South African History: Part 1

In Wednesday’s class we started learning some of the history of South Africa. It is unfortunate that we cannot spend longer on this, because it is fascinating. I feel like I know U.S. history fairly well, but barely know the history of any other part of the world. This is a shame, because there is so much more to world history.  Anyway, Heather asked us to think about how South African history will affect us in our day to day lives in East London. Several things come to mind with this – East London will have a much greater diversity of people than any place that I have lived before. There are colored people, Afrikaans, English, black, etc. It is good to know where they came from historically and how they relate to each other because of the past. Heather mentioned a black friend who was from the Xhosa tribe, I think, and did not think very highly of guys from the Zulu (?) tribe. These kinds of relationships would definitely be good to keep in mind in day to day interactions. It was cool to realize why East London is called East London, and why there is a Port Elizabeth. It is because the British were “in charge” of South Africa for several years, so of course they named things after London and after Queen Elizabeth. And there will not just be British influence in South Africa, because the French and Dutch also had a strong presence there. The Dutch even developed into a new people, sort of, the Afrikaners. And there are all the colored people, who descended from Indians and Malaysians and I can’t remember who else. It is going to be amazing! I am excited to be around so many different people. Do they have different cultures among each group? How united are the South Africans as a people? They have only really been their own country for about 60 years…I am excited to see the effects of these different cultures in everyday life in South Africa.