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South Africa have a complicated past

South Africa have a complicated past. So have a cup of tea and Let’s talk about it.

Many moons ago the only people in South Africa were the Khoi and the San. Later Blacks would join them. Then on 6 April 1652 a guy from Holland landed in Cape Town. His name was Jan van Riebeeck. He became known as the founder of South Africa. With Jan van Riebeeck more white people came to South Africa known worldwide as Boers.

A war happened

Britain decided to stake a claim to South Africa and so the Boers on the one hand and the British on the other hand fought each other for the land. Two sets of white people fighting in a land whose original occupants and therefore main occupants were people of colour. Britain won the war and so South Africa was colonized.

It’s complicated

This is however not where the story end. Pour yourself another cup of tea. Later the British would give the country back to the Boers after fighting 2 Boer wars in South Africa. The Chinese were brought in to work in the mines, the Germans helped the Boers in the wars. There were a few years of people living together in relative harmony with different races living among each other.

More to come

Unfortunately not everyone liked the peace and harmony. Some dudes decided it would be a good idea to start a Good neighborliness campaign called Apartheid. According to those who were involved in the decision making the idea was that each race would be given la nd where they would rule and care for their own people. Instead it resulted in racial hate and displacement. People of colour were treated inhumanely. Apartheid turned out to be the worst idea ever. It eventually ended when Nelson Mandela was freed from prison and South Africa became a Democracy.

The smell of roses

While South Africa is now a Democracy with equal human rights, everything is not hunky dory. There are race tensions among all the different races, corruption in Government, poor service delivery and more. South Africa however still keeps the gold medal for giving over power from one nation to another without it ending in a bloodbath. It says a lot about all the different people who live in South Africa.