The Illusion of Freedom in South Africa: Post-colonialism, Exploitation and Identity Crisis in Alan Paton’s Cry, The Beloved Country

Abstract

Colonization of Africa began in 1488 when the Portuguese explorer Bartolemeu Dias first sailed along the cost of South Africa and eventually arrived at the north of South Africa. Then the British sailors stopped briefly in the southwest of Africa on their way to India in the 1600s. In 1602, the Dutch East India Company was established to expand trade relationship with colonies in Asia by entering into a fierce rivalry with Britain, and Jan van Riebeeck brought in 1652 three Dutch East India Company ships with around 100 people to establish a station, and these people, known as Afrikaners, were the first white settlers of South Africa. By the end of the seventeenth century, the white population, including Dutch, German, and French, increased considerably in South Africa by killing, driving out or enslaving the indigenous peoples, and then the slave trade started.