The mineral revolution

By 1880, diamond mining around Kimberley was already reshaping southern Africa. Small claims were gradually taken over by large companies with the money needed for deep excavation. Cecil Rhodes’s De Beers Consolidated Mines, founded in 1888, eventually controlled diamond production.

Gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand in 1886, with even wider consequences. Johannesburg grew quickly, and the South African Republic, or Transvaal, became the centre of the world’s largest gold-mining industry. The gold deposits were deep and low-grade, so profitable mining depended on costly machinery, specialist knowledge and substantial capital. Powerful mining companies and financial groups grew as a result. These groups were often known as the Randlords.

Economic consequences

Mining pushed the regional economy away from mainly pastoral farming and towards industrial capitalism.

• Railways linked Kimberley and the Witwatersrand with ports such as Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Durban.
• Coal mining, engineering, construction, banking and commercial agriculture expanded to serve the mining centres.
• Johannesburg grew into a major industrial and financial city.
• British and overseas investment increased, giving outside financiers a strong interest in the Transvaal.
• Taxation, land loss and the need to purchase manufactured goods tied African households increasingly to the cash economy.

The mines needed a large, cheap and tightly controlled workforce. African men were recruited across southern Africa and employed on temporary contracts. Compounds and pass controls limited their movement, while racial job allocation restricted their bargaining power. Skilled work with higher pay went largely to whites. These practices helped establish the racial labour system that segregation and apartheid later reinforced.

Social consequences

Rapid urban growth brought Africans, Afrikaners, British immigrants and migrants from elsewhere in southern Africa into the same towns. Those towns remained sharply divided by race, income and occupation. Mine compounds kept many African workers apart from their families. Repeated migration also disrupted rural communities and left women with additional agricultural work.

Workers paid a heavy price through mine accidents, lung disease and poor housing. Meanwhile, a small African urban population of teachers, clergy, traders and professionals began to emerge. It helped establish new political organizations and newspapers that challenged racial discrimination.

Mining also widened divisions among whites. Wealthy mine owners, skilled workers and impoverished Afrikaners displaced from rural areas had different interests. Concern about competition for jobs encouraged white workers to defend a racial colour bar.

Political consequences

The gold industry made the Transvaal more strategically important. President Paul Kruger’s government received substantial revenue, but it also had to deal with a growing immigrant population—the Uitlanders—many of whom were British subjects. They made a major contribution to the mining economy, yet they lacked full political rights unless they completed a lengthy naturalization process.

Mining leaders attacked the Transvaal government over its taxes, railway charges and concessions. British politicians used Uitlander grievances to demand political change. Economic interests, imperial rivalry and the wish to control the region also played important roles.

The Jameson Raid of 1895–1896 was an unsuccessful attempt to provoke an Uitlander uprising. It increased Boer suspicions of British intentions, temporarily strengthened Kruger, weakened Rhodes’s position and made compromise between the Transvaal and Britain more difficult. Mineral wealth alone did not cause the South African War, but it changed the balance of power and raised the stakes of the Anglo-Boer conflict.

Causes of the war

The South African War of 1899–1902 was fought between Britain and the two Boer republics: the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. Several connected issues led to the conflict.

British High Commissioner Alfred Milner took a hard line towards Kruger. The Bloemfontein Conference, held in May–June 1899, failed to resolve the franchise dispute. Britain then sent reinforcements to southern Africa. In October, the Transvaal demanded their withdrawal in an ultimatum. Britain rejected it, and the Boer republics declared war.

Historians disagree about responsibility. Economic interpretations focus on the gold industry and the influence of mining capital. Imperial interpretations highlight Milner’s determination to establish British supremacy. Other accounts place more weight on Kruger’s defence of sovereignty, as well as the escalating cycle of mobilization, ultimata and mutual distrust.

Course of the war

During the first phase, from October 1899 into early 1900, Boer commandos invaded British territory and besieged Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking. Their mobility and knowledge of the terrain revealed serious British weaknesses.

The arrival of large reinforcements under Lord Roberts shifted the balance. British forces relieved the besieged towns, occupied Bloemfontein in March 1900 and entered Pretoria in June. Britain formally annexed the Orange Free State in May 1900 and the Transvaal in September 1900. Resistance, however, continued.

From late 1900, Boer commandos fought a guerrilla war. Lord Kitchener responded with blockhouses, barbed-wire lines, farm destruction and the removal of civilians into concentration camps. Overcrowding, inadequate food and disease caused very high mortality among Boer civilians. Black Africans were also confined in camps under harsh conditions. Many served as labourers, scouts, transport workers or combatants, despite British claims that this was a white man’s war.

Treaty of Vereeniging

The Treaty of Vereeniging, signed on 31 May 1902, ended the war. Its principal terms included:

• Boer forces accepted British sovereignty and surrendered their weapons.
• Britain promised eventual responsible self-government to the former republics.
• Dutch could be taught in public schools where parents desired it and used in courts when necessary.
• Britain provided £3 million for reconstruction.
• The question of extending political rights to black Africans in the former republics was postponed until after self-government.

The treaty combined military defeat with concessions designed to reconcile white Boer leaders to British rule. It did not create political equality for the African majority.

Consequences and the road to Union

The war devastated farms, displaced civilians and deepened hostility between British and Afrikaners. African communities also suffered property losses, while wartime service brought no general extension of political rights.

Under Milner, British reconstruction restored the mines and expanded railways and administration. The importation of Chinese labour from 1904 to work on the gold mines became politically controversial. Responsible government was granted to the Transvaal in 1906 and the Orange River Colony in 1907. Former Boer leaders such as Louis Botha and Jan Smuts could then return to power through elections.

Delegates from the Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal and Orange River Colony met at the National Convention of 1908–1909. They focused on white reconciliation, economic integration, railway coordination and common policies towards the African majority. The South Africa Act received royal assent in 1909 and created the Union of South Africa on 31 May 1910.

The Union was a self-governing dominion with a strong central parliament. Existing provincial voting arrangements were largely preserved. The Cape’s limited qualified franchise for some black and Coloured men survived, but no common non-racial franchise was created. Union therefore brought British and Boer political elites together while entrenching white minority control.

White politics after Union

Louis Botha became the Union’s first prime minister, with Jan Smuts serving as a leading minister. Their South African Party aimed to bring English-speaking and Afrikaner whites together. Many Afrikaner nationalists, however, felt that reconciliation gave Britain too much influence. In 1914, JBM Hertzog founded the National Party to advance Afrikaner interests and seek greater independence.

Smuts became prime minister in 1919. His decision to use force against white miners during the Rand Revolt of 1922 weakened his support among organized white labour. After the 1924 election, Hertzog’s National Party formed a Pact government with the Labour Party.

In 1934, Hertzog and Smuts joined forces in the United Party. DF Malan opposed fusion and led the Purified National Party. The United Party split in 1939 over participation in the Second World War. When Hertzog opposed entering the war on Britain’s side, Smuts returned as prime minister.

Segregation and discrimination

Segregation separated racial groups and treated them unequally through law, administration and social practice. Before 1948, it developed gradually rather than through one complete programme. Even so, it created much of the machinery later used for apartheid.

The Natives Land Act of 1913 limited African land ownership and certain forms of tenancy to designated areas that made up a small portion of South Africa. It weakened African tenant farming, increased pressure on overcrowded reserves and encouraged migrant labour. Sol Plaatje recorded the disruption caused by the act and helped bring African grievances to a wider audience.

Later measures increased territorial and urban separation:

• The Native Affairs Act of 1920 created administrative structures for governing Africans separately.
• The Natives (Urban Areas) Act of 1923 treated Africans in towns as temporary residents. Their presence depended on the needs of the white economy.
• The Mines and Works Amendment Act of 1926 reinforced the reservation of skilled occupations for whites.
• The Native Administration Act of 1927 gave the state greater authority over African political and customary affairs.
• The Representation of Natives Act of 1936 removed African voters in the Cape from the common electoral roll and put them into a separate system of representation.
• The Native Trust and Land Act of 1936 slightly increased the land allocated to Africans, but it also strengthened state control and did not solve the shortage of land.

Hertzog’s “civilized labour” policy protected white workers by reserving jobs and giving them preferential employment. Its racial assumptions harmed African workers. The policy also helped bring poor Afrikaners into state employment and industry.

Smuts sometimes used more flexible language, particularly as wartime industrial expansion brought more Africans into the cities. In 1948, the Fagan Commission reported that African urbanization was permanent and that controls should be changed to reflect this. Smuts’s government still maintained segregation, however, and used force against challenges such as the African mineworkers’ strike of 1946.

Protest

The South African Native National Congress was founded in 1912 to oppose racial discrimination through petitions, delegations and constitutional protest. It was renamed the African National Congress in 1923. Its early leadership came largely from the educated African elite.

Resistance also spread among wider groups. Founded in 1919, the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union organized workers and rural tenants during the 1920s. The Communist Party of South Africa, formed in 1921, increasingly recruited African workers. Women opposed pass controls, while Indian organizations used strikes and passive resistance against discriminatory legislation.

During the 1940s, protest became more forceful. The ANC’s African Claims document of 1943 called for full citizenship rights. Founded in 1944, the ANC Youth League promoted mass action and African nationalism. These developments exposed the limits of petition-based protest and prepared the way for the radical campaigns of the apartheid era.

Why the National Party won in 1948

In the 1948 election, DF Malan’s Reunited National Party joined forces with the Afrikaner Party and defeated Smuts’s United Party. White voters largely determined the outcome, although qualified Coloured voters in the Cape still had the vote on the common roll until 1956. The United Party won more votes overall. However, constituency boundaries and weighting favoured the National Party, especially in rural seats.

Several factors explain the result:

• Wartime industrialization had accelerated African movement into towns. This increased white fears about employment, housing and racial integration.
• The United Party seemed divided over how to manage urbanization. The Fagan Commission accepted that a permanent African urban population would exist, allowing opponents to claim that Smuts was weakening segregation.
• The National Party presented apartheid—a programme of enforced racial separation and white supremacy—as a clear alternative.
• Afrikaner nationalist organizations encouraged cultural unity and economic advancement while directing resentment towards British influence.
• Memories of the South African War, together with dissatisfaction over Smuts’s support for Britain, strengthened Afrikaner nationalism.
• The National Party campaigned effectively among farmers, lower-middle-class whites and workers who feared African competition.

The result did not prove that every white voter supported a fully developed apartheid system. Electoral geography, divisions among white politicians and the National Party’s ability to combine racial fears with Afrikaner nationalism all shaped the result.

Malan’s apartheid policies

Malan was prime minister from 1948 to 1954. His government transformed existing segregation into a broader system enforced from the centre.

The Population Registration Act of 1950 classified every person by race. That classification became the basis for laws controlling where people could live, work, attend school and use public facilities. The Group Areas Act of 1950 allocated residential and commercial areas to particular racial groups, leading to large-scale forced removals.

The Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 gave the government wide powers to ban organizations and individuals it considered threatening. Its definition of communism was broad enough to target many opponents of apartheid.

Other major measures included:

• the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 and Immorality Amendment Act of 1950, which regulated intimate relationships across racial categories;
• the Bantu Authorities Act of 1951, which promoted state-controlled tribal authorities in African reserves;
• the Natives (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act of 1952, which extended and standardized reference-book controls rather than abolishing passes in practice;
• the Bantu Education Act of 1953, which put African education under central government control and designed it for a subordinate economic position;
• the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act of 1953, which legalized unequal racially separate public facilities.

The attempt to remove Coloured voters in the Cape from the common roll led to a constitutional struggle. In 1956, under Malan’s successor, JG Strijdom, the government ultimately enlarged the Senate and revalidated separate representation for Coloured voters.

Verwoerd and Grand Apartheid

Hendrik Verwoerd was minister of native affairs from 1950 and prime minister from 1958 to 1966. He developed Grand Apartheid, an attempt to divide South Africa territorially into a white-controlled core and separate African ethnic homelands.

The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 divided Africans into officially defined national units. The existing reserves became Bantustans: fragmented territories presented as the future political homes of different African peoples. Transkei received limited self-government in 1963. Later governments declared several Bantustans independent, beginning with Transkei in 1976. No state outside South Africa recognized their independence.

The Bantustan system had several purposes. It denied Africans citizenship and political rights in South Africa as a whole, strengthened compliant local chiefs and provided migrant workers for white-owned farms, mines and industries. The territories did not have enough land, employment or revenue, so they depended on South African subsidies and migrant earnings.

Impact

Apartheid controlled access to land, employment, education, movement and political power. Forced removals destroyed established communities, including Sophiatown from 1955, and moved millions to townships, rural reserves and Bantustans. Enforcing pass laws led to arrests on a vast scale.

White citizens gained from protected employment, better-funded services and political monopoly, although class affected how those benefits were distributed. Africans, Coloured people and Indians faced different legal restrictions, but all were excluded from equal national citizenship. Apartheid also produced resistance and international isolation, which eventually made the system increasingly difficult to sustain.

The ANC and mass resistance

The ANC shifted direction after it adopted the Programme of Action in 1949. Leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo pushed for boycotts, strikes and civil disobedience instead of relying mainly on petitions.

During the Defiance Campaign of 1952, volunteers deliberately violated apartheid regulations and accepted arrest. The campaign increased ANC membership and showed what disciplined mass action could achieve. It did not, however, make the government repeal the laws.

The Congress Alliance united the ANC with allied Indian, Coloured and white organizations, along with trade unions. At the Congress of the People in Kliptown in 1955, it adopted the Freedom Charter, which called for a non-racial democratic South Africa. The government responded with the Treason Trial of 1956–1961. Every defendant was eventually acquitted, but the prosecution occupied time and disrupted the organizations involved.

Some African nationalists rejected the ANC’s multiracial approach. Led by Robert Sobukwe, the Pan Africanist Congress split from the ANC in 1959 and stressed independent African leadership.

Sharpeville and armed struggle

On 21 March 1960, PAC-led protesters gathered at Sharpeville to oppose the pass laws. Police opened fire, killing 69 people and wounding many others, including people who were shot as they fled. The killings led to demonstrations and strikes, and drew international condemnation.

The government declared a state of emergency and banned both the ANC and PAC. With legal political space closed, resistance leaders began to reconsider non-violence. In 1961, the ANC helped establish Umkhonto we Sizwe, usually known as MK. Its purpose was to carry out sabotage against government installations while initially trying to avoid loss of life. The PAC created Poqo, which later became associated with the Azanian People’s Liberation Army.

In 1963, the state arrested leading activists at Rivonia. Mandela and the other defendants received life imprisonment sentences in 1964. Tambo directed the ANC from outside the country, but repression and organizational disruption inside South Africa weakened resistance for much of the later 1960s.

Black Consciousness and Steve Biko

The Black Consciousness movement aimed for psychological and political liberation. It encouraged black people to reject ideas of white superiority and to organize independently. Here, “black” included Africans, Coloured people and Indians oppressed under white rule.

Steve Biko became its most influential leader. Founded in 1969, the South African Students’ Organisation challenged white liberal control of student opposition. Black Consciousness organizations supported community projects, worker organization and cultural pride. Their influence was particularly strong among students and a younger generation that was not directly led by the banned ANC.

The government banned Biko in 1973. After security police assaulted him, he died in police custody in September 1977. His death brought international condemnation, and the state banned major Black Consciousness organizations the following month.

Soweto

On 16 June 1976, students in Soweto demonstrated against the compulsory use of Afrikaans alongside English as a medium of instruction in black schools. Police fired on the demonstrators. The Soweto massacre set off months of unrest that spread to other townships.

The uprising reflected more than opposition to language policy. Students rejected inferior Bantu Education, overcrowded schools, poor employment prospects and the authority of the apartheid state. Black Consciousness helped build the protesters’ political confidence, although no single central command directed the revolt.

Thousands of young people later left South Africa, with some joining ANC and PAC structures in exile. Soweto revived organized resistance, weakened the regime’s international standing and showed that coercion had not won African acceptance of apartheid.

Township unrest in the 1980s

During the 1980s, resistance brought together community protest, labour organization, underground activity and international campaigning. Launched in 1983, the United Democratic Front coordinated hundreds of organizations against the new tricameral parliament. The parliament gave limited representation to Coloured and Indian citizens but excluded Africans.

Township residents opposed rent increases, poor services, local councillors and forced removals. Civic associations and youth groups organized boycotts and tried to make apartheid institutions unworkable. The Congress of South African Trade Unions, formed in 1985, increased the influence of organized labour.

The government imposed states of emergency, particularly from 1985, and used detention, censorship, military deployment and covert violence. Resistance organizations also experienced internal divisions, while some alleged collaborators were attacked violently. Even under repression, the scale of the unrest made normal government increasingly difficult and added to the economic and international pressure for negotiations.

Growth of international opposition

Sharpeville in 1960 and Soweto in 1976 made apartheid a major international issue. Newly independent African states pushed for action through the United Nations and supported South African liberation movements. In Europe, North America and elsewhere, anti-apartheid organizations organized consumer boycotts, demonstrations and campaigns against companies operating in South Africa.

International opposition took several forms:

• diplomatic condemnation and growing isolation at the United Nations;
• restrictions on military cooperation and arms sales;
• sporting, academic and cultural boycotts;
• consumer boycotts of South African products;
• campaigns for banks, universities and pension funds to withdraw investments;
• trade, financial and investment sanctions imposed by governments.

The UN Security Council introduced a voluntary arms embargo in 1963, then made it mandatory in 1977. South Africa was also increasingly excluded from international sport, including the Olympic movement. These measures did not dismantle apartheid directly. They did, however, challenge white claims that South Africa could remain internationally accepted without political reform.

The economic boycott

The economic boycott sought to raise the cost of apartheid by reducing trade, investment, lending and access to technology. It combined popular refusal to buy South African goods with formal sanctions imposed by states.

Pressure grew during the township crisis of the mid 1980s. International banks became reluctant to renew short-term loans, which contributed to the 1985 debt crisis. In 1986, the United States adopted the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act over President Ronald Reagan’s veto. European states also introduced restrictions, though governments disagreed about how far sanctions should go.

Private divestment mattered alongside official policy. Universities, churches, local authorities and investment funds sold shares in companies associated with South Africa. Multinational companies withdrew or reduced their operations. Some did so for ethical reasons; others were responding to the way political instability damaged confidence.

Impact and limitations

Economic pressure contributed to falling investor confidence, capital flight and restricted access to loans. Its separate effect on long-term growth, however, is difficult to isolate. The boycott also signalled that apartheid was bringing rising diplomatic and commercial costs. As unrest and isolation threatened economic stability, business leaders increasingly urged the government to negotiate.

The boycott’s impact should not be treated as the single decisive cause of apartheid’s collapse. South Africa still had valuable mineral exports, traded through intermediaries and developed domestic substitutes for some imported goods. Sanctions were uneven and often came later than campaigners wanted. Their costs could also fall on black workers through lost jobs and higher prices.

Supporters argued that temporary hardship was justified if sanctions shortened apartheid. Those who supported comprehensive sanctions presented them as a way to force negotiations. Critics claimed that economic engagement would encourage gradual reform more effectively.

The strongest interpretation is that the economic boycott and sanctions worked cumulatively with township rebellion, labour action, armed resistance, diplomatic isolation and the declining strategic value of South Africa’s anti-communist role as the Cold War ended. International pressure narrowed the government’s options, but it did not determine the timing or terms of the transition by itself.

De Klerk changes course

PW Botha introduced limited reforms during the 1980s, but he refused to accept majority rule. By the time FW de Klerk became state president in 1989, South Africa had endured prolonged unrest. The economy was weak, international pressure was mounting, and more people recognised that repression could not create a stable settlement.

On 2 February 1990, De Klerk announced that the ANC, PAC, South African Communist Party and other prohibited organizations would be unbanned. He also announced Nelson Mandela’s release, the release of some political prisoners and the partial lifting of restrictions on political activity. Mandela left Victor Verster Prison on 11 February after 27 years of imprisonment.

The decision was significant, although historians continue to debate De Klerk’s motivation. One interpretation focuses on his pragmatic recognition that apartheid had failed and that negotiations offered the best way to protect white interests. Another points to pressure from internal resistance, sanctions and economic decline. The end of the Cold War also reduced fears that an ANC government would become part of Soviet expansion in southern Africa.

Mandela’s role

Mandela gave the ANC a leader with international authority. He could speak to militant supporters as well as to the National Party government. He insisted on a democratic constitution based on universal adult suffrage, while accepting that the transition would require negotiation and compromise.

His role included:

• maintaining ANC unity during difficult negotiations;
• pressing the government to end political violence and release prisoners;
• reassuring whites that majority rule would not lead to racial revenge;
• defending negotiations after massacres and breakdowns in trust;
• accepting temporary power-sharing arrangements to secure a democratic election.

Mandela did not control all resistance or violence. The transition involved the ANC leadership and the government, along with trade unions, civic organizations, business groups, the Inkatha Freedom Party and other political organizations.

CODESA

The Convention for a Democratic South Africa, or CODESA, brought political groups together to negotiate a new system. CODESA I opened in December 1991. Participants broadly accepted the need for an elected constitution-making body and a democratic future. They still disagreed over majority rule, regional powers and safeguards for minorities.

CODESA II reached a deadlock in May 1992. The ANC formally withdrew from negotiations in June after the Boipatong massacre. The government wanted constitutional thresholds that would stop a simple majority from exercising full power. The ANC argued that these proposals would preserve minority vetoes. Violence made the lack of trust worse. After the Boipatong massacre in June 1992, the ANC suspended negotiations and returned to mass action.

Talks resumed after Mandela and De Klerk agreed the Record of Understanding in September 1992. Negotiations continued through the Multi-Party Negotiating Process in 1993. Major compromises included:

• an interim constitution followed by a final constitution drawn up by an elected assembly;
• a Government of National Unity for parties achieving sufficient electoral support;
• constitutional principles protecting rights and limiting arbitrary majority power;
• continued employment and pension guarantees for many civil servants and security personnel;
• provincial government within a single South African state.

Political violence continued to pose a serious threat. The assassination of South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani in April 1993 brought the country close to wider conflict. Violence involving supporters of the ANC and Inkatha also continued. Mandela’s appeal for calm strengthened his national authority. The Inkatha Freedom Party entered the election process only shortly before voting began.

The 1994 elections

South Africa held its first election based on universal adult suffrage from 26 to 29 April 1994. Long queues and administrative problems affected the voting, but the election went ahead without the large-scale conflict many had feared.

The ANC won 62.65% of the vote and 252 of the 400 seats in the National Assembly. The National Party finished second, while the Inkatha Freedom Party came third. Under the interim arrangements, a Government of National Unity was formed. Mandela was inaugurated as president on 10 May 1994, with De Klerk and Thabo Mbeki as deputy presidents.

The election ended the National Party’s monopoly of power and established a democratic system based on political equality. It did not immediately remove the social and economic consequences of segregation and apartheid. Land ownership, wealth, education and residential patterns remained deeply unequal. The achievement of 1994 was therefore a political transformation, not the immediate completion of social and economic change.