Colonial South Africa Man has inhabited South Africa for more than 100,000 years. At the time of the first European contact, the dominant indigenous groups were the Xhosa and Zulu peoples. In 1487, the Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias was the first European to reach the southernmost point of Africa. King John II of Portugal named it Cabo da Boa Esperan a (Cape of Good Hope), as it led to the riches of India. In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck established a trading station which later became Cape Town. Cape of Good Hope was under the administration of the Dutch East India Company until 1795. Many European settlers joined the colony. They became known as Boers , a Dutch word meaning farmers. They were mainly of Dutch origin, but included German Protestants and French Huguenots1. The British took control of the Cape of Good Hope area in 1795 to prevent it from falling into the hands of the French, who had invaded the region. Given its interests in Australia and India, Great Britain also wanted to use Cape Town as a port for its merchants long voyages. The British returned Cape Town to the Dutch in 1803, but soon afterwards the Dutch East India Company declared bankruptcy2. The Cape Colony was annexed to the British Empire in 1806. During the 1830s, approximately 12,000 Boers departed from Cape Town, where they were subjected to British control, and migrated to the future Natal, Orange Free State and Transvaal regions. They founded the Boer Republics: the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. The discovery of diamonds in 1867, and later gold, increased economic growth and immigration, but also intensified the struggle for the control of these resources between the indigenous people and Europeans, and between the Boers and the British. The Boer Republics resisted British expansion during the first Boer War (1880-81), but had to surrender in the Second Boer War (1899-1902). Since most white South Africans were in favour of independence, the Cape and Natal colonies (in 1909) together with the Orange Free State and Transvaal (in 1910) joined together into one single state, the Union of South Africa, which became a dominion of the British Empire. The union was effectively granted independence from Britain by the Statute of Westminster in 1931. While in colonial years racial discrimination had been informal, in the Boer Republics and subsequent South African governments, a system of segregation, later known as apartheid, became legally institutionalized. The government established three classes of racial stratification: white, coloured and black, with rights and restrictions for each. While the white minority enjoyed a high standard of living, the Black majority remained disadvantaged in everything: income, education, housing and life expectancy. An enormous movement for the defence of civil rights in South Africa arose all over the world. After years of internal protests, activism and insurgency by black South Africans, in 1990 the government finally took the first steps to dismantle this system; among these, the release of black leader Nelson Mandela from prison after 27 years incarceration on a sabotage sentence. South Africa had its first universal elections in 1994 and the ANC (African National Congress) won by an overwhelming majority. It has been in power ever since. 1. Huguenots: members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France. 2. bankruptcy: when a company cannot pay its debts.