AAA Ch. 3

Another crazy day of learning new stuff about South Africa! Shortly after the colonization of Africa, the British granted South Africa their independence in 1910. This should have resulted in the development of the country for the people, but what happened was the powerful took control! And the power was not native South Africans, it was immigrant Europeans who called themselves Afrikaners. The Afrikaners laterally fought tribes off of the best lands for growing crops, access to water, and natural resources.

Afrikaners were in charge of all the businesses and governments in South Africa and they used ancient tribal differences to keep the majority Black Africans down. For nearly 80 years this was the system of control in Africa, the Whites in power and the Blacks and Asians (mainly Indians) were the labor force. Over the span of time ancient tribal differences between tribes of Black Africans began to give way to an idea of repression by foreign rulers.

The Black Africans were very sad, but there was little they could do, the Afrikaners were in control of the military and did a very good job of limiting the Black Africans from gaining any resources to resist their rule. Instead of a violent conflict the Black Africans needed to come up with a way to oust the Afrikaners.