The Making of South Africa, 1488–2026: African Peoples, Colonies and Republics

Timeline

Layers

Cape Colony → Cape Province · Queen Adelaide Province, British Kaffraria · Transkeian Territories (to the Cape) · Natalia → Natal · Orange River Sovereignty → Orange Free State · South African Republic (Transvaal) · New Republic (Vryheid, 1884–88) · Stellaland and Goshen (1882–85) · Griqualand West · British Bechuanaland and Gordonia · Republic of South Africa: nine provinces (1994–) · Transkei (homeland) · Ciskei (homeland) · Bophuthatswana (homeland) · Venda (homeland) · KwaZulu (homeland) · Lebowa (homeland) · Gazankulu (homeland) · KaNgwane (homeland) · KwaNdebele (homeland) · QwaQwa (homeland) · Basotho → Basutoland → Lesotho · Swazi kingdom → Swaziland → Eswatini · Northern Nguni → Zulu kingdom → Zululand · Xhosa: amaRharhabe · Xhosa: amaGcaleka · abaThembu · amaMpondo and amaMpondomise · Batswana · Bapedi and other northern Sotho · Southern Ndebele · Ndebele (Matabele) of Mzilikazi · VhaVenda · Tsonga and Shangaan · Griqua · Korana and Einiqua Khoikhoi · Namaqua (Nama) Khoikhoi · Cape Peninsula Khoikhoi · Cochoqua Khoikhoi · Guriqua Khoikhoi · Chainouqua and Hessequa Khoikhoi · Gouriqua, Attaqua and Outeniqua Khoikhoi · Inqua, Gamtoos and Gonaqua Khoikhoi · San

Events

• 3 Feb 1488, c. 1220–1290 · Mapungubwe: Centuries before any European ship arrived, a kingdom on Mapungubwe Hill, where the Shashe meets the Limpopo, traded gold and ivory with the Indian Ocean world; its royal graves held the famous golden rhinoceros. Farmers speaking Bantu languages had lived south of the Limpopo since the first centuri…
• 3 Feb 1488, The first South Africans: San and Khoikhoi: San hunter-gatherers have lived here for tens of thousands of years; Khoikhoi (Khoekhoe) herders arrived with sheep, and later cattle, about 2,000 years ago. The Dutch called the Khoikhoi “Hottentotten” and the San “Bosjesmans”, names now considered offensive.
• 3 Feb 1488, Dias lands at Mossel Bay: Bartolomeu Dias’s crew come ashore for water. Khoikhoi herders guarding their watering place pelt them with stones, and Dias kills one with a crossbow: the first recorded clash between Europeans and South Africans.
• 1 Mar 1510, Khoikhoi defeat the viceroy d’Almeida: After a quarrel over bartered cattle, a Portuguese party burns a Goringhaiqua (ǃUriǁ’aekua) village near the Salt River. The herders strike back with spears, arrows and trained oxen; Francisco de Almeida, first viceroy of Portuguese India, and some 60 of his men are killed. The Portuguese shun Table…
• 6 Apr 1652, Van Riebeeck lands at Table Bay: The Dutch East India Company (VOC) sends Jan van Riebeeck with about 90 people to build a fort and grow vegetables for its ships. The Goringhaiqua and Gorachouqua lose their Peninsula grazing. Autshumao (Harry), a Khoikhoi leader who had sailed to Java with the English, becomes the first interpreter…
• 19 May 1659, Doman’s war: Doman (Nommoa), a Goringhaiqua interpreter who had seen the Dutch subdue Java, leads young Khoikhoi in raids on the settlers’ herds, striking in the rain when Dutch matchlocks cannot fire. The war ends in stalemate in 1660, but the Khoikhoi must accept the loss of the Peninsula; Van Riebeeck plants…
• 2 Jun 1664, Krotoa, the go-between: Krotoa (Eva), a Goringhaicona girl raised in Van Riebeeck’s household, interprets between the Dutch and her people. In 1664 she marries the surgeon Pieter van Meerhof, the first recorded Khoikhoi–European marriage. Shunned after his death, she is exiled to Robben Island and dies in 1674; many South…
• 18 Jul 1673, Gonnema’s war: The Cochoqua under Gonnema, rich in cattle and pressed by Dutch hunters and raiders, fight back. Commandos with Khoikhoi allies seize thousands of their cattle and sheep, and in 1677 Gonnema makes peace with a yearly tribute of 30 cattle. The free Khoikhoi of the south-western Cape are broken.
• 8 Apr 1713, Smallpox: a great dying: Smallpox comes ashore with the laundry of a VOC fleet. The settlers lose about a quarter of their number; the Khoikhoi, never exposed before, lose perhaps nine in ten, and survivors report whole clans gone. More epidemics follow in 1755 and 1767.
• 1 Jun 1739, War in the Bokkeveld: Khoikhoi and |Xam San bands raid the trekboer farms advancing onto their land in the Bokkeveld and Cederberg. Commandos answer with killing raids, carrying off women and children as captive labour. From now on the frontier moves by commando.
• 1 Aug 1774, The war against the San: In the Roggeveld, Nuweveld and Sneeuberg the |Xam San fight the trekboers for their hunting grounds. A single general commando in 1774 kills about 500 San; in 1792 the Company pays bounties for captives. Historians now call the destruction of the Cape San a genocide.
• 1 Dec 1779, The first Frontier War: Boer frontiersmen and Xhosa clash over cattle in the Zuurveld between the Sundays and Fish rivers. Governor Van Plettenberg had named the Fish River the colony’s border in 1778; in 1781 Adriaan van Jaarsveld’s commando drives the Xhosa across it, but they return. Eight more wars follow in the next h…
• 16 Sep 1795, Britain takes the Cape: After the Battle of Muizenberg a British force takes the Cape from the bankrupt VOC, to keep it from revolutionary France. The frontier burghers of Graaff-Reinet and Swellendam had just declared short-lived republics.
• 1 Apr 1799, Klaas Stuurman’s rebellion: Hundreds of Khoikhoi leave the farms they are forced to work on and join the Gqunukhwebe Xhosa. Led by Klaas Stuurman, Hans Trompetter and Boesak they retake land as far west as Oudtshoorn, and Stuurman asks only for the country taken from their fathers. After his death in 1803 his brother David fig…
• 8 Jan 1806, Battle of Blaauwberg: British troops defeat the Batavian garrison north of Cape Town; the Cape is British for good (formally ceded in 1814).
• 27 Oct 1808, Louis of Mauritius leads a slave revolt: Louis, an enslaved tailor from Mauritius, with the Irish sailors James Hooper and Michael Kelly, marches some 300 slaves and Khoikhoi servants from the Swartland farms towards Cape Town to demand freedom. Troops stop them at Salt River; Louis and others are hanged.
• 15 Jan 1812, Xhosa driven from the Zuurveld: British troops and commandos under Colonel John Graham drive some 20,000 Gqunukhwebe and Ndlambe Xhosa across the Fish River, burning homesteads and crops. A line of forts follows, centred on the new military post of Grahamstown.
• 1 Jul 1816, Shaka builds the Zulu kingdom: Shaka kaSenzangakhona takes over the small Zulu chiefdom in 1816, remodels its army and crushes the Ndwandwe (1818–19). Within a decade he rules from the Pongola to the Tugela and raids far beyond. The wars of this era, the Mfecane or Difaqane, scatter peoples as far as Malawi and Tanzania.
• 22 Apr 1819, Makhanda storms Grahamstown: The prophet Makhanda (Nxele), adviser to Chief Ndlambe, leads 6,000 to 10,000 warriors against the British garrison in broad daylight; Khoikhoi marksmen help beat them off. Makhanda gives himself up to end the war, is jailed on Robben Island and drowns trying to escape. Since 2018 the town bears his…
• 1 Jul 1824, Moshoeshoe at Thaba Bosiu: Moshoeshoe leads his followers to the flat-topped mountain of Thaba Bosiu, which no enemy ever takes. He shelters refugees from the wars and builds the Basotho nation by diplomacy, cattle loans and marriage alliances.
• 1 Jun 1832, Mzilikazi’s Ndebele kingdom: Mzilikazi, a former commander of Shaka, breaks away about 1821 and builds a kingdom on the highveld, from 1832 centred on Mosega and eGabeni in the Marico valley. His regiments rule or raid the Tswana around.
• 1 Dec 1834, Slavery abolished: About 38,000 enslaved people are freed on paper, but must serve four more years as “apprentices”, until 1 December 1838. Slave-owners resent the small compensation, payable only in London: one grievance behind the Great Trek.
• 21 Dec 1834, Maqoma’s war: After a colonial patrol wounds Xhoxho, a chief of the royal house, Maqoma leads some 10,000 Rharhabe Xhosa into the colony, angered by years of land loss and his expulsion from the Kat River. The Sixth Frontier War lasts until late 1835.
• 12 May 1835, King Hintsa killed: Hintsa kaKhawuta, king of all the Xhosa, comes to the British camp on a promise of safety and is held hostage for cattle. Trying to escape near the Nqabarha River he is shot and his body mutilated. Governor D’Urban annexes the land to the Kei as Queen Adelaide Province; London cancels it in 1836.
• 1 Sep 1835, The Great Trek: From 1835 Boer families with their servants and herds cross the Orange to escape British rule, in parties led by Louis Tregardt, Hendrik Potgieter, Gerrit Maritz, Piet Retief and Piet Uys. Some 12,000 leave by the mid-1840s; Afrikaner nationalism later makes the Trek its founding story.
• 16 Oct 1836, Battle of Vegkop: Mzilikazi’s regiments attack Hendrik Potgieter’s laager of about 40 wagons; the trekkers hold out but lose almost all their cattle. In January 1837 a commando with Barolong and Griqua allies destroys Mosega.
• 15 Nov 1837, The Ndebele leave for Zimbabwe: Attacked by trekker commandos at eGabeni and by Dingane’s Zulu, Mzilikazi leads the Ndebele north across the Limpopo, where they found Bulawayo in today’s Zimbabwe. The trekkers claim the land between the Vaal and the Limpopo.
• 6 Feb 1838, Retief killed at uMgungundlovu: Two days after signing a deed ceding Natal, King Dingane has Piet Retief and about 100 of his party killed at his capital; Zulu regiments then fall on the trekker camps near Weenen.
• 16 Dec 1838, Blood River (Ncome): Andries Pretorius’s 470 trekkers fight from a wagon laager on the Ncome River; about 3,000 of Dingane’s warriors are killed, three trekkers wounded. Afrikaner nationalists later make 16 December a sacred “Day of the Vow”; since 1995 it is the Day of Reconciliation.
• 12 May 1843, Britain annexes Natal: Natal becomes a British colony and most trekkers recross the Drakensberg. Theophilus Shepstone sets aside “locations” for the African majority: the model for later reserves.
• 23 Dec 1847, British Kaffraria: Sir Harry Smith ends the War of the Axe by annexing the land between the Keiskamma and Kei as British Kaffraria, a separate colony under military rule, and humiliates Maqoma by putting his foot on his neck.
• 24 Dec 1850, War of Mlanjeni; the Kat River rises: Inspired by the prophet Mlanjeni, Sandile’s Ngqika and Maqoma, fighting from the forests of the Waterkloof, take on the British. Many Kat River Khoikhoi under Hermanus Matroos and Willem Uithaalder join them. After three years the Xhosa lose more land.
• 23 Feb 1854, The Boer republics recognised: Britain recognises the Boer republics north of the Vaal (Sand River Convention, 1852) and between the Orange and Vaal (Bloemfontein, 1854). The conventions let the Boers buy guns but deny them to Africans, and void Britain’s treaties with African chiefs.
• 15 Apr 1856, Nongqawuse’s prophecy: The teenage prophet Nongqawuse says the ancestors will rise and sweep the colonists into the sea if the Xhosa kill their cattle and burn their grain. Some 400,000 cattle are killed; perhaps 40,000 people starve, and British Kaffraria’s population falls from 105,000 to under 27,000. Governor Grey use…
• 1 Jun 1862, Adam Kok’s Griqua trek: Hemmed in by the Free State, Adam Kok III sells Philippolis and leads about 3,000 Griqua over the Drakensberg to the “Nomansland” beyond, where they found Kokstad. Britain takes over Griqualand East in 1874 and annexes it in 1879.
• 15 Aug 1865, Siege of Thaba Bosiu: Free State commandos storm Moshoeshoe’s mountain twice in a week; in the second assault, on 15 August, Commandant Louw Wepener is killed. Starving, the Basotho cede most of their farmland in 1866, but war breaks out again in 1867.
• 15 Jul 1867, Makhado drives the Boers out: The Venda under Makhado force the Boers to abandon Schoemansdal, their northernmost town. The Venda remain independent until 1898.
• 12 Mar 1868, Basutoland becomes British: Moshoeshoe asks Queen Victoria for protection. The Convention of Aliwal North (1869) fixes Lesotho’s borders and leaves the fertile “Conquered Territory” west of the Caledon to the Free State. Moshoeshoe dies in 1870.
• 27 Oct 1871, Diamonds at Kimberley: After the “Eureka” (1867) and the Kimberley rush of 1871, Britain annexes the diamond fields in the name of the Griqua chief Nicolaas Waterboer, over Free State protests. Thousands of African migrants dig the Big Hole; from the 1880s they are locked in closed compounds.
• 12 Apr 1877, Britain annexes the Transvaal: Theophilus Shepstone annexes the bankrupt South African Republic, part of Lord Carnarvon’s plan to federate southern Africa.
• 29 May 1878, The last Xhosa war: Sarhili’s Gcaleka and Sandile’s Ngqika fight the Ninth Frontier War (1877–78); Sandile is killed in the Amatola forests. A century of wars ends with all Xhosa land under colonial rule.
• 22 Jan 1879, Battle of Isandlwana: King Cetshwayo’s army, some 20,000 strong, overruns a British column; about 1,300 soldiers and auxiliaries are killed, Britain’s worst defeat by an African army. Rorke’s Drift holds out that night.
• 4 Jul 1879, Ulundi: the Zulu kingdom falls: Lord Chelmsford burns the royal homestead of oNdini. Cetshwayo is captured in August and exiled; Wolseley splits Zululand into 13 chiefdoms, which fall into civil war.
• 28 Nov 1879, Sekhukhune’s Pedi kingdom falls: King Sekhukhune, who had beaten the Boers in 1876, is overwhelmed by Wolseley’s British troops and some 8,000 Swazi; his capital Tsate falls and he is jailed in Pretoria.
• 13 Sep 1880, The Gun War: The Basotho refuse the Cape’s order to hand in their guns and fight it to a standstill (1880–81). In 1884 Britain takes Basutoland back under direct rule: one reason Lesotho never became part of South Africa.
• 27 Feb 1881, Majuba: Boer commandos rout a British force on Majuba hill. The Pretoria Convention restores the South African Republic under British “suzerainty”; Paul Kruger becomes president in 1883.
• 10 Jul 1883, The Ndzundza Ndebele defeated: King Nyabela shelters Mampuru, who had killed Sekhukhune, in the caves of Mapoch. After an eight-month siege the South African Republic breaks the Ndzundza kingdom, hangs Mampuru and indentures the Ndebele to Boer farmers.
• 30 Sep 1885, British Bechuanaland: Sir Charles Warren’s 4,000 troops dissolve Stellaland and Goshen. South of the Molopo the Tswana lands become the crown colony of British Bechuanaland (joined to the Cape in 1895); north of it a protectorate that is today Botswana. Montshiwa of the Barolong had appealed for British protection.
• 20 Sep 1886, Gold on the Witwatersrand: The richest goldfield on earth is found. Johannesburg grows from a mining camp into a great city, built on the labour of migrant workers from all over southern Africa.
• 2 Jan 1896, Jameson Raid: A raid backed by Cecil Rhodes to topple Kruger’s republic ends in surrender at Doornkop. It drives Britain and the Boers towards war.
• 11 Oct 1899, The South African War: Boer commandos invade Natal and the Cape and besiege Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking. Though called a “white man’s war”, tens of thousands of Black South Africans are drawn in, mostly on the British side as scouts, guards, drivers and labourers.
• 13 Oct 1899, Siege of Mafeking: The town holds out for 217 days. Baden-Powell’s defence relies on armed Barolong, whose part is told in the war diary of the young court interpreter Sol Plaatje; African residents get the smallest rations.
• 1 Nov 1900, Concentration camps: To beat the Boer guerrillas, Kitchener burns farms and interns civilians. About 26,000 Boer women and children and at least 14,000 to 20,000 Black Africans die in the camps, mostly of disease. Emily Hobhouse exposes the conditions.
• 31 May 1902, Peace of Vereeniging: The Boer republics surrender and become British colonies. The question of votes for Africans is put off until after self-government: in effect, until 1994.
• 10 Jun 1906, Bambatha rebellion: Chief Bambatha kaMancinza leads a rising against a new £1 poll tax and is killed at Mome Gorge on 10 June. Some 3,000 to 4,000 Africans die, against 36 on the colonial side; Dinuzulu is jailed for supposedly backing it.
• 31 May 1910, Union of South Africa: The four colonies unite as a self-governing British dominion under Prime Minister Louis Botha. Only white men may sit in Parliament; a qualified vote for Black and Coloured men survives only in the Cape.
• 8 Jan 1912, Founding of the ANC: Chiefs, lawyers, teachers and journalists meet in Bloemfontein and form the South African Native National Congress, from 1923 the African National Congress: John Dube president, Pixley ka Isaka Seme its founder, Sol Plaatje secretary.
• 19 Jun 1913, Natives Land Act: Africans, two-thirds of the population, may own or rent land only in “scheduled” reserves of about 7% of the country; sharecropping on white farms is outlawed and families are evicted. Sol Plaatje cycles through the countryside recording their plight for Native Life in South Africa (1916).
• 6 Nov 1913, Gandhi’s great march: Mohandas Gandhi, a lawyer in South Africa since 1893, leads Indian passive resistance against discriminatory laws; on 6 November 1913 he marches some 2,000 striking miners from Natal across the Transvaal border at Volksrust.
• 1 Jul 1936, Hertzog’s “native bills”: The Representation of Natives Act removes Black men in the Cape from the common voters’ roll; the Native Trust and Land Act promises to enlarge the reserves to about 13% of the country.
• 26 May 1948, Apartheid: D.F. Malan’s National Party wins the whites-only election on a programme of apartheid. Laws on population registration, group areas, separate amenities, Bantu education and passes follow in 1949–53.
• 26 Jun 1955, The Freedom Charter: Some 3,000 delegates of the Congress Alliance adopt the Freedom Charter at Kliptown, Soweto: “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.” Police break up the meeting on its second day.
• 9 Aug 1956, The Women’s March: Some 20,000 women led by Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa and Sophia Williams-De Bruyn march on the Union Buildings in Pretoria against passes for women. 9 August is now Women’s Day.
• 21 Mar 1960, Sharpeville massacre: Police fire on a crowd protesting against the pass laws at the call of Robert Sobukwe’s Pan Africanist Congress, killing 69. On 8 April the ANC and PAC are banned; both turn to armed struggle.
• 12 Jun 1964, Rivonia Trial: After a police raid on Liliesleaf farm, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada and four others are sentenced to life imprisonment; most serve their time on Robben Island.
• 11 Feb 1966, District Six: Cape Town’s District Six is declared a white area; from 1968 some 60,000 people are moved to the Cape Flats and their homes bulldozed. Under apartheid about 3.5 million people are forcibly removed (1960–83).
• 4 Oct 1966, Lesotho independent: Basutoland becomes the Kingdom of Lesotho under King Moshoeshoe II and Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan, surrounded on every side by apartheid South Africa. Bechuanaland had become Botswana four days earlier.
• 6 Sep 1968, Swaziland independent: Swaziland regains its independence under King Sobhuza II, who reigned from 1899 to 1982.
• 16 Jun 1976, Soweto uprising: About 20,000 pupils, with Tsietsi Mashinini among the leaders, march against being taught in Afrikaans; police open fire. Sam Nzima’s photograph of the dying 12-year-old Hector Pieterson goes round the world. At least 176 die that day and hundreds more in the months that follow.
• 26 Oct 1976, Transkei “independent”: Under Kaiser Matanzima the Transkei becomes the first homeland to take “independence”, and its people lose South African citizenship. No country except South Africa recognises it. Bophuthatswana (1977), Venda (1979) and Ciskei (1981) follow.
• 12 Sep 1977, Steve Biko dies in detention: The founder of the Black Consciousness Movement dies in Pretoria of brain injuries suffered under interrogation by security police in Port Elizabeth.
• 27 Jun 1985, The Cradock Four: Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkhonto and Sicelo Mhlauli are abducted and murdered by security police. At their funeral the flags of the banned ANC and Communist Party fly; a state of emergency is declared that night.
• 11 Feb 1990, Mandela walks free: Nine days after F.W. de Klerk unbans the ANC, PAC and Communist Party, Nelson Mandela leaves Victor Verster prison near Paarl after 27 years behind bars.
• 10 Apr 1993, Chris Hani assassinated: The Communist Party leader is shot outside his home in Boksburg by a far-right gunman. Mandela’s televised plea for calm helps force agreement on an election date.
• 27 Apr 1994, The first democratic election: Nearly 20 million people vote, most for the first time; the ten homelands are dissolved into nine new provinces. Nelson Mandela is sworn in as president on 10 May.
• 10 Dec 1996, The Constitution: Mandela signs the new Constitution at Sharpeville. Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1996–98) hears thousands of victims and perpetrators of apartheid-era violence.
• 9 Aug 2002, Sarah Baartman comes home: The remains of Sarah (Saartjie) Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman exhibited as a curiosity in London and Paris who died in 1815, are returned from France and buried above the Gamtoos valley where she was born.
• 19 Apr 2018, Swaziland becomes Eswatini: King Mswati III renames the country Eswatini, “land of the Swazi”, on the 50th anniversary of independence.
• 29 May 2024, The ANC loses its majority: Thirty years after 1994 the ANC falls to 40% of the vote. It forms a Government of National Unity with the DA, IFP and others, and Cyril Ramaphosa is re-elected president.
• 4 Nov 2026, Municipal elections: The results declared on 8 November 2026 put the ANC on about 31% of the vote, its lowest share in any election since 1994, ahead of the DA (about 25%) and Jacob Zuma’s MK party (just under 10%). Turnout was 52%; many councils will need coalitions.

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