South African history has been dominated by the interaction and conflict of several diverse ethnic groups. The aboriginal Khoisan
people have lived in the region for millennia. Most of the population,
however, trace their history to immigration since. Black South Africans
are descendants of immigrants from further north in Africa who first
entered what are now the confines of the country roughly one thousand
years ago. White South Africans are descendants of later European settlers, mainly from the Netherlands and Britain. The Coloureds
are descended at least in part from all of these groups, as well as
from slaves from the then East Indies, and there are many South Africans
of Indian and Chinese origin, descendants of labourers who arrived in
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The history South Africa
is taken here more broadly to cover the history not only of the current
South African state but of other polities in the region, including those
of the Khoisan, the several Bantu kingdoms in the region before
colonisation, the rule of the Dutch in the Cape and the subsequent rule of the British there and in Natal, and the so-called Boer republics,
including the Orange Free State and the South African Republic. South
Africa was under an official system of racial segregation and white
minority rule from 1948 known as Apartheid,
until its first egalitarian elections in 1994, when the ruling African
National Congress came to dominate the politics of the country.
Ancient and medieval historyStarting from around 500 BC, some San groups acquired livestock from further north. Gradually, hunting and gathering gave way to herding as the dominant economic activity as these San People tended to small herds of cattle and oxen. The arrival of livestock introduced concepts of personal wealth and property-ownership into San society. Community structures solidified and expanded, and chieftaincies developed. These pastoralist San People became known as Khoikhoi ('men of men'), as opposed to the still hunter-gatherer San People, whom the Colonialist Settlers referred to as
Bushmen. At the point where the two groups became intermarried, mixed and hard to tell apart, the term
Khoisan arose. Over time the Khoikhoi established themselves along the coast, while small groups of San continued to inhabit the interior.
Around 2,500 years ago Bantu peoples started migrating across sub-Saharan Africa from the Niger River Delta. The San People of Southern Africa and the Bantu-speakers didn't have any method of writing, so researchers know little of this period outside of archaeological artefacts
The Bantu-speakers had started to make their way south and eastwards in about 1000 BC, reaching the present-day KwaZulu-Natal Province by 500 CE. The Bantu-speakers had an advanced Iron Age culture, keeping domestic animals and also practicing agriculture, farming sorghum
and other crops. They lived in small settled villages. The
Bantu-speakers arrived in South Africa in small waves rather than in one
cohesive migration. Some groups, the ancestors of today's Nguni peoples (the Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, and Ndebele), preferred to live near the coast. Others, now known as the Sotho-Tswana peoples (Tswana, Pedi, and Basotho), settled in the Highveld, while today's Venda, Lemba, and Shangaan-Tsonga peoples made their homes in the north-eastern areas of South Africa
Bantu-speakers and Khoisan mixed, as evidenced by rock paintings
showing the two different groups interacting. The type of contact
remains unknown, although linguistic proof of integration survives, as several Southern Bantu languages (notably Xhosa and Zulu) incorporated many click consonants of earlier Khoisan languages. Archaeologists have found numerous Khoisan artifacts at the sites of Bantu settlements
From around 1200 AD a trade network began to emerge just to the North as is evidenced at such sites as Mapungubwe. Additionally, the idea of sacred leadership emerged – concept that transcends English terms such as “Kings” or “Queens”.
[1] Sacred leaders were elite members of the community, types of prophets, people with supernatural powers and the ability to predict the future.
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذه الصورة]Looking out over the floodplains of the Luvuvhu River (right) and the Limpopo River (Far distance and left).
Through interactions and trade with Muslim traders plying the Indian ocean as far south as present day Mozambique – the region emerged as a trade centre producing gold and ivory and trading for glass beads and porcelain from as far away as China.
[1] 
موضوع: South AFRICA TOURISM.............. 
الإثنين 25 أبريل - 19:33
