The Scramble for Soutpansberg? The Boers and the partition of Africa in the 1890s

Abstract

Accidents of course happen, but when they occur in clusters and on a global scale some thought needs to be given to the possibility that they had underlying causes which, while still being man-made, were not in themselves, accidental.

The most obvious umbrella under which to discuss European conquests of African communities in the late nineteenth century seems to be the "Scramble for Africa" or "the partition of Africa". The literature on these themes hardly ever includes the Boer conquests of the African communities in the northernmost parts of modern-day South Africa, the former South African Republic. Likewise, the surprisingly dense - and much of it fairly recently produced - collection of research outputs on the armed confrontations between the Boers and the Hananwa, the Lobedu and the Venda (to name but a few communities is hardly ever portrayed or explained in a broader African perspective.