State of Emergency – 1985
The year of 1985 signalled the beginning of the end of apartheid society and governance in South Africa. Following an upsurge of violent and non-violent resistance to the racially-exclusive system of apartheid – which had…
SA History
Second World War and its impact, 1939-1948
South Africa enters the War General Smuts signing the agreement at the first meeting of the UN General Assembly. Source: P. Joyce (2000), Suid-Afrika in die 20ste eeu Kaapstad: Struik, p.107. In September 1939, World…
Colonial conquest and resistance, Pre 1900
An image of Jan Van Riebeeck and the local San people, © cybercapetown.com Several factors seemed to pave the way to apartheid, among them ─ colonial conquest, land dispossession, economic impoverishment, and exclusion from citizenship…
African nationalism and working-class & popular protests, 1910-1924
Solomon Plaajte was part of the deputation to London in 1914 to protest the land act, the pamphlet above was an advert for Plaatje’s address to the New England P.S.A on 18 July 1915. ©…
The genesis of the armed struggle, 1960-1966
Introduction Sharpeville shortly after the shootings © Museum Africa. The 1960s marked an important watershed in South Africa’s struggle against apartheid. The aftermath of the Sharpeville Massacre, in 1960, signalled the beginning of a far…
Constructing the Union of South Africa; negotiations & contestations, 1902-10
Scanned in copy of the last page of the Treaty of Vereeniging, click to enlarge and view other pages Industrialization and British imperialism in South Africa, driven by economic and political ambitions, and the individual…
Partial State of Emergency, July 1985
On 21 July 1985 the government declared a State of Emergency in 36 magisterial districts in the Eastern Cape and PWV (now Gauteng) areas. This was the first State of Emergency since 1960, and gave…
South Africa in the 19th Century
INTRODUCTION Unlike most of the rest of Africa, South Africa was very sparsely populated at the time when the first Europeans arrived. They came, not to settle, but to resupply their ships on long voyages…
The Siege of South Africa
INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW Ivor Benson The main argument which I seek to establish in this paper falls into three parts and can be summarized as follows: The history of South Africa, since shortly…
Blacks are not ‘indigenous’ and arrived at same time as whites in South Africa
POSTED BY: PRAAG JANUARY 17, 2016 The recent uproar in South Africa over the claims by ANC president Jacob Zuma that the 1913 Land Act dispossessed blacks is a blatant lie, and forms part of…