nation draft South Africa
A country of twelve official languages and many histories that ended apartheid by negotiation, wrote one of the world's most progressive constitutions, and is still working out what freedom should mean for everyone.
Table Mountain · Danie van der Merwe from Cape Town, South Africa, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Understanding a South African in 5 minutes
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Apartheid's long shadow
From 1948 to the early 1990s the National Party government classified every person by race and used that label to decide where they could live, study, work, marry and be buried. It built on centuries of conquest and segregation, above all the 1913 Natives Land Act. Apartheid ended three decades ago, but its geography of white suburbs and distant Black townships, and its gaps in wealth and schooling, are still visible every day.
- Apartheid, 1948–1994 — Saul Dubow, Oxford University Press (2014)
- South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid — Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger, Routledge (2016)
- Native Life in South Africa — Sol T. Plaatje, P. S. King & Son (1916)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
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The 1994 "miracle"
Many expected a race war. Instead, after four years of negotiation and terrible violence, South Africans of every race voted together on 27 April 1994, and Nelson Mandela, released after 27 years in prison, became president. The 1996 Constitution, with its Bill of Rights and Constitutional Court, is a source of real pride. Many South Africans still feel the emotion of those queues; others now ask what the deal left undone.
- Long Walk to Freedom — Nelson Mandela, Little, Brown (1994)
- Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 — Republic of South Africa (1996)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- Nelson Mandela — Encyclopaedia Britannica
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Many peoples, twelve languages
In the 2022 census, 81% of South Africans were Black African, 8% Coloured, 7% white and 3% Indian or Asian, categories inherited from apartheid but still widely used. The country has twelve official languages, including South African Sign Language since 2023. isiZulu is the most common home language (24%), followed by isiXhosa (16%) and Afrikaans (11%); English, the language of business, is the home language of fewer than one in ten.
- Census 2022: Statistical Release — Statistics South Africa (2023)
- Sign language officially the 12th official language — SAnews (South African Government News Agency) (2023)
- Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 — Republic of South Africa (1996)
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Land and belonging
From the Dutch arrival at the Cape in 1652 to the 1913 Natives Land Act, which reserved about 7% of the country for the Black majority, and the forced removal of some 3.5 million people under apartheid, the history of South Africa is a history of who owns the land. It remains one of the most emotional questions in politics, for Black South Africans seeking restitution and for white farmers fearful of losing what they have.
- Native Life in South Africa — Sol T. Plaatje, P. S. King & Son (1916)
- Forced Removals in South Africa: The SPP Reports — Surplus People Project (1983)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
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Ubuntu
"Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu", a Nguni saying, means "a person is a person through other people". Ubuntu, the idea that we are bound up in each other's humanity, was invoked by Desmond Tutu to explain forgiveness at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and is written into the country's founding story. In everyday life it shows in greetings, in the obligations of extended family, and in neighbours who turn up when someone dies.
- No Future Without Forgiveness — Desmond Tutu, Doubleday (1999)
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report — Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (1998)
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Hope and frustration
Democracy brought votes, houses, electricity, welfare grants and a Black middle class. But the World Bank ranks South Africa as the most unequal country on earth, around a third of the workforce is unemployed, violent crime is high, and corruption under Jacob Zuma's presidency, known as "state capture", hollowed out state firms. Many South Africans swing between deep love for their country and exasperation with how it is run.
- Inequality in Southern Africa: An Assessment of the Southern African Customs Union — World Bank (2022)
- Report of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector including Organs of State — Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture (chair: Raymond Zondo) (2022)
- South Africa — Encyclopaedia Britannica
The story
Khoe-San & early farming societies
1000 BCE – 1074 The San and Khoikhoi: South Africa's first peoples
Hunter-gatherer San and herding Khoikhoi peoples, heirs to one of humanity's oldest continuous cultures, fill southern Africa with rock art, and are later dispossessed and almost erased.
- An abstract drawing from the 73,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa — Christopher S. Henshilwood et al., Nature (2018)
- The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840 — Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), Wesleyan University Press (1989)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
Read more
- An abstract drawing from the 73,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa — Christopher S. Henshilwood et al., Nature (2018)
- The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840 — Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), Wesleyan University Press (1989)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
The San and Khoikhoi (together often called Khoe-San) are honoured on the national coat of arms, and many Coloured South Africans trace ancestry to them. Yet their languages are endangered or lost, and Khoe-San activists campaign for recognition as South Africa's First Nations and for land. The return of Sarah Baartman's remains from France in 2002 became a symbol of restored dignity.
Southern Africa is one of the places where modern humans grew up. At Blombos Cave on the southern Cape coast, archaeologists found engraved ochre and a cross-hatched drawing on stone about 73,000 years old, the oldest known drawing by human hands.
Mapungubwe & African kingdoms
1075 – 1651 Mapungubwe and the African kingdoms
Bantu-speaking farmers settle the eastern half of the region, and the gold-working kingdom of Mapungubwe rises on the Limpopo, long before any European arrives.
- Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape (World Heritage List) — UNESCO World Heritage Centre (2003)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
Read more
- Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape (World Heritage List) — UNESCO World Heritage Centre (2003)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
Apartheid-era textbooks claimed that Black and white settlers arrived at about the same time in an "empty land". Mapungubwe, deliberately downplayed under apartheid, now features on national honours and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a proof that complex African states flourished here centuries before colonialism. The kingdoms and chiefdoms that followed are the roots of today's Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana, Pedi, Venda and other identities, and traditional leaders still hold real influence.
From around the third or fourth century CE, farmers speaking Bantu languages, who grew sorghum and millet, herded cattle and worked iron, settled the better-watered eastern half of what is now South Africa. Over centuries they absorbed and intermarried with Khoe-San peoples; the click sounds in isiXhosa and isiZulu are a lasting sign of that mixing.
The Dutch Cape & slavery
1652 – 1805 The Dutch at the Cape and the slave colony
The Dutch East India Company sets up a refreshment station at the Cape, which grows into a slave-holding settler colony and the cradle of Afrikaans.
- The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840 — Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), Wesleyan University Press (1989)
- The Afrikaners: Biography of a People — Hermann Giliomee, University of Virginia Press (2003)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
Read more
- The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840 — Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), Wesleyan University Press (1989)
- The Afrikaners: Biography of a People — Hermann Giliomee, University of Virginia Press (2003)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
1652 is the date many South Africans use as shorthand for the start of colonial dispossession; it is invoked in debates on land and on "settler" identity. The colony's slaves, from Indonesia, India, Madagascar and East Africa, are ancestors of many Coloured and Cape Muslim South Africans, and their Creole Dutch became Afrikaans, a language now spoken by more Coloured than white South Africans.
On 6 April 1652 Jan van Riebeeck landed at Table Bay for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to set up a station supplying fresh food to ships sailing to Asia.
Jan van Riebeeck's landing was long celebrated as the founding of white civilisation in Africa, and Van Riebeeck Day was a public holiday until 1994.
1652 began the dispossession of the Khoikhoi and the importation of enslaved people, the founding injustices of everything that followed; it is remembered as the beginning of conquest, not civilisation.
British Cape, Mfecane & Great Trek
1806 – 1866 Shaka, the Zulu kingdom and the Mfecane
Shaka builds the Zulu kingdom into a regional power amid a period of wars and migrations across southern Africa, whose causes historians still argue over.
- Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention — Carolyn Hamilton, Harvard University Press (1998)
- The Mfecane as Alibi: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo — Julian Cobbing, Journal of African History (1988)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
Read more
- Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention — Carolyn Hamilton, Harvard University Press (1998)
- The Mfecane as Alibi: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo — Julian Cobbing, Journal of African History (1988)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
Shaka is the founding hero of Zulu identity, celebrated each September and invoked by the Zulu royal house and in KwaZulu-Natal politics. The Mfecane shaped the map of southern Africa, giving rise to the Basotho and Swazi kingdoms and the Ndebele state. The debate over its causes is also a debate over whether apartheid-era history used "Black-on-Black" violence to justify white land claims.
In the early nineteenth century, larger and more centralised states were forming among the Nguni peoples between the Drakensberg and the Indian Ocean. Shaka kaSenzangakhona became ruler of the small Zulu chiefdom around 1816 and, through warfare and alliance, made it the dominant power in the region.
Shaka was a military and political genius who united many chiefdoms into a great nation, the foundation of the Zulu people's pride and their resistance to colonial conquest.
The Mfecane ("crushing") was a wave of destruction set off by Zulu militarism that left the interior depopulated, so that Voortrekkers later moved into largely "empty" land.
In 1988 Julian Cobbing argued that the "Mfecane" was an alibi, invented to hide the role of Portuguese slave-trading from Delagoa Bay and of Cape colonial labour raiding.
The Great Trek and Blood River
Thousands of Dutch-speaking farmers leave the British Cape for the interior, defeat a Zulu army at Blood River, and found the Boer republics.
- The Afrikaners: Biography of a People — Hermann Giliomee, University of Virginia Press (2003)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
Read more
- The Afrikaners: Biography of a People — Hermann Giliomee, University of Virginia Press (2003)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
The Trek became the founding epic of Afrikaner nationalism, celebrated in the vast Voortrekker Monument outside Pretoria. 16 December, once the Afrikaner "Day of the Vow", is now the Day of Reconciliation, a deliberate act of shared memory; at the battle site, a Voortrekker memorial and a Zulu museum face each other across the river.
From 1835 several thousand Dutch-speaking frontier farmers, with their families and the servants who travelled with them, left the Cape Colony in ox-wagon parties, a movement later called the Great Trek; estimates run to around 15,000 by the mid-1840s.
Voortrekkers fled British injustice to seek freedom, faced terrible hardship and treachery, and won Blood River after making a covenant with God, a sign that they were a people with a calling.
The Trek was an invasion of African land, conquering and displacing Zulu, Ndebele, Sotho and Tswana communities and creating republics that denied Black people equality "in church or state".
Diamonds, gold & conquest
1867 – 1909 The South African (Anglo-Boer) War
Britain conquers the gold-rich Boer republics after a long guerrilla war, burning farms and herding women and children, Boer and Black, into camps where tens of thousands die.
- The Boer War — Thomas Pakenham, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1979)
- The South African War, 1899–1902 — Bill Nasson, Arnold (1999)
- Black People and the South African War, 1899–1902 — Peter Warwick, Cambridge University Press (1983)
- The Afrikaners: Biography of a People — Hermann Giliomee, University of Virginia Press (2003)
- Concentration camps of the South African War (Anglo-Boer War) — South African History Online
Read more
- The Boer War — Thomas Pakenham, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1979)
- The South African War, 1899–1902 — Bill Nasson, Arnold (1999)
- Black People and the South African War, 1899–1902 — Peter Warwick, Cambridge University Press (1983)
- The Afrikaners: Biography of a People — Hermann Giliomee, University of Virginia Press (2003)
- Concentration camps of the South African War (Anglo-Boer War) — South African History Online
For Afrikaners the war, and above all the camps, is a defining trauma that fed a nationalism determined never again to be ruled by others; that determination later helped build apartheid. Black South Africans, whose part in the war was long ignored, gained nothing from the peace. The war's names, the "Boer War", the "Anglo-Boer War" or the "South African War", themselves reflect whose story is being told.
The discovery of diamonds at Kimberley around 1870 and of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 transformed South Africa. Johannesburg mushroomed, drawing Black migrant workers and foreign miners (uitlanders). Britain, which had already crushed the Zulu kingdom in 1879 after an early defeat at Isandlwana, wanted to bring the Boer republics into a British-led South Africa.
A small people fought the world's greatest empire for its freedom.
Over 100,000 Black people served the British as scouts, transport workers and armed men, and many hoped for rights in return; at least 14,000, perhaps 20,000 or more, died in separate camps.
Britain went to war to secure supremacy in southern Africa and control of the Witwatersrand gold fields, presented as defending the rights of British "uitlanders".
Union & segregation
1910 – 1947 The Union of South Africa and the founding of the ANC
Britain's four southern African colonies unite as a white-ruled dominion, and Black leaders respond by founding the movement that will become the ANC.
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
- Native Life in South Africa — Sol T. Plaatje, P. S. King & Son (1916)
Read more
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
- Native Life in South Africa — Sol T. Plaatje, P. S. King & Son (1916)
The Union created the borders and the white-minority state that apartheid later hardened. The ANC, founded in response, is Africa's oldest liberation movement and governed South Africa from 1994.
Eight years after the war, the Cape, Natal, Transvaal and Orange River colonies were united as the Union of South Africa on 31 May 1910, a self-governing British dominion under former Boer generals Louis Botha and Jan Smuts.
The Natives Land Act
A new law confines African land ownership to reserves covering about 7% of the country, turning millions of farmers into labourers and tenants overnight.
- Native Life in South Africa — Sol T. Plaatje, P. S. King & Son (1916)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
- South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid — Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger, Routledge (2016)
Read more
- Native Life in South Africa — Sol T. Plaatje, P. S. King & Son (1916)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
- South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid — Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger, Routledge (2016)
The Act is the legal foundation of the land question. Post-1994 land restitution law allows claims only for dispossession after 19 June 1913, the day it took effect, and debates over land reform and expropriation still return to it. For many Black South Africans it is the moment the country's land was formally taken from them.
The Natives Land Act of 1913 made it illegal for Africans to buy or rent land outside designated "native reserves", which then made up about 7% of South Africa's territory; a 1936 law later raised the share to about 13%.
Apartheid
1948 – 1989 Apartheid
The National Party wins power and builds apartheid, "separateness", a system that classifies every South African by race and controls where they live, work, study, love and vote.
- Apartheid, 1948–1994 — Saul Dubow, Oxford University Press (2014)
- South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid — Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger, Routledge (2016)
- The Afrikaners: Biography of a People — Hermann Giliomee, University of Virginia Press (2003)
- Forced Removals in South Africa: The SPP Reports — Surplus People Project (1983)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- Apartheid — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Read more
- Apartheid, 1948–1994 — Saul Dubow, Oxford University Press (2014)
- South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid — Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger, Routledge (2016)
- The Afrikaners: Biography of a People — Hermann Giliomee, University of Virginia Press (2003)
- Forced Removals in South Africa: The SPP Reports — Surplus People Project (1983)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- Apartheid — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Apartheid shaped every South African alive today. Its racial categories are still used to measure redress; its townships, homelands and segregated cities still define where people live; and its gaps in wealth, land and schooling are why South Africa remains so unequal. Memory of it differs: for most Black South Africans it was a crime against humanity they lived through; many white South Africans now say it was wrong, though some recall those years as more orderly and safe.
South Africa was already deeply segregated by 1948, through the 1913 Land Act, pass laws and job reservation. But in the general election of May 1948 the National Party of D. F. Malan, campaigning on the slogan of apartheid ("separateness"), won a majority of seats, though not of votes, in an all-white electorate.
Apartheid was a system of humiliation and theft: passes demanded at any moment, families torn apart by migrant labour and forced removals, inferior "Bantu Education" designed to train servants, and police terror against any resistance.
Its architects presented apartheid as "separate development", a way for a small, recently poor and conquered Afrikaner people to survive among a Black majority, with each "nation" to have its own homeland.
The UN General Assembly condemned apartheid repeatedly and a 1973 UN convention declared it a crime against humanity; historians see it as an intensification of earlier segregation, distinctive in its scale and its ambition to engineer society entirely by race.
The Sharpeville massacre
Police open fire on a crowd protesting the pass laws, killing 69 people; the ANC and PAC are banned, and the liberation movements turn to armed struggle.
- Sharpeville Massacre, 21 March 1960 — South African History Online
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report — Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (1998)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid — Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger, Routledge (2016)
Read more
- Sharpeville Massacre, 21 March 1960 — South African History Online
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report — Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (1998)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid — Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger, Routledge (2016)
21 March is Human Rights Day in South Africa and, worldwide, the UN's International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Nelson Mandela signed the 1996 Constitution into law at Sharpeville. The massacre is remembered as the moment peaceful protest was met with bullets, and the start of thirty years of underground and exiled struggle.
On 21 March 1960 the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), a breakaway from the ANC led by Robert Sobukwe, called on Black men to leave their passes at home and present themselves for arrest at police stations. In the township of Sharpeville, south of Johannesburg, a crowd of several thousand gathered outside the police station.
The Soweto uprising
Schoolchildren marching against being taught in Afrikaans are shot by police, setting off a nationwide revolt and a new generation of resistance.
- The June 16 Soweto Youth Uprising — South African History Online
- South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid — Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger, Routledge (2016)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report — Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (1998)
Read more
- The June 16 Soweto Youth Uprising — South African History Online
- South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid — Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger, Routledge (2016)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report — Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (1998)
16 June is Youth Day, a public holiday, and the photograph of the dying Hector Pieterson is one of the defining images of the struggle. The "class of '76" is honoured as the generation that broke the silence of the 1960s. The uprising is still invoked whenever young South Africans protest, as students did in 2015–16.
In 1974 the government ordered that half of subjects in Black secondary schools be taught in Afrikaans, a language many pupils and teachers barely spoke and saw as the language of the oppressor. Inspired by Steve Biko's Black Consciousness movement, students in Soweto organised.
Negotiated transition
1990 – 1994 Mandela's release and the transition to democracy
F. W. de Klerk unbans the liberation movements, Nelson Mandela walks free after 27 years, and after four years of tense negotiation and bloodshed South Africans of all races vote together for the first time.
- Long Walk to Freedom — Nelson Mandela, Little, Brown (1994)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- Nelson Mandela — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 — Republic of South Africa (1996)
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report — Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (1998)
Read more
- Long Walk to Freedom — Nelson Mandela, Little, Brown (1994)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- Nelson Mandela — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 — Republic of South Africa (1996)
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report — Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (1998)
27 April, Freedom Day, marks the first democratic election, and the images of long, patient queues are part of the national soul. The settlement produced the 1996 Constitution, a source of deep pride. But a younger generation increasingly asks whether the deal, which left most land and wealth in white hands, traded political freedom for economic continuity.
By the late 1980s apartheid South Africa was isolated, its economy squeezed by sanctions and capital flight, its townships in revolt, and its military stalemated in Angola. Secret talks between Mandela, still a prisoner, and government ministers had begun in the mid-1980s. In 1989 the ailing P. W. Botha was replaced by F. W. de Klerk.
Against all expectations, enemies sat down together and negotiated a democracy, thanks to Mandela's generosity and moral authority, de Klerk's courage, and millions of ordinary people who chose peace.
The ANC leadership accepted protection of property, market economics and amnesty in exchange for political power; Black South Africans got the vote but not the land or the economy.
Many white South Africans voted for reform in 1992 but feared for their safety, property and language under majority rule; a minority on the far right saw the transition as surrender and threatened war.
Democratic South Africa
1995 – today The Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Under Archbishop Desmond Tutu, victims tell their stories in public and perpetrators can win amnesty by confessing in full, an experiment watched around the world.
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report — Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (1998)
- Truth Commission: South Africa — United States Institute of Peace
- No Future Without Forgiveness — Desmond Tutu, Doubleday (1999)
- Country of My Skull — Antjie Krog, Random House (1998)
- Amnesty or Impunity? A Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa — Mahmood Mamdani, Diacritics (2002)
Read more
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report — Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (1998)
- Truth Commission: South Africa — United States Institute of Peace
- No Future Without Forgiveness — Desmond Tutu, Doubleday (1999)
- Country of My Skull — Antjie Krog, Random House (1998)
- Amnesty or Impunity? A Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa — Mahmood Mamdani, Diacritics (2002)
The TRC gave the country a shared record of apartheid's crimes that no one can easily deny, and it became a model for truth commissions worldwide. But many victims feel let down: few perpetrators who were refused amnesty or never applied were ever prosecuted, and reparations were small and late. Whether South Africa chose forgiveness wisely, or let the guilty off, is still argued.
Created by Parliament in 1995 and chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated gross human rights violations committed between 1960 and 1994. It took statements from about 21,000 victims, some 2,000 of whom testified at public hearings broadcast on radio and television.
Truth in exchange for amnesty was the price of a peaceful transition.
Families such as Steve Biko's opposed the amnesty process in court; many feel justice was traded away.
Both the National Party and the ANC objected to parts of the findings: de Klerk went to court to remove passages implicating him, and the ANC unsuccessfully sought to block publication of findings on its own abuses.
The AIDS crisis and denialism
South Africa becomes the country with the most people living with HIV, while President Thabo Mbeki's government questions the science and delays treatment, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.
- Estimating the Lost Benefits of Antiretroviral Drug Use in South Africa — Pride Chigwedere, George R. Seage III, Sofia Gruskin, Tun-Hou Lee and M. Essex, Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (2008)
- Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred — Mark Gevisser, Jonathan Ball (2007)
- Country factsheet: South Africa — UNAIDS
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
Read more
- Estimating the Lost Benefits of Antiretroviral Drug Use in South Africa — Pride Chigwedere, George R. Seage III, Sofia Gruskin, Tun-Hou Lee and M. Essex, Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (2008)
- Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred — Mark Gevisser, Jonathan Ball (2007)
- Country factsheet: South Africa — UNAIDS
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
Almost every South African family has lost someone to AIDS, and a generation of children grew up as orphans. The fight for treatment, led by the Treatment Action Campaign, is remembered as a triumph of activism and of the Constitution. Today South Africa runs the world's largest HIV treatment programme, but the denialist years remain a painful stain.
HIV spread rapidly in South Africa through the 1990s, driven by migrant labour, poverty, gender inequality and the disruption of apartheid's last years. By the early 2000s millions were infected, and AIDS was killing hundreds of thousands a year. Life expectancy fell sharply.
Mbeki's flirtation with "AIDS dissidents" and his health minister's promotion of garlic and beetroot over antiretrovirals were a catastrophe; a Harvard study estimated that more than 330,000 lives were lost through delayed treatment.
Mbeki raised legitimate questions about poverty as a driver of disease, the cost of patented drugs and racist stereotypes about African sexuality, even if his doubts about the science were wrong.
Inequality, Marikana and state capture
Under President Jacob Zuma, private interests capture state institutions, while police kill 34 striking miners at Marikana and the country remains the most unequal on earth.
- Report of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector including Organs of State — Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture (chair: Raymond Zondo) (2022)
- Marikana Commission of Inquiry: Report on Matters of Public, National and International Concern Arising out of the Tragic Incidents at the Lonmin Mine in Marikana — Marikana Commission of Inquiry (chair: Ian Farlam) (2015)
- Inequality in Southern Africa: An Assessment of the Southern African Customs Union — World Bank (2022)
- South Africa — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Read more
- Report of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector including Organs of State — Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture (chair: Raymond Zondo) (2022)
- Marikana Commission of Inquiry: Report on Matters of Public, National and International Concern Arising out of the Tragic Incidents at the Lonmin Mine in Marikana — Marikana Commission of Inquiry (chair: Ian Farlam) (2015)
- Inequality in Southern Africa: An Assessment of the Southern African Customs Union — World Bank (2022)
- South Africa — Encyclopaedia Britannica
State capture is why many South Africans speak of a "lost decade": collapsing state companies, power cuts, unemployment, and deep distrust of politicians. Yet the courts, journalists, the Public Protector and the Zondo Commission exposed it, which many see as proof that the democracy built in 1994 still has teeth. Anger at inequality fuels the country's politics and its frequent protests.
Democracy brought real gains: millions of new houses, electricity and water connections, social grants that reach a large share of households, and a growing Black middle class.
A connected elite, including the Gupta family and senior ANC figures, looted state firms such as Eskom and Transnet; the party put loyalty above competence, and the poor paid the price.
Zuma's supporters say he was the victim of a political and media campaign by those opposed to "radical economic transformation", and that white-owned capital, not the ANC, is the true obstacle to Black prosperity.
Core values & worldview
If you want to understand a South African, start with the fact that, until 1994, the law told them who they were. Under apartheid every person was classified as “White”, “Coloured”, “Indian” or “Native/Bantu”, and that label decided almost everything.
- Apartheid, 1948–1994 — Saul Dubow, Oxford University Press (2014)
- South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid — Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger, Routledge (2016)
Struggle and dignity. For Black South Africans especially, the liberation struggle is a family story: a grandfather jailed for not carrying his pass, a mother who marched, a cousin in exile, a sibling shot in 1976 or the 1980s. That history gives many people a fierce sense of dignity and of rights won rather than given, and a readiness to protest, often in song.
- South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid — Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger, Routledge (2016)
- The June 16 Soweto Youth Uprising — South African History Online
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
Ubuntu and the extended family. Ubuntu, “a person is a person through other people”, is more than a slogan. Many Black South Africans support wide circles of relatives; a salary is rarely just for one household, a pressure sometimes called “black tax”. Funerals, weddings and family gatherings are major events, and respect for elders and ancestors runs deep.
- No Future Without Forgiveness — Desmond Tutu, Doubleday (1999)
- South Africa — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Faith. About four in five South Africans are Christian, from Dutch Reformed and Anglican to Catholic, Pentecostal and the huge African-initiated churches such as the Zion Christian Church, whose Easter gathering at Moria draws enormous crowds. Many combine Christianity with honouring ancestors, and traditional healers (sangomas) are widely consulted. There are significant Muslim, Hindu and Jewish communities.
- South Africa — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
Humour and straight talking. South Africans are often direct, quick to joke, and good at laughing at themselves and their country’s absurdities. Comedy, from Pieter-Dirk Uys’s satire of apartheid politicians to Trevor Noah, has long been a way of facing hard truths.
- Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood — Trevor Noah, Spiegel & Grau (2016)
Daily life & customs
The braai. Across every community, cooking meat over an open fire with friends is a ritual: boerewors, lamb chops, pap (maize porridge) and chakalaka relish. Sunday lunch with family, a shisa nyama (township grill) or a braai on Heritage Day are all part of the week’s rhythm.
- South Africa — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Language mixing. Most South Africans speak several languages and switch between them mid-sentence. Township slang mixes isiZulu, Sesotho, English and Afrikaans; the Afrikaans-based Kaaps of the Cape Flats is its own living tongue. Everyday words like lekker (nice), eish (exasperation), howzit (hello) and ja cross every line. Asking “now now” versus “just now” is a classic local puzzle: both mean “soon-ish”.
- Census 2022: Statistical Release — Statistics South Africa (2023)
- South Africa — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Townships, suburbs and walls. Apartheid’s urban plan survives. Many Black South Africans still live in townships far from city centres and commute long distances by minibus taxi, the country’s real public transport. Wealthier suburbs, increasingly mixed, sit behind high walls, electric fences and private security, a sign of high crime and fear.
- Apartheid, 1948–1994 — Saul Dubow, Oxford University Press (2014)
- Inequality in Southern Africa: An Assessment of the Southern African Customs Union — World Bank (2022)
Sport as nation-building. Football is the most popular sport among Black South Africans, and the 2010 World Cup, the first in Africa, was a moment of national joy. Rugby and cricket, once white-dominated, have become more mixed, and Springbok victories bring the whole country into the streets.
- South Africa — Encyclopaedia Britannica
The calendar. Public holidays tell the national story: Human Rights Day (21 March, Sharpeville), Freedom Day (27 April), Youth Day (16 June, Soweto), Women’s Day (9 August, the women’s march of 1956), Heritage Day (24 September) and the Day of Reconciliation (16 December), once the Afrikaner “Day of the Vow”.
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- Sharpeville Massacre, 21 March 1960 — South African History Online
- The June 16 Soweto Youth Uprising — South African History Online
Wounds & sensitivities
Apartheid and forced removals. Some 3.5 million people were forcibly moved between 1960 and 1983, from places such as District Six in Cape Town and Sophiatown in Johannesburg, to make “white” areas and “homelands”. Families lost homes, land and communities.
- Forced Removals in South Africa: The SPP Reports — Surplus People Project (1983)
- Apartheid, 1948–1994 — Saul Dubow, Oxford University Press (2014)
Violence and loss. Sharpeville, Soweto, deaths in detention like Steve Biko’s, the violence of the 1980s and early 1990s, and later the police killing of 34 striking miners at Marikana in 2012: many families have scars. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard from about 21,000 victims, but many feel they never got justice or reparations.
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report — Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (1998)
- Truth Commission: South Africa — United States Institute of Peace
- Marikana Commission of Inquiry: Report on Matters of Public, National and International Concern Arising out of the Tragic Incidents at the Lonmin Mine in Marikana — Marikana Commission of Inquiry (chair: Ian Farlam) (2015)
The Boer War camps. For many Afrikaners, the deaths of some 26,000–28,000 Boer women and children in British concentration camps in 1900–02 remain a deep wound, alongside the often-forgotten deaths of at least 14,000 Black Africans in separate camps.
- Concentration camps of the South African War (Anglo-Boer War) — South African History Online
- The Boer War — Thomas Pakenham, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1979)
- Black People and the South African War, 1899–1902 — Peter Warwick, Cambridge University Press (1983)
AIDS. The epidemic, and the government’s years of denial under Thabo Mbeki, cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Nearly every family has lost someone.
- Estimating the Lost Benefits of Antiretroviral Drug Use in South Africa — Pride Chigwedere, George R. Seage III, Sofia Gruskin, Tun-Hou Lee and M. Essex, Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (2008)
- Country factsheet: South Africa — UNAIDS
Crime and farm attacks. Violent crime touches everyone, especially poor Black communities. Murders of white farmers are an emotive issue internationally and among many Afrikaners; claims of a “white genocide” are rejected by courts and researchers, but fear and grief are real.
- South Africa — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Xenophobia. Mobs attacking African migrants, notably in 2008 when 62 people were killed, shamed many South Africans, and tensions over migration from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Nigeria and elsewhere persist.
- Report on the SAHRC Investigation into Issues of Rule of Law, Justice and Impunity Arising out of the 2008 Public Violence against Non-Nationals — South African Human Rights Commission (2010)
Modern attitudes
The rainbow nation and its critics. Tutu’s phrase “the rainbow people of God” and Mandela’s reconciliation politics still inspire many. Younger Black South Africans, especially since the student protests of 2015–16 (#RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall), often argue that “rainbowism” asked Black people to forgive while white South Africans kept their wealth. Others answer that reconciliation saved the country from war. Both views are widely held.
- No Future Without Forgiveness — Desmond Tutu, Doubleday (1999)
- Amnesty or Impunity? A Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa — Mahmood Mamdani, Diacritics (2002)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
Politics after the ANC’s dominance. The ANC won every national election from 1994 with large majorities, but disillusion with corruption, power cuts (“load-shedding”) and unemployment eroded its support, and in 2024 it lost its majority and formed a coalition government. Many South Africans are fiercely engaged in politics and debate it everywhere.
- Report of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector including Organs of State — Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture (chair: Raymond Zondo) (2022)
- South Africa — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Liberal laws, mixed attitudes. The Constitution was the first in the world to ban discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, and South Africa legalised same-sex marriage in 2006, the first African country to do so. Social attitudes, especially in religious and rural communities, are often more conservative than the law.
- Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 — Republic of South Africa (1996)
- South Africa — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Leaving and staying. Many skilled South Africans of all races have emigrated, to the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Gulf, often citing crime and the economy. “Are you staying?” is a common, loaded dinner-table conversation.
- South Africa — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Not all South Africans are the same
Black South Africans. The great majority, with many languages and traditions, from Zulu and Xhosa to Sotho, Tswana, Pedi, Venda, Tsonga, Swazi and Ndebele. Experiences range from rural villages in former homelands to a growing urban middle class, sometimes called “black diamonds”.
- Census 2022: Statistical Release — Statistics South Africa (2023)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
Coloured South Africans. A community of mixed Khoikhoi, San, enslaved Asian and African, and European ancestry, concentrated in the Western and Northern Cape, mostly Afrikaans-speaking. Many say they were “not white enough then, not black enough now”, and debate about the term itself is ongoing.
- The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840 — Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), Wesleyan University Press (1989)
- Census 2022: Statistical Release — Statistics South Africa (2023)
Afrikaners. Descendants of Dutch, German and French Huguenot settlers who forged their own language, Afrikaans, and identity. They were themselves conquered by Britain, then built apartheid. Many today wrestle with that legacy, cherish their language and culture, and fear becoming an unwanted minority.
- The Afrikaners: Biography of a People — Hermann Giliomee, University of Virginia Press (2003)
English-speaking whites. Descendants of British settlers and later immigrants, historically dominant in business and often seen as having profited from apartheid while letting Afrikaners take the blame.
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
Indian South Africans. Most descend from indentured labourers brought to Natal from 1860 and traders who followed; Durban has the largest Indian community in Africa. Gandhi developed his methods of non-violent resistance here between 1893 and 1914.
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
Cape Malays and Muslims. Descendants of enslaved people and political exiles brought from the Dutch East Indies, with a rich Muslim heritage in Cape Town’s Bo-Kaap.
- The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840 — Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), Wesleyan University Press (1989)
Meeting someone
Conversation starters
- Food and the braai. Ask about their favourite braai or their gran’s cooking; everyone has an opinion on boerewors and bunny chow.
- Sport. The Springboks, Bafana Bafana or the Proteas are an easy route to passionate conversation.
- Music. Amapiano, kwaito, Brenda Fassie, Ladysmith Black Mambazo or Miriam Makeba.
- Where they’re from. South Africa is huge and varied; asking about their province, town or home language opens doors.
- 1994. Older South Africans often love to tell you where they were on the day they first voted.
- Long Walk to Freedom — Nelson Mandela, Little, Brown (1994)
Topics to approach carefully
- Race. South Africans talk about race all the time, but with nuance and from experience. Don’t assume someone’s politics from their skin colour.
- Apartheid, 1948–1994 — Saul Dubow, Oxford University Press (2014)
- Land. Land reform and expropriation stir fear and anger on several sides.
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- Crime. People may have been victims of violent crime; don’t make it a joke or a headline.
- Mandela. Revered by most, but some younger Black South Africans criticise his compromises. Let them lead.
- Nelson Mandela — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Amnesty or Impunity? A Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa — Mahmood Mamdani, Diacritics (2002)
- “Coloured”. It is a standard self-description in South Africa, but don’t use it outside that context, and follow how the person describes themselves.
- Census 2022: Statistical Release — Statistics South Africa (2023)
Common misconceptions
- “South Africa is just Black and white.” Coloured and Indian South Africans, and dozens of distinct African peoples, make it far more complex.
- Census 2022: Statistical Release — Statistics South Africa (2023)
- “Everyone speaks English.” Most people speak it, but it is the home language of fewer than one in ten.
- Census 2022: Statistical Release — Statistics South Africa (2023)
- “Apartheid was only about separate benches.” It was a total system of dispossession, forced removals, cheap labour and violent repression.
- Apartheid, 1948–1994 — Saul Dubow, Oxford University Press (2014)
- South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid — Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger, Routledge (2016)
- “Afrikaners are Dutch” or “Boers are all farmers”. Afrikaners are an African-born people with their own language; most live in cities.
- The Afrikaners: Biography of a People — Hermann Giliomee, University of Virginia Press (2003)
- “South Africa is all safari and lions.” Most South Africans live in cities and townships, and the country is Africa’s most industrialised economy.
- South Africa — Encyclopaedia Britannica
People everyone knows
Shaka kaSenzangakhona
Founder of the Zulu kingdom. From about 1816 he turned a small chiefdom into the most powerful state in south-east Africa, reorganising young men into disciplined age-regiments. He was assassinated by his half-brothers in 1828. Few African leaders have been mythologised so much in both directions: to many Zulu people a heroic nation-builder, remembered on Shaka Day (24 September, now Heritage Day); to colonial writers a bloodthirsty tyrant. Historians such as Carolyn Hamilton show how much of the "Shaka" we know was invented by both sides.
- Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention — Carolyn Hamilton, Harvard University Press (1998)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
Paul Kruger
A boy on the Great Trek who became president of the South African Republic (Transvaal) from 1883 to 1900. Deeply Calvinist and suspicious of the British and the gold-rush "uitlanders", he led his republic into war with Britain in 1899 and died in exile in Switzerland. For Afrikaners "Oom Paul" became the father figure of their struggle for independence; the Kruger National Park and the Krugerrand carry his name. For Black South Africans his republic, which denied them equality in church and state, looks very different.
- The Afrikaners: Biography of a People — Hermann Giliomee, University of Virginia Press (2003)
- The Boer War — Thomas Pakenham, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1979)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
Sol Plaatje
Journalist, linguist and founding secretary-general of the South African Native National Congress (later the ANC) in 1912. He kept a diary of the siege of Mafeking, translated Shakespeare into Setswana, and wrote Mhudi, among the first novels in English by a Black South African. His Native Life in South Africa (1916) is a furious, precise record of the 1913 Natives Land Act and its human cost, written to persuade the British public. He shows how early, and how eloquently, Black South Africans organised against dispossession.
- Native Life in South Africa — Sol T. Plaatje, P. S. King & Son (1916)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press (2008)
Nelson Mandela
A Thembu royal-born lawyer who helped build the ANC Youth League, co-founded the armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 and was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivonia Trial in 1964. He spent 27 years in prison, most of them on Robben Island, and walked out in February 1990 to negotiate the end of apartheid. As the first president of a democratic South Africa (1994–99) he made reconciliation his mission. Known affectionately by his clan name, Madiba, he remains the country's moral reference point, though some younger South Africans argue his compromises left economic injustice untouched.
- Long Walk to Freedom — Nelson Mandela, Little, Brown (1994)
- Nelson Mandela — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
Steve Biko
Founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, which told Black South Africans to shed the psychological chains of apartheid and lead their own struggle: "Black is beautiful". His ideas inspired the Soweto students of 1976. Arrested in August 1977, he was beaten in police custody and died on 12 September after being driven naked, unconscious, more than 1,000 km to Pretoria. The police were never prosecuted. His writings, collected in I Write What I Like, still shape debates about race and dignity.
- South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid — Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger, Routledge (2016)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report — Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (1998)
Desmond Tutu
Anglican archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1984) who denounced apartheid from the pulpit and called for sanctions. He coined "the rainbow people of God" for the new nation and chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, weeping openly at its hearings. Grounding forgiveness in ubuntu, he was also an unsparing critic of the ANC governments after 1994, of corruption, and of homophobia in the church. "The Arch" is remembered as the country's conscience.
- No Future Without Forgiveness — Desmond Tutu, Doubleday (1999)
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report — Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (1998)
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
F. W. de Klerk
The last apartheid-era president (1989–94). On 2 February 1990 he stunned the country by unbanning the ANC and other movements and announcing Mandela's release, then negotiated the transition and shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela. He served as deputy president in the unity government until 1996. He remains divisive: many credit him with choosing peace; many others note he never fully acknowledged apartheid as a crime, and that state-backed violence continued on his watch.
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press (2014)
- The Afrikaners: Biography of a People — Hermann Giliomee, University of Virginia Press (2003)
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report — Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (1998)
Try it yourself
The quickest way into a culture: a song, a film, a book and a dish.
“Awakening on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African Native found himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth.”
“I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
“Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.”
Listen
- Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika Enoch Sontonga's 1897 hymn ("God Bless Africa"), sung at liberation rallies and funerals for decades, now combined with "Die Stem" in a national anthem sung in five languages.▶ Listen
- Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela Makeba, "Mama Africa", and Masekela, whose "Bring Him Back Home (Nelson Mandela)" became an anthem, were exiles who carried township jazz and the anti-apartheid cause around the world.▶ Listen
- Amapiano The log-drum-driven house music born in Gauteng's townships in the 2010s, now one of Africa's biggest musical exports.▶ Listen
Watch
- Tsotsi Gavin Hood's 2005 film about a young Johannesburg gangster, in isiZulu, Sesotho and tsotsitaal; it won the Oscar for best foreign-language film.▶ Watch
Read
Taste
- Braai, pap and bunny chow The weekend braai (barbecue) with boerewors and maize pap is close to a national rite; Durban's bunny chow, curry in a hollowed-out loaf, comes from the Indian community; Cape Malay bobotie from the descendants of enslaved Asians.Recipe
See & do
- The Springboks Once a symbol of white South Africa, the rugby team became a unifying force after Mandela wore the jersey at the 1995 World Cup; Siya Kolisi, its first Black captain, lifted the trophy in 2019 and 2023.Look it up
- San rock art Thousands of painted shelters in the Drakensberg and Cederberg, some thousands of years old; a San figure appears on the national coat of arms, with the motto in the extinct |Xam language.Look it up
- Freedom Day and Heritage Day 27 April marks the first democratic election; on 24 September, Heritage Day, many celebrate with a braai, jokingly called "National Braai Day".Look it up
Where
Homeland Diaspora Significant place
Related
Ethiopia · India · Hinduism · Nigeria · United States
Sources & further reading
- Country of My Skull — Antjie Krog, Random House, 1998
- The South African War, 1899–1902 — Bill Nasson, Arnold, 1999
- Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention — Carolyn Hamilton, Harvard University Press, 1998
- An abstract drawing from the 73,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa — Christopher S. Henshilwood et al., Nature, 2018
- No Future Without Forgiveness — Desmond Tutu, Doubleday, 1999
- Nelson Mandela — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- South Africa — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Apartheid — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Afrikaners: Biography of a People — Hermann Giliomee, University of Virginia Press, 2003
- Report of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector including Organs of State — Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture (chair: Raymond Zondo), 2022
- The Mfecane as Alibi: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo — Julian Cobbing, Journal of African History, 1988
- A History of South Africa — Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, Yale University Press, 2014
- Amnesty or Impunity? A Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa — Mahmood Mamdani, Diacritics, 2002
- Marikana Commission of Inquiry: Report on Matters of Public, National and International Concern Arising out of the Tragic Incidents at the Lonmin Mine in Marikana — Marikana Commission of Inquiry (chair: Ian Farlam), 2015
- Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred — Mark Gevisser, Jonathan Ball, 2007
- South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid — Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger, Routledge, 2016
- Long Walk to Freedom — Nelson Mandela, Little, Brown, 1994
- Statement from the dock at the opening of the defence case in the Rivonia Trial, 20 April 1964 — Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela Foundation, 1964
- Inaugural address as President of the Republic of South Africa, Union Buildings, Pretoria, 10 May 1994 — Nelson Mandela, 1994
- Black People and the South African War, 1899–1902 — Peter Warwick, Cambridge University Press, 1983
- Estimating the Lost Benefits of Antiretroviral Drug Use in South Africa — Pride Chigwedere, George R. Seage III, Sofia Gruskin, Tun-Hou Lee and M. Essex, Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, 2008
- Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 — Republic of South Africa, 1996
- The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840 — Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), Wesleyan University Press, 1989
- A Concise History of South Africa — Robert Ross, Cambridge University Press, 2008
- Sign language officially the 12th official language — SAnews (South African Government News Agency), 2023
- Apartheid, 1948–1994 — Saul Dubow, Oxford University Press, 2014
- Native Life in South Africa — Sol T. Plaatje, P. S. King & Son, 1916
- The June 16 Soweto Youth Uprising — South African History Online
- Sharpeville Massacre, 21 March 1960 — South African History Online
- Concentration camps of the South African War (Anglo-Boer War) — South African History Online
- Report on the SAHRC Investigation into Issues of Rule of Law, Justice and Impunity Arising out of the 2008 Public Violence against Non-Nationals — South African Human Rights Commission, 2010
- Census 2022: Statistical Release — Statistics South Africa, 2023
- Forced Removals in South Africa: The SPP Reports — Surplus People Project, 1983
- The Boer War — Thomas Pakenham, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979
- Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood — Trevor Noah, Spiegel & Grau, 2016
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report — Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, 1998
- Country factsheet: South Africa — UNAIDS
- Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape (World Heritage List) — UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2003
- Truth Commission: South Africa — United States Institute of Peace
- Inequality in Southern Africa: An Assessment of the Southern African Customs Union — World Bank, 2022