Editing History of South Africa (section)

===Cape Colony===
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{{main|Cape Colony|Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope}}
[[File:Sir Harry G W Smith.jpg|thumb|Harry Smith]]
Between 1847 and 1854, [[Sir Harry Smith, 1st Baronet|Harry Smith]], governor and high commissioner of the Cape Colony, annexed territories far to the north of the original British and Dutch settlement.

Smith's expansion of the Cape Colony resulted in conflict with disaffected Boers in the Orange River Sovereignty who in 1848 mounted an abortive rebellion at Boomplaats, where the Boers were defeated by a detachment of the Cape Mounted Rifles.<ref>Karel Schoeman (ed), ''The British Presence in the Transorange 1845–1854'', Human & Rosseau, Cape Town, 1992, p.22-25 {{ISBN|0-7981-2965-4}}</ref> Annexation also precipitated a war between British colonial forces and the indigenous Xhosa nation in 1850, in the eastern coastal region.<ref>Piers Brendon, ''Decline and Fall of the British Empire'', New York: Knopf 2007, page 98.</ref>

Starting from the mid-1800s, the [[Cape Colony|Cape of Good Hope]], which was then the largest state in southern Africa, began moving towards greater independence from Britain.
In 1854, it was granted its first locally elected legislature, the [[Cape Parliament]].

In 1872, after a long political struggle, it attained [[responsible government]] with a locally accountable executive and Prime Minister. The Cape nonetheless remained nominally part of the British Empire, even though it was self-governing in practice.

The Cape Colony was unusual in southern Africa in that its laws prohibited any discrimination on the basis of race and, unlike the Boer republics, elections were held according to the non-racial [[Cape Qualified Franchise]] system, whereby suffrage qualifications applied universally, regardless of race.

Initially, a period of strong economic growth and social development ensued. However, an ill-informed British attempt to force the states of southern Africa into a British federation led to inter-ethnic tensions and the [[First Boer War]].  Meanwhile, the discovery of diamonds around [[Kimberley, Northern Cape|Kimberley]] and gold in the [[South African Republic|Transvaal]] led to a later return to instability, particularly because they fueled the rise to power of the ambitious colonialist [[Cecil Rhodes]]. As Cape Prime Minister, Rhodes curtailed the multi-racial franchise, and his expansionist policies set the stage for the [[Second Boer War]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=A New History of Southern Africa|author=Neil Parsons|isbn=0333570103|publisher=Macmillan, London|year=1993|url=https://archive.org/details/newhistoryofsout0000pars}}</ref>