TRC Final Report

Volume 3

Chapter 4

Subsection 1

Volume THREE Chapter FOUR

Regional ProfileOrange Free State

■ OVERVIEW OF THE REGION

Historical background

1 In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, much of what is now the Free State was inhabited by Sotho-speaking people. The first white settlers began crossing the Orange River in the south around the turn of the eighteenth century. This movement increased after 1836, when many Boer farmers moved north with the Great Trek, in search of freedom from British rule in the Cape Colony. However, the territory was annexed by the British in 1848 and remained under British rule as the Orange River Sovereignty until 1854, when it became the Boer-dominated independent Orange Free State. The territory continued to be highly contested by the Basotho, leading to many skirmishes until part of the Sotho-held territory was finally annexed to the Orange Free State. In 1900, the Orange Free State was again annexed by Britain and became known as the Orange River Colony. Boer self-government was restored in 1907, and three years later the colony became the Orange Free State province of the Union of South Africa. It remained so after 1961 when the country became a republic. Since 1994, the province has become known simply as the Free State.

2 Throughout this report, the province has been referred to as the Orange Free State, the name by which the territory was known during the years covered by the mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the Commission).

Demography

3 During the period under review (1960–94), the Orange Free State was the second smallest of South Africa’s four provinces, covering an area of just over 129 000 square kilometres. It was land-locked, with the Vaal River forming its northern border with the Transvaal and the upper Orange River forming its southern border with the Cape Province. To the east lay Natal and the independent Kingdom of Lesotho. When the provincial boundaries were re-drawn in 1994, the borders of the Free State remained largely unchanged.

4 Though fertile and verdant in parts, particularly in the mountainous eastern areas, the landscape of the Orange Free State reflects harsh conditions and a semi-arid climate in the south. In the west, it gives way to sandy, desert-like terrain and successful cultivation is possible only under irrigation. With its low annual rainfall, the province experiences long periods of drought, making survival difficult.

5 The population of the Orange Free State makes up roughly seven per cent of the national population. The province’s total population more than doubled during the period under review, from just over 1.2 million in 1960 to 2.8 million by 1993. Even so, the latter amounted to only 21.7 people per square kilometre, linking the Orange Free State with the Northern Cape as the most sparsely populated areas in the country. The overwhelming majority (84 per cent) was African, followed by whites (13 per cent) and coloureds (3 per cent). Southern Sotho was the most widely spoken language (55 per cent), followed by Afrikaans (14 per cent) and Xhosa (9 per cent). The population density tended to increase towards the north, with Bloemfontein and the north-western gold fields (centred around Welkom, Virginia and Odendaalsrus) being the most densely populated regions. Once the QwaQwa homeland was established (see below), it had a population density of 400 people per square kilo-metre – even though more than a third of the area was too mountainous for habitation.

6 Other African ethnic groups represented include the Zulu to the north-east, the Xhosa, who lived mainly in the cities, and the Tswana. Of the white population, the great majority were Afrikaans-speaking, with English-speakers tending to concentrate in the cities and industrial centres.

7 From the time of the Boers’ arrival with the Great Trek, Afrikaners dominated both the farming life in the rural areas and the political and social life of the urban areas. The province became a bastion of Afrikaner culture, known for its austere and moralistic character. This seems to be at the root of the perception that the powerful Afrikaners of the Orange Free State were both products and originators of the conservative ideologies and laws that gave rise to the policy of apartheid. Indeed, the province’s administrative capital of Bloemfontein was also the judicial capital of the Republic.

8 The Orange Free State was considered by many to be the most ‘verkrampte’ (conservative) part of the country’s power base. Its rural nature and its remoteness from South Africa’s largest cities seemed to isolate it from the evolving cosmopolitan identity and the sense of enlightenment associated with the large melting-pot cities of Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. Residents of the other provinces tended to think of the Orange Free State as a backwater, ‘in the middle of nowhere’.