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Answer

Who colonized South Africa?

Southern Africa — the powers that ruled South Africa, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized South Africa?

The Dutch first, then the British. The Dutch East India Company settled the Cape in 1652; Britain seized it in 1795 and permanently in 1806, and handed a whites-only state the machinery in 1910.

South Africa is the case that shows colonialism rarely has one coloniser or one ending. The apparatus built by the VOC and extended by Britain was inherited intact by the National Party in 1948 and renamed apartheid.

Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela became president after South Africa's first fully democratic national election in 1994. The end of apartheid was not the same event as earlier constitutional independence.Source — Wikimedia Commons

How rule changed in South Africa

These periods describe different governing arrangements. The presence of a trading company, a military occupation and direct colonial government are not interchangeable; the notes preserve those distinctions where the record identifies them.

Political chronology

Rulers, periods and governing arrangements

PeriodRuler or administrationContext
before 1652Khoekhoe, San, Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho and Pedi politiesSee the chronology and context below.
1652–1795Dutch East India CompanySee the chronology and context below.
1795–1803 and 1806–1910BritainSee the chronology and context below.
1910–1994Union and apartheid stateSee the chronology and context below.

Periods may overlap where control differed by territory. A national independence date does not imply that every enclave or dependency changed status on that day.

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Netherlands, Britain
Independence
Union 1910; majority rule April 1994
Serial conquest
A company, then an empire, then a settler state
Land
1913 Act confined the majority to 7%, raised to 13% in 1936
Inequality today
Gini coefficient around 0.63, among the highest measured

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1652

    VOC supply station founded at the Cape.

  2. 1806

    Britain takes the Cape permanently.

  3. 1879

    Anglo-Zulu War destroys the Zulu kingdom as an independent power.

  4. 1899–1902

    Second Boer War and the concentration camp system.

  5. 1913

    Natives Land Act: 7% of the land for about 67% of the people.

  6. 1994

    First non-racial elections.

Context

What the record shows

Legal equality arrived in 1994. The land map, the wealth map and the wage map did not change with it.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised South Africa?
The Dutch East India Company from 1652 and Britain from 1795 and permanently 1806.
When did apartheid end?
Legally in April 1994, with the first non-racial elections.
Was South Africa a British colony?
Yes — the Cape and Natal were British colonies, joined with the former Boer republics into the self-governing Union of South Africa in 1910.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial South Africa

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.