South African Americans

In 1652, the Dutch built the Fort of Good Hope on the Western South African coast to supply fresh water and food to ships travelling around the Cape. Employees of the company grew wheat on small lots and bought cattle from the Khoikhoi, local cattle breeders. A couple of wealthy landowners imported the first batch of black slaves in 1658 from Dahomey to convert the original Dutch small holdings into larger wheat and grape plantations. Gradually, a culturally Dutch settler society emerged consisting of Protestants fleeing religious persecution in France and Germany.
These settlers were urban craftspeople and traders, while most farmers employed from Mozambique, Madagascar and the focal point of Dutch colonial ambitions in the East Indies, Indonesia.
The Union of South Africa, which came into existence in 1910 remained to be given this status before 1914. No British colonist had settled in South Africa until Great Britain retained the former Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope (1814). They called this ’Cape Colony’ and soon there arrived some thousands of British settlers who, though outnumbered by the Dutch, had the backing of the British government in introducing British laws.This opened a period of whittling away of the privileges of the Boers. They were irked by any limitation of their freedom to deal with the native Africans as they wished. Their indignation was aroused when (as a result of the abolition of slavery in British territories) some 35 000 of their slaves were freed with inadequate compensation. Convinced that the British would not abandon a policy favourable to the native Africans, a great exodus of Boers took place in 1835. This ’Great Trek’ north across the Orange River was important in forming the Afrikaner consciousness. It was thus the beginning of a long period during which the Anglo-Saxons, Boers, and Africans struggled to live
They began to legislate against Asian immigrants, mainly of the Indian variety. The modern South African Indian community is largely descended from Indians who arrived in South Africa from 1860 onwards. Of the first 342 came on board the Truro from Madras,followed by the Belvedere from Calcutta. Around 150 000 were transported as indentured labourers to work on the sugarcane plantations of Natal Colony over a period of 5 decades, then as indentured coal miners and railway workers.When they agreed on a draft constitution for the South African Union, it was on the terms of equality for the Dutch and English languages and provided for government by an elected assembly formed according to the electoral regulations in each province. In the Boer provinces, the franchise was confined to Caucasian men. When Europeans spoke of a racial problem in South Africa they meant the problems between the British and Boers, whose conciliation was the most urgent. The defects of the settlement would take some time to appear. When they did, it would be because the historical sense of the Afrikaner proved tougher than people had hoped, and the transformation of South African society that began with the industrialization of the Rand goldfields’, which would give light to the issue of black