What is a South African?

Part of the richness, and part of the challenge, is that South Africa is made up from such a broad range of people groups.

“I believe in Nelson Mandela’s vision. I believe in a vision shared by Gandhi and King….that all people are equal. A world governed by such principles is possible and…we have no choice but to move forward.” (Barack Obama)

To Nelson Mandela, being South African wasn’t about being white, or black, or colored. It wasn’t about being rich or poor, modern or traditional. It was about embracing all of these things and taking pride in being a part of this rich rainbow of a nation.

But so much of South Africa’s history has denied this beautiful recognition of God’s amazing creation of billions of unique people throughout human history and before. Inter-tribal conflicts, racial domination, colonialism and apartheid have all worked against God’s great human tapestry. South Africa is a microcosm of how this has occurred throughout the world.

In a previous blog I asked how it could be that such a rich nation could be so dysfunctional. The answer is, I think, most simply explained as misuse of power. Of course, this is at the heart of so much – it is pride, the original sin. It is greed, hate, sexual abuse, oppression of all kinds. And South Africa has seen it all for millennia.

It is helpful to look at the major cultural layers that make up modern South Africa. So I want to tell you a story.

Preface – Prehistory. (if you have a problem with evolution, you may want to skip this bit!) In 1924 limestone workers on the Cape coast discovered what turned out to be the skull of the so-called Taung Child, a specimen of Australopithecus africanus which is thought by many to be a direct ancestor of humans. (This story and many related to it are told in the wonderfully presented Cradle of Civilization just outside Johannesburg). For many archeologists, and based on fossil evidence to date, Southern Africa is where what we know of as humanity emerged. (For me this is not inconsistent with the Biblical creation story, which leaves out all sorts of details not relevant to the purpose of the book. But you may disagree and we’ll still be friends!)

Chapter 1 – Hunter-gatherers. Once upon a time, about 100,000 years ago, there came from the north a migration of small middle stone-age humans mostly known now as San or bushmen (though they had no name for themselves since there was nobody else around to tell it to!) They were nomadic hunter-gatherers, using primitive tools to create shelters, kill and skin game, and generally survive. But they were also artists, and responsible for the first known artistic endeavors, including the beautiful kuku shown here. When we say “primitive” we clearly don’t mean backward or inept! A few of these works still survive in caves in the Kalahari Basin, as well as in Botswana.

The San lived quite happily with their animals and their small family groups for close to 100,000 years, which by American standard is quite a long time.

Chapter 2 - Herders. All was peaceful in the Kalahari until around the time of Christ another set of migrants arrived in the Kalahari from their original home in Botswana. They are known as the Khoikhoi people or, as the Dutch called them, the Hottentots. (This derogatory nickname came from the clicks in their language that Europeans have a hard time understanding). The Khoikhoi (literally “men of men”) weren’t like the San. Rather than hunt their food, they grew it. They herded sheep, goats and cattle, which overran the lands with their large settlements. And because the Khoikhoi felt they owned their cattle, they took exception to San people hunting and gathering their meat! It was easier for the Khoikhoi to thrive, and so they mostly absorbed the San people. In fact the two groups together are known as Khoisan (really the name of the merged languages).

This was a gradual absorption and was never quite completed. There are small groups of indigenous San still living in some parts of southern Africa, especially Botswana. But for South Africa there are very few if any left in the Kalahari. They are true people of the land, with rich customs and deep humanity. But there seems to be no place for them in “modern civilization”.

Chapter 3 – Bantu Invasion. The Khoisan continued to occupy the western portion of South Africa until the arrival of the first Europeans. But a couple of hundred years after the Khoikhoi arrived, a different migration reached this southernmost part of the world. This migration was on a scale that humanity had never before experienced. The Bantu expansion swept across the whole of Africa in the couple of millennia before Christ, ending up in the early centuries of the Christian era in South Africa.

The Bantu came and took over all the nice parts of town. One group, today's Nguni peoples - the Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, and Ndebele - liked the Eastern coastal areas. The Sotho-Tswana peoples (Tswana, Pedi, and Sotho) settled in the interior on the plateau known as the Highveld. And today's Venda, Lemba, and Tsonga peoples set up shop in the north-east. They started to encroach upon Khoisan lands and moved them out of their fertile lands into the more arid north of the country. They did absorb some of the Khoisan culture, including the clicks in their language (which you can still hear particularly in Zulu and Xhosa). Why have I told you all this? South Africa isn’t just white and the rest. It isn’t even just white, black, colored and Indian. Black covers a whole rainbow. And as we’ll see, even white includes a couple of rainbow bands.

Interlude – Enter the Europeans. Then exit quickly. In 1488 Bartholomeu Dias explored the South African coastline. And a few years later, a whole Portuguese fleet sailed right up the eastern coast. But apparently they didn’t see anything much to shout about. So they left.

Chapter 4 – Enter the Europeans – For Real. Now we’re starting to get to the bits they covered in your history books. Africa couldn’t be left out because it impacted history so significantly. After all we know that history is really just about Europe (with a little bit about America in the epilogue).

In the 17^th century, the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC in Dutch – don’t ask) needed a supply station for its trading ships. And so was invented Cape Town. The Khoisan had lots of meat, and the Bantu had lots of meat, and the Dutch were most certainly not vegetarians. So they traded (vegetables too). The VOC didn’t plan on colonizing – just trading, which they did until the Khoisan decided not to play any more. So the VOC imported Dutch farmers to grow crops and herd livestock. These were the so-called boers (Dutch for farmers). The more that arrived, the more land they needed, and the rest is history – ugly, bloody history.

Chapter 5 – Cape Malay and Colored. The Dutch had no problem with slavery at that time. Curiously, though, they decided not to make slaves of the Khoisan and instead imported them from various Dutch colonies, but particularly from Indonesia. This was the beginning of the Cape Malay communities in South Africa (perhaps because it’s easier to say than Cape Indonesian?) Since there weren’t enough of the right kind of slaves, the white settlers started to indenture Khoisan workers (but this wasn’t slavery, honest!) Very soon after this, masters and slaves and indentured servants started to have babies together. In very large numbers. This was the beginning of the extremely varied groups of people who are collectively known today as Colored. And they all spoke a variant of Dutch, influenced by Khoisan and Malay languages, and ultimately renamed as Afrikaans. In case you wondered.

Chapter 6 – Late to the Party. So the Dutch had everything to themselves, and had established some kind of peaceful co-existence with the black and colored previous inhabitants of South Africa. It was hardly an equal partnership, but it worked (if you had white skin). And then Britain realized that it needed to protect its own trade routes from the French so it seized the Cape from the Dutch (French allies at the time).  Kind of a clumsy way to gate-crash a party, but it worked and British influence is still stronger in the Western Cape province than anywhere else in South Africa except around the old Natal (see next chapter)!

The history of relations between the Dutch and the British is quite well documented, although it really was much messier than the school texts make it sound. Mostly all we hear about are the Anglo-Boer wars – also referred to as the South African wars, although these were just two of many wars and isolated battles that peppered the 18^th and 19^th centuries throughout South Africa.

White vs white, black vs white, black vs black – they all happened with tragic results. There was certainly a clash between Dutch protectiveness and expansionism, and British hunger for gold and diamonds. But also there was the emergence of a dominant Zulu tribe that turned on everyone else. Remember Shaka Zulu. Yes, he started it. And there were lots more attempts by one group to exert power over another.

Chapter 7 – Last to the Party. So our story of what makes up a South African has nearly finished. But there is one element missing – the Indians. How on earth did they get into the mix? Actually they first started to arrive in Chapter 5 – slaves introduced by the Dutch. But far greater numbers came at the end of the 19^th century, in Natal which the British had pretty much taken over. For some reason the Zulu refused to be Britain’s laborers and mineworkers, so a few Indians – 150,000 of them actually – were brought in to do the dirty work instead. In fact when Mahatma Gandhi arrived in 1893, Indians outnumbered whites in Natal. But that’s a whole different story for another time.

Epilogue – Put All Ingredients in and Mix Well. Of course, they didn’t mix very well. You know at least the basics of apartheid (literally “separateness”, a doctrine of the Afrikaner government designed to keep non-whites under control). This isn’t the place to go into detail. But by this time races and traditions had been shunted and segregated and oppressed so much that being South African had no meaning at all.

Then came Nelson Mandela with his vision of a united, everybody-equal South Africa. Then came Desmond Tutu with his “rainbow nation”. But it was never going to be that easy or that quick. Going into the 1994 elections, the ANC promised all sorts of impossible things to get elected. That wasn’t all bad. But now, 24 years later, not much has been accomplished. Given all the complexity of South Africa’s migrations, invasions and power struggles, it’s hardly surprising is it?

The current situation is the subject of my next blog post. Stay tuned!