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Between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, modern humans began to evolve throughout Africa, including southern Africa. They became known as the San people, who later met the Khoi pastoralists moving south from the north, and they became collectively known as the Khoisan.

 

The San were the first people of Southern Africa.

 

The KhoiSan people moved down into the Western Cape at about the same time (300 CE) as the early Iron Age groups who crossed the Limpopo and whose descendants, about 1,000 years later, created the African kingdom of Mapungubwe and began trading with China, India, and Arabia.

 

In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck and his crew of 90 men arrived from the Netherlands and set up a supply station at Cape Town. This was an important point both geographically and politically, as it was on the only trade route at the time from Europe and the Americas to India, the Spice Islands of the East Indies, and the Orient. Waves of other European and Indian settlers arrived over the next 200 years.

 

Then, the Dutch, English, and, to some extent, the French fought for control of the Cape, with the English eventually triumphing in 1806. Originally from Holland, the Boers set out on the "trek" into the interior to escape British rule. This was the beginning of the "mfecane" ('dispersion, suppression') of Africans, which began in Zululand and spread through the Drakensberg to what is now the Free State. Fueled by the growing militarism of King Shaka Zulu, it became a tangled maelstrom of bloody conflicts. The involvement of land-hungry Voortrekkers and the newly arrived British settlers in 1820 only exacerbated the conflict.

 

In the late 19th century, vast deposits of gold, diamonds, and later platinum were discovered in South Africa.

 

The early 20th century saw the end of the South African War (also known as the Second Boer War), which lasted from 1899 to 1902. The Union of South Africa was created in 1910. The country fought on the side of the Allies in World Wars I and II. The largely Afrikaner National Party narrowly won in 1948, and in the following years, apartheid was established.

 

Apartheid was a nearly 50-year period marked by institutionalized racism and the oppression of non-white individuals in South Africa. During this time, the African National Congress (ANC) was banned, and its leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were imprisoned on Robben Island.

 

The unbanning of the ANC, the release of Mandela and his associates, and the democratic elections in 1994 signified the beginning of a new era for South Africa.