Scratching the Surface of South African History

As soon as we learned we would be in South Africa for a year, I checked out Leonard Thompson’s A History of South Africa from the Brunswick, Maine, library.  Having grown up in the 70’s and 80’s watching my mom lead letter writing campaigns to promote divestment in South Africa, and having taught 7th grade world history for a decade, South Africa was ‘familiar.’ Nevertheless, really, my knowledge of South Africa as an American was limited to “Apartheid” and “the Boer Wars.”

Knowing I would soon be living for a year in Cape Town, I consumed each chapter voraciously as Thompson walked me through South Africa’s complicated history, introducing me to the varied terrains and varied settlers who joined the Koi-San hunter gatherers on the southern tip of the African continent. It is, of course, the convergence of these early settlers who came from other parts of Africa, Holland, India, Malaysia, and Britain for varying reasons – and the conflicts between them – that shaped not only the history and landscape of South Africa, but the class and race distinctions that remain from centuries of a rich white minority holding power over a large black majority.

But that convergence also explains the incredible variety of food, the range of architecture, the cosmopolatin nature of Cape Town, and the energy that comes from a diverse country beginning to come into its own. Above all, it is that foundation that creates the potential for a ‘Rainbow State’ – seemingly possible at the end of our street on a busy corner in Rondebosch. But only possible with the vision of Nelson Mandela, who saw through years of oppression the possibility of reconciliation.

Thompson’s book ends in 1995 – one year after Nelson Mandela became the first African president of South Africa.  After reading this history from the ‘cradle of mankind’ to South Africa’s historic transition, I understood just how significant the 1993 photo of then-President de Klerk and Mandela holding hands in victory meant.  They had just been honored, together, with the Nobel Peace Prize.  As I learned over the course of a year in South Africa about all that transpired since 1995, I knew I was not only learning history, but witnessing it as well.