the colonial economy, in the case of mine workers. British control of the Cape and Natal Colonies led to the development of medical services in the cities of Cape Town and Durban, respectively, with the latter expanding on the heels of a large-scale colonial war with the Zulu Kingdom.26
As the British Empire transformed the social, political, and economic characteristics of the Cape Colony, the Zulu Kingdom expanded from South Africa’s eastern coast inland. Under the leadership of King Shaka, the Zulu polity subsumed autonomous regional kingships into one. One effect of Zulu expansion was the dispersal of contiguous social formations—known as the mfecane, which roughly translates to “the crushing”—from what is today known as the KwaZulu-Natal Province.27 Subsequent conflict between ethnic groups displaced by Zulu warfare spread across the central and northern reaches of the region (Comaroff and Comaroff 2001, 167). The mfecane led to new territorial borders for established social formations, the consolidation of new groups such as the Mfengu, and the restructuring of regional power dynamics. The aftermath of the mfecane saw widespread warfare and conflict led by the Matabele in the northern reaches of present-day South Africa, displacing other indigenous peoples and compounding the impact of Zulu expansion. War and migration depopulated a region that would soon be settled by the Dutch displaced from the Cape Colony.
The Dutch population that left the Cape Colony following abolition traveled northward into the South African interior, moving into the wake of the mfecane and contributing to the restructuring of African social formations. In what was far from a homogenous process, Dutch populations had slowly expanded out from the Cape Colony since the early eighteenth century. The early wave of Dutch migration had consisted of “trekboers” (trekboere), who had moved to the eastern periphery of European settlement to escape oversight and taxation from Dutch colonial authorities.28 The trekboer population first oriented around a variant of pastoral nomadism and attempted to establish their own independent republics before later developing the eastern farmlands. This group made up a significant segment of the Dutch population that departed after the abolition of slavery. Known as the voortrekkers, which roughly translates to “pioneers,” Dutch people of different class orientations and backgrounds traveled north from the eastern areas of the Cape Colony, across the Orange River, and onto lands historically occupied by African social formations.
The area directly north of the Cape Colony’s eastern region was settled by Dutch migrants and subsequently become known as the Orange Free State (Oranje-Vrijstaat). The areas immediately north of the Orange River were inhabited by Khoisan hunter-gatherers who had moved northward following the earlier wave of colonization and slavery in the Cape Colony. The Khoisan were once again displaced by European settler expansion. Further north, the migrant Dutch moved into the sociopolitical vacuum that emerged during the mfecane. There they established the Vaal Republic, which encompassed the northern region of South Africa from the Vaal River up to the Limpopo River. Neither British colonial authorities nor indigenous African social formations passively accepted the establishment of two Afrikaner republics. The voortrekkers confronted the Matabele, led by King Mzilikazi, as they moved up to the Vaal River, leading to armed conflict and the eventual establishment of the Vaal Republic, also known as the South African Republic. Intermittent conflict also erupted between the Afrikaner inhabitants of the Orange Free State and the government of the Cape Colony. Over time, conflict with the Basotho Kingdom led to the expansion of the Orange Free State as Afrikaner settlers subsumed its lands. In sum, Dutch migrants settling in the north displaced African populations while negotiating their autonomy from British imperial power.
The movement of the Dutch pioneers northward was not a uniform process; Afrikaner migrants navigated their movement amid African social formations using various tactics, including negotiations, warfare, and enslavement. Some treks ended in ruin, with all who participated meeting their ends.29 While advanced military technology was central to the success of the Afrikaner migrants in their movement northward, so too was an ability to leverage internal fissures within African societies to the benefit of mobile settler populations. The diverse outcomes reached by different voortrekker groups underscores the contingency of these forays into the South African hinterland. While the eventual outcome of the treks has become accepted history, one must not fall prey to the bias of presentism in analyzing the movement of European colonial settlers northward.
As the northern and central areas of present-day South Africa were settled by Dutch voortrekkers, a multipolar colonial arrangement came into focus. African social formations had been transformed and displaced by a combination of European expansion, slavery, colonial conflict, and warfare emanating from the Zulu and Matabele Kingdoms in the east and north, respectively. British control over the southern reaches of the African continent had expanded from the Cape Colony eastward, with Natal now an established British territory. A war with the Zulu Kingdom on South Africa’s eastern coast would also see British influence on the region expand. However, the accords that maintained an uneasy détente between the British Empire and Afrikaner republics would not hold for long. The discovery of vast diamond and gold deposits in South Africa’s northern reaches would irrevocably shift the balance of power in the region.
Gold, Settler Conflict, and African Resistance
The “scramble for Africa” among European colonial powers and the uncovering of South Africa’s vast mineral wealth instigated British imperial expansion and fomented further conflict between European settlers and African social formations. After an extended period of conflict that enveloped the lives of noncombatants, the British Empire and Afrikaner republics reached a compromise that unified white rule and expropriated land and other resources from African peoples. The transition from a multipolar colonial period to unified white rule set into motion political, economic, and institutional dynamics that expanded colonial pass laws, racial segregation, and the power of traditional authorities across rural South Africa. African peoples continued to resist the expansion of white political and economic authority through the vectors of armed conflict and political activism.
The detection of vast mineral deposits in the northern areas of the region led to profound changes. An immense concentration of diamond reserves was uncovered in the settlement of Kimberley, located in the Cape Colony’s northern region. The discovery led fortune seekers from around the world to converge on the South African north, initiating an extractive economy that would be largely controlled by British interests. As the scope of South Africa’s mineral wealth became clear, the British sought to further their interests in the region, annexing Botswana, then known as Bechuanaland, in 1885. However, the decisive event for South Africa’s historical trajectory was the declaration of British control over the Vaal Republic in 1877. While the British had acknowledged the political autonomy of both Afrikaner republics in 1852, their relationship with the northern colonial settlements was characterized by intermittent conflict. British efforts to subsume the northern Afrikaner republics occurred alongside war with the Zulu Kingdom (1879), underscoring the colonial violence that emanated from British imperialism and settlement.
The multipolar context within which the colonial wars of the late nineteenth century unfolded inexorably shifted with the discovery of substantial gold deposits in the Vaal Republic. Between 1884 and 1886, a series of mining expeditions uncovered gold in the Witwatersrand area of contemporary Johannesburg. The subsequent gold rush led to an influx of foreign miners in the area, and Johannesburg was established as the “city of gold.” The British initially engaged in conflict with the Vaal Republic from 1880 to 1881, but the commandos of the Afrikaner republic successfully engaged in guerilla warfare to undermine the British incursion. However, the discovery of gold and the threat of German and Portuguese regional claims precipitated the British initiation of the South African War (1899–1902). After the British failed in an attempt to spur an uprising against the leadership of the Vaal Republic in 1895, the commandos of the Afrikaner states attacked British-held areas across Southern Africa in 1899. Afterward, the Afrikaner commandos dispersed back into society, reverting to the guerilla tactics that had secured victory during the previous British invasion. However, this time British military commanders employed a new tactic to undermine
