SOUTH AFRICAN UNION. —
I. GEOGRAPHY
Dominion (since 1910) forming part of the British Commonwealth and consisting of a federation of four units (provinces) of very different territorial extent and demographic importance, as appears from the following table.| Provinces | Area in sq. km. | Population, in thousands (1946 census) | Density per sq. km. (population in thousands) |
| Cape Province | 717,839 | 4,045.8 | 6 |
| Orange Free State | 128,580 | 876.6 | 7 |
| Natal | 91,382 | 2,197.9 | 2 |
| | 1,223,854 | 11,391.9 | 9 |
The territory of the South African Union corresponds to the southernmost extremity of the African continent and is bounded on the north by the courses of the Orange, Molopo, Tlapan, Marico, and Limpopo rivers and by the Lebombo Highlands. Essentially, it consists of a plateau rising in steps from a narrow coastal strip, interrupted by rocky promontories, the most notable of which, Table Mountain (Table Mt., 1,082 m.), which dominates Cape Town, ends at the Cape of Good Hope.
The plateau extends along its southern margin in the Drakensberg Mountains (Mountains of the Dragons), which locally (in the Orange Free State) assume an alpine aspect (Mont-aux-Sources, 3,280 m.) and constitute the most important hydrographic node of the country. The climate, due to the altitude (1,000–1,300 m. on the plateau), is mild and healthy, but the rainfall, abundant along the southeastern summit, diminishes toward the west and much more rapidly and decisively toward the interior. Thus, one passes gradually from the coastal strip (of subtropical character, cultivated with cotton, maize, sugarcane, rice, tea, bananas, in the east; of Mediterranean type, with wheat and especially tree crops, in the south and west) to the steppes of the plateau, with a distinctly pastoral vocation, small agricultural oases, and forests corresponding to the high, humid mountains of the Transvaal and Orange Free State provinces, and finally to the semidesert regions of the north, bordering the Kalahari (on the right bank of the middle and lower Orange River).
The Cape Province (formerly Colony) was, until recently, the most important region of southern Africa. Its climate permits agriculture similar to that of Italy, and it provides the wild pastureland for sheep. In the central basin of the Orange River lie the rich diamond fields centered on Kimberley, while, beyond those of East London and Port Elizabeth, the province boasts the magnificent port of Cape Town, a key point of the trans-African railway and the country’s leading export emporium. The Natal Province is a mountainous region, but along the coasts it is well suited to various tropical crops. The Transvaal and the Orange Free State, once independent Boer Republics and later British colonies, are both livestock-raising territories; but for more than a century the Transvaal has become the world’s leading gold producer and, more recently, an industrial country, given the great wealth of its subsoil, which recent decades have brought increasingly to light.
In the Union as a whole, more than agriculture (maize first of all; fruit trees, vines, tea, sugarcane, etc.), livestock raising is economically significant (32 million head of cattle, 6 million goats, 12 million sheep), which provides meat (including frozen), hides and dairy products, and above all wool, of which the South African Union is today one of the world’s major suppliers. But the Union finds the foundations of its prosperity in the immense mineral resources at its disposal: gold and diamonds (first place in the world), coal (the largest deposits on the continent), iron, manganese, chromite, tin, copper, asbestos, etc.
This variety and wealth of raw materials has allowed the development of a flourishing industry, which the two recent world wars have strongly stimulated and which has hitherto found its only limits in the low purchasing power of the domestic market and in the great distances that, conversely, separate the Union from the world’s major consumer markets.
In the Dominion, executive power is vested in the Governor-General; legislative power in an elective bicameral Parliament. In addition to English, Afrikaans is considered an official language.
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II. HISTORY
No information exists regarding the history of the indigenous populations and lands of present-day South Africa before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, although the habitability of those regions even in prehistoric times is attested by the discovery, in past decades, of human skulls and bones.Europeans first learned of the Cape of Good Hope after the voyage of the Portuguese Bartolomeu Dias, who, in an attempt to reach the Indies and on the return journey in the early months of 1488, chanced upon II. The Cape was then rounded in 1497 by Vasco da Gama, who on Christmas Day of that same year sighted Natal, which he named in memory of the feast. The Portuguese, however, never settled in southern Africa and indeed avoided landing in the Cape region because of the hostility of the local inhabitants, who in 1510 had killed Francisco de Almeida, first viceroy of the Portuguese Indies, when he came ashore in Table Bay. With the hesitant rule of the Portuguese royal house and the union of that kingdom with the Spanish crown, Philip II, engaged in war against the rebellious Netherlands, forbade Dutch ships from calling at Lisbon during their voyages to the Indies. This measure, intended to strike at the commercial and maritime activity of the United Provinces, led in 1652 to the occupation by the Dutch East India Company of the Cape of Good Hope, where a resupply station was established for ships bound for the East Indies. Although the Company opposed European immigration and territorial expansion, the very nature of the Cape as a resupply port later encouraged the arrival of settlers (Dutch, Germans, French Huguenots), who promoted the cultivation of agricultural products and livestock raising.
The newcomers gradually extended their area of occupation ever further; in search of pastureland they moved eastward, came into contact with the Khoikhoi, who were forced to abandon their lands, and facilitated the importation of black and Malay slaves. Thus, by the end of the 18th century, the resupply station had greatly expanded and given rise to a European colony of about 30,000 inhabitants. During the revolutionary and Napoleonic period, England, after the occupation of the Netherlands by France, seized the Cape in 1795 and held it until 1803. The region was returned, following the Treaty of Amiens (1802), to the Batavian Republic, a French satellite state (the Dutch East India Company having meanwhile gone bankrupt), but the resumption of the Franco-British armed conflict led the British to reoccupy the Cape in 1806, proclaiming their sovereignty over it pursuant to the Treaty of 13 August 1814 with the King of the Netherlands. The policy pursued in the colony by England greatly embittered the Dutch settlers, who on the one hand were forced to endure the imposition of English as the sole official language and on the other saw their interests seriously harmed by the support given by the new rulers to the indigenous populations.
The Boers (this being the name of the Dutch-speaking colonists) therefore decided to seek a new homeland where they might live independently and according to their own laws. This was the reason for the so-called Great Trek, the emigration from the Cape Colony between 1836 and 1846 of some ten thousand people. They proceeded eastward into Natal and northward toward the Orange and Vaal rivers.
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**SOUTH AFRICAN UNION - The Cathedral of Cape Town.**
**Print from 1866.**
SOUTH AFRICAN UNION
SOUTH AFRICAN UNION - Darling Street in Cape Town.
The British, however, did not tolerate the formation of a free Boer republic in Natal, which they occupied militarily in 1842 and annexed two years later to the Cape Colony. Most of the Boers therefore undertook a further migration beyond the Vaal. In 1848, the governor of the Cape Colony, Harry Smith, had extended British sovereignty also over the Orange and Vaal regions, but on 23 February 1854, by the Treaty of Bloemfontein, the British renounced this and recognized Boer independence. In the same year, the Orange Free State was proclaimed. Two years earlier (Sand River Treaty, 17 January 1852), the British had also recognized the independence of the Boers residing beyond the Vaal. When attempts (which nearly provoked armed conflict between the Boers north and south of the Vaal) to establish a single Boer state failed, the Transvaal colonists established the South African Republic (Transvaal) in 1858. The discovery of diamond and gold deposits in the two republics after 1870 renewed British interest in these regions. This eventually led to the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, waged with extreme determination by the Empire. After a heroic and unequal struggle under the leadership of the two presidents Kruger and Steyn, the two republics were forced to conclude the Peace of Vereeniging (31 May 1902) and recognized British sovereignty on the promise that their traditions would be respected (parafiscal equality of the Dutch language with English) and that self-government would be granted, which occurred in 1906 in the Transvaal and in 1907 in the Orange Free State.
Subsequently, the four colonies (the Natal had enjoyed self-governing status since 1893) began examining the possibility of closer union among themselves. Many obstacles had to be overcome. Particularly contentious was whether to grant voting rights to non-Europeans, who in the Cape Colony had enjoyed them since 1853. This obstacle was surmounted by recognizing the status quo (voting rights for non-Europeans in the Cape but not in the former republics) and by inserting an article in the new unionist Constitution prohibiting any amendment to this matter unless approved by a two-thirds majority of both Houses of the South African Parliament sitting jointly. The new Constitution, the South Africa Act, approved by the British Parliament and promulgated on 20 September 1909, came into force on 31 May 1910, giving life to the Union of South Africa with its own government and parliament. Executive power was vested in a governor-general, representative of the Crown, who appointed ministers, who in turn had to be members of Parliament.
The first Prime Minister of the Union was General Botha. At the outbreak of the First World War, the Union of South Africa, despite strong opposition from some Boers, declared war on Germany, and its armed forces proceeded to occupy German South-West Africa and took part in operations in German East Africa. After Botha’s death in 1919, General Smuts succeeded him as prime minister, strongly favoring England. Opposed by the nationalists, Smuts lost power following the 1924 elections, in which his South African Party failed to secure a majority, to General Hertzog, who pursued a policy aimed at fully asserting the parity of rights of Afrikaners (South Africans of Afrikaans, i.e., Cape Dutch, speech).
Having formed a coalition with Smuts’s party in 1933, Hertzog continued to head the government until 4 September 1939, when his proposal to maintain the Union’s neutrality in the Second World War was rejected by Parliament. The new cabinet, led by Smuts, declared war on the Axis powers and decisively supported the British Empire’s war effort. In the elections of 6 May 1948, the majority of the electorate gave its votes to the Nationalist coalition of D. F. Malan, whose government was characterized by a clear racist stance in favor of the Europeans of the Union of South Africa, with the aim both of safeguarding the purity of the white race and of preventing non-white populations from achieving any real political weight.