South Africa
Pre-trip Background Research
1. History and heritage
** A nation’s dream of unity and common purpose now capable of realization 1.1 The earliest people
- The earliest representatives of South Africa's diversity – at least the earliest we can name – were the San and Khoekhoe peoples
- Both were resident in the southern tip of the continent for thousands of years
- The hunter-gatherer San ranged widely over the area
- The pastoral Khoekhoe lived in those comparatively well-watered areas with grazing
- However, the Khoekhoe have disappeared due to diseases from Europeans and some straightforward extermination
- The Thulamela site in the northern Kruger National Park is estimated to have been first occupied in the 13th century.
- The ruins of Mapungubwe are the remains of a large trading settlement thought to stretch back to the 12th century
1.2 Colonial expansion
- Settler and slaves started to exist when Dutch East India Company built a fort and a vegetable garden for the benefit of ships on the trade routes in the east.
- A mutual animosity developed between the settlers and the Khoekhoe and the growing suspicion was becoming a threat to them
- By the time Jan van Riebeeck , Dutch colonist, left the Cape of Good Hope in 1662, 250 white people lived in what was beginning to look like a developing colony.
- Later governors of the Cape Colony encouraged immigration
- The descendants of some of the Khoisan, who are slaves from other parts in Africa and the East, and the white colonists formed the basis of the mixed-race group
- The slaves from the East brought to South Africa their religion of Islam
- By the second half of the 18th century, the colonists – mainly of Dutch, German and French Huguenot stock – had begun to lose their sense of identification with Europe >>>>
The Afrikaner nation was coming into being.
- The British took the Cape over from the Dutch in 1795.
- Seven years later, the colony was returned to
1. History and heritage
** A nation’s dream of unity and common purpose now capable of realization 1.1 The earliest people
- The earliest representatives of South Africa's diversity – at least the earliest we can name – were the San and Khoekhoe peoples
- Both were resident in the southern tip of the continent for thousands of years
- The hunter-gatherer San ranged widely over the area
- The pastoral Khoekhoe lived in those comparatively well-watered areas with grazing
- However, the Khoekhoe have disappeared due to diseases from Europeans and some straightforward extermination
- The Thulamela site in the northern Kruger National Park is estimated to have been first occupied in the 13th century.
- The ruins of Mapungubwe are the remains of a large trading settlement thought to stretch back to the 12th century
1.2 Colonial expansion
- Settler and slaves started to exist when Dutch East India Company built a fort and a vegetable garden for the benefit of ships on the trade routes in the east.
- A mutual animosity developed between the settlers and the Khoekhoe and the growing suspicion was becoming a threat to them
- By the time Jan van Riebeeck , Dutch colonist, left the Cape of Good Hope in 1662, 250 white people lived in what was beginning to look like a developing colony.
- Later governors of the Cape Colony encouraged immigration
- The descendants of some of the Khoisan, who are slaves from other parts in Africa and the East, and the white colonists formed the basis of the mixed-race group
- The slaves from the East brought to South Africa their religion of Islam
- By the second half of the 18th century, the colonists – mainly of Dutch, German and French Huguenot stock – had begun to lose their sense of identification with Europe >>>>
The Afrikaner nation was coming into being.
- The British took the Cape over from the Dutch in 1795.
- Seven years later, the colony was returned to