A History Lesson…sort of (South Africa)

I have to confess that before visiting South Africa I knew little about the origin of all the white folk that eventually settled there. I guess I’d always assumed it was just a result of the Brit’s centuries-old strategy to dominate planet Earth. Nuh-uh. They certainly played their part but the reality is much more complex. Allow me to oversimplify.

You see, a really long time ago (perhaps 40,000 years) the first people migrated to Southern Africa from other parts of the continent. They are known today as the San people but since they didn’t write shit down nobody really knows much about their early history. Apparently, the San split into two main categories; the pastoralist Khoikhoi and the hunter gather Bushmen.

Some two thousand years ago (give or take) Bantu speaking peoples made their way down the Niger River Delta from parts of West Africa. They did not come all at once in one ginormous clusterf**k. They spread it out over a thousand years or so which lead to the development of different cultures, languages, etc., and saw denizens of the area separating into different regions in Southern Africa. I am sure they (as in the descendents of the San and Bantu peoples) were just fine fighting amongst themselves with sticks and stones but along came Whitey.

The Portuguese were the first to drop in when Bartolomeu Dias ‘discovered’ the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 followed by Vasco da Gama’s circumnavigation of the coast of South Africa on his way to India in 1497. Portugal didn’t give a rat’s ass about the area as their attention was focused strictly on the allure of the Orient and its vast riches. The Dutch, however, eventually took advantage albeit many years later.