surrender to the British. The British then
seized the Cape in 1795 to prevent it from falling into French hands. The Cape was relinquished back to the Dutch in 1803. In 1805, the British inherited the Cape as a prize during the
Napoleonic Wars, Like the Dutch before them, the British initially had little interest in the Cape Colony, other than as a strategically located port. As one of their first tasks they outlawed the use of the Dutch language in 1806 with the view of converting the Dutch settlers to the British language and culture. The
Cape Articles of Capitulation of 1806 allowed the colony to retain "all their rights and privileges which they have enjoyed hitherto", and this launched South Africa on a divergent course from the rest of the British Empire, allowing the continuance of
Roman-Dutch law. British
sovereignty of the area was recognised at the
Congress of Vienna in 1815, the Dutch accepting a payment of 6 million pounds (equivalent to £31,2 billion in 2023) for the colony. This had the effect of forcing more of the Dutch colonists to move (or trek) away from British administrative reach. Much later, in 1820 the British authorities persuaded about 5,000 middle-class British immigrants (most of them "in trade") to leave Great Britain. Many of the
1820 Settlers eventually settled in
Grahamstown and
Port Elizabeth. British policy with regard to South Africa would vacillate with successive governments, but the overarching imperative throughout the 19th century was to protect the strategic trade route to India while incurring as little expense as possible within the colony. This aim was complicated by border conflicts with the Boers, who soon developed a distaste for British authority. Early relations between the European settlers and the Xhosa, the first Bantu peoples they met when they ventured inward, were peaceful. However, there was competition for land, and this tension led to skirmishes in the form of cattle raids from 1779. The Royal Geographical Society later awarded Livingstone a gold medal for his discovery of
Lake Ngami in the desert.
Zulu militarism and expansionism ,
Zwangendaba,
Ndebele,
Hlubi,
Ngwane, and the
Mfengu. Some clans were caught between the Zulu Empire and advancing
Voortrekkers and
British Empire such as the
Xhosa . The Zulu people are part of the Nguni ethnic group and were originally a minor clan in what is today northern KwaZulu-Natal, founded ca. 1709 by
Zulu kaNtombela. The 1820s saw a time of immense upheaval relating to the military expansion of the
Zulu Kingdom, which replaced the original African clan system with kingdoms.
Sotho-speakers know this period as the
difaqane ("
forced migration");
Zulu-speakers call it the
mfecane ("crushing"). Various theories have been advanced for the causes of the
difaqane, ranging from ecological factors to competition in the ivory trade. Another theory attributes the epicentre of Zulu violence to the slave trade out of Delgoa Bay in Mozambique situated to the north of Zululand. Most historians recognise that the Mfecane wasn't just a series of events caused by the founding of the Zulu kingdom but rather a multitude of factors caused before and after
Shaka Zulu came into power. Shaka built large
armies, breaking from clan tradition by placing the armies under the control of his own officers rather than of hereditary chiefs. He then set out on a massive programme of expansion, killing or enslaving those who resisted in the territories he conquered. His
impis (warrior regiments) were rigorously disciplined: failure in battle meant death. in traditional
Zulu military garb The Zulu resulted in the mass movement of many tribes who in turn tried to dominate those in new territories, leading to widespread warfare and waves of displacement spread throughout southern Africa and beyond. It accelerated the formation of several new nation-states, notably those of the Sotho (present-day
Lesotho) and the
Swazi (now
Eswatini (formerly Swaziland)). It caused the consolidation of groups such as the
Matebele, the
Mfengu and the
Makololo. In 1828 Shaka was killed by his half-brothers
Dingaan and
Umhlangana. The weaker and less-skilled Dingaan became king, relaxing military discipline while continuing the despotism. Dingaan also attempted to establish relations with the British traders on the Natal coast, but events had started to unfold that would see the demise of Zulu independence. Estimates for the death toll resulting from the Mfecane range from 1 million to 2 million.
Boer people and republics After 1806, a number of
Dutch-speaking inhabitants of the Cape Colony trekked inland, first in small groups. Eventually, in the 1830s, large numbers of Boers migrated in what came to be known as the
Great Trek. The farmers had invested large amounts of capital in slaves. Owners who had purchased enslaved people on credit or put them up as security against loans faced financial ruin.
South African Republic , often referred to as the
Vierkleur (meaning four-coloured) The South African Republic (Dutch:
Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek or ZAR, not to be confused with the much later
Republic of South Africa), is often referred to as The Transvaal and sometimes as the Republic of Transvaal. It was an independent and internationally recognised nation-state in southern Africa from 1852 to 1902. Independent sovereignty of the republic was formally recognised by
Great Britain with the signing of the
Sand River Convention on 17 January 1852. The republic, under the premiership of
Paul Kruger, defeated British forces in the
First Boer War and remained independent until the end of the Second Boer War on 31 May 1902, when it was forced to surrender to the British. The territory of the South African Republic became known after this war as the Transvaal Colony.
Free State Republic The independent Boer republic of
Orange Free State evolved from colonial Britain's
Orange River Sovereignty, enforced by the presence of British troops, which lasted from 1848 to 1854 in the territory between the
Orange and
Vaal rivers, named Transorange. Britain, due to the military burden imposed on it by the
Crimean War in Europe, then withdrew its troops from the territory in 1854, when the territory along with other areas in the region was claimed by the Boers as an independent Boer republic, which they named the Orange Free State. In March 1858, after land disputes, cattle rustling and a series of raids and counter-raids, the Orange Free State declared war on the
Basotho kingdom, which it failed to defeat. A succession of wars were conducted between the Boers and the Basotho for the next 10 years. The name Orange Free State was again changed to the
Orange River Colony, created by Britain after the latter occupied it in 1900 and then annexed it in 1902 during the
Second Boer War. The colony, with an estimated population of less than 400,000 in 1904 ceased to exist in 1910, when it was absorbed into the Union of South Africa as the
Orange Free State Province.
Natalia Natalia was a short-lived Boer republic established in 1839 by Boer
Voortrekkers emigrating from the Cape Colony. In 1824 a party of 25 men under British Lieutenant F G Farewell arrived from the Cape Colony and established a settlement on the northern shore of the Bay of Natal, which would later become the port of Durban, so named after
Benjamin D'Urban, a governor of the Cape Colony. Boer
Voortrekkers in 1838 established the Republic of Natalia in the surrounding region, with its capital at
Pietermaritzburg. On the night of 23/24 May 1842 British colonial forces attacked the
Voortrekker camp at Congella. The attack failed, with British forces then retreating back to Durban, which the Boers besieged. A local trader
Dick King and his servant Ndongeni, who later became folk heroes, were able to escape the blockade and ride to Grahamstown, a distance of 600 km (372.82 miles) in 14 days to raise British reinforcements. The reinforcements arrived in Durban 20 days later; the siege was broken and the
Voortrekkers retreated. The Boers accepted British annexation in 1844. Many of the Natalia Boers who refused to acknowledge British rule trekked over the
Drakensberg mountains to settle in the Orange Free State and Transvaal republics.
Cape Colony Between 1847 and 1854,
Harry Smith, governor and high commissioner of the Cape Colony, annexed territories far to the north of the original British and Dutch settlement. Smith's expansion of the Cape Colony resulted in conflict with disaffected Boers in the Orange River Sovereignty who in 1848 mounted an abortive rebellion at Boomplaats, where the Boers were defeated by a detachment of the Cape Mounted Rifles. Annexation also precipitated a war between British colonial forces and the indigenous Xhosa nation in 1850, in the eastern coastal region. Starting from the mid-1800s, the
Cape of Good Hope, which was then the largest state in southern Africa, began moving towards greater independence from Britain. In 1854, the Cape of Good Hope
elected its first parliament on the basis of the multi-racial
Cape Qualified Franchise unlike the Boer republics, whereby suffrage qualifications applied universally, regardless of race. The Cape Colony was unusual in southern Africa for this manner of carrying out an election and because its laws prohibited any other discrimination on the basis of race. In 1872, after a long political struggle, it attained
responsible government with a locally accountable executive and Prime Minister. The Cape nonetheless remained nominally part of the British Empire, even though it was self-governing in practice. The
Orange Order established in South Africa in the 19th century, with the first lodge being established in the Cape Colony. Its growth was tied to British immigration and the presence of
British soldiers. The organization served as a
fraternal and
social group for British settlers and military personnel, often with a focus on mutual support and maintaining ties to their home
culture. The lodges were most prominent in cities like Cape Town and
Port Elizabeth. Initially, a period of strong economic growth and social development ensued. However, an ill-informed British attempt to force the states of southern Africa into a British federation led to inter-ethnic tensions and the
First Boer War. Meanwhile, the discovery of diamonds around
Kimberley and gold in the
Transvaal led to a later return to instability, particularly because they fueled the rise to power of the ambitious colonialist
Cecil Rhodes. As Cape Prime Minister, Rhodes curtailed the multi-racial franchise, and his expansionist policies set the stage for the
Second Boer War.
Natal Indian slaves from the
Dutch colonies in India had been introduced into the Cape area of South Africa by the Dutch settlers in 1654. By the end of 1847, following annexation by Britain of the former Boer republic of Natalia, nearly all the Boers had left their former republic, which the British renamed Natal. The role of the Boer settlers was replaced by subsidised British immigrants of whom 5,000 arrived between 1849 and 1851. By 1860, with slavery having been abolished in 1834, and after the annexation of Natal as a British colony in 1843, the British colonists in
Natal (now
kwaZulu-Natal) turned to
India to resolve a labour shortage, as men of the local Zulu warrior nation were refusing to work on the plantations and farms established by the colonists. In that year, the
SS Truro arrived in Durban harbour with over 300 Indians on board. Over the next 50 years, 150,000 more
indentured Indian servants and labourers arrived, as well as numerous free "passenger Indians," building the base for what would become the largest Indian diasporic community outside India. By 1893, when the lawyer and social activist
Mahatma Gandhi arrived in Durban, Indians outnumbered whites in Natal. The
civil rights struggle of Gandhi's
Natal Indian Congress failed; until the
1994 advent of democracy, Indians in South Africa were subject to most of the discriminatory laws that applied to all non-white inhabitants of the country.
Griqua people By the late 1700s, the Cape Colony population had grown to include a large number of mixed-race so-called "
coloureds" who were the offspring of extensive interracial relations between male Dutch settlers, Khoikhoi women, and enslaved women imported from Dutch colonies in the East. Members of this mixed-race community formed the core of what was to become the Griqua people. Under the leadership of a former slave named Adam Kok, these "coloureds" or
Basters (meaning mixed race or multiracial) as they were named by the Dutch—a word derived from
baster, meaning "bastard"—started trekking northward into the interior, through what is today named Northern Cape Province. The trek of the Griquas to escape the influence of the Cape Colony has been described as "one of the great epics of the 19th century." They were joined on their long journey by a number of San and Khoikhoi aboriginal people, local African tribesmen, and also some white renegades. Around 1800, they started crossing the northern frontier formed by the Orange River, arriving ultimately in an uninhabited area, which they named Griqualand. In 1825, a faction of the Griqua people was induced by Dr
John Philip, superintendent of the
London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, to relocate to a place called
Philippolis, a mission station for the San, several hundred miles southeast of Griqualand. Philip's intention was for the Griquas to protect the missionary station there against
banditti in the region, and as a bulwark against the northward movement of white settlers from the Cape Colony. Friction between the Griquas and the settlers over land rights resulted in British troops being sent to the region in 1845. It marked the beginning of nine years of British intervention in the affairs of the region, which the British named Transorange. In 1861, to avoid the imminent prospect of either being colonised by the Cape Colony or coming into conflict with the expanding Boer Republic of
Orange Free State, most of the Philippolis Griquas embarked on a further trek. They moved about 500 miles eastward, over the Quathlamba (today known as the
Drakensberg mountain range), settling ultimately in an area officially designated as "Nomansland", which the Griquas renamed Griqualand East. East Griqualand was subsequently annexed by Britain in 1874 and incorporated into the Cape Colony in 1879. The original Griqualand, north of the Orange River, was annexed by Britain's Cape Colony and renamed Griqualand West after the discovery in 1871 of the world's richest deposit of diamonds at Kimberley, so named after the British Colonial Secretary, Earl Kimberley. Although no formally surveyed boundaries existed, Griqua leader
Nicolaas Waterboer claimed the diamond fields were situated on land belonging to the Griquas. The Boer republics of
Transvaal and the
Orange Free State also vied for ownership of the land, but Britain, being the preeminent force in the region, won control over the disputed territory. In 1878, Waterboer led an unsuccessful rebellion against the colonial authorities, for which he was arrested and briefly exiled.
Factional conflicts Wars against the Xhosa In early South Africa, European notions of national boundaries and land ownership had no counterparts in African political culture. To Moshoeshoe the BaSotho chieftain from Lesotho, it was customary tribute in the form of horses and cattle represented acceptance of land use under his authority. To European settlers in Southern Africa, the same form of tribute was believed to constitute purchase and permanent ownership of the land under independent authority. As European settlers started establishing permanent farms after trekking across the country in search of prime agricultural land, they encountered resistance from the local Bantu people who had originally migrated southwards from central Africa hundreds of years earlier. The consequent frontier wars became known as the
Xhosa Wars (which were also referred to in contemporary discussion as the
Kafir Wars or the Cape Frontier Wars). In the southeastern part of South Africa, Boer settlers and the Xhosa clashed along the Great Fish River, and in 1779 the First Xhosa War broke out. For nearly 100 years subsequently, the Xhosa fought the settlers sporadically, first the Boers or Afrikaners and later the British. In the Fourth Xhosa War, which lasted from 1811 to 1812, the British colonial authorities forced the Xhosa back across the Great Fish River and established forts along this boundary. The increasing economic involvement of the British in southern Africa from the 1820s, and especially following the discovery of first diamonds at Kimberley and gold in the Transvaal, resulted in pressure for land and African labour, and led to increasingly tense relations with Southern African states. In the later annexation of the Zulu kingdom by imperial Britain, an
Anglo-Zulu War was fought in 1879. Following Lord Carnarvon's successful introduction of federation in Canada, it was thought that similar political effort, coupled with military campaigns, might succeed with the African kingdoms, tribal areas and Boer republics in South Africa. In 1874, Henry Bartle Frere was sent to South Africa as High Commissioner for the British Empire to bring such plans into being. Among the obstacles were the presence of the independent states of the South African Republic and the Kingdom of Zululand and its army. Frere, on his own initiative, without the approval of the British government and with the intent of instigating a war with the Zulu, had presented an ultimatum on 11 December 1878, to the Zulu king Cetshwayo with which the Zulu king could not comply. Bartle Frere then sent
Lord Chelmsford to invade Zululand. The war is notable for several particularly bloody battles, including an overwhelming victory by the Zulu at the
Battle of Isandlwana, as well as for being a landmark in the timeline of imperialism in the region. Britain's eventual defeat of the Zulus, marking the end of the Zulu nation's independence, was accomplished with the assistance of Zulu collaborators who harboured cultural and political resentments against centralised Zulu authority. The British then set about establishing large sugar plantations in the area today named
KwaZulu-Natal Province.
Wars with the Basotho From the 1830s onwards, numbers of white settlers from the Cape Colony crossed the Orange River and started arriving in the fertile southern part of territory known as the Lower Caledon Valley, which was occupied by Basotho cattle herders under the authority of the Basotho founding monarch
Moshoeshoe I. In 1845, a treaty was signed between the British colonists and Moshoeshoe, which recognised white settlement in the area. No firm boundaries were drawn between the area of white settlement and Moshoeshoe's kingdom, which led to border clashes. Moshoeshoe was under the impression he was loaning grazing land to the settlers in accordance with African precepts of occupation rather than ownership, while the settlers believed they had been granted permanent land rights. Afrikaner settlers in particular were loath to live under Moshoesoe's authority and among Africans. The British, who at that time controlled the area between the Orange and Vaal Rivers called the
Orange River Sovereignty, decided a discernible boundary was necessary and proclaimed a line named the Warden Line, dividing the area between British and Basotho territories. This led to conflict between the Basotho and the British, who were defeated by Moshoeshoe's warriors at the battle of Viervoet in 1851. As punishment to the Basotho, the governor and commander-in-chief of the Cape Colony, George Cathcart, deployed troops to the Mohokare River; Moshoeshoe was ordered to pay a fine. When he did not pay the fine in full, a battle broke out on the Berea Plateau in 1852, where the British suffered heavy losses. In 1854, the British handed over the territory to the Boers through the signing of the
Sand River Convention. This territory and others in the region then became the Republic of the Orange Free State. A succession of wars followed from 1858 to 1868 between the Basotho kingdom and the Boer republic of
Orange Free State. In the battles that followed, the Orange Free State tried unsuccessfully to capture Moshoeshoe's mountain stronghold at
Thaba Bosiu, while the
Sotho conducted raids in Free State territories. Both sides adopted scorched-earth tactics, with large swathes of pasturage and cropland being destroyed. Faced with starvation, Moshoeshoe signed a peace treaty on 15 October 1858, though crucial boundary issues remained unresolved. War broke out again in 1865. After an unsuccessful appeal for aid from the British Empire, Moshoeshoe signed the 1866 treaty of Thaba Bosiu, with the Basotho ceding substantial territory to the Orange Free State. On 12 March 1868, the British parliament declared the Basotho Kingdom a British protectorate and part of the British Empire. Open hostilities ceased between the Orange Free State and the Basotho. The country was subsequently named
Basutoland and is presently named
Lesotho.
Wars with the Ndebele In 1836, when Boer V
oortrekkers (pioneers) arrived in the northwestern part of present-day South Africa, they came into conflict with a Ndebele sub-group that the settlers named "Matabele", under chief Mzilikazi. A series of battles ensued, in which Mzilikazi was eventually defeated. He withdrew from the area and led his people northwards to what would later become the Matabele region of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Other members of the Ndebele ethnic language group in different areas of the region similarly came into conflict with the Voortrekkers, notably in the area that would later become the Northern Transvaal. In September 1854, 28 Boers accused of cattle rustling were killed in three separate incidents by an alliance of the Ndebele chiefdoms of Mokopane and Mankopane. Mokopane and his followers, anticipating retaliation by the settlers, retreated into the mountain caves known as Gwasa, (or Makapansgat in Afrikaans). In late October, Boer commandos supported by local
Kgatla tribal collaborators laid siege to the caves. By the end of the siege, about three weeks later, Mokopane and between 1,000 and 3,000 people had died in the caves. The survivors were captured and allegedly enslaved.
Wars with the Bapedi The Bapedi wars, also known as the
Sekhukhune wars, consisted of three separate campaigns fought between 1876 and 1879 against the
Bapedi under their reigning monarch
King Sekhukhune I, in the northeastern region known as
Sekhukhuneland, bordering on
Swaziland. Further friction was caused by the refusal of Sekhukhune to allow prospectors to search for gold in territory he considered to be sovereign and independent under his authority. The First Sekhukhune War of 1876 was conducted by the Boers, and the two separate campaigns of the Second Sekhukhune War of 1878/1879 were conducted by the British. During the final campaign,
Sekukuni (also spelled Sekhukhune) and members of his entourage took refuge in a mountain cave where he was cut off from food and water. He eventually surrendered to a combined deputation of Boer and British forces on 2 December 1879. Sekhukhune, members of his family and some Bapedi generals were subsequently imprisoned in Pretoria for two years, with Sekhukhuneland becoming part of the Transvaal Republic. No gold was ever discovered in the annexed territory.
Discovery of diamonds The first diamond discoveries between 1866 and 1867 were alluvial, on the southern banks of the Orange River. By 1869, diamonds were found at some distance from any stream or river, in hard rock called blue ground, later called
kimberlite, after the mining town of
Kimberley where the diamond diggings were concentrated. The diggings were located in an area of vague boundaries and disputed land ownership. Claimants to the site included the South African (Transvaal) Republic, the Orange Free State Republic, and the mixed-race
Griqua nation under
Nicolaas Waterboer. Cape Colony Governor Henry Barkly persuaded all claimants to submit themselves to a decision of an arbitrator and so Robert W Keate, Lieutenant-Governor of Natal was asked to arbitrate. Keate awarded ownership to the Griquas. Waterboer, fearing conflict with the Boer republic of Orange Free State, subsequently asked for and received British protection. Griqualand then became a separate Crown Colony renamed
Griqualand West in 1871, with a Lieutenant-General and legislative council. The Crown Colony of Griqualand West was annexed into the Cape Colony in 1877, enacted into law in 1880. No material benefits accrued to the Griquas as a result of either colonisation or annexation; they did not receive any share of the diamond wealth generated at Kimberley. The Griqua community became subsequently dissimulated. By the 1870s and 1880s the mines at Kimberley were producing 95% of the world's diamonds. The widening search for gold and other resources were financed by the wealth produced and the practical experience gained at Kimberley. Revenue accruing to the Cape Colony from the Kimberley diamond diggings enabled the Cape Colony to be granted responsible government status in 1872, since it was no longer dependent on the British Treasury and hence allowing it to be fully self-governing in similar fashion to the federation of
Canada,
New Zealand and some of the
Australian states. The wealth derived from Kimberley diamond mining, having effectively tripled the customs revenue of the Cape Colony from 1871 to 1875, also doubled its population, and allowed it to expand its boundaries and railways to the north. In 1888, British mining magnate
Cecil John Rhodes co-founded
De Beers Consolidated Mines at Kimberley, after buying up and amalgamating the individual claims with finance provided by the Rothschild dynasty. Abundant, cheap African labour was central to the success of Kimberley diamond mining, as it would later also be to the success of gold mining on the
Witwatersrand. It has been suggested in some academic circles that the wealth produced at Kimberley was a significant factor influencing the
Scramble for Africa, in which European powers had by 1902 competed with each other in drawing arbitrary boundaries across almost the entire continent and dividing it among themselves.
Discovery of gold Although many tales abound, there is no conclusive evidence as to who first discovered gold or the manner in which it was originally discovered in the late 19th century on the Witwatersrand (meaning White Waters Ridge) of the Transvaal. The discovery of gold in February 1886 at a farm called Langlaagte on the Witwatersrand in particular precipitated a gold rush by prospectors and fortune seekers from all over the world. Except in rare outcrops, however, the main gold deposits had over many years become covered gradually by thousands of feet of hard rock. Finding and extracting the deposits far below the ground called for the capital and engineering skills that would soon result in the deep-level mines of the Witwatersrand producing a quarter of the world's gold, with the "instant city" of Johannesburg arising astride the main Witwatersrand gold reef. Within two years of gold being discovered on the Witwatersrand, four mining finance houses had been established. The first was formed by Hermann Eckstein in 1887, eventually becoming Rand Mines. Cecil Rhodes and Charles Rudd followed, with their Gold Fields of South Africa company. Rhodes and Rudd had earlier made fortunes from diamond mining at Kimberley. In 1895 there was an investment boom in Witwatersrand gold-mining shares. The precious metal that underpinned international trade would dominate South African exports for decades to come. Of the leading 25 foreign industrialists who were instrumental in opening up deep level mining operations at the Witwatersrand gold fields, 15 were Jewish, 11 of the total were from Germany or Austria, and nine of that latter category were also Jewish. The commercial opportunities opened by the discovery of gold attracted many other people of European Jewish origin. The Jewish population of South Africa in 1880 numbered approximately 4,000; by 1914 it had grown to more than 40,000, mostly migrants from Lithuania. The working environment of the mines, meanwhile, as one historian has described it, was "dangerous, brutal and onerous", and therefore unpopular among local black Africans. Recruitment of black labour began to prove difficult, even with an offer of improved wages. In mid-1903 there remained barely half of the 90,000 black labourers who had been employed in the industry in mid-1899. The decision was made to start importing Chinese indentured labourers who were prepared to work for far less wages than local African labourers. The first 1,000 indentured Chinese labourers arrived in June 1904. By January 1907, 53,000 Chinese labourers were working in the gold mines.
First Anglo–Boer War /Transvaal
Orange Free State British
Cape Colony Natal ColonyThe Transvaal Boer republic was forcefully annexed by Britain in 1877, during Britain's attempt to consolidate the states of southern Africa under British rule. Long-standing Boer resentment turned into full-blown rebellion in the Transvaal and the first
Anglo–Boer War, also known as the Boer Insurrection, broke out in 1880. The conflict ended almost as soon as it began with a decisive Boer victory at
Battle of Majuba Hill (27 February 1881). The republic regained its independence as the
Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek ("
South African Republic"), or ZAR.
Paul Kruger, one of the leaders of the uprising, became President of the ZAR in 1883. Meanwhile, the British, who viewed their defeat at Majuba as an aberration, forged ahead with their desire to federate the Southern African colonies and republics. They saw this as the best way to come to terms with the fact of a white Afrikaner majority, as well as to promote their larger strategic interests in the area. The cause of the Anglo–Boer wars has been attributed to a contest over which nation would control and benefit most from the
Witwatersrand gold mines. The enormous wealth of the mines was in the hands of European "
Randlords" overseeing the mainly British foreign managers, mining foremen, engineers and technical specialists, characterised by the Boers as
uitlander, meaning aliens. The "aliens" objected to being denied parliamentary representation and the right to vote, and they complained also of bureaucratic government delays in the issuing of licenses and permits, and general administrative incompetence on the part of the government. In 1895, a column of mercenaries in the employ of Cecil John Rhodes' Rhodesian-based Charter Company and led by Captain
Leander Starr Jameson had entered the ZAR with the intention of sparking an uprising on the Witwatersrand and installing a British administration there. The armed incursion became known as the
Jameson Raid. It ended when the invading column was ambushed and captured by Boer commandos. President Kruger suspected the insurgency had received at least the tacit approval of the Cape Colony government under the premiership of
Cecil John Rhodes, and that Kruger's South African Republic faced imminent danger. Kruger reacted by forming an alliance with the neighbouring Boer republic of Orange Free State. This did not prevent the outbreak of a Second Anglo–Boer war.
Second Anglo–Boer War of Barberton, c.1901 Renewed tensions between Britain and the Boers peaked in 1899 when the British demanded voting rights for the 60,000 foreign whites on the Witwatersrand. Until that point, President
Paul Kruger's government had excluded all foreigners from the
franchise. Kruger rejected the British demand and called for the withdrawal of British troops from the borders of the South African Republic. When the British refused, Kruger declared war. This
Second Anglo–Boer War, also known as the
South African War lasted longer than the first, with British troops being supplemented by colonial troops from Southern Rhodesia, Canada, India, Australia and New Zealand. It has been estimated that the total number of British and colonial troops deployed in South Africa during the war outnumbered the population of the two Boer Republics by more than 150,000. By June 1900,
Pretoria, the last of the major Boer towns, had surrendered. Yet resistance by Boer
bittereinders (meaning those who would fight to the bitter end) continued for two more years with guerrilla warfare, which the British met in turn with
scorched earth tactics. The Boers kept on fighting. campaigned against the appalling conditions of the
British concentration camps in South Africa, thus influencing British public opinion against the war. The British suffragette
Emily Hobhouse visited
British concentration camps in South Africa and produced a report condemning the appalling conditions there. By 1902, 26,000 Boer women and children had died of disease and neglect in the camps. , 1900 The Anglo–Boer War affected all ethnic groups in South Africa. Black people were recruited or conscripted by both sides into working for them either as combatants or non-combatants to sustain the respective war efforts of both the Boers and the British. The official statistics of blacks killed in action are inaccurate. Most of the bodies were dumped in unmarked graves. It has, however, been verified that 17,182
black people died mainly of diseases in the Cape
concentration camps alone, but this figure is not accepted historically as a true reflection of the overall numbers. Concentration camp superintendents did not always record the deaths of black inmates in the camps. From the outset of hostilities in October 1899 to the signing of peace on 31 May 1902 the war claimed the lives of 22,000 imperial soldiers and 7,000 republican fighters. In terms of the peace agreement known as the
Treaty of Vereeniging, the Boer republics acknowledged British sovereignty, while the British in turn committed themselves to reconstruction of the areas under their control. ==Union of South Africa (1910–1948)==