Divided Past, Divided Future

From Cape to Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract

From the early history of Homo sapiens, survival of the fittest depends on co-operation. Humans formed settlements where the hunter-gatherers became warriors, while agrarians became farmers. This created a mutual relationship, where the warriors offered protection in exchange for produce. Later colonial settlements were established by explorers, from Europe, as hunter-gatherers, but they muted into farmer-producers for expansion and then back to warriors for survival. Colonial explorers annexed new terrain using Western forms of contract and title deeds unknown to those who roamed these lands before. The colonizers used addictive substance such as alcohol and tobacco which was almost unknown to indigenous tribes, weakening their morale and opening the door for exploitation.

In Africa, as in other colonized terrain, these events left a bitter tension between colonizers and indigenous inhabitants, with a history of slavery, war and racial divide as the long term damage.

Legal systems were used to manipulate and control, from the Cape to Johannesburg and in between. This history and its outfall is summarized with reflection on the current status quo which has moved from racial to economic inequality, described in Soweto and Alexandra, two prominent townships of Johannesburg.