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Most trace thier ancestery to Bantu-speaking peoples who settled throughout between A.D. 100 and A.D. 1000.
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Jan van Riebeeck, representing the Dutch East India Company, founds the Cape Colony at Table Bay
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Boers rebel against the British, sparking the first Anglo-Boer War. Conflict ends with a negotiated peace. Transvaal is restored as a republic.
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Dutch settlers fight the British in the Boer War. Britain eventually gains control of South Africa.
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British troops gather on the Transvaal border and ignore an ultimatum to disperse. The second Anglo-Boer War begins.
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Black South Africans founded the African National Congress (ANC) in 1912 in hopes of gaining power
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Feb 21, The SS Mendi steamship sank after being accidentally rammed in the British Channel by the SS Darro, an empty meat ship bound for Argentina. 607 members of the South African Labour Corps, 9 officers and 33 crew lost their lives. The crew of the Darro made no attempt to rescue survivors
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In 1948 the whites set up a system of apartheid wiych made it ilegal for differend races and ethnic groups to mix, thus limiting the rights of blacks
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Jan 14, There was a Black-Indian race rebellion in Durban, South Africa that left some 142 dead. 2 days of murder, pillage and arson left some 50 Indians dead, more than 500 injured and thousands in makeshift refugee camps. The Africans, whose toll was 87 killed and 550 injured, believed they'd won the Battle of Cato Manor.
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In South Africa Drum magazine was founded in Johannesburg. Drum journalists living in Sophiatown, a racially-mixed suburb of Johannesburg, soon began producing the best investigative journalism, short fiction, satirical humour, social and political commentary, and musical criticism South Africa had ever seen.
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Donald Woods founded and edited the Daily Dispatch until 1977 when the government put him under effective house arrest.
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after nearly 80 years of British colonial rule, Botswana became independant in 1966. Today it has one of Africas strongest democracies!
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Sep 6, South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd was stabbed to death by a deranged page during a parliamentary session in Cape Town. Demitrios Tsafendas was reported to have been insane with the belief that a tapeworm inside his head instructed him to do the killing. In 2001 Henk Van Woerden authored "The Assassin: A Story of Race and Rage in the Land of Apartheid.
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Nov 10, In South Africa Durban human rights attorney Griffiths Mxenge was found slain. Mxenge was stabbed 46 times by a police death squad that included Dirk Coetzee. In July 1985 his wife Victoria Mxenge was attacked by four men in the driveway of her home in Umlazi, Durban. She was stabbed and shot shortly after disembarking from a family friend’s vehicle.
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Nadine Gordimer, 1991 Nobel Prize winner, authored "July’s People." It was set in a futuristic South Africa roiling from racial revolution. In 2001 it was struck from the approved reading list for the 12th grade by the Education Department of Gauteng.
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Apr 11, Invoking emergency powers, the government of South Africa outlawed any action, word or written document protesting the practice of detention without trials or calling for the release of detainees.
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Once ruled by frace, the people of Comoros declared thier independance in 1974. since then, they have suffered from fighting among political groups for control of the goverment.
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For more than 40 years people inside and outside South America protested against the practice of apartheid. Many black africans were jailed for thier actions in the long struggle for justice and equality.The United Nations declared that apartheid was a crime against humanity many countries cut of trade with south america. Fianally in 1991apartheid was ended
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Start of multi-party talks. De Klerk repeals remaining apartheid laws, international sanctions lifted. Major fighting between ANC and Zulu Inkatha movement.
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Mar 24, South African Pres F.W. de Klerk admitted for the 1st time that his country had built 6 nuclear bombs, but that the weapons had been dismantled.
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South Africa held its very first democratic election in April 1994, electing Nelson Mandela as the first black president in south america!
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Truth and Reconciliation Commission chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu begins hearings on human rights crimes committed by former government and liberation movements during apartheid era.
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Jan 21, A paramilitary force killed 13 civilians in their sleep in the KwaMakutha Zulu township (KwaZulu-Natal black homeland). In 1996 former defense minister Magnus Malan and 20 others were charged with authorizing the killing. The first six defendants of the Inkatha Freedom party were acquitted by Judge Jan Hugo. Former intelligence officer Johan Opperman admitted to planning the attack.
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ANC prevails in local elections. Recently-formed Democratic Alliance captures nearly a quarter of the votes. The Inkatha Freedom Party wins 9%.
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South Africa hosts the World Cup soccer tournament.
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Former ANC youth leader Julius Malema is charged with money laundering over a government tender awarded to a company partly owned by his family trust. Mr Malema says the case is a politically motivated attempt to silence his campaign against President Zuma, in particular over the Marikana shootings.
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Police open fire on workers at a platinum mine in Marikana, killing at least 34 people, and leaving at least 78 injured and arresting more than 200 others. Prosecutors drop murder charges in September against 270 miners after a public outcry, and the government sets up a judicial commission of inquiry in October.
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Members of a white supremacist group accused of bombings in Johannesburg's Soweto township in 2002, and of plotting to murder Nelson Mandela, are found guilty and given long sentences.
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Oct 10, South African President F.W. de Klerk announced that eight prominent political prisoners, including African National Congress official Walter Sisulu, would be unconditionally freed, but that Nelson Mandela would remain imprisoned.
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Apr 10, Chris Hani, leader of the South African Communist Party, was killed by Janusz Walus and Clive Derby-Lewis. The 2 men appealed for amnesty in 1997. Amnesty was denied and the 2 continued to serve life sentences
