Bantu-speaking people of South Africa are the majority, ethno-linguistic people of South Africa. They are indigenous southern Africans from Southern Bantu-speaking peoples; whose earliest presence through surviving evidence, in the now "South Africa", is noted between 350 BCE and 300 CE from either the speculated prehistoric migrations called Bantu expansion (5000 BCE to 500 CE), or due to localized back and forth seasonal migratory culture(s) based on shifting cultivation. They are referred to in various census as African, Black, or Native South African.

History

Early history

Archaeological evidence suggests that Homo sapiens inhabited the region for over 100,000 years, with agriculture occurring since at least 100 CE. With the Bantu expansion (~1500 BCE), the latitudinal movement of original Bantu-speaking groups from west-central Africa brought some advancements with them, such as iron-worked tools and pottery unique to them. With the expansion, the language of the Bantu people spread throughout southern and central Africa, which evolved into the many languages spoken in the area today. Based on prehistorical archaeological evidence of pastoralism and farming in southern Africa, the findings in sites located in the southernmost region of modern Mozambique, that are dated , are some of the oldest and most proximate ancient findings of archaeological evidence related to the South African Bantu-speaking peoples in the south African region. Ancient settlements remains found thus far similarly based on pastoralism and farming within South Africa were dated .

Around 1220, the Kingdom of Mapungubwe formed in the Shashe-Limpopo Basin, with rainmaking crucial to the development of sacral kingship. Venda tradition holds the two kings were called Shiriyadenga and Tshidziwelele. Mapungubwe collapsed around 1300 for unknown reasons, although shifting trade routes north to Great Zimbabwe likely contributed to its demise. The population dispersed, and didn't regroup. Polity history and interactions with Europeans When the early Portuguese sailors Vasco Da Gama and Bartholomew Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope in the late , a number of Khoe language speakers were found living there and the indigenous population around the Cape primarily consisted of Khoisan groups. Following the establishment of the Dutch Cape Colony, European settlers began arriving in Southern Africa in substantial numbers. Around the 1770s, Trekboers from the Cape encountered more Bantu language speakers towards the Great Fish River and frictions eventually arose between the two groups. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, there were two major areas of frictional contact between the white colonialists and the Bantu language speakers in Southern Africa. Firstly, as the Boers moved north inland from the Cape they encountered Xhosa, Basotho, and Tswana peoples. Secondly attempts at coastal settlement was made by the British in two regions now known as the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.Martin Meredith, Diamonds Gold and War, (New York: Public Affairs, 2007):5

"Empty Land" myth

The history of the Bantu-speaking peoples from South Africa has in the past been misunderstood due to the deliberate spreading of false narratives such as The Empty Land Myth. First published by W.A. Holden in the 1860s, this doctrine claims that South Africa had mostly been an unsettled region and that Bantu-speaking peoples had begun to migrate southwards from present day Zimbabwe at the same time as the Europeans had begun to move northwards from the Cape settlement, despite there being no historical or archaeological evidence to support this theory.

This theory originated in Southern Africa during the period of Colonisation of Africa, historians have noted that this theory had already gained currency among Europeans by the mid-1840s. Its later alternative form of note were conformed around the "1830s concept of Mfecane", trying to hide and ignore the intrusion of Europeans on Bantu lands, by implying that the territory they colonized was devoid of human habitation (as a result of the Mfecane). Modern research has disputed this historiographical narrative. By the 1860s, when Holden was propagating his theory, this turbulent period had resulted in large swathes of South African land falling under the control of either the Boer Republics or British colonials, there was denaturalisation accompanied with forced displacement and population transfer of these indigenous peoples from their land, the myth being used as the justification for the capture and settlement of Bantu-speaking peoples's land. The Union of South Africa established rural reserves in 1913 and 1936, by legislating the reduction and voiding of South African Bantu-speaking peoples's land heritage holistically, thereby land relating to Bantu-speaking peoples of South Africa legislatively became reduced into being those reserves. In this context, the Natives Land Act, 1913, limited Black South Africans to 7% of the land in the country. In 1936, through the Native Trust and Land Act, 1936, Union of South Africa's government planned to raise this to 13.6% but subsequently would not.

The National Party (South Africa) government, the Apartheid government became the profundity action from the pre-1948 Union of South Africa's government rule, it introduced a series of measures that reshaped the South African society such that Europeans would take themselves as the demographic majority while being a minority group. The creation of false homelands or Bantustans (based on dividing South African Bantu language speaking peoples by ethnicity) was a central element of this strategy, the Bantustans were eventually made nominally independent, in order to limit South African Bantu language speaking peoples citizenship to those Bantustans. The Bantustans were meant to reflect an analogy of the various ethnic "-stans" of Western and Central Asia such as the Kafiristan, Pakistan, etc. But in South Africa, the association with Apartheid discredited the term, and the Apartheid government shifted to the politically appealing but historically deceptive term "ethnic homelands". Meanwhile, the Anti-Apartheid Movement persisted in calling the areas Bantustans, to actively protest the Apartheid governments' political illegitimacy. The fallacy of The Empty Land Myth also completely omits the existence of the Saan (hunter-gatherers) and the Khoikhoi (pastoralists) in southern Africans, who roamed much of the southwestern region of Africa for millenniums before the invasions, colonialism of Europeans.

Cape Frontier Wars

The longest running military action from the period of colonialism in Africa, which saw a series of nine wars during 1779 till 1879. Involving the Xhosa Kingdom and the British Empire, mainly in the present day South African region of Eastern Cape.

(1779–1803): After European invasion of the present day Western Cape, South Africa region, colonialist's frontiersmen in the 18th century started encroaching the land farther inland present-day South African region, encountering more of the indigenous population, conflict of land and cattle grew sparking the first war that set to drive Xhosa people out of Zuurveld by 1781. The second war involved a larger Xhosa territory between the Great Fish River and the Sundays River, the Gqunukhwebe clans of the Xhosa started to penetrate back into the Zuurveld and colonists under Barend Lindeque, allied themselves with Ndlambe, a regent of the Western Xhosas, to repel the Gqunukhwebe. The second war concluded when farms were abandoned due to panic in 1793. In 1799 the third war began with the Xhosa rebellion – discontented Khoekhoe revolted and joined with the Xhosa in the Zuurveld, and started retaking land through farms occupied by colonialist, reaching Oudtshoorn by July 1799. The colonial officials made peace with the Xhosa and Khoe in Zuurveld. In 1801, Graaff-Reinet rebellion started forcing more Khoekhoe desertions and farm abandonment. The commandos could not achieve any result, so in February 1803 a peace was arranged with the Xhosas and Khoekhoes.Conquest of the Eastern Cape

(1811–1819): Zuurveld became a buffer zone between the Cape Colony and Xhosa territory, empty of the Boers, the British to the west and the Xhosa to the east. In 1811 the fourth war began when the Xhosa took back the rest of their territory of Zuurveld, conflicts with the settlers followed. Forces under Colonel John Graham drove the Xhosa back beyond the Fish River. The fifth war, the war of Nxele, started after the Battle of Amalinde. This happened after a civil war broke out within the Xhosa Nation when the British-allied chief Ngqika of the Right Hand House allegedly tried to overthrow the Government and become the king of the Xhosas but was defeated. Then Ngqika appealed to the British who seized 23,000 head of cattle from a Xhosa chief. The Xhosa prophet, Nxele (Makhanda) emerged, under the command of Mdushane, Ndlambe's son, led 6,000 Xhosa force attack on 22 April 1819 to Grahamstown, which was held by 350 troops repulsed Nxele. Nxele was captured and imprisoned on Robben Island. The British pushed the Xhosa further east beyond the Fish River to the Keiskamma River. The resulting empty territory was designated as a buffer zone for loyal Africans' settlements. It came to be known as the "Ceded Territories".

(1834–1879): The Xhosa remained expelled from their territory dubbed "Ceded Territories", that was then settled by Europeans and other African peoples. They were also subjected to territorial expansions from other Africans that were themselves under pressure from the expanding Zulu Kingdom. Nevertheless, the frontier region was seeing increasing amounts of multi-racial issues because Africans and Europeans living and trading throughout the frontier region. The indecision by the Cape Government's policy towards the return of the Xhosa territories did not dissipate Xhosa frustration toward the inability to provide for themselves, hence the Xhosa resorted to frontier cattle-raiding. In response on 11 December 1834, a Cape government commando party killed a chief of high rank, incensing the Xhosa army of 10,000 led by Maqoma, that swept across the frontier into the Cape Colony. A string of defeats by Sir Benjamin d'Urban combining forces under Colonel Sir Harry Smith stopped the Xhosa, most Xhosa chiefs surrendered but the primary leadership Maqoma and Tyali retreated, a treaty was imposed and hostilities finally died down on 17 September 1836. Aftermath the sixth war, a chief believed to be actually the paramount chief or the King of the Gcaleka Xhosa by the Cape Colony, Chief Hintsa ka Khawuta, was shot and killed by George Southey, brother of Richard Southey. The era also saw the rise and fall of Stockenström's treaty system.