V. The Franchise in Southern Africa

Abstract

The Portuguese had the honour of discovering and naming the Cape of Good Hope in 1486, but it was the Dutch who first settled there in 1652 and thus began the opening up of Africa from Capetown, still the most civilized centre in the continent. During the century and a half of rule by the Dutch East India Company, the Cape Colonists dispersed themselves thinly over an area about as great as that of the United Kingdom, and then saw their country annexed by the British. After having handed over the Cape to the Dutch Government, the British took it finally in 1806 rather than risk seeing it fall into the hands of Napoleon, who had so recently failed to hold Egypt, the other halfway house to the Indian Empire of his dreams. In the course of the nineteenth century, the Cape Colony gave birth to Natal, the Orange Free State, the Transvaal and Southern Rhodesia. The Cape and its three earlier offshoots became a Dominion as the Union of South Africa in 1910 and, at the close of the Kaiser's War, obtained the mandate for South-West Africa. Southern Rhodesia, the Old Colony's youngest child, was subsequently given self-government.