It is with the origins of food-producing communities and their evolution into the contemporary societies of Southern Africa that much of the precolonial history of the subcontinent has been concerned. In a semi-arid ecological zone that extended from the Eastern Cape through the southern Free State and eastern Botswana to northern Namibia, a zone whose boundaries fluctuated over time, groups of farmers, pastoralists, and hunter-gatherers all sought to make a living, sometimes in competition with one another, sometimes in alliance. Wood and leather were used for clothing and tools, agriculture and cattle to suffice basic necessities. Labour was allocated by gender, with men responsible for hunting and gathering, women for collecting plant foods and contributing to the well-being of their household.
The farming societies that emerged in Southern Africa from early in the first millennium CE were based on the production of grain and livestock in the region mainly characterised by mostly infertile soils and unreliable rainfall. Farming communities cultivated millet, durra and legumes and pastured cattle. They also made pottery and fashioned iron tools to turn soil and cut their crops, which further enabled them to be engaged in long-distance trade. Cattle raising led to increase social stratification between rich and poor and established new divisions of labour between men and women. Cattle underpinned both material and symbolic power in Southern Africa and served to cement social obligations through bride-wealth and loan arrangements. Cattle were also an ideal medium of exchange, and the increases in herding necessitated increased specialisation and the extension of trading networks.
In the first half of the second millennium CE the majority of Southern Africa’s peoples lived as part of small communities, depending on their kinship, where political authority was exercised by a chief who, in theory, claimed to be of a royal origin, while, in practice, it was often the case of his ability to access mineral resources, be a senior hunter, or merely exercising some specific ritual skills. While the division between rich and poor already existed back then, most of the chiefdoms of Southern Africa relied on communal land for raising cattle and growing crops, which due to environmental and economical factors, was constrained from producing economic surpluses big enough to establish large empires, and to bring rulers the wealth and power needed to embark on large-scale foreign conquests. Thus, the first time when people from Souther Africa interacted with foreigners was solely due to the outsiders’ expansion into the subcontinent and not the other way around.
In the 15th century the first Europeans to enter African subcontinent were Portuguese who initially considered African coast as their prime stop on the way to find the riches of India as well as detecting supplementary sources of provision. These voyages marked the beginning of the future long-lasting international trade between Europeans and Africans. In the late 16th century the Cape had become a regular port of call for the crews of European ships, who found local people, Khoikhoi, ready to barter cattle in exchange for iron, copper, beads, tobacco, and brandy. In addition to trade Europeans provided Africans with, they also unleashed their ambitions to dominant indigenous inhabitants. With Portuguese’ desire to subordinate Africans for their personal gain, the 16th century was heralded as a century of almost constant warfare in Souther Africa. The wars soon resolved themselves into slave-trading campaigns, as Europeans demanded labour rather than tropical products in exchange for their merchandise, and African societies rapidly exhausted local supplies of war captives and criminals. States rose and fell as African rulers were ineluctably drawn into the slave trade in return for European goods and guns, and were as often destroyed by it. New colonies in the New World and their rapid expansion of plantations multiplied the numbers of slaves in the end of the 18th century. Portuguese-African trade did not go inconspicuous and from the beginning of the 17th century the former faced a severe competition from Dutch, German and British ships in the Indian Ocean. Thus, throughout the 18th century even more Europeans competed for the African local ivory, labour and cattle.
In 1652 the Dutch East India Company set up a provisioning station at the Cape. A few years later the Cape turned into a colony in which a European administration, the Dutch East India Company (VOC), ruled over a mixed population of white settlers and their servants, African and Asian slaves, Khoikhoi and San peoples. The Khoikhoi people were dependent for a livelihood on their livestock. Their stock comprised hump-backed cattle, non-woollen fat-tailed sheep and goats. The Khoikhoi men were mainly employed as herdsmen, but their activities also included hunting, constructing huts, and making leather sacks for curdled milk. They had no concept of private land ownership, and wealth depended on the number of livestock a person possessed. Poorer Khoikhoi tended the cattle and sheep of wealthy ones as part of a well-established system of clientage. The Khoikhoi people, although economically self-reliant, were appreciative of the possibility of trade with other people. There was a family well developed long distance trade with more route Khoikhoi people and Bantu-speaking people involving cattle, dagga, iron and copper. Thus, when European ships made it to the African coast the trade between Khoikhoi and Europeans was well soon established. The Khoikhoi exchanged sheep and cattle for knives, iron products, which they could use for assegai heads, and copper or brass. The climate of the Cape was well suited to Europeans, and their birth rate was high. By the end of the 18th century, Cape settlers, called Boers, were far more numerous than their Portuguese counterparts, largely because of natural increase. Despite the varied European origins of the settlers, their shared vicissitudes and the VOC’s insistence that all settlers speak Dutch and practice Calvinism led to a certain cultural uniformity and sense of group identity; the settlers began to call themselves Afrikaners.