Difference between revisions of "Southern Africa" - New World Encyclopedia

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This article concerns the region in Africa. For the present-day country in this region, see South Africa; for the former country, see South African Republic.

██ Southern Africa (UN subregion) ██ geographic, including above ██ Southern African Development Community (SADC)

Southern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, defined by the UN scheme of geographic regions as consisting of the following five countries:

Many scholars argue that the UN definition of Southern Africa is too limiting and does not properly express geographic and cultural ties in the region. These individuals support a broader definition of Southern Africa that includes the following countries, as well as those found in the UN definition:

Angola – also included in Central Africa
Mozambique and Madagascar – also included in Eastern Africa
Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe – sometimes included in Southern Africa and formerly of the Central African Federation
Comoros, Mauritius, Seychelles, Mayotte, and Réunion – small island territories in the Indian Ocean east of the African mainland

Occasionally the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania are included in discussions of Southern Africa, though they are more commonly reckoned in Central and Eastern Africa respectively. Recently, a move has begun in Southern Africa to unite the region economically, socially, and politically. One the groups to foster a sense of unification is the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which was established in 1980 to facilitate co-operation in the region. It includes all of the above except Comoros (totaling 15 members). Another such group is the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), created in 1969, which comprises of only the five countries in the UN subregion of Southern Africa.

Background

Geographically, South Africaern is defined through a series of plateaus that stretch across the nations of South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana and the central portion of Angola. Within the plateaus, a wide variety of notable ecoregions exist, ranging from the grasslands in southern Zimbabwe to the vast Kalahari Desert. The Kalahari desert is featured in the South African plateau, and eventually rises to become the Great Escarpment. The area is defined by the sharp line of the Great Escarpment, which continues almost unbroken from the Zambezi River to Angola. Another notable mountain range in the region is the Drakensberg Range. This range boasts the highest point in Southern Africa, found at Mount Ntlenyana in Lesotho.

Southern Africa hosts a wide variety of wildlife, although the animal population varies depending on the location within the region. In the semiarid plateaus which cover most of the region, Southern Africa exhibits much of the big game wildlife seen in the northeastern portions of the African continent, in particular antelopes, gazelles, zebras, elephants and the big cats. Coastal areas of Southern Africa do not host the same varieties of big game that can survive on the plateaus.

In terms of natural resources, the region has the world's largest sources of platinum and the elements chromium, vanadium, and cobalt. The region also boasts uranium, gold, titanium, iron deposits and diamonds.

History

Scholars often have difficulty defining the history of Southern Africa along the traditional linear lines of history. The continually changing political scene has jumbled the historical archives with a variety of sources, all written from a different point of view. As with any historical record pieced together from a variety of sources, it must be remembered that the authors of the historical records in the region all had separate agendas for recording the past, which changes with every passing political regime.

Southern Africa was the home to Homo Erectus, an early hominid species with upright posture and hands and teeth resembling modern humans, according to the archaeological teams that have canvassed the region looking for evidence of early life. While many people believe the the Homo Erectus was a vital link in the evolution of mankind, the connection between Homo Erectus and modern–day humans is still disputed. While followers of the theory of evolution point to the find as a huge step in discovering the human past, there are many who do not choose to believe that humans underwent a process of evolution. The debate regarding the presence of evolution is deeply intertwined with the history of Southern Africa, as the remains that are being found in the region often date prior to the Early Stone Age (about 2,500,000 to 150,000 years ago). The remains cement the debate over the validity of evolution and bring it down from theoretical heights to the tangible. If evolution exists, the Homo Erectus bones found in Southern Africa document an early form of humans who called the region their home. If not, the remains point to a separate species that, like the other wildlife of the region, found the landscape suitable for carving out a livelihood.

The remains of early Homo sapiens in Southern Africa document human civilizations reaching back 120,000 to 80,000 years ago. The most significant find for dating early human occupation was found at Klasies River Mouth Cave in Eastern Cape. The existence of early humans in Southern Africa led to an overall diversification, where humans were forced to adapt to a variety of different circumstances. This is most clearly seen through tools, as different areas across the region show a variety of tools that have been adapted to meet the most pressing needs of the area. Some scholars also argue that early Homo sapiens brought about an agricultural revolution and shifted the society from hunting and gathering to settled production.

When European explorers first reached the region, they were unable to differentiate between those individuals who continued to practice a hunting and gathering lifestyle and those who practiced settled, agricultural cultivation. The divisions between lifestyles was particularly difficult to distinguish near the Cape of Good Hope, located on the southernmost tip of Africa. In an attempt to classify the people met on their travels the Europeans simply called all inhabitants of the region Khoisan.

In the 15th century C.E. Portugal established a presence in Southern Africa while seeking a way to open up naval trade with India. The first, and perhaps most famous, Portuguese adventurer to reach Southern Africa was Vasco De Gama who sailed along the entire coast of Africa on his way to India. The first Portuguese incursions in the central portions of Southern Africa was the work of churches who were set on converting the native population. Soon after the missionaries made contact with Southern Africa, slave traders entered the region. With the Portuguese slave traders always willing to enter the market, the Kongo developed a complete monopoly over the slave exportation out of the southern portion of the African continent.

Southern Africa fell under the control of Great Britain in the early 19th century C.E., a fact that was marked by the development of the Dutch East India Company from a small outpost to a bustling metropolis of over 22,000 white settlers. After the Napoleonic Wars ravaged Europe, a humanitarian effort began which vigorously campaigned against slavery. The force of the movement was so strong that in 1807 they succeeded in persuading Britain to abolish the slave trade. The criminalization of slave trading caused a shift in exportation from Southern Africa, leading ivory to take the place of slaves as the main export from the region. The ivory trade had much the same political consequences as the slave trade in the region, and various groups began to wage war over land rich with the source of ivory, elephants.

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Southern Africa entered a period of turmoil in the early decades of the 19th century, lasting until the end of the century. It was a period of tribal warfare whose initial cause is debated but is most often understood to have been competition for trade. Devastating droughts and the decrease of the slave trade precipitated this. Battles over land ensued.

The Zulu king Shaka rose to power in the years just preceding 1820. His military brilliance led to the emergence of the Zulu as the most powerful group in the region. Shaka succeeded in consolidating numerous chiefdoms into a centralized military state. Shaka led a decade of turmoil and warfare as opposing tribes were conquered and absorbed. Though he was the leading military power, tribal warfare did not end with his assassination in 1828.

Unrest continued for the remainder of the century as tribes conquered one another, the weaker often fleeing to neighboring territories to escape the onslaught. The modern day nations of Lesotho and Zimbabwe were the destination of many, while the Kololo even crossed the Zambezi River into northern Zambia in west-central Africa. Here they fought and defeated the local Lozi kingdom. Though their reign was short-lived, the language of the region continues to be a variant of the Kololo tongue (Sotho).

The Ndebele, led by Chief Mzilikazi, set up a caste-like system in conquered territories. Though relationships with some were friendly, many chiefdoms under his domain but outside the reach of his armies began trading firearms by the 1870s in order to strengthen resistance.

In 1857 the internally divided Xhosa turned to millenarian prophecies which taught that the slaughtering of their cattle and destruction of their crops would raise from their graves

. They slaughtered their cattle and destroyed their crops in the belief that doing so would raise their ancestors from their graves and drive the whites into the sea. When the awaited salvation failed to materialize, some 30,000–40,000 Xhosa streamed across the frontier to seek work in the colony. An equal number died of starvation. Although Xhosa farther east fought the colonists again in 1877 and 1879, the slaughter of the cattle marked the end of Xhosa political and economic integrity. Thereafter the annexation of the remaining African territories proceeded peacefully, if piecemeal. The last of the independent kingdoms to pass into Cape hands was Pondoland, in 1895.

By the last quarter of the 19th century, European missionaries and African evangelists of almost every denomination were working among the peoples of Southern Africa, eroding chiefly authority and inculcating the new values and practices of the colonial world but also bringing new modes of resistance and educating many Christian Africans who later became outspoken critics of colonialism.

Culture and Religion

The population of Southern Africa can be divided based on language, with the overwhelming majority of inhabitants speaking either Khoisan or Bantu. Each language is attached to a distinct cultural identity, and unfortunately, the two cultural groups have often been at odds with one another. The first group, Khoisan speakers, were the first cultural group in the area and have called Southern Africa their home since the habitation in the region first began. Recently, Bantu speakers have began to outnumber the Khoisan speakers, resulting in a displacement of the minority group.

Colonialism had a significant effect on the population of Southern Africa by altering the traditional cultural balance in the region. European settlers in the mid 17th century brought to Southern Africa distinct ideas about cultural values and traditional kinship groups. While the Europeans were never the majority, they exercised considerable influence on the politics of the region. The most poignant impact of the European settlement was the legalized apartheid in South Africa that separated the native population along kinship lines. Apartheid was dissolved in 1994.

Currently Southern Africa, like much of the African continent, is attempting to combat the [[[AIDS]] epidemic sweeping the region. Because the political governments in Southern Africa are forced to fight the disease on such a large scale, as well as finance programs to combat poverty, valuable resources are being diverted away from the government. The financial drain is aided by corrupt politicians, a problem faced in many countries throughout Africa. Southern Africa has recently taken strides to rectify the problems of political corruption and poor economics that have hindered development in the region by developing the South African Development Community (SADC for short) in 1980.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Davidson, Basil. West Africa Before the Colonial Era: A History to 1850. Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 1998. ISBN 0582318521
Lewis, Brenda Ralph. Great Civilizations. Bath: Parragon Book Publishing, 1999. ISBN 0752561413
Costantino, Maria. The Illustrated Flag Handbook. New York: Gramercy Books, 2001. ISBN 0517218100
Encyclopedia Britannica. 2007. Southern Africa, Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Retrieved July 13, 2007.

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-unprecedented warfare in Southern Africa in the second and third decades of the 19th century; the Mfecane, or Difaqane (“Crushing”), as this warfare is known, is currently much debated.
+Southern Africa entered a period of turmoil in the early decades of the 19th century, lasting until the end of the century. It was a period of tribal warfare whose initial cause is debated but is most often understood to have been competition for trade. Devastating droughts and the decrease of the slave trade precipitated this. Battles over land ensued.
-In the early 19th century, however, the number of European ships calling at Delagoa Bay appears to have contracted, and this may have increased competition for the cattle and ivory trade. Together with a series of devastating droughts (in 1800–03, 1812, and 1816–18), this competition may better account for the debilitating wars in which the larger northern Nguni chiefdoms in Zululand were embroiled by the second decade of the century; indeed, oral sources attribute the first battles to conflicts over land. These battles occurred even before the rise of the Zulu king Shaka, whom an early historiography holds almost solely responsible for turmoil as far afield as the Cape Colony, Tanzania, and western Zambia.
+The Zulu king [[Shaka]] rose to power in the years just preceding 1820. His military brilliance led to the emergence of the Zulu as the most powerful group in the region. Shaka succeeded in consolidating numerous chiefdoms into a centralized military state. Shaka led a decade of turmoil and warfare as opposing tribes were conquered and absorbed. Though he was the leading military power, tribal warfare did not end with his assassination in 1828.
+Unrest continued for the remainder of the century as tribes conquered one another, the weaker often fleeing to neighboring territories to escape the onslaught. The modern day nations of [[Lesotho]] and [[Zimbabwe]] were the destination of many, while the Kololo even crossed the [[Zambezi River]] into northern [[Zambia]] in west-central Africa. Here they fought and defeated the local Lozi kingdom. Though their reign was short-lived, the language of the region continues to be a variant of the Kololo tongue (Sotho).
-However, divisions within the royal family culminated in his assassination in 1828.
+The Ndebele, led by Chief Mzilikazi, set up a caste-like system in conquered territories. Though relationships with some were friendly, many chiefdoms under his domain but outside the reach of his armies began trading firearms by the 1870s in order to strengthen resistance.
-Initially, Shaka's most formidable rivals were the Ndwandwe, under the leadership of Zwide, who had driven the Ngwane people led by Matiwane onto the Highveld and the Ngwane led by Sobhuza north across the Pongola river, beyond the Zulu orbit. There Sobhuza established the new conquest state of Swaziland (named for his successor, Mswati). In 1820 and again in 1823 Shaka defeated Zwide's armies, which broke into several groups. Zwide himself retired, but his generals fled northward. Clashing with one another and with the peoples in their path, the Ndwandwe (or Ngoni, as they became known) eventually established military states in northern Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania, while the Ndwandwe general
-Ngoni aristocracy monopolized cattle, incorporated the women and children of conquered peoples, and exacted tribute from those whom they were unable to permanently subdue.
-Warfare among the northern Ngoni preceded the expansion of the Zulu kingdom, and its rise does not sufficiently explain the violence in the hinterland of the Cape Colony. There the destructiveness of the settler presence was increasingly felt from the mid 18th century, as displaced groups of Khoisan and escaped slaves, carrying with them the commando system and the guns—and sometimes also the religion and the genes—of the white man, fled beyond the confines of the colony. In central and northwestern South Africa and southern Namibia these heterogenous groups of people, known variously as Basters, Griqua, Korana, Bergenaars, and Oorlams, competed for land and water with the Tswana and Nama communities and traded for or raided their ivory and cattle in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. By the 1800s the extension of the firearms frontier was disrupting the Orange River valley and intensifying conflict between the Sotho-Tswana chiefdoms beyond.
-Others shattered by the dual impact of the wars emanating from Zululand and the activities of labour raiders from the south scrambled to safety in the mountain fortresses of what is now Lesotho. There Moshoeshoe, the Koena leader, built a new kingdom at Thaba Bosiu, defeating and then incorporating his main rivals. Moshoeshoe quickly appreciated the utility of firearms and horses in the new warfare and of missionaries as diplomatic intermediaries. Shrewd diplomatic marriages extended his sway, and by the mid 19th century he had attracted some 80,000 followers, based on his ability to provide them with cattle and protection.
+In 1857 the internally divided Xhosa turned to millenarian prophecies which taught that the slaughtering of their cattle and destruction of their crops would raise from their graves
-Over the next 15 years Mzilikazi created a 20,000-strong raiding kingdom in east-central South Africa by absorbing local Sotho-speaking peoples into his regiments. Nevertheless, he was constantly harried by Griqua raiders from the south, Zulu armies from the east, and the Pedi kingdom, which was establishing itself as the most formidable power in the northeastern Transvaal region. In 1837, harassed by his many enemies and defeated by expanding white farmers from the Cape Colony, Mzilikazi retreated across the Limpopo into southwestern Zimbabwe.
-There Mzilikazi established himself relatively easily, for the Shona polities were ill-prepared for the new form of warfare and were already weakened by the earlier incursions of the Ngoni and by drought. As in northeastern South Africa, the local populace was absorbed into Ndebele age-set regiments; a castelike society evolved, with the original Ngoni on top, Sotho in the middle, and Shona at the bottom. The relationships that the Ndebele established with groups beyond their immediate settlement ranged from friendly alliances to the regular exaction of tribute and random raiding. Beyond the range of Mzilikazi's armies, however, many Shona chiefdoms remained independent; by the 1870s they were trading firearms to resist Ndebele incursions.
+. They slaughtered their cattle and destroyed their crops in the belief that doing so would raise their ancestors from their graves and drive the whites into the sea. When the awaited salvation failed to materialize, some 30,000–40,000 Xhosa streamed across the frontier to seek work in the colony. An equal number died of starvation. Although Xhosa farther east fought the colonists again in 1877 and 1879, the slaughter of the cattle marked the end of Xhosa political and economic integrity. Thereafter the annexation of the remaining African territories proceeded peacefully, if piecemeal. The last of the independent kingdoms to pass into Cape hands was Pondoland, in 1895.
-Yet another group dislodged by the warfare of this time, the composite Sotho group known as the Kololo, made its mark in west-central Africa. Defeated in warfare among the western Tswana, about 1840 Sebetwane led his followers across the Zambezi into northwestern Zambia. There they conquered the Lozi kingdom, which had been built up in the 18th century, and then dominated western Zambia. The Kololo triumph was short-lived, however; by 1864 the ravages of malaria, the accession of a weak and diseased king, and the revival of Lozi royal fortunes put an end to their hegemony. Nevertheless, a variant of Sotho is still the language of the region.
-In its constitutional development the Cape Colony followed the pattern set by Britain's other settler colonies in the 19th century. It was initially a crown colony governed by an autocratic governor, whose more extreme powers were modified by the presence in Cape Town of an articulate middle class and by the arrival in 1820 of some 5,000 British settlers. These groups demanded a free press, an independent legal system, the rooting out of corruption, and more representative institutions. After intense political struggle, Cape men were granted representative government in 1853, with a nonracial franchise that included a low property threshold, which, it was hoped, would defuse the discontent of both Afrikaners and the rebellious creolized Khoisan/Coloured population.
-In 1857 the internally divided Xhosa, exhausted by years of attrition, in the midst of severe drought and cattle disease, and undermined by the aggressive policies of the British governor Sir George Grey, turned to millenarian prophecies. They slaughtered their cattle and destroyed their crops in the belief that doing so would raise their ancestors from their graves and drive the whites into the sea. When the awaited salvation failed to materialize, some 30,000–40,000 Xhosa streamed across the frontier to seek work in the colony. An equal number died of starvation. Although Xhosa farther east fought the colonists again in 1877 and 1879, the slaughter of the cattle marked the end of Xhosa political and economic integrity. Thereafter the annexation of the remaining African territories proceeded peacefully, if piecemeal. The last of the independent kingdoms to pass into Cape hands was Pondoland, in 1895.