Robben Island is an island in Table Bay, 6.9 kilometres (4.3 mi) west of the coast of Bloubergstrand, Cape Town, South Africa. It takes its name from the Dutch word for seals (robben), hence the Dutch/Afrikaans name Robbeneiland which translates to Seal(s) Island. Robben Island is roughly oval in shape, 3.3 km (2.1 mi) long north-south, and 1.9 km (1.2 mi) wide, with an area of 5.08 km2 (1.96 sq mi). It is flat and only a few metres above sea level, as a result of an ancient erosion event. It was fortified and used as a prison from the late 17th century to 1996, after the end of apartheid. Many of its prisoners were political.
The Great Trek was an eastward migration of Dutch-speaking settlers who travelled by wagon trains from the Cape Colony into the interior of modern South Africa from 1836 onwards, seeking to live beyond the Cape’s British colonial administration. The Great Trek resulted from the culmination of tensions between rural descendants of the Cape's original European settlers, known collectively as Boers, and the British Empire. It was also reflective of an increasingly common trend among individual Boer communities to pursue an isolationist and semi-nomadic lifestyle away from the developing administrative complexities in Cape Town. Boers who took part in the Great Trek identified themselves as voortrekkers, meaning "pioneers", "pathfinders" in Dutch and Afrikaans.
The Boer Republics were independent, self-governed republics in the last half of the nineteenth century, created by the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of the Cape Colony and their descendants, variously named Trekboers, Boers and Voortrekkers in mainly the middle, northern and north eastern and eastern parts of what is now the country of South Africa. Two of the Boer Republics achieved international recognition and complete independence: the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. The republics did not provide separation of church and state, and initially only the Dutch Reformed Church, then also other churches in the Calvinist Protestant tradition, were allowed. The republics came to an end after the Second Boer War which resulted in the British annexation and later incorporation into the Union of South Africa.
The British diaspora in Africa is a population group broadly defined as English-speaking white Africans of mainly British descent who live in or come from Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority live in South Africa and other Southern African countries in which English is a primary language, including Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Lesotho (Basutoland) and Eswatini (Swaziland). There are also sizable numbers in Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana. Their first language is usually English. The majority of white Africans who speak English as a first language are of British and Irish descent.
The following lists events that happened during 1817 in South Africa.
Sir Charles Patrick John Coghlan,, was a lawyer and politician who served as Premier of Southern Rhodesia from 1 October 1923 to his death. Having led the responsible government movement in the territory during the latter days of Company rule, he was Southern Rhodesia's first head of government after it became a self-governing colony within the British Empire.
The 1820 Settlers were several groups of British colonists settled by the government of the Kingdom of Great Britain government and the Cape Colony authorities in the Eastern Cape of South Africa in 1820.
The Colony of Natal was a British colony in south-eastern Africa. It was proclaimed a British colony on 4 May 1843 after the British government had annexed the Boer Republic of Natalia, and on 31 May 1910 combined with three other colonies to form the Union of South Africa, as one of its provinces. It is now the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa.
The First Matabele War was fought between 1893 and 1894 in modern day Zimbabwe. It pitted the British South Africa Company against the Ndebele (Matabele) Kingdom. Lobengula, king of the Ndebele, had tried to avoid outright war with the company's pioneers because he and his advisors were mindful of the destructive power of European-produced weapons on traditional Matabele impis attacking in massed ranks. Lobengula reportedly could muster 80,000 spearmen and 20,000 riflemen, armed with Martini-Henry rifles, which were modern arms at that time. However, poor training meant that these were not used effectively.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Cape Colony was annexed by the British and officially became their colony in 1815. Britain encouraged settlers to the Cape, and in particular, sponsored the 1820 Settlers to farm in the disputed area between the colony and the Xhosa in what is now the Eastern Cape. The changing image of the Cape from Dutch to British excluded the Dutch farmers in the area, the Boers who in the 1820s started their Great Trek to the northern areas of modern South Africa. This period also marked the rise in power of the Zulu under their king Shaka Zulu. Subsequently, several conflicts arose between the British, Boers and Zulus, which led to the Zulu defeat and the ultimate Boer defeat in the Second Anglo-Boer War. However, the Treaty of Vereeniging established the framework of South African limited independence as the Union of South Africa.
David Hume was a South African explorer and big-game hunter.
Scottish Australians are residents of Australia who are fully or partially of Scottish descent.
White Africans of European ancestry are descendants of any of the white ethnic groups originating on the European continent. In 1989, there were an estimated 4.6 million white people with European ancestry on the African continent. Most are of Dutch, British, Portuguese, German, and French descent; and to a lesser extent there are also those who descended from Italians, Spaniards, and Greeks. The majority once lived along the Mediterranean coast or in Southern Africa.
Moodie is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Saul Solomon was an influential liberal politician of the Cape Colony. A tireless defender of racial and religious equality, Saul Solomon was an important member of the movement for responsible government and an opponent of Lord Carnarvon's disastrous Confederation scheme.
Pallas & Poleman were South African pharmacists who played a considerable role in plant collecting in the Cape Colony during the years 1810 to 1839, by employing young German pharmacists such as Bergius, Krebs, Drège and Ecklon.
General Sir Abraham Josias Cloëté KCB was an Afrikaner senior officer in the British Army.
John Wedderburn Dunbar Moodie was a Scottish-born army officer, farmer, civil servant and writer in early Canada.
Thomas Moodie was a pioneer who in 1892 led a party of mostly Afrikaner farmers from the Orange Free State to settle in Rhodesia. Moodie, known as "Groot Tom", left Bethlehem on 5 May 1892 with his party, and settled on 4 January 1893, establishing the town of Melsetter, named after the Moodie ancestral home in the Orkney Islands.
Duncan Campbell Francis Moodie, commonly referred to as D. C. F. Moodie, was a South African writer, historian and linguist who published a newspaper The Portonian in Port Adelaide, South Australia, from 1871 to 1879.
