South Africa is consistently headline news, for positive as well as negative reasons. Its unique history this century has brought the names of its most famous political activists not only to our television sets but more permanently to names of streets and buildings throughout the West. This study closely examines the social and economic history underlying the political upheavals, and the establishment and fitful but dramatic dismantling of apartheid. It begins with the final colonial conquests at the end of the 19th century and ends with a prognosis for democracy and the redistribution of resources in the 1990s.