The Anglo-Boer War
Once the British and the Boer (white South Africans of Dutch origin) had finally defeated the Zulu, and subjugated all the black tribes of the sub-continent, they set to work waging war against one another.
The dynamics of the Anglo-Boer War are, again, both simple and complex. The simple version is that neither party – British or Boer – could get on. The Dutch arrived on the southern tip of Africa in 1652, and so, as far as European colonists were concerned, they felt that they were the senior partners. The British, on the other hand, acquired the Cape from the Dutch as a consequence of the period Anglo/French wars, and so no particular love existed between them. The British then went on to impose their system of administration, which irritated the Dutch, after which they mandated emancipation, which soured relations further.
By the time gold and diamonds were discovered, towards the end of the 19th century, relations between the two white language groups were so poor that war was inevitable. The essential dynamic of war was the steady British erosion of Dutch/Boer sovereignty. The gold and diamond rushes of the 1870s and 1880s introduced English-speaking immigrants by the tens of thousands, and through the 1890s, steady British demands for political rights in the Boer republics exacerbated tensions.
In much the same way as the British could not tolerate an independent Zulu, they could not tolerate an independent Boer. The Boer was pro-German, and as WWI loomed large on the horizon, that was a problem.
The British, therefore provoked a war, and the Boer, pushed into a corner, issued an ultimatum. On October 11, 1899, war was declared. South Africa comprised two Boer republics (Transvaal and Orange Free State) and two British colonies (Natal and Cape). The Boer held the initial advantage and invaded Natal, but they failed to secure the ports, and instead were drawn into a number of pointless sieges. As they were holding these sieges, the British were able to introduce a massive expeditionary force. Once this was in place, the conventional war shifted, and by the end of the first year, the British were in effective occupation of all of South Africa.
The Boer, however, fought on for another two years as a guerrilla army, and a long and bloody conflict played out. The British deployed scorched earth, concentration camps and massive sweeps, and eventually, an exhausted and demoralized Boer army surrendered.
At the end of May 1902, peace was brokered, and South Africa became four British colonies. In 1910, it was unified, and the Union of South Africa became a British Dominion. This remained until 1961 when South Africa was declared a republic.