A 350-YEAR JOURNEY TO LIBERATION (1652-1994)

Migration, Minerals and War

The British occupation prospered and throughout the 1800s the boundaries of European influence expanded to the east and north beyond the borders of the Cape. The British Colony of Natal was proclaimed in 1843. The Boers resented British rule and felt marginalised. They were further antagonised when slavery was abolished in 1834 and began a mass migration away from the Cape Colony, known as the Great Trek. They would finally establish two land-locked republics away from the British - the Orange Free State (current day Free State) and the South African Republic (current day Gauteng, Northwest, Limpopo, and Mpumalanga provinces).

The British recognized the Dutch-speaking Boer republics in the 1850's, but the situation would change with the discovery of South Africa's vast mineral wealth. Diamonds were found in 1867 in what is now the Northern Cape; however the real turning point was the discovery of gold in the South African Republic in 1886. English-speaking immigrants (called Uitlanders – foreigners – by the Boers) lured by the promise of riches on the goldfields streamed into the SAR and the demand for franchise rights for them was the pretext Britain employed to declare war on both Boer republics in 1899.

The Anglo-Boer War, or South African War, was the bloodiest, longest and most expensive war Britain engaged in between 1815 and 1915. It cost more than 200 million pounds and Britain lost more than 22 000 men. The Boers lost over 34 000 people, 20 000 of them women and children herded into British concentration camps. Black South Africans and even San people were inevitably affected by the 'white-man's war' as the conflict raged over their lands. Many were pulled into participating in military operations on both sides, and some became involved in hostilities with the Boers, defending themselves or settling old scores. More than 15 000 black South Africans were killed. The war additionally inspired anti-British social movements across the empire, as far away as East Asia where Boxer rebels in China adopted pro-Boer slogans as rallying cries for their anti-European imperialist movement.