I can't see this happening. In OTL, even with the whole devastation of the Cape Khoi they managed to survive and become part of a middle-class between White and Black. I don't think they would all completely die and the social ramifications of them surviving would be interesting.
Actually, the population group you are thinking of are more descended from Indonesian, Indian and Mozambican slaves than from the Khoisan. The Khoisan were decimated by a smallpox epidemic, which allowed for the former slaves to become the dominant factor in that genetic pool. Of course, some isolated Khoisan tribes remain seperate and genetically distinct from the mixed race population group to this day.
Again, i don't see this happening. Two problems with this.
1) It assumes all tribes south of the Limpopo are a monolithic force.
2) it assumes 1,000 men is a damaging number of casualties. The Zulus sustained three times that many at Blood river and had no real problems. And that's just the Zulu, discounting the massive number of tribes not destroyed by the Mfecane TTL.
Agreed on that. You would need some bigger differences with the OTL to accomplish that. Perhaps some further divergence of European history to increase the power of the Dutch as allies? More European diseases to become epidemics under the native population? An earlier and more extensive Mfecane?
Or leave Afrikaner expansion until later? The Afrikaner population takes on a more urbanised, educated character at an earlier time in their history, before attempting expansion? Also, expansion through landing by ship at various good harbours along the coast, and creating settlements there before venturing inland, in the way that colonial powers usually started colonies, might be more viable than the "Great Trek" method, as Afrikaner expansion happened in the OTL.
And finally, I have to call the general character of the Afrikaners out in this TL. While it would doubtless be different from that of OTL's Boers, the Afrikaners never have and never will be Mongols with guns trying to conquer everything they see.
I agree with this as well. An important distinction to make in the OTL is the two different groups among Afrikaners. There were those at the Cape, who were quite content with colonial rule, and those who ventured inland, as the Voortrekkers, to pursue independance and self-determination. Some consider this group the Boers, while those who remained at the Cape are seen to be the Afrikaners. Two hugely important factors in unifying the two groups and establishing eventual Afrikaner domination in South Africa was:
1) The abandonment of the Cape Colony by the Dutch to the British (TWICE!) in the Treaty of Amiens, and then again by the Convention of London.
2) The utter humiliation of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, and the genocide perpretrated against the Boers, especially their women and children, by Lord Kitchener's scorched earth policy and concentration camps during the Second Boer War.
I realise neither the colonial nature of the Cape nor any of the events of the Anglo-Boer Wars exist in your TL, but you will need something similiar, I believe, to shape the Afrikaner character so that it would desire to create an apartheid superpower. In fact, I would suggest that you put them under constant threat of being dominated by others, since it is overarching desire of the Afrikaners for self-determination against all the odds, that drives them to formalise racial segregation into the policies of apartheid and pursue technological and economic dominance.
I think, also, you need to create further conditions (especially with regards to the European powers) to enhance the likelihood of an Afrikaner superpower. Might I suggest:
1) In the OTL, the first "settlement" at the Cape was the "Sand Fort of the Cape of Good Hope", built by the shipwreck victims of the Dutch East India Company ship Nieuwe Haarlem in March 1647. They stayed for nearly one year before being rescued, and after their return to the Netherlands they tried to persuade the Dutch East India Company to open a trading center at the Cape. This was realised in 1652 by Jan van Riebeeck, who was on one of the rescue ships that had come to rescue the shipwrecked sailors, and upon seeing the land, had decided to return. But the Cape of Good Hope was already discovered in 1488 by Bartolomeu Dias, a Portuguese navigator, and in 1497, Vasco da Gama sailed along the whole coast of South Africa on his way to India. How about applying the shipwreck story, and subsequent developments, to a Portuguese ship around 1500 as your POD? This gives you an extra 70 years of development, albeit Portuguese development.
2) THEN: In the OTL, the Dutch East India company managed to snatch quite a few possessions away from the Portuguese during the Dutch-Portuguese War, notably Amboina in 1605, Jakarta/Batavia in 1619, Malacca in 1641, Colombo in 1656, Ceylon in 1658, Nagappattinam in 1662 and Cranganore and Cochin in 1662. If a Portuguese colony had existed at the Cape, the very first act of the Dutch East India Company when it was formed in 1602, would have been to take it. A significant Dutch possession at the Cape of Good Hope could significantly interfere with the Portuguese during the war (which lasted until 1663) which would give you a good excuse to reinforce the Cape with a significant number of Dutch people, especially if, from the base at the Cape, the Dutch could also grab Portuguese East and West Africa. The Dutch-Portuguese war was also seen as a way to weaken Spain (Portugal was in a dynastic union with the Spanish Crown, after the 1580 Portuguese succession crisis, for most of the conflict) by forcing Spain to divert financial and military resources away from its attempt to quell Dutch independence, thus tying in well with your ideas of Protestant vs Catholic.
3) In the OTL, the Dutch discovered and mapped Australia, but did not settle it. Perhaps, buoyed by greater success against the Portuguese, imperialistic desires would convince them to do so. Then James Cook later also establishes a British colony there in a different part of the continent.
4) A stronger Dutch East India Company might decide to develop ship repair facilities at the Cape as well. It would charge handsomely for repairing and restocking the ships of other nations.
4) The Batavian Republic (Netherlands as a French client state) in the OTL came about as a direct result of the weakening of the Republic of the United Netherlands during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. Have it go differently, with Great Britain being weakened and the United Netherlands coming out on top and stronger, due to their gains from the supremacy the Dutch East India Company in the Far East trade, having trounced Portugal, and milked the advantage of possessing the resupply points in Southern Africa to the full. (A weaker Britain is also quite likely because the war coincides with the American Revolution, giving Britain a lot to handle.) The Dutch now obtain the whole of Australia. (The British colony there was in it's beginning stages in the OTL too, so it wouldn't be difficult.)
5) Because of Britain's increased weakness, the 1798 Irish Rebellion occurs earlier (before the Wars of the First Coalition), succeeds, and Ireland becomes independent.
6) Apply the events that led to the creation of the Batavian Republic to Britain: the loss of the American colonies, the Indian colonies and Ireland leads the increasing satisfaction in Britain. Sensing weakness, and fatigued from all of Britain's wars, discontented subjects, especially Papists, in Britain rise up, with French help. A surprise attack from France seals Britain's fate. The French install a client state regime in Britain, that survives for a decade before being overthrown, during the War of the Third Coalition.
7) As a result, the Dutch Republic and Britain's roles in the OTL Wars of the First and Second Coalitions is reversed. Instead of Britain securing the Cape Colony before the French can get to it, the Dutch secures British India, and in the Treaty of Amiens, they retain it.
8) With Britain still compliant to France, the Dutch Republic also takes its place in the OTL Wars of the Third Coalition. The Dutch rely heavily on manpower from its now-sizeable colony at the Cape, whose ship-repairing industry had developed into a ship-building industry, as well as it's smaller subsidiaries at OTL Durban, OTL Maputo and OTL Luanda. But the smaller Dutch Republic cannot hold before the might of the French Armies, and it is occupied, but not before draining the resources of the French Empire quite a bit.
9) The installation of a Catholic monarchy in the Netherlands is the last straw for the
vrijburghers in the Cape, which have already been straining under the yoke of the narrow and tyrannical policy adopted by the Dutch East India Company. (In OTL, The Company stopped the colony's policy of open immigration, monopolised trade, combined the administrative, legislative and judicial powers into one body, told the farmers what crops to grow, demanded a large percentage of every farmer's harvest, and harassed them.) The settlements of Swellendam and Graaff-Reinet, which had already declared themselves independent republics a short while earlier in the OTL, now convinces the Governor of the Cape (under whose control the lesser colonies of former Portuguese West and East Africa fell) to join them in declaring independence from the Netherlands. The Governor, a devout Protestant and determined republican unhappy with the Catholic French influence in the current monarchic Dutch regime, agrees. This act tears the Dutch East India Company in two and it is soon at war with itself.
10) The Kingdom of Holland under Louis Bonaparte tries to regain control of the full Dutch East India Company, but weakened as it is by the wars against France, it is not able to. France cannot help, either. It is still reeling from its surprise defeat in the Haitian Revolution, trying to keep its other possessions from rebelling AND dealing with a resurgent Britain. With so much manpower having been pulled away from the Dutch colonies to help against France, the
burghers at the Cape handle those few remaining dissenters to independence without too much trouble.
11) The newly proclaimed
Afrikaansche Republiek (African/Afrikaans Republic) also renamed the portions of the Dutch East India Company it controlled, which included possessions in India, Batavia and Australia, to the
Afrikaansche Oos-Indiese Companjie (African/Afrikaans East India Company). Recognition of the new state by the European powers did not come immediately, but with the Kingdom of Holland soon absorbed in the First French Empire, and the latter embroiled in its disastrous Russian campaign, it was left alone. It used the chaos caused during the remaining years of the Napoleonic wars to consolidate its hold on it's territories, and also draws a good number of Dutch refugees fleeing the French Empire.
12) At the request of Britain, and with the resources and ships gained from the East India Company, the Afrikaner Republic manages to take most of the remaining former Dutch possessions in India, Batavia, Ceylon and Australia.
13) During the Congress of Vienna, representatives of the Afrikaner Republic were invited to the discussions by Britain for the role they played in defeating the French Empire. William of Orange-Nassau lobbied hard to have the Dutch Empire's former possessions restored, but the Afrikaners resisted, not finding the prospect of an United Kingdom of the Netherlands under a monarch with nearly unlimited powers palatable. The Four Great Powers (Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia), while wishing for a strong Netherlands to serve as a foil for a possibly resurgent Imperial France, had no desire to hand it a near monopoly on the East India trade route, considering previous altercations. Britain, for its part, wanted some retribution on the Dutch for the role they played in the loss of its American colonies. Then there was the practical consideration that, after the destruction caused by the Napoleonic wars, the navy of the former Dutch East India Company, now in Afrikaner hands, was a match for any of Europe's. Reluctantly, the independence of the Afrikaner Republic is granted.
Or if such an outcome to the Congress of Vienna seems improbable, perhaps you could consider a similiar situation as to what led to the independence of Brazil:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_of_the_Portuguese_Court_to_Brazil Perhaps the
Here XVII, directors of the Dutch East India Company, now based at the Cape, don't want to give up their relative freedom to a monarchy (and be taxed by him)?
14) Mindful of the desires for self-determination they themselves experienced, the Afrikaner Republic is remodelled into an Afrikaner Confederacy as their various coastal territories are expanded inland, with each state having some autonomy in its internal affairs, to avoid discontent. The great advantage held by the Afrikaner Confederacy in the Far East to Europe trade garners them enormous wealth before the powers of Europe are able to compete again. But the latter are sure not to be rest on their laurels, and as always where great wealth is involved, conflicts are sure to follow...
15) The Suez Canal breaks the stranglehold the Confederacy has over the trade routes, but the discovery of diamonds three years earlier at OTL Kimberley guarantees the Confederacy a new source of wealth. And the gold discovered at the Witwatersrand a mere two decades later means that the loss of the monopoly on Far East Trade is no great loss... and the Afrikaner Confederacy's newfound mineral wealth guarantees a renewed interest by all the powers of Europe in acquiring this valuable territory...
Of course, I don't want to write your story for you, but it seems to me that the above would be plausible (you could weave in more reasons for like-minded immigrants to move to the Cape - how about a Huguenot-like persecution in Prussia for a while?), and fits neatly with many OTL events, and with where you are headed with your TL. Feel free to use any parts that you like.
