timeline
THE RECORD, IN ORDER
Timeline of South African History
- Dated entries
- 3,516
- Spanning
- 1304 - 2025
Early Encounters before 1652 · 18 entries
Ibn Battuta to the first Europeans rounding the Cape: trade, exploration and the societies already here.
The Colonial Cape 1652 - 1806 · 71 entries
The Dutch East India Company settlement, slavery at the Cape, and the frontier wars of dispossession.
Frontiers and Dispossession 1806 - 1867 · 155 entries
British rule, the Mfecane, the Great Trek and the destruction of independent African polities.
- 1806The Battle of Blaauwberg takes place
- 1828Extension of Khoikhoi (then referred to as Hottentots) liberties
- 1837Karl Gottlieb Mauch, purported to be the first man to discover gold in SA, is born in Stetten
- 1849The Cape Agulhas lighthouse begins operating
- 1859Sir George Gray, governor of the Cape, lays the cornerstone of the New Somerset Hospital
The Mineral Revolution 1867 - 1910 · 330 entries
Diamonds, gold, migrant labour and the South African War remake the subcontinent.
- 1867Griqua leader Andries le Fleur is born
- 1882World TB Day, observed to create public awareness that tuberculosis remains a global epidemic
- 1893Sir John Robinson forms Natal’s first ministry as Prime Minister
- 1900General Christiaan de Wet attacks Rooiwal railway station during the South African War
- 1902Railway line between Cape Town and Beira in Mozambique is completed
Union and Segregation 1910 - 1948 · 438 entries
The white Union of 1910, the 1913 Land Act, and the founding of the ANC and organised resistance.
- 1910Tryna du Toit, Afrikaans novelist, is born in De Aar, Karoo
- 1918The University of South Africa is officially opened, replacing the University of the Cape of Good Hope.
- 1925Patrice Emery Lumumba, first Prime Minister of an independent Congo, is born
- 1934Artist Bill Ainslie is born
- 1941Ahmed Timol born on the 3rd Nov 1941
Apartheid 1948 - 1994 · 1750 entries
Legislated racial rule - and four decades of defiance, armed struggle, exile and mass mobilisation.
- 1948Zakes Mda was born on this day
- 1962Nelson Mandela is sentenced to five years for “incitement and leaving South Africa illegally”
- 1974The QwaQwa homeland receives self-government status
- 1982Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu on Robben Island 5 August 1982
- 1988Rajbansi threatens not to co-operate with the James Commission
Democracy 1994 - today · 754 entries
From the 1994 election onward: the constitution, the TRC, and the unfinished work of transformation.