If the history of South Africa is in large part one of racial divisiveness, today it can also be seen as the story of a journey through massive obstacles towards the creation, from tremendous diversity, of a single nation whose long-time dream of unity and common purpose is today being realised.
The earliest representatives of this countrys diversity were the San and Khoekhoe peoples (otherwise known individually as the Bushmen and Hottentots or Khoikhoi; collectively called the Khoisan). Both were resident in the southern tip of the continent for thousands of years before its written history began with the arrival of European seafarers. Before that, modern human beings had lived here for more than 100 000 years - indeed, the country is an archaeological treasure chest.
The hunter-gatherer San ranged widely over the area; the pastoral Khoekhoe lived in comparatively well-watered areas, chiefly along the southern and western coastal strips, where adequate grazing was to be found. So it was with the Khoekhoe that the early European settlers made first contact - much to the disadvantage of the Khoekhoe. A range of factors, including diseases such as smallpox (imported by the Europeans), assimilation with settlers and straightforward extermination, contributed to the effective disappearance of the Khoekhoe as an identifiable group.
Other long-term inhabitants of the area that was to become South Africa were the Bantu-speaking people who had begun moving from more northern parts of Africa into the north-eastern and eastern regions many hundreds of years before the arrival of the Europeans. The Thulamela site in the northern Kruger National Park is estimated to have been first occupied in the 13th century. The ruins of Mapungubwe, where artifacts from as far away as China have been found, are the remains of a large trading settlement thought to stretch back to the 12th century. Agro-pastoralists, these people brought with them an Iron Age culture and sophisticated socio-political systems.
The existence of these native settlements was of little import to Jan van Riebeeck and the 90 men who landed with him in 1652 at the Cape of Good Hope, under instructions by the Dutch East India Company to build a fort and develop a vegetable garden for the benefit of ships on the Eastern trade route. The Dutch settlers relationship with the Khoekhoe was initially one of bartering, but a mutual animosity developed over issues such as cattle theft and, no doubt, the growing suspicion on the part of the Khoekhoe that Van Riebeecks outpost constituted a threat to their way of life. Perhaps the first sign that the threat was to be realised came in 1657 when nine of the settlers, released from their contracts, were given land to farm. In the same year the first slaves were imported to South Africa. By the time Van Riebeeck left in 1662, 250 white people lived in what was beginning to look like a developing colony.
Later governors encouraged immigration, and by the early 1700s independent farmers called trekboers began to push north and east. Inevitably, the Khoisan started losing their lands and/or being pressed into service for the colonists.
The descendants of some of the Khoisan, slaves from elsewhere in Africa and the East (who brought a potent new ingredient to South Africas cultural mix, in the form of Islam), and white colonists formed the basis of the mixed-race group known today as "coloured".
