Southern AfricaSouthern Africa

Southern Africa:

Human Perspective

• This paragraph in the book talks about a armed men attacking a white farmer whose family has lived in Zimbabwe for generations. The book then talks about the colonial legacy and white folks owning a bunch of the land.

• What the book leaves out is Zimbabwe’s dictator Robert Mugabe, who has been in power since Britain ended colonial rule there in 1980.

• He has pushed radical land reform and redistribution.

• One law says that the government can take white-owned land without providing compensation for the purpose of redistributing it to blacks (usually Mugabe cronies).

• Mugabe uses whites as scapegoats for his own mismanagement of the country. Somehow they’re to blame for Zimbabwe having one of the world’s lowest life expectancies and one of its highest inflation rates.

• Whites are attacked, persecuted, and sometimes killed. Mugabe and his cronies are essentially acting as African Nazis. In fact, his right hand man gave himself the nickname, ‘Hitler.’

• The point is, Mugabe is fomenting the violence and instability of his country.

Language

• Most of the people in this area are Bantu-speaking. Which makes sense since the Bantu spread throughout the southern half of the continent.

• You also, though, have plenty of English and Afrikaans.

• Afrikaans derives from Dutch from when the Dutch colonized South Africa.

Great Zimbabwe

• This was a city that flourished from around 1200 to 1450 by a Bantu people called the Shona.

• It was the center of a gold-trading empire, but then suddenly abandoned around 1450.

Mutapa Empire

• The Mutapa Empire replaced Great Zimbabwe and was also involved in the gold trade (at least at first – once the gold was exhuasted, they switched to slaves).

• It didn’t last long, though, and was conquered by the Portuguese in 1629.

European influence

• The Europeans, primarily the Dutch and English, colonized the area.

• The Zulus suffered for it.

• The Zulus were a warrior tribe in the area who conquered a lot of territory. The Dutch and English started encroaching, however.

• By 1878, the British and the Zulus were at war.

• There were several dramatic battles.

• In the Battle of Isandlwana, 20,000 Zulus surprised a British force of about 1,500 and pasted them.

• The next day at Rorke’s Drift, the British waged a defensive battle against the Zulus. 139 British soldiers held out against 5,000 Zulus.

• They fired their rifles so rapidly, the barrels started glowing and the biggest hazard was rounds popping off in the breach.

• The Zulus were ultimately defeated and were treated as second-class citizens in South Africa, which brings us to…

South African apartheid

• This was the official system of racial segregation that existed in South Africa from 1948 to 1992.

• It was merely unofficial before 1948.

• Nonwhites were forced to live in certain areas and to carry identification papers. Even different races of nonwhite people were segregated from each other.

• They were not allowed to work in certain professions and could not participate in the government.

• The had separate facilities for everything that were supposed to be separate but equal, but weren’t.

• They were economically disadvantaged and kept that way.

Apartheid signs

• There was much resistance to it and sometimes it turned violent.

• Nelson Mandela, as head of the African National Congress, fought against it.

• He was actually imprisoned from 1967 to 1990 for his opposition.

• In 1991, apartheid was finally repealed and a new constitution was adopted in 1993.

• There’s still racial strife and tension and some civil unrest.

• The key is non-violence and reconciliation.

• You’re too young to remember, but apartheid was a big deal in the 1980’s.

• There was a great deal of opposition to it in the U.S. and the West.

• It was a cause celebre and there were even censures and trade embargoes against South Africa.

Economy

• Southern Africa has probably the best economy on the continent.

• It doesn’t have quite the political strife that is seen elsewhere, its industrial base is solid, and it has a relatively educated workforce.

• There’s still problems, though, which mainly stem from the inequality among the races generated by segregation.

• Minority populations are frequently less well-educated and live in poorer areas.

Culture

• Ethnic groups have a variety of celebrations featuring dances which your book talks about. On the next slide is the Chewa dancing.

A music group from South Africa called Ladysmith Black Mambazo. They’ve achieved some popularity outside of the continent.