40 Fun Facts About South African History

Vasco da Gama named the coast of today's KwaZulu-Natal 'Natal' after sighting it on which day in 1497?

Christmas Day is 'Natal' in Portuguese, the name Vasco da Gama gave the coast as he sailed for India; it outlived the 1994 merger of Natal province with the KwaZulu homeland to form KwaZulu-Natal.

South Africa's longest river was named in 1779 by Robert Gordon, a VOC garrison commander, after which royal dynasty?

The House of Orange, the Dutch ruling family, was honoured by Gordon on a trip into the interior from Cape Town; the Orange River's name has nothing to do with the colour of its water.

Mandela cast his 1994 vote at Ohlange school so that he could lay a wreath on which first ANC president's grave?

John Dube founded Ohlange with his wife Nokutela as the Zulu Christian Industrial School and is buried in its grounds; Mandela chose it so that his first vote was cast beside the grave of the movement's first leader.

Which future British prime minister, captured as a war correspondent in 1899, escaped a Boer prison camp in Pretoria?

Winston Churchill was covering the war for the Morning Post when Boers ambushed his armoured train near Chieveley; that December he escaped, hid in a mine and stowed away on freight trains to Portuguese East Africa.

Women who marched on Pretoria against pass laws in 1956 sang that to strike a woman is to strike what?

A rock is what prime minister Strijdom had struck, the marchers sang, and the line became a slogan of women's resistance; up to 20,000 women took anti-pass petitions to the Union Buildings on 9 August 1956, now National Women's Day.

A teenage prophetess's 1856 visions led the Xhosa to kill what, expecting the dead to rise and expel the settlers?

Their cattle, the basis of Xhosa wealth and food, were slaughtered on the word of Nongqawuse, and crops were destroyed too; in the famine that followed in 1856–57, tens of thousands of Xhosa starved to death.

The National Party won the 1948 election that brought in apartheid despite doing what?

Winning fewer votes than its rival did not stop Daniel Malan's Nationalists: the United Party polled more votes, but first-past-the-post and over-weighted rural seats handed the Nationalists and their allies more seats.

In 1893 a young Mohandas Gandhi was thrown off a train for refusing to leave a first-class carriage at which station?

Pietermaritzburg's station is where Gandhi sat shivering all night, weighing whether to go home to India or protest for his rights; he chose to protest, boarded the next day, and stayed in South Africa for 21 years.

At the 1838 Battle of Blood River, a few hundred Voortrekkers held off thousands of Zulu from inside what defensive formation?

A wagon laager, ox wagons drawn into a closed ring, let the trekkers fire from cover at attackers who could not reach them; the date, 16 December, long sacred to Afrikaners, is now the Day of Reconciliation.

Mandela wore a No. 6 Springbok jersey to hand the 1995 Rugby World Cup to which captain?

Francois Pienaar, asked after the final about the support of the Ellis Park crowd, answered that the team had not had 60,000 South Africans behind it but 43 million.

Which animal, made of wood covered in gold foil, is the most famous artefact from the medieval kingdom of Mapungubwe?

A rhinoceros of gold foil over wood lay in a royal grave on Mapungubwe Hill, near where the Shashe meets the Limpopo. The kingdom exported gold and ivory to the east coast in exchange for glass beads, cloth and glazed ceramics.

At which 1879 battle did a Zulu army overrun a British camp days after the invasion of Zululand began?

Isandlwana, on 22 January 1879, saw some 20,000 Zulu warriors overrun about 1,800 British, colonial and African troops, killing more than 1,300; Britain had to rebuild its force before taking Ulundi in July.

The 16 June anniversary of the 1976 Soweto uprising, which began as a school protest, is marked by which public holiday?

Youth Day remembers the schoolchildren who marched against the Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974, which forced black schools to teach half their subjects in Afrikaans. Internationally the same date is the Day of the African Child.

Which country, run by South Africa as South West Africa from 1915, finally became independent in March 1990?

Namibia was a German colony seized by South African troops in 1915, then held as a League of Nations mandate that Pretoria refused to give up for decades. The United Nations had renamed the territory in 1968.

What could the Truth and Reconciliation Commission grant someone who fully disclosed a politically motivated crime?

Amnesty from prosecution, civil as well as criminal, was the commission's trade for truth: applicants had to show their acts were political and proportionate and hold nothing back. The first hearing was televised live on 15 April 1996.

Besides resentment of British rule, which 1834 decision across the empire helped push Boer families onto the Great Trek?

The abolition of slavery hit slave-owning Boers hard, since the compensation Britain offered had to be collected in Britain itself, a costly voyage away; trek parties soon left to find land beyond British reach.

Which Zulu king had Voortrekker leader Piet Retief and his party put to death in February 1838 after a land treaty?

Dingane, who took the throne after the assassination of his half-brother Shaka in 1828, killed Retief's delegation at his royal kraal after signing over land, then sent regiments against the trekker camps near Weenen.

From 1860, indentured labourers from India were shipped to Natal mainly to work on which crop?

Sugar cane plantations on the humid Natal coast took the first shiploads, and later arrivals went to coal mines and railways; their descendants stayed on and still live mostly in and around Durban.

The defenders of Rorke's Drift, who held off thousands of Zulu in 1879, were awarded eleven of which medal?

Victoria Cross awards went to eleven defenders, who fought behind hastily built walls of mealie bags and biscuit boxes at the mission station.

Which Zulu king, deposed after the British burned his capital Ulundi in 1879, later travelled to England and met the Queen?

Cetshwayo was first exiled to Cape Town; after his 1882 visit Britain returned him to part of Zululand, but his rival Zibhebhu attacked within months and the restoration failed.

Which summit saw the final, decisive battle of the First Boer War, a Boer victory in February 1881?

Majuba Hill was occupied overnight by General Colley's force, which Boer marksmen then picked off as they climbed its slopes; Colley was killed, and within months Britain restored self-government to the Transvaal.

Which British campaigner exposed conditions in the Boer War concentration camps where thousands of Boer civilians died?

Emily Hobhouse, a Cornish welfare campaigner, toured the camps with a single truck of supplies; her report on what she saw led the government to send a commission under Millicent Fawcett, which confirmed her account.

Which Boer general who fought Britain in 1899–1902 became the first prime minister of the Union of South Africa in 1910?

Louis Botha had commanded Boer forces against the British, yet within eight years of the peace he led the new dominion and sent troops to seize German South West Africa in the First World War. He died in office in 1919.

In which city was the African National Congress founded in January 1912, as the South African Native National Congress?

Bloemfontein hosted the founding meeting on 8 January 1912, held to fight for the rights of black South Africans; the congress took its present name in 1923 and won power 82 years after its birth.

The Natives Land Act of 1913 initially confined black land ownership in the Union to roughly what share of the country?

7% of the land was set aside for the black majority, a share later raised to about 13%; Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa recorded the families the act drove off white-owned farms to wander in search of new land.

Which South African prime minister helped draft the preamble to the United Nations Charter in San Francisco in 1945?

Jan Smuts, a Boer general turned British field marshal, was the only signatory of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles to also sign the UN Charter. He lost power three years later to the party that built apartheid.

The 1922 Rand Rebellion on the Witwatersrand gold mines was an armed uprising by which group of workers?

White mineworkers rose up when mine owners, hit by a falling gold price, moved to put cheaper black labour into skilled jobs; strikers formed armed units and fought police and troops in March 1922. The revolt was crushed within days.

The anti-pass campaign that ended in the Sharpeville shootings of 21 March 1960 was organised by which breakaway party?

Pan Africanist Congress founder Robert Sobukwe urged people to leave their passes at home and present themselves for arrest at police stations, and he led his own march in Soweto that morning.

The 1977 Gleneagles Agreement committed Commonwealth governments to discourage what with apartheid South Africa?

Sporting contact was the target a year after African teams boycotted the Montreal Olympics over a New Zealand rugby tour of South Africa; the leaders agreed it at Gleneagles in Perthshire, Scotland.

Which coalition of hundreds of civic, church and union groups was launched in 1983 to oppose the tricameral parliament?

United Democratic Front activists rallied under the slogan 'UDF Unites, Apartheid Divides' against a constitution that gave Coloured and Indian voters token chambers while excluding black people. It dissolved in 1991 once the ANC was legal.

Which party entered the April 1994 election so late that its name had to be added to the printed ballots with stickers?

Inkatha Freedom Party leaders dropped their boycott on 19 April, days before voting, after months of deadly clashes with ANC supporters. The party went on to win KwaZulu-Natal and a place in the Government of National Unity.

Who was the only black player in the Springbok squad that won the 1995 Rugby World Cup on home soil?

Chester Williams, a winger nicknamed 'The Black Pearl', scored four tries in the quarter-final; when Invictus retold the story in 2009, he coached Matt Damon and the other actors for its rugby scenes.

Which Black Consciousness leader died in police custody in September 1977, a story later told in the film Cry Freedom?

Steve Biko died after being beaten in detention and driven naked in a police vehicle to Pretoria; his friend Donald Woods, a newspaper editor, wrote the biography that became Cry Freedom.

South Africa's five-language national anthem opens in Xhosa and closes in which language?

English closes the anthem, after lines in Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho and Afrikaans; the 1997 hybrid shortened and joined the two anthems the country had sung side by side since 1994.

What rises with uplifted wings above a protea on South Africa's coat of arms?

A secretary bird, a hunter of snakes, stands for protection of the nation against its enemies; the motto beneath it, in the extinct ǀXam language, means 'diverse people unite'.

Which architect designed Pretoria's sandstone Union Buildings, where South African presidents are inaugurated?

Herbert Baker set the building on Meintjieskop with two wings that stand for the union of a formerly divided people, the country's British and Boer settlers; Mandela was sworn in there in 1994.

At noon on 16 December each year, a shaft of sunlight through the Voortrekker Monument's dome strikes what?

A cenotaph in the lower hall catches the ray, which lights the words 'Ons vir Jou, Suid-Afrika' ('We for Thee, South Africa') on the anniversary of Blood River; the beam is said to symbolise God's blessing on the Voortrekkers.

The 1906 Bambatha Rebellion in Natal, crushed at Mome Gorge, was sparked by the introduction of which new levy?

A poll tax, levied on top of the existing hut tax, was meant to push Zulu men into wage labour; thousands of Zulu died as the revolt was crushed, and supporters insisted Bambatha himself had escaped to Mozambique.

Hosting in place of Kenya, South Africans saw their team beat Tunisia 2–0 to win which 1996 tournament?

Africa Cup of Nations holders Nigeria pulled out at the last moment, after South Africa had condemned the Nigerian regime's hanging of activists, so a tournament drawn for 16 teams was played with 15.

Which Cape governor gives his name to South Africa's second-oldest town, founded in 1679 and famed for oaks and wine?

Simon van der Stel planted the oaks that earned Stellenbosch its Afrikaans nickname Eikestad, 'City of Oaks'. The town, whose name means 'Van der Stel's forest', is a showcase of Cape Dutch architecture at the heart of the Cape winelands.