Until the mid 19th century the British had only sought more land (they had so little of it at home), and the Dutch more freedom to do their own thing and build their enormous, if rather ugly, churches; however, between 1867 and 1871 various rich deposits of diamonds were found on a farm in Griqualand West, causing the encroaching Dutch and the beaten natives to fight each other once more in order to secure the ownership of this hoard. The British stepped in and annexed Griqualand West to restore peace. Sorry, we shouldn't have done it. It would have been better to wait until each side had killed off the other; we would have got hold of the diamonds anyway.
Sensing more trouble to come, the British then went on and annexed the Transvaal which led within three years to the first Boer War which broke out in 1880. At this stage, South Africa was undergoing dramatic changes, brought about by the discovery of diamonds. Railways were being built to bring diggers and prospectors to the fields, roads were hacked through what had hitherto been deemed impenetrable mountains; the country was no longer a smattering of farmers eeking out a living around the Cape and fighting their way into the interior; it was now heading towards becoming a land of mineral wealth and value to the rest of the world. We whites should have known better than to allow this to happen. We should have left there and then. We are sorry.
The African, having nothing to offer but his labour, came in droves to the diggings and, being smart despite his rural background, began to make his fortune. We should not have let this happen. We are sorry. It caused rifts in families, untold strife, and a huge human movement whose wave is still breaking on our shores today. We should have imported our own white labour for the diamond fields and allowed the African to continue to farm his cattle, eat his mealies, and sell his daughters.
Then, as if this was not enough, gold was discovered on the Reef in 1886. More African labour left the kraals in search of wealth and fortune. We are sorry. We should not have allowed it. We should have mined the gold on our own and taken the spoils with us when we left. After all, finders keepers!
Because of the greed of the colonialists the cities of Kimberley and Johannesburg were founded in the middle of nowhere; resulting from the cupidity of the native black, steps had to be taken to accommodate those who sought work in the cities, and so, temporary shanty towns for all races were allowed to mushroom out of the veld. We are sorry. It was the start of a new problem.
1902 brought the end of the second Boer war; it was the end of tremendous suffering for both British and Afrikaner and, in retrospect, achieved little other than to unite the whole of South Africa in the Act of Union in1910. One of Britain's great mistakes was to beat warring factions into submission, establish law and order, and then give the land back to those from whom it had been taken. We apologise; we should have kept it all for ourselves and forced those who came before us to live under the British colonial yoke.
In 1913 the National Party was formed. What had hitherto just been various small groups of people living off the land, fighting with each other from time to time but largely keeping to themselves, had suddenly become a country and a population which required organising and governing, something that the British were particularly good at, and some sort of order needed to be established to avoid the anarchy and lawlessness of the Wild West gradually taking over. In order to protect the rights of the wandering blacks, 912 million hectares of land was put aside for their sole use. For the first time, the blacks actually had the legal right to occupy and farm this enormous area.
In 1928 Iscor was formed. In order to prevent further strife between black and white, a form of segregation was attempted. It failed.
1929 saw the first National Party government come to power, but for various reasons it was a dismal failure, and in 1933 a coalition government was established under the then United Party. Because only a very small proportion of the land was arable and because both blacks and whites saw enormous wealth being wrested from the ground, large numbers of both races had abandoned the rural areas and descended on the cities, whose streets, they believed, were paved with gold. They both lived in incredible hardship and poverty - a situation which could not be allowed to continue.
1936 saw a further 6,2 million hectares of land added to the initial 912 million hectares for exclusive black use. We were wrong; we should not have allowed black legal tenure of any of the land and rather kept it for ourselves. Sorry.
By 1944 Jan Hofmeyr had lost a great deal of his support because of his promotion of the interests of black people in this country, and in 1948 the dreaded Nationalists came to power and Grand Apartheid followed soon after. We really are sorry about this one.
