The early
inhabitants
The discovery of the skull of a
Taung child in 1924; discoveries of hominid fossils at
Sterkfontein caves, a world heritage site; and
the ground-breaking work done at Blombos Cave in the southern Cape,
have all put South Africa at the forefront of palaeontological
research into the origins of humanity. Modern humans have lived in
the region for over 100 000 years.
The latest discovery is a new
species of hominid,
Australopithecus sediba, almost two million years
old. It was discovered in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage
Site, 40 kilometres from Johannesburg, South Africa in 2010.
The small, mobile bands of
Stone-Age hunter- gatherers, who created a wealth of
rock art, were the ancestors of the
Khoikhoi and San of historical times. The Khoikhoin and San (the
"Hottentots" and "Bushmen" of early European terminology), although
collectively known as the Khoisan, are often thought of as distinct
peoples.
The former were those who, some 2
000 years ago, adopted a pastoralist lifestyle herding sheep and,
later, cattle. Whereas the hunter-gatherers adapted to local
environments and were scattered across the subcontinent, the
herders sought out the pasturelands between modern-day Namibia and
the Eastern Cape, which, generally, are near the coast. At around
the same time, Bantu-speaking agropastoralists began arriving in
southern Africa, bringing with them an iron-age culture and
domesticated crops. After establishing themselves in the
well-watered eastern coastal region of southern Africa, these
farmers spread out across the interior plateau, or "highveld",
where they adopted a more extensive cattle-farming culture.
Chiefdoms arose, based on control
over cattle, which gave rise to systems of patronage and hence
hierarchies of authority within communities.
Metallurgical skills, developed in
the mining and processing of iron, copper, tin and gold, promoted
regional trade and craft specialisation.
At several archaeological sites,
such as
Mapungubwe and
Thulamela in the Limpopo Valley,
there is evidence of sophisticated political and material cultures,
based in part on contact with the East African trading economy.
These cultures, which were part of a broader African civilisation,
predate European encroachment by several centuries. Settlement
patterns varied from the dispersed homesteads of the fertile
coastal regions in the east, to the concentrated towns of the
desert fringes in the west.
The farmers did not, however,
extend their settlement into the western desert or the
winter-rainfall region in the south-west. These regions remained
the preserve of the Khoisan until Europeans put down roots at the
Cape of Good Hope.
Currently, aided by modern science
in uncovering the continent's past, which forms part of the African
Renaissance, South Africa is gaining a greater understanding of its
rich precolonial past.
The early colonial
period
Portuguese seafarers, who pioneered
the sea route to India in the late 15th century, were regular
visitors to the South African coast during the early 1500s. Other
Europeans followed from the late 16th century.
In 1652, the Dutch East India
Company (VOC) set up a station in Table Bay (Cape Town) to
provision passing ships. Trade with the Khoekhoe(n) for slaughter
stock soon degenerated into raiding and warfare. Beginning in 1657,
European settlers were allotted farms by the colonial authorities
in the arable regions around Cape Town, where wine and wheat became
the major products. In response to the colonists' demand for
labour, the VOC imported slaves from East Africa, Madagascar, and
its possessions from the East Indies.
By the early 1700s, the colonists
had begun to spread into the hinterland beyond the nearest mountain
ranges. These relatively independent and mobile farmers
(trekboers), who lived as pastoralists and hunters, were largely
free from supervision by the Dutch authorities.
As they intruded further upon the
land and water sources, and stepped up their demands for livestock
and labour, more and more of the indigenous inhabitants were
dispossessed and incorporated into the colonial economy as
servants.
Diseases such as smallpox, which
was introduced by the Europeans in 1713, decimated the Khoisan,
contributing to the decline of their cultures. Unions across the
colour line took place and a new multiracial social order evolved,
based on the supremacy of European colonists. The slave population
steadily increased since more labour was needed. By the mid-1700s,
there were more slaves in the Cape than there were "free burghers"
(European colonists). The Asian slaves were concentrated in the
towns, where they formed an artisan class. They brought with them
the Islamic religion, which gained adherents and significantly
shaped the working-class culture of the Western Cape. Slaves of
African descent were found more often on the farms of outlying
districts.
In the late 1700s, the Khoisan
offered far more determined resistance to colonial encroachment
across the length of the colonial frontier. From the 1770s,
colonists also came into contact and conflict with Bantu-speaking
chiefdoms. A century of intermittent warfare ensued during which
the colonists gained ascendancy, first over the Khoisan and then
over the Xhosa-speaking chiefdoms to the east.
It was only in the late 1800s that
the subjugation of these settled African societies became feasible.
For some time, their relatively sophisticated social structure and
economic systems fended off decisive disruption by incoming
colonists, who lacked the necessary military superiority.
At the same time, a process of
cultural change was set in motion, not least by commercial and
missionary activity. In contrast to the Khoisan, the black farmers
were, by and large, immune to European diseases. For this and other
reasons, they were to greatly outnumber the whites in the
population of white-ruled South Africa, and were able to preserve
important features of their culture.
Perhaps because of population
pressures, combined with the actions of slave traders in Portuguese
territory on the east coast, the
Zulu kingdom emerged as a highly
centralised state. In the 1820s, the innovative leader
Shaka established sway over a
considerable area of south-east Africa and brought many chiefdoms
under his dominion.
As splinter groups conquered and
absorbed communities in their path, the disruption was felt as far
north as central Africa. Substantial states, such as
Moshoeshoe's Lesotho and other
Sotho-Tswana chiefdoms, were established, partly for reasons of
defence. The Mfecane or Difaqane, as this period of disruption and
state formation became known, remains the subject of much
speculative debate.
The British colonial
era
In 1795, the British occupied the
Cape as a strategic base against the French, controlling the sea
route to the East.
After a brief reversion to the
Dutch in the course of the Napoleonic wars, it was retaken in 1806
and kept by Britain in the post-war settlement of territorial
claims. The closed and regulated economic system of the Dutch
period was swept away as the Cape Colony was integrated into the
dynamic international trading empire of industrialising
Britain.
A crucial new element was
evangelicalism, brought to the Cape by Protestant missionaries. The
evangelicals believed in the liberating effect of "free" labour and
in the "civilising mission" of British imperialism. They were
convinced that indigenous peoples could be fully assimilated into
European Christian culture once the shackles of oppression had been
removed.
The most important representative
of the mission movement in South Africa was Dr John Philip, who
arrived as superintendent of the London Missionary Society in 1819.
His campaign on behalf of the oppressed Khoisan coincided with a
high point in official sympathy for philanthropic concerns.
One result was Ordinance 50 of
1828, which guaranteed equal civil rights for "people of colour"
within the colony and freed them from legal discrimination. At the
same time, a powerful anti-slavery movement in Britain promoted a
series of ameliorative measures, imposed on the colonies in the
1820s, and the proclamation of emancipation, which came into force
in 1834. The slaves were subject to a four-year period of
"apprenticeship" with their former owners, on the grounds that they
must be prepared for freedom, which came on 1 December 1838.
Although slavery had become less
profitable because of a depression in the wine industry, Cape
slave-owners rallied to oppose emancipation. The compensation
money, which the British treasury paid out to sweeten the pill,
injected unprecedented liquidity into the stagnant local economy.
This brought a spurt of company formation, such as banks and
insurance companies, as well as a surge of investment in land and
wool sheep in the drier regions of the colony, in the late
1830s.
Wool became a staple export on
which the Cape economy depended for its further development in the
middle decades of the century.
For the ex-slaves, as for the
Khoisan servants, the reality of freedom was very different from
the promise. As a wage-based economy developed, they remained
dispossessed and exploited, with little opportunity to escape their
servile lot.
Increasingly, they were lumped
together as the "coloured" people, a group which included the
descendants of unions between indigenous and European peoples, and
a substantial Muslim minority who became known as the "Cape Malays"
(misleadingly, as they mostly came from the Indonesian
archipelago).
The coloured people were
discriminated against on account of their working-class status as
well as their racial identity. Among the poor, especially in and
around Cape Town, there continued to be a great deal of racial
mixing and intermarriage throughout the 1800s.
In 1820, several thousand British
settlers, who were swept up by a scheme to relieve Britain of its
unemployed, were placed in the eastern Cape frontier zone as a
buffer against the Xhosa chiefdoms.
The vision of a dense settlement of
small farmers was, however, ill-conceived and many of the settlers
became artisans and traders. The more successful became an
entrepreneurial class of merchants, large-scale sheep farmers and
speculators with an insatiable demand for land.
Some became fierce warmongers who
pressed for the military dispossession of the chiefdoms. They
coveted Xhosa land and welcomed the prospect of war involving
large-scale military expenditure by the imperial authorities. The
Xhosa engaged in raiding as a means of asserting their prior claims
to the land. Racial paranoia became integral to white frontier
politics. The result was that frontier warfare became endemic
through much of the 19th century, during which Xhosa war leaders
such as
Chief Maqoma became heroic figures to
their people.
By the mid-1800s, British settlers
of similar persuasion were to be found in Natal. They too called
for imperial expansion in support of their land claims and trading
enterprises.
Meanwhile, large numbers of the
original colonists, the Boers, were greatly extending white
occupation beyond the Cape's borders to the north, in the movement
that became known as the Great
Trek, in the mid-1830s. Alienated by British
liberalism, and with their economic enterprise usurped by British
settlers, several thousand Boers from the interior districts,
accompanied by a number of Khoisan servants, began a series of
migrations northwards.
They moved to the Highveld and
Natal, skirting the great concentrations of black farmers on the
way by taking advantage of the areas disrupted during the
Mfecane.
When the British, who were
concerned about controlling the traffic through Port Natal
(Durban), annexed the territory of Natal in 1843, those emigrant
Boers who had hoped to settle there returned inland. These
Voortrekkers (as they were later called) coalesced in two
land-locked republics, the South African Republic (Transvaal) and
the Orange Free State. There, the principles of racially exclusive
citizenship were absolute, despite the trekkers' reliance on black
labour.
With limited coercive power, the
Boer communities had to establish relations and develop alliances
with some black chiefdoms, neutralising those who obstructed their
intrusion or who posed a threat to their security.
Only after the mineral discoveries
of the late 1800s did the balance of power swing decisively towards
the colonists. The Boer republics then took on the trappings of
real statehood and imposed their authority within the territorial
borders that they had notionally claimed for themselves.
The Colony of Natal, situated to
the south of the mighty Zulu State, developed along very different
lines from the original colony of settlement, the Cape. The size of
the black population left no room for the assimilationist vision of
race domination embraced in the Cape. Chiefdoms consisting mainly
of refugee groups in the aftermath of the Mfecane were persuaded to
accept colonial protection in return for reserved land and the
freedom to govern themselves in accordance with their own customs.
These chiefdoms were established in the heart of an expanding
colonial territory.
Natal developed a system of
political and legal dualism, whereby chiefly rule was entrenched
and customary law was codified. Although exemptions from customary
law could be granted to the educated products of the missions, in
practice they were rare. Urban residence was strictly controlled
and political rights outside the reserves were effectively limited
to whites. This system is widely regarded as having provided a
model for the segregationism that would prevail in the 20th
century.
Natal's economy was boosted by the
development of sugar plantations in the subtropical coastal
lowlands. Indian-indentured labourers were imported from 1860 to
work the plantations, and many Indian traders and market gardeners
followed. These Indians, who were segregated and discriminated
against from the start, became a further important element in South
Africa's population. It was in South Africa that Indian activist
and leader,
Mohandas Gandhi refined, from the
mid-1890s, the techniques of passive resistance, which he later
effectively practised in India. Although Indians gradually moved
into the Transvaal and elsewhere, they remain concentrated in
Natal.
In 1853, the Cape Colony was
granted a representative legislature in keeping with British
policy, followed in 1872 by self-government. The franchise was
formally non-racial, but also based on income and property
qualifications. The result was that Africans and coloured people
formed a minority of voters - although in certain places a
substantial one.
What became known as the "liberal
tradition" in the Cape depended on the fact that the great mass of
Bantu-speaking farmers remained outside its colonial borders until
late in the 19th century. Non-racialism could thus be embraced
without posing a threat to white supremacy.
Numbers of Africans within the Cape
Colony had sufficient formal education or owned enough property to
qualify for the franchise. Political alliances across racial lines
were common in the eastern Cape constituencies. It is therefore not
surprising that the eastern Cape became a seedbed of African
nationalism, once the ideal and promise of inclusion in the common
society had been so starkly violated by later racial policies.
The mineral
revolution
By the late 19th century, the
limitations of the Cape's liberal tradition were becoming apparent.
The hardening of racial attitudes that accompanied the rise of a
more militant imperialist spirit coincided locally with the
watershed discovery of mineral riches in the interior of southern
Africa.
In a developing economy, cheap
labour was at a premium, and the claims of educated Africans for
equality met with increasingly fierce resistance.
At the same time, the large numbers
of Africans in the chiefdoms beyond the Kei River and north of the
Gariep
(Orange River), then being incorporated into the Cape Colony, posed
new threats to racial supremacy and white security, increasing
segregationist pressures.
Alluvial diamonds were discovered
on the Vaal River in the late 1860s. The subsequent discovery of
dry deposits at what became the city of Kimberley drew tens of
thousands of people, black and white, to the first great industrial
hub in Africa, and the largest diamond deposit in the world. In
1871, the British, who ousted several rival claimants, annexed the
diamond fields.
The Colony of Griqualand West thus
created was incorporated into the Cape Colony in 1880. By 1888, the
consolidation of diamond claims had led to the creation of the huge
De
Beers monopoly under the control of
Cecil Rhodes. He used his power and wealth
to become prime minister of the Cape Colony (from 1890 to 1896)
and, through his chartered British South Africa Company, conqueror
and ruler of modern-day Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The mineral discoveries had a major
impact on the subcontinent as a whole. A railway network linking
the interior to the coastal ports revolutionised transportation and
energised agriculture. Coastal cities such as modern-day Cape Town,
Port Elizabeth, East London and Durban experienced an economic boom
as port facilities were upgraded.
The fact that the mineral
discoveries coincided with a new era of imperialism and the
scramble for Africa, brought imperial power and influence to bear
in southern Africa as never before.
Independent African chiefdoms were
systematically subjugated and incorporated by their white-ruled
neighbours. In 1897, Zululand was incorporated into Natal.
The South African Republic
(Transvaal) was annexed by Britain in 1877. Boer resistance led to
British withdrawal in 1881, but not before the Pedi (northern
Sotho) state, which fell within the republic's borders, had been
subjugated. The indications were that, having once been asserted,
British hegemony was likely to be reasserted.
The southern Sotho and Swazi
territories were also brought under British rule but maintained
their status as imperial dependencies, so that both the current
Lesotho and Swaziland escaped the rule of local white regimes.
The discovery of the Witwatersrand
goldfields in 1886 was a turning point in the history of South
Africa. It presaged the emergence of the modern South African
industrial state.
Once the extent of the reefs had
been established, and deep-level mining had proved to be a viable
investment, it was only a matter of time before Britain and its
local representatives again found a pretext for war against the
Boer republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
The demand for franchise rights for
English-speaking immigrants on the goldfields (known as uitlanders)
provided a lever for applying pressure on the government of
President Paul Kruger. Egged on by the
deep-level mining magnates, to whom the Boer government seemed
obstructive and inefficient, and by the expectation of an uitlander
uprising,
Rhodes launched a raid into the Transvaal
in late December 1895. The raid's failure saw the end of Rhodes'
political career, but
Sir Alfred Milner, British high
commissioner in South Africa from 1897, was determined to overthrow
Kruger's government and establish British rule throughout the
subcontinent. The Boer government was eventually forced into a
declaration of war in October 1899.
The mineral discoveries had a
radical impact on every sphere of society. Labour was required on a
massive scale and could only be provided by Africans, who had to be
drawn away from the land.
Many Africans responded with
alacrity to the opportunities presented by wage labour, travelling
long distances to earn money to supplement rural enterprise in the
homestead economy.
In response to the expansion of
internal markets, Africans exploited their farming skills and
family labour to good effect to increase production for sale. A
substantial black peasantry arose, often by means of share-cropping
or labour tenantry on white-owned farms.
For the white authorities, however,
the chief consideration was ensuring a labour supply and
undermining black competition on the land. Conquest, land
dispossession, taxation and pass laws were designed to force black
people off the land and channel them into labour markets,
especially to meet the needs of the mines.
Gradually, the alternatives
available to Africans were closed, and the decline of the homestead
economy made wage labour increasingly essential for survival. The
integration of Africans into the emerging urban and industrial
society of South Africa should have followed these developments,
but short-term, recurrent labour migrancy suited employers and the
authorities, which sought to entrench the system.
The closed compounds pioneered on
the diamond fields, as a means of migrant labour control, were
replicated at the gold mines. The preservation of communal areas
from which migrants could be drawn had the effect of lowering
wages, by denying Africans rights within the urban areas and
keeping their families and dependants on subsistence plots in the
reserves.
Africans could be denied basic
rights if the fiction could be maintained that they did not belong
in "white South Africa", but to "tribal societies" from which they
came to service the "white man's needs". Where black families
secured a toehold in the urban areas, local authorities confined
them to segregated "locations". This set of assumptions and
policies informed the development of segregationist ideology and,
later (from 1948), apartheid.
The Anglo-Boer/South African War
(October 1899 - May 1902) and its aftermath
The war that followed the mineral
revolution was mainly a white man's war.
In its first phase, the Boer forces
took the initiative, besieging the frontier towns of Mafeking
(Mafikeng) and Kimberley in the northern Cape, and Ladysmith in
northern Natal.
Some colonial Boers rebelled,
however, in sympathy with the republics. But, after a large
expeditionary force under lords Roberts and Kitchener arrived, the
British advance was rapid. Kruger fled the Transvaal shortly before
Pretoria fell in June 1900. The formal conquest of the two Boer
republics was followed by a prolonged guerrilla campaign. Small,
mobile groups of Boers denied the imperial forces their victory by
disrupting rail links and supply lines.
Commandos swept deep into colonial
territory, rousing rebellion wherever they went. The British were
at a disadvantage, owing to their lack of familiarity with the
terrain and the Boers' superior skills as horsemen and
sharpshooters. The British responded with a scorched-earth policy
which included farm burnings, looting and the setting-up of
concentration camps for non-combatants, in which some 26 000 Boer
women and children died from disease. The incarceration of black
(including coloured) people in the path of the war in racially
segregated camps has been absent in conventional accounts of the
war and has only recently been acknowledged.
They too suffered appalling
conditions and some 14 000 (perhaps many more) are estimated to
have died. At the same time, many black farmers were in a position
to meet the demand for produce created by the military, or to avail
themselves for employment opportunities at good wages. Some 10 000
black servants accompanied the Boer commandos, and the British used
Africans as labourers, scouts, dispatch riders, drivers and
guards.
The war also taught many Africans
that the forces of dispossession could be rolled back if the
circumstances were right. It gave black communities the opportunity
to recolonise land lost in conquest, which enabled them to withhold
their labour after the war. Most Africans supported the British in
the belief that Britain was committed to extending civil and
political rights to black people. In this they were to be
disappointed, as in the Treaty of Vereeniging that ended the war,
the British agreed to leave the issue of rights for Africans to be
decided by a future self-governing (white) authority. All in all,
the Anglo-Boer/South African War was a radicalising experience for
Africans.
Britain's reconstruction regime set
about creating a white-ruled dominion by uniting the former Boer
republics (both by then British colonies) with Natal and the
Cape.
The most important priority was to
re-establish white control over the land and force the Africans
back to wage labour. The labour-recruiting system was improved,
both internally and externally. Recruiting agreements were reached
with the Portuguese authorities in Mozambique, from where much mine
labour came.
When, by 1904, African resources
still proved inadequate to get the mines working at pre-war levels,
over 60 000 indentured Chinese were brought in. This precipitated a
vociferous outcry from proponents of white supremacy in South
Africa and liberals in Britain.
By 1910, all had been repatriated,
a step made easier when a surge of Africans came forward from areas
such as the Transkeian territories and the northern Transvaal,
which had not previously been large-scale suppliers of migrants.
This was the heyday of the private recruiters, who exploited
families' indebtedness to procure young men to labour in the mines.
The Africans' post-war ability to withhold their labour was
undercut by government action, abetted by drought and stock
disease.
The impact of the Anglo-Boer/South
African War as a seminal influence on the development of Afrikaner
nationalist politics became apparent in subsequent years.
The Boer leaders - most notably
Louis Botha,
Jan Smuts and
JBM Hertzog - played a dominant role in the
country's politics for the next half century. After initial plans
for anglicisation of the defeated Afrikaners were abandoned as
impractical, the British looked to the Afrikaners as collaborators
in securing imperial political and economic interests.
During 1907 and 1908, the two
former Boer republics were granted self-government but, crucially,
with a whites-only franchise. Despite promises to the contrary,
black interests were sacrificed in the interest of white
nation-building across the white language divide. The National
Convention drew up a constitution and the four colonies became an
independent dominion called the Union of South Africa on 31 May
1910.
The 19th century formally
non-racial franchise was retained in the Cape but was not extended
elsewhere, where rights of citizenship were confined to whites
alone. It was clear from the start that segregation was the
conventional wisdom of the new rulers. Black people were defined as
outsiders, without rights or claims on the common society that
their labour had helped to create.
Segregation
Government policy in the Union of
South Africa did not develop in isolation, but against the backdrop
of black political initiatives. Segregation and apartheid assumed
their shape, in part, as a white response to Africans' increasing
participation in the country's economic life and their assertion of
political rights. Despite the government's efforts to shore up
traditionalism and retribalise them, black people became more fully
integrated into the urban and industrial society of 20th-century
South Africa than elsewhere on the continent. An educated élite of
clerics, teachers, business people, journalists and professionals
grew to be a major force in black politics. Mission Christianity
and its associated educational institutions exerted a profound
influence on African political life, and separatist churches were
early vehicles for African political assertion. The experiences of
studying abroad, and in particular, interaction with black people
struggling for their rights elsewhere in Africa, the United States
of America and the Caribbean, played an important part. A vigorous
black press arose, associated in its early years with such pioneer
editors as
JT Jabavu,
Pixley Seme,
Dr Abdullah Abdurahman,
Sol Plaatje and
John Dube, served the black reading
public.
At the same time, African communal
struggles to maintain access to the land in rural areas posed a
powerful challenge to the white state. Traditional authorities
often led popular struggles against intrusive and manipulative
policies. Government attempts to control and co-opt the chiefs
often failed. Steps towards the formation of a national political
organisation of coloureds began around the turn of the century,
with the formation of the African Political Organisation in 1902 by
Dr Abdurahman, mainly in the Cape Province.
The African National
Congress (ANC), founded in 1912, became the most
important black organisation drawing together traditional
authorities and the educated African élite in common causes.
In its early years, the ANC was
concerned mainly with constitutional protest.
Worker militancy emerged in the
wake of the First World War and continued through the 1920s. It
included strikes and an anti-pass campaign given impetus by women,
particularly in the Free State, resisting extension of the pass
laws to them. The Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union, under
the leadership of
Clements Kadalie, was (despite its name)
the first populist, nationwide organisation representing blacks in
rural as well as urban areas. But it was short-lived.
The Communist
Party, formed in 1921 and since then a force for
both non-racialism and worker organisation, was to prove far
longer-lasting. In other sections of the black population too, the
turn of the century saw organised opposition emerging.
Gandhi's leadership of protest against
discriminatory laws gave impetus to the formation of provincial
Indian congresses, including the
Natal Indian Congress formed by
Gandhi in 1894.
The principles of segregationist
thinking were laid down in a 1905 report by the South African
Native Affairs Commission and continued to evolve in response to
these economic, social and political pressures. In keeping with its
recommendations, the first union government enacted the seminal
Natives Land Act in 1913.
This defined the remnants of their
ancestral lands after conquest for African occupation, and declared
illegal all land purchases or rent tenancy outside these
reserves.
The reserves ("homelands" as they
were subsequently called) eventually comprised about 13% of South
Africa's land surface. Administrative and legal dualism reinforced
the division between white citizen and black non-citizen, a
dispensation personified by the governor-general who, as "supreme
chief" over the country's African majority, was empowered to rule
them by administrative fiat and decree.
The government also regularised the
job colour bar, reserving skilled work for whites and denying
African workers the right to organise. Legislation, which was
consolidated in the Natives (Urban Areas) Act, 1923, entrenched
urban segregation and controlled African mobility by means of pass
laws. The pass laws were designed to force Africans into labour and
to keep them there under conditions and at wage levels that suited
white employers, and to deny them any bargaining power. In these
and other ways, the foundations of apartheid were laid by
successive governments representing the compromises hammered out by
the National Convention of 1908 to 1909 to effect the union of
English- and Afrikaans-speaking whites. However, divisions within
the white community remained significant. Afrikaner nationalism
grew as a factor in the years after union.
It was given impetus in 1914, both
by the formation of the
National Party (NP), in a breakaway
from the ruling South African Party, and by a rebellion of
Afrikaners who could not reconcile themselves with the decision to
join the First World War against Germany.
In part, the NP spoke for
Afrikaners impoverished by the Anglo-Boer/South African War and
dislodged from the land by the development of capitalist
farming.
An Afrikaner underclass was
emerging in the towns, which found itself uncompetitive in the
labour market, as white workers demanded higher wages than those
paid to blacks.
Soon, labour issues came to the
fore. In 1920, some 71 000 black mineworkers went on strike in
protest against the spiralling cost of living, but the strike was
quickly put down by isolating the compounds where the migrant
workers were housed. Another threat to government came from white
workers. Immigrant white workers with mining experience abroad
performed much of the skilled and semi-skilled work on the mines.
As mine owners tried to cut costs by using lower-wage black labour
in semi-skilled jobs, white labour became increasingly militant.
These tensions culminated in a bloody and dramatic rebellion on the
goldfields in 1922, which the Smuts government put down with
military force. In 1924, a pact government under
Hertzog, comprising Afrikaner nationalists
and representatives of immigrant labour, ousted the
Smuts regime.
The pact was based on a common
suspicion of the dominance of mining capital, and a determination
to protect the interests of white labour by intensifying
discrimination against blacks. The commitment to white labour
policies in government employment, such as the railways and postal
service was intensified, and the job colour bar was reinforced,
with a key objective being to address what was known as the
"poor-white problem".
In 1934, the main white parties
fused to combat the local effects of a worldwide depression.
This was followed by a new
Afrikaner nationalist breakaway under
Dr DF Malan. In 1936, white supremacy was
further entrenched by the United Party with the removal of the
Africans of the Cape Province who qualified, from the common
voters' roll. Meanwhile, Malan's breakaway NP was greatly augmented
by an Afrikaner cultural revival spearheaded by the secret white
male
Afrikaner Broederbond and other
cultural organisations during the year of the Voortrekker centenary
celebrations (1938), as well as by anti-war sentiment from
1939.
Apartheid
After the Second World War in 1948,
the NP, with its ideology of apartheid that brought an even more
rigorous and authoritarian approach than the segregationist
policies of previous governments, won the general election. It did
so against the background of a revival of mass militancy during the
1940s, after a period of relative quiescence in the 1930s when
black groups attempted to foster unity among themselves.
The change was marked by the
formation of the ANC Youth
League in 1943, fostering the leadership of
figures such as
Anton Lembede, AP Mda,
Nelson Mandela,
Oliver Tambo and
Walter Sisulu, who were to inspire the
struggle for decades to come.
In the 1940s, squatter movements in
peri-urban areas brought mass politics back to the urban centres.
The 1946 Mineworkers' Strike was a turning point in the emergence
of a politics of mass mobilisation.
As was the case with the First
World War, the experience of the Second World War and post-war
economic difficulties enhanced discontent. For those who supported
the NP, its primary appeal lay in its determination to maintain
white domination in the face of rising mass resistance; uplift poor
Afrikaners; challenge the pre-eminence of English-speaking whites
in public life, the professions and business; and abolish the
remaining imperial ties.
The state became an engine of
patronage for Afrikaner employment. The
Afrikaner Broederbond co-ordinated
the party's programme, ensuring that Afrikaner nationalist
interests and policies attained ascendancy throughout civil
society.
In 1961, the NP Government under
Prime Minister
HF Verwoerd declared South Africa a
republic, after winning a whites-only referendum on the issue. A
new currency, the Rand, and a new flag, anthem and coat of arms
were formally introduced.
South Africa, having become a
republic, had to apply for continued membership of the Commonwealth.
In the face of demands for an end to apartheid, South Africa
withdrew its application and a figurehead president replaced the
British queen (represented locally by the governor-general) as head
of state.
In most respects, apartheid was a
continuation, in more systematic and brutal form, of the
segregationist policies of previous governments.
A new concern with racial purity
was apparent in laws prohibiting interracial sexual activities and
provisions for population registration requiring that every South
African be assigned to one discrete racial category or another.
For the first time, the coloured
people, who had always been subjected to informal discrimination,
were brought within the ambit of discriminatory laws. In the
mid-1950s, government took the drastic step of overriding an
entrenched clause in the 1910 Constitution of the Union so as to be
able to remove coloured voters from the common voters' roll. It
also enforced residential segregation, expropriating homes where
necessary and policing massive forced removals into coloured "group
areas".
Until the 1940s, South Africa's
racial policies had not been entirely out of step with those to be
found in the colonial world. But by the 1950s, which saw
decolonisation and a global backlash against racism gather pace,
the country was dramatically opposed to world opinion on questions
of human rights. The architects of apartheid, among whom
Dr Verwoerd was pre-eminent,
responded by elaborating a theory of multinationalism.
Their policy, which they termed
"separate development", divided the African population into
artificial ethnic "nations", each with its own "homeland" and the
prospect of "independence", supposedly in keeping with trends
elsewhere on the continent.
This divide-and-rule strategy was
designed to disguise the racial basis of official policy-making by
the substitution of the language of ethnicity. This was accompanied
by much ethnographic engineering as efforts were made to resurrect
tribal structures. In the process, the government sought to create
a significant collaborating class.
The truth was that the rural
reserves were by this time thoroughly degraded by overpopulation
and soil erosion. This did not prevent four of the "homeland"
structures (Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei) being
declared "independent", a status which the vast majority of South
Africans, and therefore also the international community, declined
to recognise. In each case, the process involved the repression of
opposition and the use by the government of the power to nominate
and thereby pad elected assemblies with a quota of compliant
figures.
Forced removals from "white" areas
affected some 3,5 million people and vast rural slums were created
in the homelands, which were used as dumping grounds. The pass laws
and influx control were extended and harshly enforced, and labour
bureaux were set up to channel labour to where it was needed.
Hundreds of thousands of people were arrested or prosecuted under
the pass laws each year, reaching over half a million a year from
the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. Industrial decentralisation to
growth points on the borders of (but not inside) the homelands was
promoted as a means of keeping blacks out of "white" South
Africa.
In virtually every sphere, from
housing to education to healthcare, central government took control
over black people's lives with a view to reinforcing their allotted
role as "temporary sojourners", welcome in "white" South Africa
solely to serve the needs of the employers of labour. However,
these same programmes of control became the focus of resistance. In
particular, the campaign against the pass laws formed a cornerstone
of the struggle.
The end of
apartheid
The introduction of apartheid
policies coincided with the adoption by the ANC in
1949 of its programme of action, expressing the renewed militancy
of the 1940s. The programme embodied the rejection of white
domination and a call for action in the form of protests, strikes
and demonstrations. There followed a decade of turbulent mass
action in resistance to the imposition of still harsher forms of
segregation and oppression.
The
Defiance Campaign of 1952 carried
mass mobilisation to new heights under the banner of non-violent
resistance to the pass laws. These actions were influenced in part
by the philosophy of
Mohandas Gandhi.
A critical step in the emergence of
non-racialism was the formation of the Congress Alliance, including
the ANC;
South African Indian Congress; the Coloured
People's Congress; a small white congress organisation (the
Congress of Democrats); and the South African Congress
of Trade Unions.
The alliance gave formal expression
to an emerging unity across racial and class lines that was
manifested in the Defiance Campaign and other mass protests,
including against the Bantu education of this period, which also
saw women's resistance take a more organised character with the
formation of the
Federation of South African
Women.
In 1955, the
Freedom Charter was drawn up at the Congress of
the People in Soweto. The charter enunciated the principles of the
struggle, binding the movement to a culture of human rights and
non-racialism. Over the next few decades, the Freedom Charter was
elevated to an important symbol of the freedom struggle.
The Pan-Africanist
Congress (PAC), founded by
Robert Sobukwe and based on the
philosophies of "Africanism" and anti-communism, broke away from
the Congress Alliance in 1959.
The state's initial response, harsh
as it was, was not yet as draconian as it was to become. Its
attempt to prosecute more than 150 anti-apartheid leaders for
treason, in a trial that began in 1956, ended in acquittals in
1961. But by that time, mass organised opposition had been
banned.
Matters came to a head at
Sharpeville in March 1960, when 69
anti-pass demonstrators were killed when police fired on a
demonstration called by the PAC. A state of emergency was imposed
and detention without trial was introduced.
The black political organisations
were banned and their leaders went into exile or were arrested. In
this climate, the ANC and
PAC abandoned their long-standing commitment to non-violent
resistance and turned to armed struggle, combined with underground
organisation and mobilisation as well as mobilisation of
international solidarity. Top leaders, including members of the
newly formed military wing
Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) (Spear of the
Nation), were arrested in 1963. In the "
Rivonia Trial", eight ANC leaders,
including Nelson
Mandela, were convicted of sabotage (instead of
treason, the original charge) and sentenced to life
imprisonment.
In this period, leaders of other
organisations, including the PAC and the New Unity Movement, were
also sentenced to long terms of imprisonment and/or banned.
The 1960s was a decade of
overwhelming repression and relative political disarray among
blacks in the country. Armed action was contained by the state.
State repression played a central
role in containing internal resistance, and the leadership of the
struggle shifted increasingly to the missions in exile. At the same
time, the ANC leadership embarked on a campaign to infiltrate the
country through what was then Rhodesia.
In August 1967, a joint force of MK
and the Zimbabwean People's Revolutionary Army (Zipra) of the
Zimbabwe African People's Union (Zapu) entered Zimbabwe, and over a
two-month period engaged the joint Rhodesian and South African
security forces.
Although the joint MK-Zipra force
failed to reach South Africa, this was the first military
confrontation between the military forces of the ANC-led alliance
and white security forces.
The resurgence of resistance
politics from the early 1970s was dramatic. The Black Consciousness
Movement, led by
Steve Biko (who was killed in detention in
1977), reawakened a sense of pride and self-esteem in black
people.
News of the brutal death of Biko
reverberated around the globe and led to unprecedented outrage.
As capitalist economies sputtered
with the oil crisis of 1973, black trade unions revived.
A wave of strikes reflected a new
militancy that involved better organisation and was drawing new
sectors, in particular intellectuals and the student movement, into
mass struggle and debate over the principles informing it. Rallies
at black universities in support of Frelimo, the Mozambican
liberation movement, also gave expression to the growing militancy.
The year 1976 marked the beginning of a sustained anti-apartheid
revolt. In June, school pupils of Soweto rose up against apartheid
education, followed by youth uprisings all around the country.
Despite the harsh repression that followed, students continued to
organise, with the formation in 1979 of organisations for school
students (
Congress of South African Students)
and college and university students (
Azanian Students Organisation). By
the 1980s, the different forms of struggle - armed struggle, mass
mobilisation and international solidarity - were beginning to
integrate and coalesce.
The
United Democratic Front and the
informal umbrella, the Mass Democratic Movement, emerged as legal
vehicles of democratic forces struggling for liberation. Clerics
played a prominent public role in these movements. The involvement
of workers in resistance took on a new dimension with the formation
of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the National
Council of Trade Unions.
Popular anger was directed against
all those who were deemed to be collaborating with the government
in the pursuit of its objectives, and the black townships became
virtually ungovernable. From the mid-1980s, regional and national
states of emergency were enforced.
Developments in neighbouring
states, where mass resistance to white minority and colonial rule
led to Portuguese decolonisation in the mid-1970s and the
abdication of Zimbabwe's minority regime in 1980, left South Africa
exposed as the last bastion of white supremacy.
Under growing pressure and
increasingly isolated internationally, the government embarked on a
dual strategy, introducing limited reform coupled with intensifying
repression and militarisation of society, with the objective of
containing the pressures and increasing its support base while
crushing organised resistance.
An early example of reform was the
recognition of black trade unions to try to stabilise labour
relations. In 1983, the Constitution was reformed to allow the
coloured and Indian minorities limited participation in separate
and subordinate houses of Parliament.
The vast majority of these groups
demonstrated their rejection of the tricameral dispensation through
massive boycotts of elections, but it was kept in place by the
apartheid regime despite its visible lack of legitimacy. Attempts
to legitimise community councils as vehicles for the participation
of Africans outside the Bantustans in local government met a
similar fate.
Militarisation included the
ascendancy of the State Security Council, which usurped the role of
the executive in crucial respects, and a succession of states of
emergency as part of the implementation of a comprehensive
counter-insurgency strategy to combat what, by the mid-1980s, was
an endemic insurrectionary spirit in the land.
However, by the late 1980s, popular
resistance was taking the form of mass defiance campaigns, while
struggles over more localised issues saw broad sections of
communities mobilised in united action. Popular support for
released political prisoners and for the armed struggle was being
openly expressed.
In response to the rising tide of
resistance, the international community strengthened its support
for the anti-apartheid cause. Sanctions and boycotts were
instituted, both unilaterally by countries across the world and
through the United
Nations (UN). These sanctions were called for in
a co-ordinated strategy by the internal and external anti-apartheid
movement in South Africa.
FW de Klerk, who replaced
PW Botha as State President in 1989,
announced at the opening of Parliament in February 1990 the
unbanning of the liberation movements and release of political
prisoners, among them, Nelson
Mandela. A number of factors led to this step.
International financial, trade, sport and cultural sanctions were
clearly biting.
Above all, even if South Africa was
nowhere near collapse, either militarily or economically, several
years of emergency rule and ruthless repression had clearly neither
destroyed the structures of organised resistance, nor helped
establish legitimacy for the apartheid regime or its collaborators.
Instead, popular resistance, including mass and armed action, was
intensifying.
The ANC,
enjoying popular recognition and legitimacy as the foremost
liberation organisation, was increasingly regarded as a
government-in-waiting.
International support for the
liberation movement came from various countries around the globe,
particularly from former socialist countries and Nordic countries
as well as the Non-Aligned
Movement (NAM).
The other liberation organisations
increasingly experienced various internal and external pressures
and did not enjoy much popular support.
To outside observers, and also in
the eyes of growing numbers of white South Africans, apartheid
stood exposed as morally bankrupt, indefensible and impervious to
reforms.
The collapse of global communism,
the negotiated withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola, and the
culmination of the South-West African People's Organisation's
liberation struggle in the negotiated independence of Namibia -
formerly South-West Africa, administered by South Africa as a
League of Nations mandate since 1919 - did much to change the
mindset of white people. No longer could they demonise the ANC and
PAC
as fronts for international communism.
White South Africa had also changed
in deeper ways. Afrikaner nationalism had lost much of its raison
d'être. Many Afrikaners had become urban, middle class and
relatively prosperous.
Their ethnic grievances and
attachment to ethnic causes and symbols had diminished. A large
part of the
NP's core constituency was ready to
explore larger national identities, even across racial divides, and
yearned for international respectability. In 1982, disenchanted
hardliners split from the NP to form the Conservative Party,
leaving the NP open to more flexible and modernising
influences.
After this split, factions within
the Afrikaner élite openly started to pronounce in favour of a more
inclusive society, causing more friction with the NP government,
which became increasingly militaristic and authoritarian.
A number of business, student and
academic Afrikaners held meetings publicly and privately with the
ANC in exile. Secret talks were held between the imprisoned Mandela
and government ministers about a new dispensation for South Africa,
with blacks forming a major part of it.
Inside the country, mass action
became the order of the day. Petty apartheid laws and symbols were
openly challenged and removed. Together with a sliding economy and
increasing international pressure, these developments made historic
changes inevitable.
The First Decade of
Freedom
After a long negotiation process,
sustained despite much opportunistic violence from the right wing
and its surrogates, and in some instances sanctioned by elements of
the state, South Africa's first democratic election was held in
April 1994 under an interim
Constitution.
The interim Constitution divided
South Africa into nine new provinces in place of the previous four
provinces and 10 "homelands", and provided for the Government of
National Unity to be constituted by all parties with at least 20
seats in the National Assembly.
The ANC
emerged from the election with a 62% majority. The main opposition
came from the
NP, which gained 20% of the vote
nationally, and a majority in the Western Cape. The Inkatha Freedom
Party (IFP) received 10% of the vote, mainly in
its KwaZulu-Natal base. The NP and the IFP formed part of the
Government of National Unity until 1996, when the NP withdrew. The
ANC-led Government embarked on a programme to promote the
reconstruction and development of the country and its
institutions.
This called for the simultaneous
pursuit of democratisation and socio-economic change, as well as
reconciliation and the building of consensus founded on the
commitment to improve the lives of all South Africans, in
particular the poor. It required the integration of South Africa
into a rapidly changing global environment.
Pursuit of these objectives was a
consistent focus of government during the First Decade of Freedom,
seeking the unity of a previously divided society in working
together to overcome the legacy of a history of division, exclusion
and neglect.
Converting democratic ideals into
practice required, among other things, initiating a radical
overhaul of the machinery of government at every level, working
towards service delivery, openness, and a culture of human rights.
It has required a more integrated approach to planning and
implementation to ensure that the many different aspects of
transformation and socio-economic upliftment cohere with maximum
impact.
A significant milestone in the
democratisation of South Africa was the exemplary
Constitution-making process, which in 1996 delivered a document
that has evoked worldwide admiration. So too have been the
elections subsequent to 1994 - all conducted peacefully, with high
levels of participation compared with the norm in most democracies,
and accepted by all as free and fair in their conduct and results.
Local government elections during 1995 and 1996, and then again in
2000 after the transformation of the municipal system, gave the
country its first democratically elected non-racial municipal
authorities.
Since 2001, participatory democracy
and interactive governance have been strengthened through the
practice of imbizo, roving executive council and mayoral meetings,
in which members of the executive, in all three spheres of
government, including The
Presidency, regularly engage directly with the
public around implementation of programmes of reconstruction and
development.
The second democratic national
election in 1999 saw the ANC
majority increase to just short of two thirds and the election of
Mr Thabo
Mbeki as president and successor to Mr
Mandela. It saw a sharp decline of the
NP (then the New National Party
[NNP]) and its replacement by the Democratic Party, led by
Mr Tony Leon, as the official opposition in
Parliament.
These two parties formed the Democratic
Alliance, which the NNP left in 2001.
The Truth and
Reconciliation Commission (TRC), under the
leadership of
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, helped inculcate a
commitment to accountability and transparency in South Africa's
public life, at the same time helping to heal wounds inflicted by
the inhumanities of the apartheid era.
During 2003, Parliament accepted
the Government's response to the final report of the TRC. Out of 22
000 individuals or surviving families appearing before the
commission, 19 000 were identified as needing urgent reparation
assistance - virtually all, where the necessary information was
available, received interim reparations.
As final reparations, government
provided a once-off grant of R30 000 to individuals or survivors
who appeared before, and were designated by, the TRC, over and
above the programmes for material assistance. There are continuing
programmes to project the symbolism of the struggle and the ideal
of freedom. These include the Freedom
Park and other symbols and monuments, and such
matters as records of history, remaking of cultural and art forms
and changing geographical and place names.
The ethos of partnership informed
the establishment of the National Economic
Development and Labour Council. It brings
together government, business, organised labour and development
organisations to confront the challenges of growth and development
for South Africa in a turbulent and globalising international
economy.
The Presidential Jobs Summit in
1998 and the Growth
and Development Summit (GDS) in June 2003 brought
these sectors together to collectively take advantage of the
conditions in South Africa for faster growth and development.
At the GDS, a comprehensive set of
agreements was concluded to address urgent challenges in a
practical way and to speed up job-creating growth and
development.
Partnership between government and
civil society was further strengthened by the creation of a number
of working groups through which sectors of society - business,
organised labour, higher education, religious leaders, youth and
women - engage regularly with the President.
In the First Decade of Freedom,
government placed emphasis on meeting basic needs through
programmes for socio-economic development such as the provision of
housing, piped water, electricity, education and healthcare, as
well as social grants for those in need.
Another priority was the safety and
security of citizens, which required both transforming the police
into a service working with the community, and overcoming grave
problems of criminality and a culture of violence posed by the
social dislocations inherited from the past.
Key economic objectives included
job creation, poverty eradication, reduction of inequality and
overall growth. There was much progress in rebuilding the economy,
in particular with the achievement of macroeconomic stability and
the initiation of programmes of microeconomic reform. By the end of
2004, growth was accelerating and there were signs of the
beginnings of a reduction in unemployment.
The integration of South Africa
into the global political, economic and social system has been a
priority for democratic South Africa. As a country isolated during
the apartheid period, an African country, a developing country, and
a country whose liberation was achieved with the support of the
international community, it remains of critical importance to build
political and economic links with the countries and regions of the
world, and to work with others for an international environment
more favourable to development across the world, and in Africa and
South Africa in particular.
The South African Government is
committed to the African Renaissance, which is based on the
consolidation of democracy, economic development and a co-operative
approach to resolving the challenges the continent faces.
South Africa hosted the launch in
2002 of the
African Union (AU), a step towards further
unification of Africa in pursuit of socio-economic development, the
Organisation of African Unity having
fulfilled its mandate to liberate Africa. President
Mbeki chaired the AU for its founding year,
handing over the chair to President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique
in July 2003.
In 2004, the AU decided that South
Africa should host the Pan-African
Parliament and it met for its second session in
South Africa, the first time on South African soil, in September of
that year.
By participating in UN and AU
initiatives to resolve conflict and promote peace and security on
the continent - in among other countries, the Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC), Burundi and Sudan - South Africa has contributed to
the achievement of conditions conducive to the entrenchment of
stability, democracy and faster development.
During the First Decade of Freedom,
it acted at various times as chair of the Southern African
Development Community (SADC), NAM, AU
and the Commonwealth
Heads of Government meetings. It has played host to several
international conferences, including the UN Conference on Trade
and Development in 1996, the 2000 World AIDS
Congress, World
Conference Against Racism in 2001, World Summit on
Sustainable Development in 2002, and the
World Parks Congress in 2003. The
country has also been represented on international forums such as
the International
Monetary Fund's Development Committee and Interpol.
Into the Second Decade of
Freedom
When South Africa celebrated 10
years of freedom in 2004, there were celebrations across the world
in countries whose peoples had helped to bring freedom to South
Africa through their solidarity, and who today are partners in
reconstruction and development.
As government took stock of the
First Decade of Freedom in Towards a Ten Year
Review, it was able to document great progress by
South Africans in pursuit of their goals, as well as the challenges
that face the nation as it traverses the second decade of its
freedom towards 2014.
In its third democratic elections,
in April 2004, the country gave an increased mandate to the
Government's programme for reconstruction and development and for
the entrenchment of the rights inscribed in the
Constitution. It mandated government
specifically to create the conditions for halving unemployment and
poverty by 2014. Following these elections, Thabo
Mbeki was appointed to a second term of office as
President of South Africa - a position he
relinquished in September 2008, following the decision of the
National Executive Committee of the ANC to
recall him. Parliament
elected Kgalema Motlanthe as President of South Africa on 25
September 2008.
Local government elections in 2006,
following a long period of civic unrest as communities protested
against a mixed record of service delivery, saw increased
participation compared with the previous local elections, as well
as increased support for the ruling party based on a manifesto for
a concerted effort, in partnership with communities, to make local
government work better.
South Africa held national and
provincial
elections to elect a new National Assembly
as well as the provincial legislature in each province on 22 April
2009. Some 23 million people were registered for the 2009 general
election, which were about 2,5 million more than in 2004. About 77%
of registered voters took part in the election. The results for the
top five parties were as follows: the ANC achieved 65,9%; the DA
16,6%; the newlyformed Congress of the People 7,4%; the IFP 4,5%;
and the Independent Democrats 0,9% of the votes cast.
Jacob Zuma was
inaugurated as President of South Africa on 9 May
2009. Shortly thereafter, President Zuma announced several changes
to current government departments and the creation of new
structures within The Presidency. The latter essentially comprises
the Ministry for Performance Monitoring, Evaluation and
Administration and the National Planning Ministry, in keeping with
the new administration's approach to intensify government delivery
through an outcomes-based approach, coupled with a government-wide
monitoring and evaluation system.
During 2010, much effort was
dedicated into organising and shifting government onto a new
plateau of efficiency and accountability. The Cabinet Lekgotla,
held from 20 to 22 January 2010, adopted the following 12
outcomes as focus areas for government's
work:
an improved quality of basic
education
a long and healthy life for all South Africans
all South Africans should be safe and feel safe
decent employment through inclusive growth
a skilled and capable workforce to support an inclusive growth
path an efficient, competitive and responsive economic
infrastructure network
vibrant, equitable, sustainable rural communities with food
security for all
sustainable human settlements and an improved quality of household
life
a responsive, accountable, effective and efficient local
government system
environmental assets and natural resources that are well protected
and enhanced
a better Africa and a better world as a result of South Africa's
contributions to global relations
an efficient and development-oriented public service and an
empowered, fair and inclusive citizenship.
A big part of making the outcomes a
reality lies in escalating the extent to which departments are
accountable for their delivery areas. The President has signed
performance agreements with all 34 Cabinet ministers. Delivery
agreements will further
unpack each outcome and each output and the requirements to reach
the targets. The performance monitoring and evaluation systems that
have been put in place will continue to be built upon so that the
work of government towards achieving these outcomes is consistently
tracked.
At the end of 2010, the annual
Development Indicators were published by
the National Planning Commission Secretariat and the Department of
Performance Monitoring and Evaluation. These measures assist in
understanding the impact of various government policies and
programmes on the country and its citizens. In many spheres there
are improvements generally, for example, access to basic services
remains on the increase. In other areas, challenges remain. It is
envisaged that the launch of the outcomes methodology under the
leadership of the Department of Performance Monitoring and
Evaluation, will enable government to improve its performance and
for citizens to hold it accountable for its performance.
A significant milestone for South
Africa in the Second Decade of Freedom was the
successful hosting of the 2010 FIFA World
Cup™.
The tournament, which was the first
on African soil, demonstrated that South Africa has the
infrastructure and capability to warrant serious investment
consideration. It also showcased South Africa and its people to the
world. According to FIFA, more than matches of the tournament. This
was the third-highest aggregate attendance behind the 1994 FIFA
World Cup in the United States of America (USA), and the 2006 FIFA
World Cup in Germany. This figure excludes the millions of people
who watched World Cup games at fan fests, fan parks and public
viewing areas across the country, and in cities around the world.
Government recorded that more than 1,4 million foreigners visited
the country during the tournament.
Government spent about R40 billion
on infrastructure projects, and billions more on upgrading roads
and airports. Improvements in public transport, security,
investment and tourism have already been shown to benefit the
people of our country. The hosting of the tournament also resulted
in job creation. South Africans demonstrated an explosion of
national pride and embraced each other, making the tournament a
powerful nation-building tool.
South Africa has continued to build
on its international profile. On 1 January 2011, South Africa began
its second term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security
Council for the period 2011 and 2012. South
Africa serves alongside the permanent five members, China, France,
the Russian Federation, United Kingdom and USA and elected members
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Colombia, Gabon, Germany, India,
Lebanon, Nigeria and Portugal. South Africa in the conduct of its
international relations is committed to garner support for its
domestic priorities, promote the interests of the African
continent, enhance democracy and human rights, uphold justice and
international law in relations between nations, seek the peaceful
resolution of conflicts and promote economic development through
regional and international cooperation in an interdependent
world.
The number of diplomatic
missions opened abroad increased from 91 in
2001/02 to 124 in 2009/10. The increase has been mainly in Africa
in line with government's policy of contributing to creating a
better Africa and a better world. Deployment of South African
National Defence Force members in other countries in Africa is a
clear indication of the South African Government's commitment to
peace and stability in Africa.
Source:
South Africa Yearbook
2010/11