The Making of Modern South Africa Book Summary - The Making of Modern South Africa Book explained in key points

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Name: The Making of Modern South Africa
Rating: 4.7 (177 reviews)
Author: Nigel Worden

Nigel Worden

The Making of Modern South Africa

4.7 (177 ratings)

24 mins

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The Making of Modern South Africa
summarized in 8 key ideas

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What’s in it for me? An exploration of South African history.

The end of the Cold War witnessed the birth of dozens of new democracies. From Poland to Chile, old dictatorships were dismantled as countries embraced representative government.

In 1994, South Africa was added to that global trend. The past it was leaving behind, however, wasn’t shaped mainly by the struggle between communism and capitalism – it was a past defined by a state-mandated system of apartheid, which had been the hallmark of South African politics and society since 1948.

Apartheid, an enforced system of white minority rule over the country’s Black majority, was toppled by the democratic revolution of 1994. But in order to fully understand apartheid and its eventual demise, we need to go all the way back to an earlier chapter in modern South Africa’s history – the colonial period.

And that’s exactly what we’ll be doing in this Blink, as we explore how South Africa was made and remade over the centuries that passed since the first people settled in that region.Along the way, you’ll also learn:

why Europeans decided to settle in South Africa;
how the discovery of gold transformed the country; and
how opponents of apartheid won their struggle for freedom.

Premodern South Africa was home to three distinctive indigenous groups who settled in the region.

Fifteenth-century Africa was a well-connected place. North Africa’s ports linked local Muslim states to a Mediterranean market, which stretched from Spain to Syria. Then there was East Africa – a vital node in trade networks spanning the entire Indian Ocean.

West Africa’s powerful coastal kingdoms, meanwhile, looked both outward, across the Atlantic Ocean, and inward, into the continent’s vast interior.

There was one exception, though: Africa’s southern tip, a geographical region made up of the modern-day Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, and South Africa. Though this area is one of the world's oldest sites of continuous human habitation, it developed in relative isolation from the rest of the globe until the seventeenth century.

The area that encompasses modern-day South Africa had been inhabited by our prehuman ancestors for over 2.5 million years, with Homo sapiens first establishing settlements in the region around 125,000 years ago. The San and the Khoikhoi are, arguably, direct descendents of these earliest settlers to the region. And although they’re related, the two groups are distinguished by their pastoral structures: the San were traditionally hunter-gatherers, while the Khoi were herders. Around 500 AD, a third group – also herders – migrated into South Africa from as far north as central and east Africa. They were part of the Bantu-linguistic group – a family of languages distinct from those spoken by the San and Khoi peoples.

Over the centuries, and after settling in the fertile plateaus and in the more mediterranean climates of the coast, both the Khoi and Bantu-linguistic groups embraced agriculture. They formed powerful kingdoms, which controlled these settled regions.

Land was vital to both societies, but they didn’t regard it as private property that could be owned. The real source of wealth was cattle. The larger a ruler’s herd, the more power and prestige he enjoyed. The San, for their part, favored nomadic social structures and shared the understanding that land was not something that should be possessed or controlled by anyone. All three overarching societies respected and understood this view.

And so when European colonists arrived in South Africa in the seventeenth century, the first Africans they met lived in kingdoms built around common land ownership. The settlement of these European colonists would throw that system into crisis.

The Dutch presence in South Africa triggered a brutal conflict over land.

In 1488, Portuguese sailors rounded a rocky headland near Africa’s southernmost tip. Once they had passed it, they realized that the prevailing winds were carrying them east, not south.

They’d accidentally just discovered a sea passage to Asia.

Mining kickstarted South Africa’s industrial revolution and urbanization.

Europeans were interested in South Africa for strategic reasons – it was a place to resupply ships headed east. So the larger a European state’s footprint was in Asia, the greater its desire was to control South Africa.

In 1795, the British seized the Cape Colony from the Dutch. The British wanted to secure the passage to what was quickly becoming their empire’s most prized possession – India. That goal was best served by creating a South African colony with stable frontiers.They didn’t shy away from conflict, either. In the early years of their regime, they pushed the colony’s frontiers eastward. This provoked a series of brutal wars with the Xhosa, and eventually the Zulu, nations – both descendent groups of the early Bantu-linguistic people.

Gold, war, and the Union of South Africa

Gold wasn’t just valuable in its own right – it also underpinned the global economy.

Back in the nineteenth century, the world’s currencies were based on the gold standard. This meant that banks and states could only issue money if they held the same amount in gold.

The Union of South Africa, the roots of apartheid, and the birth of political resistance

On May 31, 1910, the British passed the Act of Union. It created a single state – the Union of South Africa – out of the lands occupied by the African monarchies, those of the former Cape Colony, and those that comprised the Afrikaner Republic.

On paper, the country was a democracy – for property-owning men, at any rate. What this meant was that, in reality, political power was concentrated in the hands of a small minority: white men. During the Union’s early years, they used their power to systematically keep Africans from owning property and, with it, their right to participate in political life.

Apartheid and the new spirit of defiance

Apartheid was a system of laws, Acts, and policies that enforced the separation of South Africans based on perceived ethnicity. It was a system that ensured that political power and economic wealth would be concentrated on the white minority. It became the official policy of the ruling National Party in 1934 and was eventually the platform which won them the election in 1948. This election led to the formal establishment of a racial-segregated nation, with laws and Acts passed to enforce this ideology. The Black majority became second-class citizens who had to carry special passes to travel outside of their designated areas for work.

White voters supported these policies because they allowed the government to break Black political resistance, thus shoring up white minority rule.

Revolt – and a call for reform

The protests and the draconian state retaliation grew year by year. The 1970s signaled the start of an especially brutal period of history.On June 16, 1976, around 20,000 children and parents marched through Soweto to protest the latest law, which declared that Afrikaans be the medium of instruction in Black schools. Once again, police opened fire on the crowd, killing hundreds.

The country exploded into revolt, and throughout the year, there were running battles between protestors and security forces across the country. Meanwhile, the economy was disrupted by striking workers.By 1985, South Africa resembled a war zone. The state had deployed the army to townships and detained thousands of activists. There was fierce resistance, but stones and burning barricades were no match for the heavily armed military. With the help of sweeping emergency powers, the army and police ruthlessly crushed the rebellions once and for all.

Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk’s compromise resulted in an inclusive republic.

South Africa’s economic decline began in 1980. The first strike was delivered by foreign banks which had loaned the apartheid government money in the ’70s.

When those banks recalled their loans and refused to renew them, the rand – South Africa’s currency – collapsed. The shock was so severe that the Johannesburg Stock Exchange had to close temporarily.

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What is The Making of Modern South Africa about?

The Making of Modern South Africa (2012) traces the history of South Africa from the colonial conquests of the eighteenth century to the birth of an inclusive democracy in 1994. Along the way, it unpacks how struggles over land, natural resources, and belonging shaped the country’s development.

Who should read The Making of Modern South Africa?

Historians
Politics buffs
Anyone interested in race and equality

About the Author

Nigel Worden is a British-South African historian who specializes in the history of colonial South Africa. He was Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Cape Town until his retirement in 2016.

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