Early Colonial Period
On the 6th April 1652,
Jan van Riebeck arrived in the Cape to build a refreshment station to supply
ships of the Dutch East India company.
The Dutch East India Company at first just wanted to farm a small area of land to grow crops and to obtain supplies of meat by trading with Khoikhoi. The Khoikhoi took advantage of an opportunity to trade cattle for iron and copper, even though they showed some resistance at first. The Dutch brought slaves from other parts of Africa and the East Indies, to avoid trouble with the Khoikhoi and keep costs as low as possible. To save even more money, the Dutch East India company later released some soldiers to become independent armors.
The majority of the soldiers were Dutch, but among them were Germans, Scandinavians, French and a few English.
The settlers came with a new language, Afrikaans, which is a version of Dutch mixed in new words from speaking to each other. They proudly accepted the name 'Boers' which means farmers in Afrikaans.
In 1705, a company trader hoping to trade for oxen, with the Khoikhoi, found that a trek Boer had got there before him. Whites smashed the resistance of the Khoikhoi and the remaining San as they were mounted and armed with superior weapons. Those who survived became servants.
The 'coloureds' in the Cape, descend from the children of mixed marriages between Khoikhoi slaves and their white masters.
In 1851, Natal sugar cane production provided a new source of wealth, but there was a shortage of labour. The sugar plantation owners recruited labourers from India as they were unable to persuade Africans to work for them. About 52% of the Indian slaves decided to stay in South Africa once their contracts were over.
Black Africans see the colonialism era as the beginning of the invasion of the whites, which finally led to slavery and apartheid.
