Southern Africa

The countries that make up the southmost part of the huge continent of Africa are collectively known as Southern Africa. The nations are Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Eswatini (Swaziland). Other countries often included in this group include Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Southern Africa encompasses 2,672,831 square kilometers (1,032,000 square miles). Because Lesotho is entirely enclosed within South Africa and because Eswatini (Swaziland) is a small monarchy pinched between South Africa and Mozambique—it is just 17,364 square kilometers in area—the three remaining nations of Southern Africa are quite large.

However, all that land is sparsely populated. Only about sixty-one million people live in Southern Africa, but nearly fifty-four million of this area’s total population lives in South Africa alone. Only about 2.2 million people live on Namibia’s 824,000 square kilometers. Namibia has just a few thousand more people than Botswana, but Botswana’s population lives in a country almost twice the size of Texas. (The population of Texas in 2014 was 26.96 million.) At the other extreme, Lesotho’s 1,947,701 inhabitants live on just 30,355 square kilometers of land.

Much of Southern Africa consists of vast empty spaces, such as the Kalahari Desert that covers a large portion of Botswana and crosses into Namibia, where ancient people follow traditional ways of life. This culture contrasts sharply with that of the modern cities and high-tech hubs of South Africa. Southern Africa is nothing if not a region of extreme contrasts.

Historical Perspective

Southern Africa’s story is older than that of modern humanity’s. Evidence of australopithecines—the oldest human precursors—has been found in South Africa. Human ancestors using simple stone tools reached Southern Africa at least one million years ago, and some of the earliest Homo sapiens fossils have been found in South Africa and along the South Africa-Eswatini (Swaziland) border. This evidence indicates that modern humans have lived in Southern Africa for at least ninety thousand years.

Modern inheritors of the earliest cultures may be found in the San, Pygmy, and Khoekhoe peoples who continue to live in the region. They are grouped together by their related languages, which are collectively known as Khoisan.

The known human history of Southern Africa is characterized by sweeping changes that resulted from the arrival of foreigners. First, there was the gradual incursion of Bantu speakers. The Bantu Expansion originated in the area around modern-day Cameroon between two thousand and three thousand years ago. Over the centuries, these farmers and pastoralists moved south and east, reaching Southern Africa no later than 300 to 500 CE.

Contrary to previous assumptions, the Bantu speakers did not drive the Khoisan speakers into ever-more inhospitable terrain. The interactions between the cultures probably took many forms, including assimilation. The Bantu speakers established farming communities, and some of the resident hunter-gatherers must have joined them—the click sounds of Khoisan also occur in the modern Bantu family languages of Xhosa, Zulu, and Shona.

The next great incursion came from Europe. Portuguese sailors arrived in the fifteenth century. The people of Southern Africa may not have been greatly affected by the rise and fall of great kingdoms to their northeast, notably Great Zimbabwe, but the arrival of Europeans had a profound impact.

By the time the Portuguese arrived, Great Zimbabwe was gone, and it was replaced by the Mutapa Empire to the north and Torwa in the south. The Portuguese succeeded in undermining Mutapa, but Torwa was replaced by the Rozwi Empire, which drove the Portuguese out in 1693.

Where the Portuguese failed, however, the Dutch succeeded. By 1652, they had established a permanent settlement in what is now South Africa. Boers, or farmers, expropriated Khoikhoi grazing lands and worked the farms with enslaved people from West Africa. The first war between Europeans (the Dutch) and Indigenous Africans (the Khoikhoi) in Southern Africa was in 1659. The second Dutch-Khoikhoi War came in the period from 1673 to 1677. As the Cape colony grew, the number of enslaved Africans also increased. A lucrative slave trade was established to supply Brazilian plantations as well.

The conflict between the Afrikaans-speaking newcomers and those who already lived in the region persisted. The wars between the Boers and the Khoisan speakers evolved into wars between the Boers and Xhosa. These wars theoretically ended only when the British took control of Southern Africa in the early nineteenth century. In reality, the Xhosa fought repeatedly against the British and the Afrikaaner settlers in South Africa, who had their own conflicts with the British.

Botswana was once a British colony, but it became part of the Union of South Africa in 1910. Lesotho and Eswatini (Swaziland) were kept out of South Africa by the British. Botswana finally gained its independence in 1965.

The toxic legacy of a minority population of European heritage violently subduing a much larger Indigenous population of African heritage continued late into the twentieth century. Namibia had been a German colony but was under South African control from 1919 until 1988. South African settlers made up two-tenths of 1 percent of the population, but they owned 74 percent of the arable land. Namibia did not become officially independent until 1990. The 1949 policy of Apartheid in South Africa, in which the White minority suppressed the Black majority as a matter of official policy, did not end until 1994.

Geography and Climate

The geography of Southern Africa is often described as high (elevation). The Southern Plateau is between 3,000 and 5,000 feet in elevation (900 to 1,500 meters) and is surrounded by ranges of mountains known as the Great Escarpment. The region’s boundaries are two great bodies of water, the Atlantic and the Indian oceans, which naturally impact the climate.

Botswana’s border with South Africa is formed by the Limpopo River, one of the region’s great rivers. Botswana’s border with Zimbabwe is formed by the Shashe River. A large part of the landlocked nation is covered by the Kalahari Desert, and Botswana features a river that does not run to the sea: The Okavango flows into the Kalahari to form the world’s largest inland river delta.

Only one Southern African river flows into the Atlantic—the Orange River, which forms the boundary between South Africa and Namibia. Namibia’s Atlantic Ocean coast is dominated by the Namib Desert. Together with the Kalahari in the east, the two deserts make Namibia one of the world’s driest countries. It is also the only nation to include environmental protection in its constitution: About 14 percent of the country is protected.

Lesotho is a mountainous country completely surrounded by South Africa; Eswatini (Swaziland) is almost wholly surrounded by South Africa as well. Lesotho’s climate is temperate, with cold, dry winters and hot, wet summers. Eswatini (Swaziland), on the other hand, is almost tropical most of the year. South Africa’s terrain ranges from coastal plains to high plateaus inland. Its climate varies widely, from temperate to semiarid to tropical.

The terrain of Southern Africa ranges from forest to grasslands to deserts, and the ecosystems are likewise very diverse. Grassland, savannah, bushveld, and riparian zones are all features of this region, and tourists flock to the national parks for glimpses of elephants, white rhinoceroses, lions, leopards, impalas, and kudus, among other wild animals.

Economy

Southern Africa is a vast storehouse of mineral wealth. Main exports include platinum-group metals, gold, diamonds, and uranium. South Africa is by far the region’s dominant economy, and although it is no longer Africa’s economic powerhouse, its gross domestic product (GDP) is still many times greater than any of its neighbors. Its regional importance cannot be overstated. For example, Eswatini (Swaziland) receives more than 90 percent of its imports from its neighbor and sends more than 60 percent of its exports there. Its currency is pegged to the South African rand, so its monetary policy is basically dictated by its giant neighbor.

Lesotho is also economically bound to South Africa. Its populace depends on remittances from family members who work in the mines, farms, and homes of South Africans. As a member of the South African Customs Union (SACU), Lesotho relies on revenues from this organization. South Africa also pays royalties for water from a dam and reservoir in Lesotho.

The Namibian economy depends on mining, which accounts for more than 11 percent of its GDP and half of all foreign exchange earnings. The country is the world’s primary source of gem-quality diamonds, and it is also an important producer of uranium and zinc.

Botswana’s economy is utterly dependent on diamonds, which produce as much as 80 percent of its export earnings. However, the country is very well managed; since independence, it has transformed itself from one of the world’s poorest countries into a mid-level nation. It is considered the best credit risk in the entire continent of Africa.

Demographics

Southern Africa struggles with the aftereffects of colonialism and the legacy of Apartheid, which affected not only South Africa but also its neighbors. The demographic makeup of the countries includes at least thirty different ethnic groups and around forty languages. Namibia alone has thirteen recognized national languages. Eswatini's (Swaziland's) population is 97 percent African and 3 percent European; South Africa lists its demographics as 81.4 percent Black, 7.3 percent White, and 11.3 percent Colored (a South African designation for people of mixed-race ancestry).

The greatest demographic challenge in the region may be HIV/AIDS. Eswatini (Swaziland), Lesotho, and Botswana have a very high prevalence of the disease, all exceeding 20 percent of the adult population.

Bibliography

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