”Most people assume that South African society is unequal because of colonialism. But we want to know what factors gave rise to this unequal distribution and why it persisted for so long,” says researcher Erik Green. Photo: Gregory Fullard/Unsplash

In a unique project, researchers from Lund University in Sweden, together with universities in South Africa, the Netherlands and the USA, will for the first time systematise large amounts of historical data from the Dutch East India Company’s colonisation of South Africa. Their aim: to find out when and how colonial processes arose, and how they may have continued to impact young nations up to modern times.