History of South Africa podcast

First off, some news! This series has been selected as one of the five finalists for the DStv Content Creators podcast of the year awards which is taking place on October 12th 2024. I feel completely out of place folks - a kind of imposter syndrome - finalists include the hugely successful series called True Crime South Africa with the glorious Nicole Engelbrecht and African Story Magic with magnificent Gcina Mhlophe. I had to rub my eyes when I received the email and immediately thought it was a nasty bit of malware that had crept into my system — but after a follow up call from the organisers I realised it was true. So thanks to all of my listeners for helping promote this podcast series — I owe you all a great deal. With that shameless self promotion out of the way, back to the real world of South Africa mid-19th Century. Momentous moves were afoot. The vicious 8th Frontier war was still bubbling away in the eastern Cape as Andries Stockenstrom set off from his farm under the Amatholas. The old man of the frontier had decided to travel to London to lobby politicians there and the ruling elite concerning self-government for South Africa. Journalist John Fairbairn joined him in the mission. For the settlers back on the frontier, Stockenstrom was both loved and hated. He was respected as an elder who had survived all the frontier Wars, but now colonists were taking aim at the former administrator of the Albany region, and the Zuurveld. Every single farm had been burned down by the amaXhosa in the district, but they’d left Stockenstrom’s home alone. The amaNqgika people were faithfully adhering to their old chief’s promise to Stockenstrom that he would not be attacked — even in the throes of this dreadful war. Stockenstrom had set off at the end of 1851, but when he returned from his political mission, he was greeted by a smouldering wreck that used to be his magnificent home on his farm called Maasstrom. It was a shock from which he did not recover. At first he thought it was the amaXhosa who burned his home but then the truth emerged, which shocked him all the more. It was deliberately burned down by a British officer and his patrol — who had been instigated by Grahamstown Journal Editor Robert Godlonton. To the north, in the mountains along the Caledon Valley, Moshoeshoe had been building his base of power and was trying to keep out of the British way. Major Warden as you know, was based in Bloemfontein with a company of British troops, and the Major had been skirmishing with Moshoeshoe’s allies along the southern flank of the Orange River, the border with British Kaffraria. While the British were being kept busy in the 8th Frontier War, Andries Pretorius had been in touch with Major Warden and with Moshoeshoe. Emissaries from Moshoeshoe had visited Pretorius a few times to ask for the Boers to join the Basotho in an uprising against the British - particularly after Warden’s repeated attempts to subjugate the Basotho King. While this was going on, a separate group of Boers decided to take the matter into their own hands and rode to Thaba Bosiu, where they negotiated their own Peace Treaty with Moshoeshoe. They didn’t tell Pretorius, and he was angry. Once again the fractured nature of the Voortrekkers was highlighted. Moshoeshoe realised this, but took the emissaries at face value when they said they’d avoid conflict with the Basotho and other groups. Pretorius who was in Mooi River, was angry about this matter because he had been trying to stabilise the trekker relationship with the British. Here were Vermaak and Linde doing their own thing, clearly a threat to Major Warden - so the following day — 4th September — Pretorius wrote to Warden expressing a commitment to a lasting Peace with the British.

Episode 190 is about the ocean, and a staggering event. The sinking of the HMS Birkenhead off Gansbaai, south of Cape Town - and event which led to the famous phrase women and children first in maritime lore. All of course also linked to the fierce 8th Frontier War of South Africa because there were hundreds of troops on board this ship when it went down - it is believed 445 drowned or were killed by sharks. The chronicle of what happened is riveting. The terrifying ordeal for the survivors of this ship became part of the mid-nineteenth century Victorian consciousness. The sinking of the Birkenhead also remains one of the greatest maritime disasters off South Africa's coast. But the fact that every one of the women and children aboard survived the wreck owing to the gallantry and discipline of the men on board has been immortalised in maritime lore. The soldiers of the British Army regiments, and the sailors and marines under Captain Robert Salmond, jeopardised their own chances of survival by putting the 'women and children first’. It stems from the ongoing 8th Frontier War I’ve been covering now for a couple of episodes. The British fighting the amaxhosa were in need of reinforcements, particularly the 74th highland Regiment which had already borne the brunt of the fighting along the Amatola ridges and valleys. Mount Misery had caused hundreds of casualties. In many ways, The Birkenhead was also a symbol of the age of innovation, she was one of the first iron-hulled ships ever built for the Royal Navy and was converted into a troop ship. As she was being laid down the Navy switched it’s main propulsion to propellor from paddle wheels, so the vessel ended up converted from frigate to troop carrier. The Birkenhead was among the early attempts to marry sail and steam and rigged as a brigantine with two masts, a third being added later. She was powered by two 564 horsepower steam engines from Forrester & Co that drove a pair the 6-metre paddle wheels. . As part of her conversion to a troopship in 1851, a forecastle and poop deck were added to increase her accommodation, and a third mast was added, to change her sail plan to a barquentine. Although she never served as a warship, she was faster and more comfortable than any of the wooden sail-driven troopships of the time, making the trip from the Cape in 37 days in October 1850. However, it was a journey HMS Birkenhead would make for the last time in January 1852. Under command of Captain Robert Salmond, it steamed to Portsmith in the first week of January to pick up troops from ten different regiments, including the 2nd and the 74th. On the 5th January she sailed across the Irish Sea to Queenstown and picked up officers wives and children. All told there were 479 soldiers on board and more than 50 women and children, as well as a crew of 125. That was a total of 693 people stuffed into an iron hull less than 64 metres long and just over eleven metres wide - about the width of a tennis court. Even though she was thought of as well built, the early iron used in shipbuilding was quite brittle and tore easily compared to iron of later ships. Upon arrival at Simons Bay, most of the civilians disembarked, leaving only seven women and 13 children on board. Fuel, food and nine horses and forage were loaded along with more passengers, then HMS Birkenhead set sail again at 18h00 on the 25th February, heading for Algoa Bay and East London. Captain Salmond made a few hasty calculations and sailed close to the the coast heading south east towards Cape Agulhas. Time was of the essence, but two factors transpired against the ship. One was the compasses were registering small errors making navigation tricky, and the other was a strong south-east current was sweeping into Walker Bay and carrying the ship closer to shore than the crew realised. The were heading towards Danger Point, and the rocks.

1851 it is, and the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition took place in Hyde Park, London, from 1 May to 15 October 1851. It was the first in a series of World's Fairs, exhibitions of culture and industry that became popular in the 19th century. Famous people of the time attended the Great Exhibition, including Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Michael Faraday, Samuel Colt, writers like Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Alfred Tennyson, and William Makepeace Thackeray. Schweppes was the official sponsor. The Great Exhibition was a celebration of modern industrial technology and design - mainly for the British who were trying to show how through tech, the world would be a better place - leading the nations in innovations so to speak. Six million people, equivalent to a third of the entire population of Britain at the time, visited the Great Exhibition, averaging over 42 000 visitors a day, sometimes topping 100 000. Thomas Cook managed the travel arrangements for the Exhibition, and made the equivalent of 33.2 million pounds in today’s cash - or 186 000 pounds back in 1851, and promptly used the money to found the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Science Museum, as well as the Natural History Museum. Inventor Frederick Bakewell demonstrated a precurser to something that we know as a Fax Machine. The New Zealand exhibit was well liked, featuring Maori crafts such as flax baskets, carved wooden objects, eel traps, mats, fish hooks and the scourge of the British army in Kiwiland, their hand clubs. A couple of conservative politicians let it be known they were not happy about the Exhibition, saying visitors would turn into a revolutionary mob. Considering that Karl Marx was part of the visitors - perhaps not unsurprisingly. But did Karl Marx use the services of Thomas Cook? Not exactly a question destined for a dissertation. This Exhibition went on to become a symbol of the Victorian Era. Meanwhile … a serious War in one of its colonies, the Cape was more than disquietening - it appeared this war was more a Victorian error. AS in mistake. amaNgqika chief Maqoma was causing Harry Smith sleepness nights, and Colonel Fordyce and his colleagues were fighting for their lives along the Amathola mountains. The Waterkloof ridges — in a place to the west of Fort Beaufort — was where the Khoekhoe and coloured marksmen made their greatest impact. The ex-Cape Mounted Rifles members amongst the rebels had other uses. They understood the British bugle calls, having been trained by the British, further exasperating men like Henry Somerset and Colonel Fordyce. The amaXhosa and Khoekhoe rebels were also much more organised than in previous wars against the invaders. They targeted the Messengers reading updates from British commanders intended for Grahamstown and been reading the reports, and some of the rebels were actually being supplied directly from Grahamstown itself. Then Henry seemed to receive an injection of spine - of determination. On November 6th 1851 he massed two large columns, one under Colonel Fordyce, and the other led by Colonel Michel. Unbeknownest to him, this was to be Fordyce’s last mission. Michel’s column had to advance up the Waterkloof aka Mount Misery, while Fordyce’s column would wait above, on the summit. Michel would drive the rebels up the mountain, Fordyce would trap them and voila! Victory. It didn’t quite work that way.

We’re into an extremely tough time in our past, 1851, and about to hear about the struggle for control of an area of the Amatolas that the Boers had named Waterkloof - better known by local amaXhosa as Mtontsi. It was a case of jungle warfare as you’re going to hear. The area of operation was only 40 square kilometers and yet it remained out of Britains control for most of the 8th Frontier War. If you have an old steam driven hard copy map of the area, or can fire up your trusty digital device of choice, go to Google maps and focus on the area between the Kat and Koenap Rivers, to the west of the town of kwaMaqoma which used to be known as Fort Beaufort. Just to add a bit of post-modern spice here, nearby Cookhouse wind Farm is one of the largest in South Africa on the high ridge east of the Great Fish River. The Waterkloof itself is a deep, narrow valley, six kilometres long, bounded by the Kroomie Heights to the south and to the north by a second series of majestic ridges falling away to a rolling plateau. Running roughly south-east and open at its western side, it comes to a head in a high, grassy tableland fringed with bushes and gigantic trees. To the east, this tableland falls away into another deep, heavily-forested gorge, known as Fuller's Hoek. It was in this gorge, in a gigantic overhanging cave of a type that proliferates in the area, that amaNqika chief Maqoma had his headquarters. The plateau is linked to the Kroomie by a narrow ridge and where this joins the plateau is a 'horseshoe-shaped flat', approximately a square kilometre in area and fringed by towering forests. In due course it would be named 'Mount Misery' by the British troops who fought in or near there. In the mountain fastnesses above, there are two reserves today - Mpofu and Fort Fordyce. Here you’ll still find the Chacma baboon, black wildebeest on the escarpment, blue duiker, mountain reedbuck. If you’re lucky you’ll spot the Cape Parrot, and eagles, while the playful Knysna Loeries abound. The Caracal is the largest predator there these days, but in the past leopards would stalk here - eating a snack of rock dassie. By February 1851 the bitterness of the 8th Frontier War was becoming more evident with descriptions of British troops being captured and tortured to death by the amaXhosa. Settlers and regular troops marched through the Thyumie valley in February in revenge, burning everything and carrying a flag which had the word “Extermination” emblazoned for all the see. Governor Sir Harry Smith had advocated extermination of the amaXhosa and the Khoekhoe in letters and conversations - he was panikcing besieged in King Williams Town and chaos was the order of the day - the governor was lashing out. No quarter was being given by either side - man against man. Somerset was stung into action. On 7th September he sent a large patrol into the Waterkloof, 600 men from the 74th Highland Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Fordyce. The man who was to give both his name and his life to these mountains.

This is episode 187 - it’s 1851. Time to take stock of what’s going on across southern Africa which as you know was in the throes of the 8th Frontier War. A significant war. After that we’ll return to Thomas Stubbs who had turned himself into a useful night raider and was about to show the British how to fight in the Albany thickets. To the north, in the mountains of the BaSotho people, King Moshoeshoe the first was not idle in early 1851and his patience with his own kith and kin as well as with the Boers and the British had worn out. When word of Mlanjeni the prophet reached the BaSotho - and how his new message of salvation through a mixture of Christianity and amaXhosa religion had resonated with so many, Moshoeshoe kept a clear head. He had allowed the French missionaries and Casalis in particular to operate within his kingdom and trusted the man in black, but now the exuberant revival of traditional customs and rituals and warfare began to sweep through LeSotho — a millenarian moment. Mlanjeni’s reputation caused a relapse among the BaSotho converts, led by a local diviner called Mantsopa who began to build a formiddable reputation as a soothsayer. She could predict victories in war it was said, and in 1850 and 1851 the revivalist movement grew more powerful. Moshoeshoe was always cautious when to came to religion, as you’ll hear when we return over the coming episodes to the mountain kingdom. Mlanjeni’s reputation caused a relapse among the BaSotho converts, led by a local diviner called Mantsopa who began to build a formiddable reputation as a soothsayer. She could predict victories in war it was said, and in 1850 and 1851 the revivalist movement grew more powerful. Moshoeshoe was always cautious when to came to religion, as you’ll hear when we return over the coming episodes to the mountain kingdom. Moshoeshoe took note of this reaction and how the racial and political message was deeply felt by his people. And yet he continued to attend French missionary Casalis’ church services out of good faith, and ensured that the missionaries were protected. He also reinforced to all that he was a man of his word. This is the really incredible thing, whereas most others around him were quite ready to go on some terminal quest to kill all the invaders, he was first and foremost, a realist. This all began to come to a head as the 8th Frontier war exploded when the British officials in the Orange River Sovereignty demanded restitution for cattle raiding. And now it’s time to return to the story of Thomas Stubbs. His part in this epic drama is seemingly insignificant, and yet it is more important at second glance. What, would you say, could really be important about a small-scale import export trading rebel who was a part-time saddle artisan from Albany ? A man who’s father Henry made money trading illegally with the amaXhosa? As I mentioned in passing last episode, in some ways, Stubbs set off a series of what became known as special force tactics in the British Army. He wasn’t alone in the period, the British Army was coming up regularly against unconventional soldiers experts in their own bush and veld. In India, Canada, Australia, the middle East. But what was really important about Thomas Stubbs was how he approached tactical issues in the bush. The entire British military experiment in the mid-19th Century was all about seeing what was going on— marching around — bugles, classic red tunics, polished buttons flashing in the midday sun where they’d strut about. You know the saying, no-one goes out in the midday sun except mad dogs and Englishmen.

Episode 186 it is - we’re taking a closer look at theological suppositions, ecclesiastical superstitions, magic and myth. Some housekeeping - first thanks to John for taking the time to send a note regarding ecclesiastical and to Mphuthumi for your message about Nkosi Maqoma - I’ll get hold of your book, The Broken River Tent published in 2017. In this episode we’re going to plunge into a sea of mystery because we’re going to investigate the incredibly diverse history of situations where people believe they can turn bullets into water - or where traditional methods were deployed to deflect incoming projectiles. These are widely held beliefs which surface in popular ‘millenarian’ movements – usually uprisings against colonial conditions. You’ve heard how Mlanjeni’s philosophy had motivated so many to take up arms against the invaders, his message of salvation had spread throughout the Cape. amaXhosa and other people felt it resonated with personally, so they gravitated towards the prophet. amaXhosa chiefs like Maqoma and the paramount Sandile realised that Mlanjeni had the power of persuasion and visited the prophet. But they weren’t alone because by the mid-nineteenth century, charismatic men and women like Mlanjeni of the amaXhosa had taken to mixing Christianity and animist faiths to create a new way to deal with colonisation. This is a classic process in social structures. The old ways were failing — how could assegai’s beat artillery? Turn to enchantment, wizadry, spellcraft, mysticism. The missionaries had closely interwoven their Christian message with western civilisation, diametrically opposed to traditionalism. So prophets like Mlanjeni seized part of their narrative, the salvation message, and merged it rather than opposed it using traditional views to distinguish themselves from the missionaries, to coopt the power so to speak. An ancient philosophy rooted in a world view now threatened by a new industrial powerhouse alter itself, took hold of the strengths of the invader and mixed the message. Missionaries had preached salvation and many of these millenarian movements used part of the story of the Bible, exodus, the crucifixion, Christ rising from the dead, combined with their own ancient myths and legends, to create a really potent new doctine that made sense. This is all linked to what anthropoligists and psychologists call Cognate epistemology. It was identified as something that occured between southern African hunters, herders and farmers, San Khoe and bantu speakers. Cross-cultural convictions emerge amongst people who share a common landscape. Cognate epistemology is the study of knowledge—how we know what we know — exploring questions like "What is knowledge?" and "How do we acquire this knowledge?” I am by no means denegrating those who believe this. Because another way of thinking about cognate epistemology is how folks like to dive deeply into that pool of disinformation called X and or WhatsApp, sharing social media bilge. The very idea of an influencer itself, correlates almost exactly with those who seek cognate connectivity — advertisers also deploy this concept constantly. So go tell your favourite influencer on TikTok that they’re indulging in Cognate Epistemology. When Fort Hare was attacked at 9am on the morning of 21st January 1851, six thousand warriors were yelling Bolowana as they descended on the fortified post. This was going to be the most decisive event of the 8th Frontier War and amaXhosa chief Sandile knew it.

Cape Governor Harry Smith had made his escape from Fort Cox to King Williams’ Town, and was now hoping for help in the form of 3000 Zulu warriors. The British had mucked things up on the frontier, and most of their old allies the Khoekhoe of the Kat River Settlement had decided to rise up, along with the amaXhosa. The Boers were also not in any mood to send help, in fact, the destabilisation was in their favour, it drew English troops away from the transOrangia Region. Mlanjeni the prophet had told the Xhosa that this was the time to drive the English into the sea - and Maqoma the amaRharhabe chief of the amaNhlambe was all to ready to do just that. It was new Year, 1851. In a few days, the Taiping Rebellion - or Civil War as some call it - would begin in China. And like the uprising in the Cape, a man who claimed super powers was behind this war in Asia. Hong Xiuquan was an ethnic Hakka man who claimed to be related to Jesus Christ and was trying to convert the local Han people to his syncretic version of Christianity. Xiuquan was trying to overthrow the Qing dynasty and the Taiping rebels were hell bent on should I say, heaven bent on upending the entire country’s social order. Eventually the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom based in Nanjing managed to seize a significant portion of southern China. It was to become the bloodiest war of the 19th Century, lasting 14 years. Back on the eastern Cape frontier, the settlers were facing the amaXhosa rage and fury, frustration that had built up over generations burst into the 8th Frontier War. Maqoma had warned the errant missionary George Brown that a war was coming of cruelty never seen before in southern AFrica. Some called it the first war of colour, a general war of the races. The Kat River people rebelled, some Khoekhoe soldiers rebelled, some of the famous Cape Mounted Rifles men mutinied, the amaThembu people under Maphasa, so important to Xhosa tradition, joined the Xhosa. amaNhlambe chief Siyolo, the best soldier amongst the amaXhosa, had cut off the road between King WilliamsTown and Grahamstown. And yet, in this frontier war it wasn’t just black versus white - oh no. As you’ll hear, Black South Africans fought for the British, and there were incidents of British soldiers who mutinied and joined the amaXhosa. amaNgqika men upset at how they’d been treated by their own countrymen worked for the colonists in this war, not the mention the amaMfengu people who the amaXhosa regarded as illegal immigrants on their land - there was no love lost between these two either. To merely describe this war as blacks versus whites is to commit historical incongruity. Sandile met with Maqoma in the first days of 1851 in order to work out a series of offensive moves against the British. Hermanus Matroos, who you met last episode was leading a powerful battalion sized group of amaXhosa and Khoesan fighters. Willem Uithaalder, former Cape Mounted Rifles cavalryman, was also fighting the British — his knowledge about how to go about focusing attacks was key.

This is episode 184 and we’re picking up our story on old year’s eve 1850. Last episode, we heard how Cape Governor Harry Smith was holed up in Fort Cox, and the amaXhosa were in control of most of British Kaffraria - the 8th Frontier War was in full flow. There were fears amongst the settlers that the war would spread as far as the Cape Colony, and the five thousand British troops stationed in southern Africa were spread as far as across the Orange River. What was also unclear was what was going on across the Kei, had the Gcaleka and Paramount chief Sandile decided to join in with Maqoma and Mlonjeni? Also unclear was the situation in all the villages and towns, and what about the amaGqunukhwebe - were they going to remain neutral? Missionary George Brown was still searching for his wife Janet and their infant — he didn’t know yet that she’d was on her way to Fort White and was safe. When we left off, Brown had been accosted close to his mission station at Iqibira, where Chief Maqoma who led the rebellion demanded he answer questions. We had also met Maqoma’s main translator who historians believe was Hermanus Matroos although he never formally introduced himself to Brown. The reason why we’ve spent some time talking about Matroos is because he had convinced many in the Kat River Settlement Khoekhoe to join the uprising against the British. One raid too many by the redcoats into the Kat River, following years of being bad mouthed by the English Settlers led by the odious editor of the Grahamstown Journal Robert Godlonton, had pushed the Khoekhoe over the edge. Mlanjeni the prophet had preached that an uprising against the British would succeed and so far he appeared to be 100 percent correct. It was Sunday 29th December and on that very day, Colonel Henry Somerset — commanding officer of the frontier forces and commanding officer of the Cape Mounted Rifles, was on his horse heading towards Fort Cox. He was trying to save Governor Sir Harry Smith who was besieged there - out although his dispatch riders had failed to pierce the amaXhosa warrior perimeter the previous night. Somerset was in his 60s, and quite a sight he was. Large handlebar moustache, was dapper in dress, but regularly almost useless in his actions. This was the man upon which the entire British response dangled. Somerset’s father was Lord Charles, who had returned home after his stint as Governor of the Cape between 1814 and 1826 and died in 1837 at the age of 63. His men loved him because he preferred sending them to the beach with a band than into the bracken with a rifle. By now he was seen as the beau ideal of a cavalry officer of the old regime. One trooper wrote that he was “…a fine looking old man, a regular Vieux d’Afrique…” Or "Old Man of Africa" And to make things worse, the defeat of the 91st was not the only bad news on Sunday 29th December 1850 — Somerset was to hear that Hermanus Matroos had convinced his fellow Khoekhoe and coloured brethren in the Kat River Settlement to join the amaXhosa uprising. Attention turned quite swiftly to the Khoekhoe men of the Cape Mounted Rifles where some had already joined the Xhosa war.

Episode 183 it is, and we’re going to take stock as we enter 1851. In war, truth is the first casualty. It’s a military maxim attributed to Aeschylus, the father of Greek tragedy. Aeschylus actually fought in the front lines against the Persians at Marathon in 490 BC. We don’t know much about the rest of his life, but we do know that his work called 'Persians' which was financed by Pericles was such a success that he was invited to Sicily by Hieron of Syracuse to restage the play. His life bridged the Archaic and Classical ages. Considered even by the ancients to be difficult and old-fashioned, Aeschylus was also quite innovative in the structures, personnel, and even subjects of his 89 plays, of which we have only seven. Later, in In 1758 the famous lexicographer Samuel Johnson penned a short item in “The Idler" which included the following statement .. ‘ “Among the calamities of War may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.” Credulity. A willingness to believe whatever is dished up. The lovers of social media are infected by a disease called credulity. In this series I have endeavoured to avoid relying on credulity by constantly referring to original sources, documents, oral history, cross-referencing where I can. There is nothing more important than deploying verification. Credulity is the tendency to be too ready to believe that something is real or true, often without sufficient evidence or critical examination. It refers to a person's inclination to accept claims or assertions with little skepticism or questioning. Southern African history is full of credulity being punctured by reality. Most politicians make a living out of abusing credulity. With that melodromatic introduction, let us dive into the deep pool of tangibility regarding Mlanjeni’s War, the 8th Frontier War which broke out on Christmas day 1850. The military villages along the Thyumie River were gone, burned down, dozens of British soldiers were dead, killed in Boma Pass or killed in their military villages named Auckland, Juanasburg and Woburn. In the mountains above Thyumie River, missionary Niven and his family had walked out of Keiskamma hoek and straight into a party of amaXhosa warriors. It is true that respected Rharhabe chief Ngqika had declared the missionaries and their homes protected, but that was twenty years ago and the respected chief was long gone. Into our story steps one of the most remarkable characters we’ve heard about thus far, a man called Hermanus Matroos. Brown was to remark later later that Matroos “… spoke English more precisely than I have ever heard any other native do…” Hermanus Matroos, otherwise known as Ngxukumeshe enters our tale, a large and imposing man, broad shouldered, powerful. Hermanus means army man, warrior, brave warrior and comes from the German, Herman. Matroos means sailor. And Ngxukumeshe means in the vanguard - at the front. These names fit the man, a warrior born of a slave sailor, a man who was always at the front of everything.

Welcome to the History of South Africa podcast with me your host, Des Latham, this is episode 182. 182 is a triangular number meaning it can be arranged in an equilateral triangle — specifically it is the 13th triangle number because 13x4 Divided by 2 is 182. And it’s a death triangle that the British were facing now - facing amaXhosa prophecy, a blazing hot environment not conducive to their warfare, and the amaXhosa chiefs who were stacking up against the invaders. When we left off, the British column under Lieutenant Colonel George Mackinnon was trying to make it back to Fort White having been whipped by the amaXhosa in the Boma Pass. It’s important to note that all 12 British killed in that ambush were shot. Previously in the first seven Frontier Wars, most soldiers were stabbed by amaXhosa wielding assegais, but now the boot was on the other foot. And yet in the coming months of war, the Xhosa would use their trusty assegai’s to good effect as you’re going to hear. It was Boxing Day 1850, a year in which the transportation of British convicts to Western Australia had begun just as it was being phased out in other parts of that territory. In June 1850 Former Twice-Served British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel fell off his horse and died. Mayer Lehman sailed from Germany to join his two brothers in the United States, who were running a dry-goods business, a pre-cursor to the doomed Lehman Brothers bank which collapsed in 2007 and took the world’s economy with it. Also in the United States, Edward Ralph May delivered a speech to the Indiana legislature where he called for African-Americans to be given the right to vote. This was a period when slavery was still legal in the U.S., ten years before the civil War. In southern Africa, Mackinnon’s men had been shot at through Christmas by Sandile’s warriors who were imbued with Prophet Mlanjeni’s magic - and now the troops were trying to escape what looked like certain doom. They’d bivouacked overnight at the Uniondale mission station at Keiskamma Hoek. It hadn’t helped that Mackinnon stuck to his original orders like a limpet to a rock. Governor Sir Harry Smith had ordered that the men should march with firearms unloaded to avoid any accidents, and despite the fact that a large army of amaXhosa were now tailing the British as they were force marched to Fort White, the muskets remained unloaded. In nearby Woburnin for example, homes had been built at Ngqika’s warrior son Thyali’s grave. As you’ve heard the ex-British soldiers living there had opened up and desecrated the grave. For the Ngqika line of the Rharhabe - this military village would be their first main target. The amaNgqika had watched the vets till their land, they lived cheek by jowel. The land that had recently been their forefathers. The little river between Woburn and the amaNgqika was easy to cross except when in full spate, and a large amaXhosa army crossed the river on Christmas Day 1850, and laid waste to Woburn which they attacked at nine in the morning. Sixteen ex-soldiers farmed here some with families, and they were overrun in less than an hour - the women and children spared, the men speared or shot. The nearby military village of Auckland was attacked at two in the afternoon, it lay in a a bowl at the head of the Thyumie River valley and this was a trap from which none of the soldiers would escape. There was no clear view down into the valley which meant they had no idea what was taking place they could not see the smoke from Woburn and the little village of Juanasberg. When a Khoekhoe woman struggled up the path on Christmas morning and told the inhabitants of Auckland she had spotted smoke from the other villages, she was ignored. Across the other side of the Amatola mountains, the British troops who’d managed to make it out of Boma Passthen marched off from Keiskamma hoek heading to Fort White, were suffering in the mid-summer heat.

Shots fired! We’re with the amaXhosa under Maqoma and Sandile, and the British soldiers under Lieutenanat Colonel George Mackinnon, fighting on the steep cliffs of Boma Pass. When the firing began, one of the companies of 73rd Regiment had just entered the pass and it’s Captain JC Gawler explained later about the confusion. Last episode we heard all about the long column of British troops strung out more than two kilometers up this pass, and how Mackinnon, along with the Xhosa police fighting alongside the British and the Coloured Cape Mountain Rifles had emerged at the top. Bugles were blasting off below, sounding the advance call, but the British troops were not sure what that meant - either run up the slopes, or turn to fight their attackers. What was even more bizarre in spite of the volleys going off and the sounds of Xhosa muskets echoing off the rocky cliffs, Mackinnon refused to believe that his column was being attacked. This was supposed to be a show of force said Governor Harry Smith, not a real attempt at arresting Sandile the Ngqika chief. Major John Jarvis Bisset managed to convince the lieutenant Colonel the Xhosa were in fact attacking — Mackinnon regarded the amaXhosa as savages who couldn’t properly organise a fight of this sort. He’d also convinced himself that Maqoma and others who’d been hell bent on war were being ignored by the amaXhosa chiefs, a very bad miscalculation. His hesitation some say was actually caused by shock, then having to accept the truth. Only the very best commanders and leaders are able to quickly rally themselves in a time of crisis and I’m afraid Mackinnon was not one of those. Bisset was, however, and he appeared to take over matters to some extent. It was his duty he said to plunge back down the gorge to take command of the ragged column and Mackinnon agreed. But a quick word about Tiyo. He’d been the first black minister to be ordained overseas, and overseas happened to be Scotland. He’d married a Scots Woman, and been the first to translate an English classic into isiXhosa. And which classic? Pilgrims’ Progresss. The firsts continue- his eldlest son was the first black doctor in the Cape, his second eldest son Johna Henderson Soga is revered as the first amaXhosa historian. Third son was a vet. All his sons were educated in Scotland. But that was in the future. Right now, Tiyo had made his way back to Keiskamma Hoek with his Scots bride, aged 21. As the lovebirds disembarked from their voyage in Port Elizabeth, a settler shouted they were “the shame of Scotland”.

Episode 180 it is then so let’s get cracking. Or crackling, which was the atmosphere in late 1850 as Xhosaland and British Kaffraria was seized by the exploits of prophet Mlanjeni. He’d combined world views, his messianic emergence shook the land as far away as Cape Town. AS a sickly young man from near King Williams Town, he’d disappeared to work in the Cape Colony and returned in 1850 claiming to have been living under the sea. Not quite Sponge Bob because unlike that loveable kids character, Mlanjeni said it was during his stint underwater that God spoke to him. You’ll remember how I explained that Mlanjeni took to sitting in pools in nearby rivers and streams, the water lapping against his face as he sat deep in thought. At first he seemed to be in sync with the missionaries and the Governor Harry Smith, saying the amaXhosa should abandon witchcraft, avoid raiding settler cattle and so on. However his message morphed as I explained, and very soon he was exorting his numerous adherents to stop burning the wood of gum trees — an invasive species — he believed the exotic tree symbolised white influence. Word spread, and some began saying that Mlanjeni had miraculous powers, he could light his pipe from the sun, he wore his face on one cheek so he could spot witches and paralyse them. When the missionaries heard that he was also saying that he could heal the sick, give sight to the blind, to make the mute speak and the lame walk. He refused to accept gifts, and the chiefs and commoners streamed to his home. Then the British tried to arrest him and he disappeared, thus growing more power in the eyes of his adherents. We need to focus on these religious matters, so a quick return to the men in black. The missionaries were in a spot. Robert Niven of the United Presbyterian Church was holding forth in Keiskamma hoekDown the road was a man who you could say was taking his position as missionary into the missionary position. George Brown lived on the plains below the Amatolas, not far from the Thyumi valley, arriving in early 1849. At first people noted how he had a kind and manly appearance. But very soon, however, the manly appearance took on a reverential lust — a scandalous man as you’ll hear. But first, he seduced the young Janet Chalmers, William Chalmers daughter, and John Forbes Cumming hated him so much for this act, that the two men spoke only through letters. Brown was forced to marry Janet Chalmers in August 1850, five months pregnant.Harry Smith by now was on the frontier, and Sandile’s mother Sutu who was Ngqika’s widow, went to the Thyumi mission station on 9th December to speak with him. She asked why the English wanted another war. Smith said that the chiefs were not paying fines and she warned “You have taken away all my power, you take away the power of the chiefs, and then you find fault with us for not keeping the people in order…” Christmas Eve was the date selecte by Harry Smith as the day his intimidatory force as Noel Mostert Called it, up the Boma Pass into the Amatola mountains. It was exactly sixteen years to the day of the outbreak of the Frontier War of 1834.

This is episode 179 and the prophet Mlanjeni is about to emerge. His story is one of the phenomenal tales of our land, he joined an already fairly long list of colonial era fighters who imbued their struggle against encroaching settlers with a combination of christian salvation ethos and a narrative full of amaXhosa ancient mystery and magic. If you recall last episode, Mlanjeni had been calling all local spiritual leaders to his home, where they were to pass between two poles that had been cleansed and purified. After this other rank and file amaXhosa were being called to be cleansed by Mlanjeni from his — village amongst the Ndlambe people — a people who were now being administered by Commissioner John Maclean. As you heard last episode Maclean had written a brief message to Governor Harry Smith about the rising excitement amongst the amaXhosa about Umlanjeni’s prophecies. It was Messianic paradigm, eventually morphing into the a mythos about the triumphant resurrection of the ancestors who were going to drive the English back into the sea. This message has been repeated since. So let’s take a much closer look at Prophet Umlanjeni. What made him tick? By the time he was a youth of 18, he had begun to fast regularly in the manner of all other messianic messengers like Moses or Mohammed — a process guaranteed to lead to hallucination. Without going too far into the weeds here, those who go on hunger strike or fast extensively report there is an incredible psychological impact. Fasting beyond 72 hours for example causes a deficiency in nutrients, muscles begin to break down, dizziness and dehydration occur. As the prophet continues to fast, hallucinations can be extreme, as electrolyte imbalances trigger brain malfunction leading to delirium. IT was in this delirius state the Umlanjeni found his happy place. And as psychologists will tell you, those with preexisting mental conditions should not fast beyond what is accepted as healthy. When Mlanjeni called his people to the two poles for cleansing, he could barely walk he was so frail from his fastidious fasting. It was 18th August 1850 when Maclean first heard about this wardoctor, who at this point merely appeared to be a somewhat misguided youngster with pre-existing mental conditions. Mlanjeni, like the previous wardoctor Nxele, had lived in the Cape Colony and heard the messages of Christianity and Islam. When he returned to the Ndlambe people living near the Amatola mountains, people say he had changed. His family said he took to sitting in a nearby river, in the still waters of a pool, sitting here in water up to his neck, musing on the world, refusing to eat. He said he was talking to the spirit world, to his ancestors and he was infused with divine powers, endowed with the capacity to relay the messages from the ancients to the amaXhosa. He was told he had to purify his people, and the way he was going to do this was similar to War Doctor Nxele, also known as Makana. He said the ubuthi was the root cause of all amaXhosa suffering, linked to disease and death, and he declared “Let us cast it away, and come to me to be cleansed…” Normally, a grandiose claim of this sort from a troubled youth would have been ignored, but the amaXhosa across the Cape were ripe and ready for such a message. Their leaders had failed them, the traditional ways had failed them, and here was a messiah, preaching in a manner that was uplifting. And a succession of British blunders were to take place which exacerbated the situation.

The mid-nineteenth Century was like the calm before the storm with the discovery of diamonds a decade away, and then the wars between the Boers and Brits, and the Brits and amaZulu a glimmer in the imperial eye. Moshoeshoe was gaining power amongst the Basotho, and to the east, Mpande continued to dream of crushing the amaSwazi. But to the South on Christmas Day 1850, another frontier war in a long and bitter series between the Cape colony and the amaXhosa erupted in the wake of the witchcraft eradication processes enforced by Governor Harry Smith. I spent much of last episode explaining the religious and social ethos and differences between the empire and missionaries on one side, and the amaXhosa and their spiritual leaders on the other. Mlanjeni one of these spiritual leaders was the driver of this attempt by the amaXhosa to throw off the yoke of the empire. Andries Stockenstrom had been warning the British for some time that their tone-deaf and blunt attempts at destroying the power of the amaXhosa chiefs was not just chafing the people of British Kaffraria, but becoming dangerous. Smith had been compelled to maintain a heavy force of patrols in this territory to enforce the removals of the amaXhosa from land now allocated to English farmers and dislodge those who’d returned to places from which they’d already been driven. It was like the very definition of madness. The British authorities were repeating exactly what they’d done to the Xhosa before the Seventh Frontier War of 1846 and 1847. Since then they’d been very busy. The British had laid out an extensive series of roads and forts, centred on King Williams’ Town which was the main pivot for this grid of power in and around the Amatola mountains. The town was about 22 kilometers south of the base of these picturesque peaks, on the banks of the Buffalo River which provided protection against assault from the high ground. It was the Boma Pass down to the Keiskamma River that troubled the British soldiers most, it also extended upwards into the Amatola mountains behind the Fort to a point known as Keiskamma Hoek — the source of the Keiskamma where another mission station called Uniondale was located. This is not to be confused with the town of Uniondale in the Karoo. After looking out from Keiskamma Hoek, taking in the scenic views, swept up in the wonder of the beauty of this region, you’d climb back on your intrepid pony and head back down the trail past Fort Cox and Burnshill, towards Fort White, and then onwards another 30 kilometers or so to Fort Hare. Many military historians have fixated on the British propensity to forget what they’d learned in previous wars, it was a kind of disease of the age, which would become a pandemic during the Anglo-Boer War, then a catastrophic forgetfulness by the First World War. The Khoekhoe were now extremely angry at the British authorities for messing around with the Kat River Settlement agreements, and the Boers had been embittered by Harry Smith’s unilateral annexation of the TransOrangia region. This grew into a seething hatred when Smith had a young Boer called Thomas Dreyer executed. With so many Boers gone in the Great Trek, the British had to rely on the Khoekhoe and unfortunately for the people of the Kat River, the people now being called the coloured people, opprobrium and malice were heaped upon them. Who needs enemies when the British treated their friends like this?

We’re plunging into the developments of the 1850s now and this is episode 177. In numerology the digits 1 and 7 are significant,1 represents new beginnings and leadership, while 7 is often associated with spirituality and introspection. So it’s no mistake this this episode probes spirituality and introspection - and leadership. Not that I necessarily ascribe to the tenets of numerology, but its a useful way into a sensitive subject. By mid-19th Century, most of the game of the Cape, from the north, the east to the south, had been shot out. The amaXhosa had been driven across the Fish River in 1812, out of the Kat River Valley in 1829, then right past the Keiskamma River in 1847. None of the land they lived on west of the Kei was secure, no longer did the sons of the chiefs leave their dad’s homesteads to seek out their own virgin territory because there was none left. In the old days, when a man died his hometead was burned down and vacated where as now and the new cattle enclosure was built back to back with the old one. Dwellings were clustered closer together, and not everyone lived near a river unlike the century before. This was change, and now drought took on calamatous forms. Before the people could move to water now they were stuck on the landscape. So it was not surprising that given the pressures of people and animals, the first great cattle lungsickness to be registered in this region followed hard on the land losses of 1850 to 1853. The amaXhosa men were now labouring for the very people who had supplanted them, deprived of their means of subsistence and independence. Many amaXhosa had worked for the farmers and settlers before this time, and contrary to most reports, many were quite happy to do so because they earned cash, and left when they felt like it. The standard of living on these farms determined how long the workers remained at least until this period of our history. The option of leaving at their own discretion eroded rapidly as the access to cattle as wealth eroded. The smaller Xhosaland could no longer support the population. Even within Xhosaland the men and women were now unconsciously working for the settlers by growing forage they sold to the farms, and then making some money to buy textiles and pots and pans. Here is the crux of the contradiction in colonialism. That the people who bought the clothing preferred to buy this clothing than manufacture their skin karosses of yore, and yet, by doing so, they were becoming dependent on the cash they made from their labour. As colonial intervention increased, a seachange in Xhosa politics took place. The petty rivalries of the various chiefs was encouraged by some of colonial officials, the divide and rule precursor and the new governor Sir Harry Smith was particularly active in his attempts to divide the royal line of the amaXhosa and the commoners. This was not working. He’d try to ban lobola, he’d tried to usurp the power of the chiefs, but the commoners did not buy into the British plan. It was such a cynical move that the commoners despite little access to power, preferred their chiefs and an age of proper resistance to colonialism began. This is the period that saw the rise of leaders who would be recalled all the way through the struggle period during apartheid, names like Hintsa, Sarhili, Ndlambe, Chungwa, Maqoma, Tyhali and Sandile. As I’ve pointed out through this series, the grafting of two types of cosmology together, the ancient African legends and power ethos, with a salvation tale through the story of the cross, featured throughout our history of connection.

This is the period of the utilitarian liberal, not of the democrat, it’s 1850 and in the Cape, a newly ninted constitution had been drafted by the attorney general, William Porter. This was based on a nonracial qualified franchise - all adult males who had occupied property worth at least twenty five pounds for a year were eligible to vote. Porter had toiled on the draft of this document for the also newly minted Governor, Sir Harry Smith, who sent it to London. Porter later in 1850 had a complete change of heart as utilitarian liberals tend to do, he denounced the option of univesal suffrage — at least for men of all colours — as threatening to the colony with its in his words, “communism, socialisms, and red republicanism which had caused so much mischief in France….” There had been an attempted major communist revolution in France in 1848, which spilled over into other parts of western Europe including the land that would become known as Germany. This horrified utilitarians everywhere, no less so in the Cape Colony. As the ship bearing Smith’s new constitution headed north, another was heading south and crossed each other somewhere out there on the wild untamed ocean. It was a dispatch from Colonial Secretary Earl Grey who proposed sending Irish convicts to the Cape. Smith announced this proposal to the horrified residents of Cape Town and immediately aroused a storm of agitation against the Governor. The settlers had been considering representative government for some time and this suggestion of Irish convicts arriving backfired — driving many more of the moderate thinkers into the arms of those who were agitating for some form of independent governance. The colonists regarded the Irish as a threat to their respectability and citizens used the concept as a weapon to attaack the oligarchy that ran the Cape at the time. It was a legislative council, nominated by Governors not elected by the people so it had been tainted constantly by allegations of corruption, nepotism, and a host of other maladies associated with power wielded too long by men who were mostly too greedy. The convicts duly arrived on a ship called Neptune, but they were refused entry to Cape Town, and the men sat in chains in Simon’s Bay for five months. Eventually in 1850 the ship was ordered to sail away. One of the main antagonists in this crazy story was a man called John Montagu. He had been alarmed by how the Irish convict idea had radicalised even his mild-mannered friends, and so he demanded that Smith reimpose some kind of authority and stop this movement towards representative government. Montagu argued that the whole idea was anti-English, not what the British should be supporting, so Smith delayed the implementation. But what was going on was very very interesting. The hullabaloo had revealed two very distinct political movements inside the Cape. One was conservative, pro-English and pro-British government, led by Montagu, joined by the big merchants of Cape Town. They were also joined by the Eastern Cape settlers led by their flag bearer, Grahamstown Journal Editor and land speculator Robert Godlonton. Another powerful figure joined this conservative echelon, and that was the newly arrived Anglican Bishop, Robert Gray. A newspaper called the Cape Monitor was launched in October 1850 by these conservatives. The second political movement were the radicals, both British and Afrikaner, led by John Fairbairn, Christoffel Brand, Francis William Reitz and Andries Stockenstrom. They regarded the conservatives as a corrupt bunch of nepotists, an oligarchy, but they were divided by what to do about frontier policy. Fairbairn used his newspaper the South African Advertiser to defend the rights of blacks, while Brand preferred to defend the rights of the Dutch descendents against the oppression of old-English money elites. Stockenstrom had his own varied approach to both.

This is episode 175 - and we’re back in the Cape circa 1849 and thereabouts. Before we dive into the latest incidents and events, let’s take a look at what was going on globally as everything is connected. In France, citizens are able to use postage stamps for the very first time, a series called Ceres, which is also a place in the Western Cape. The Austrian Army invades Hungary entering the countries two capitals, which back in 1849 were called Buda and Pest. Next door, Romanian paramilitaries laid into Hungarian civilians, killing 600 in what we’d call ethnic cleansing. The second Anglo-Sikh war was on the go in India, and the British suffered a defeat at the Battle of Tooele, while across the ocean in Canada, the Colony of Vancouver Island was established. This is important because that’s where one of my ancestors eloped later in the 19th Century for the metropolis that was Beaufort West. Elizabeth Blackwell was awarded her M.D, thus becoming the first women doctor in the United States, and the Corn Laws were officially repealed by the UK Parliament. These were tariffs and trade resctrictions on imported food — including all grains like Barley, wheat and oats. I mention this because the repeal spelled the death knell to British mercantilism — skewing the value of land in the UK, raised food prices there artificially, and hampered the growth of manufacturing. The Great Famine of Ireland between 1845 and 1852 had also revealed a real need to produce alternative food supplies through imports. It was this change that led to free trade finally being ushered into Britain — and of course this created opportunities for Southern African farmers. It’s also the year the first Kennedy arrives in America, a refugee of the Irish Famine. More prosaic perhaps, in New York on a cold February day, President James Knox Polk became the first president to have his photograph taken, while Minnesota became a formal US territory and the settlement of Fort Worth in Texas is founded. In July, a slave revolt at the Charleston Workhouse breaks out led by Nicholas Kelly, but plantation owners manage to suppress the revolt and hang 3 of the leaders including Kelly. Later in September, African-American abolitionist and hero Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery. And importantly for our story, Sir Benjamin D’Urban, after whom Durban in KZN is named and one of the Governors of the Cape, died in Montreal, Canada. Back to the Cape, because the anger at Harry Smith’s new policies were curing, nay, ripening, stewing, brewing amongst the amaXhosa. Arriving in the Eastern Cape, Harry was committed to reinstating the D’Urban system with which he had been associated - and which Lord Glenelg back in the colonial office has rejected. But now Earl Grey was in the colonial hot seat back home and he gave the thumbs up. Smith set to work sorting out the administration, appointing members of the settler elite to official positions including Richard Southey as his personal secretary. AS a close colleague of Grahamstown Journal Editor and rabid anti-Xhosa Robert Godlonton, he was chosen for his anti-black bias. If you remember how Smith had arrived, placing his foot on amaXhosa chief Maqoma’s neck, and his new edicts including the creation of British Caffraria — the previously known ceded territory —you can imagine how he was regarded further east. What is not common knowledge these days is that there was great demand for children under the age of ten to work in the Western Cape. Of course, this was not a proper labour environment, and the shift meant that these young boys and girls, and their mothers and fathers, were being turned into indentured labourers. This was a free market situation of the amaXhosa being able to hawk their labour for a fair price. Many were told they would be paid a wage, only to find that the terms of contract were vague, they were now receiving unspecified promises and the fabric of rural life based on marriage and female

This is episode 174. First off, a big thank you to all the folks who’ve supported me and for sharing so many personal stories of your ancestry. Particularly Jane who is a font of knowledge about the Williams family, and John who’s been communicating about the Transkei. Please also sign up for the weekly newsletter by heading off to desmondlatham.blog - you can also email me from that site. When we left off episode 173, King Mswati the first was running out of patience with his elder brother Somcuba. Voortrekker leader Hendrick Potgieter had also left the area north of the Swazi territory, settling in the Zoutpansberg. It was his last trek. He’d signed a treaty with Bapedi chief Sekwati, which had precluded any proper agreement with the other Voortrekkers around Lydenburg. With Potgieter gone, however, things were about to change. We need to swing back across the vast land to the region south of the Vaal River because dramatic events were taking place in 1848 - clashes between the British empire and the trekkers. By now, the area between the Orange and the Vaal was an imbroglio, elements of every type of society that existed in southern Africa for millennia could be found scattered across the region. Hunters and gatherers, pastoralists, farmers, San, Khoesan, Khoekhoe, BaSotho, Afrikaners, Boers, mixed race Griqua and Koranna, and British settlers could be found here. In some cases different combinations of these peoples lived together cheek by jowel, many combinations of cultures, languages and political systems. A classic frontier situation, with intermingling and very little structured relationship charactersing the mingling. Some of the San, Khoekhoe and even Basotho were now incorporated as servants of the Boers, and each of those groups were divided into rival political commuties. Bands of San still hunted through this area, despite attempts to eradicate them, a kind of ethnic cleansing you’ve heard about. In the south east, on either side of the Caledon River, rival Sotho states existed, under Moshoeshoe, Moletsane, Sikonyela, and Moroka — each of these had their own tame missionary living alongside as an insurance policy against each other and the British and Boers. By 1848 the new Governor of the Cape, Sir Harry Smith, had begun to experiment with British expansionism that he’d observed in India, assuming British culture and traditions, the empire’s institutions, were superior to all other. Smith loved to oversimplify complex problems, and the made him a natural expansionist and a man likely to make big mistakes. Within two months of arriving in Cape Town in December 1847, he had extended the frontiers of the Cape Colony to the Orange River in the arid north west of the Cape. This was between the area known as Ramah and the Atlantic Ocean. He’d annexed the land between the Keiskamma River and the Kraai River Basin in the east, booted out the amaXhosa, and annexed two contiguous areas as seperate British colonies — British Caffraria between the Keiskamma and the Kei River, and a second area that became known as the Orange River Sovereignty between the Orange and Vaal Rivers. Pretorius was so incensed that he began fanning the flames of anti-British opposition, or probably to be more accurate, anti-Smith opposition. This resentment boiled over in July 1848 when Pretorius with commandants Stander, Kock and Mocke led a powerful force of 200 Transvalers and about 800 Free Staters along with a 3 pounder artillery gun into Bloemfontein. The preamble to the Battle of Boomplaats had begun.

This is episode 173 and we’re in what was called the north eastern transvaal, modern day Mpumalanga and Limpopo. Last we heard how Hendrick Potgieter’s Voortrekkers had camped at a new town they named Ohrigstad in 1845, after leaving the are around Potchefstroom. Potgieter wanted to move further away from the British, and he sought a new port to replace Durban which had been annexed by the English. The area around Ohrigstad had a major drawback, apart from the fact it was already populated by the Bapedi. The lowlands were rife with malaria. Within a few weeks of arriving in the rainy season of 1845, men women and children began dying. The trekkers realised they had to move once more so families packed up their wagons and trekked to higher ground 50 kilometers south. The named the new town Lydenburg and established a new Republic named after the town. The Boers were gathered across the Vaal now, deep into the lowveld, spreading out across southern Africa. They had congregated around towns like Winburg, Potchefstroom, Ohrigstad, Lydenburg. Local African chieftans had to decide how they were going to face this arrival, was it a threat or opportunity? Later it would obviously become clear that the boers arrival was a threat, but this wasn’t the case at first in spite of modern assumptions. They were new power brokers, thinly spread, a minority on the ground and the Bapedi Chief Sekwati quickly came to the conclusion that the trekkers were an opportunity rather than threat. So when Hendrick Potgieter and his trekkers rolled onto the landscape, a meeting was arranged between the Boer leader and the Bapedi chief. On the 5th July 1845 a Vredenstractaat was signed - a treaty - which granted the Boers the land east of the Steelpoort River. As I pointed out last episode, many of the Boers who had trekked with Potgieter took exception to this treaty. They said he was acting dictatorially, and wanted more of a say in how these treaties were being signed. King Mswati of the Swazi’s who lived south east of this region was aware of what was going on. The Boers understood that he also laid claim to the Steelpoort, and had been fighting constantly with Sekwati about who had the right to this region. Mswati met with this group of disatissfied Boers, and told them that the Bapedi were his subjects, he’d defeated them. The Boers under Potgieter and the second group who regarded themselves as independent of Potgieter’s actions continued to settle on Bapedi land and friction developed. The Bapedi took a liking to the Boer cattle, and raids escalated quite quickly into full-blown attacks between the two groups on the veld. Sekwati had heard about the Boers and Mswati’s recent talks, so naturally he was suspicious of their motives. The Bapedi king encouraged the raiding of Boer cattle so by 1846 bad faith seemed to imbue all negotiations. Then an incident occurred that escalated matters. According to the Bapedi annals, the Boers complained that in joint Boer-Bapedi hunting parties the Bapedi had taken more than their allotted share of game. The Boer annals report something much more violent. That was the Bapedi raid on a Boer laager at Strydpoort, just south of modern day Polokwane. The trekkers were particularly angry because the Bapedi raided the laager on a day that most of the men were away hunting with a section of Bapedi, leaving the women alone. It was the women who fought off the attackers. There are poignant stories told by trekkers who survived how the women were knocked flat on their backs every time they fired these huge heavy muskets, leaving them bruised and battered but unbowed. There is further intrigue. The Trekkers had no idea about who owned which bit of land, they naturally assumed that Mswati was the overlord considering his people’s military social structure, similar to the amaZulu who by now, they knew well. What followed was intrigue, mystery, myth and of course, war.

This is episode 172 and we’re galloping back to cover the effect of the Boers 33 Articles, approved by the Volksraad on April 9th 1844, and thus installing the little Republic of Potchefstroom. Some of the articles and the fledgling laws and rules were going to crop up throughout the history of South Africa, all the way through to the time of apartheid, and even to the present. If you recall, the Natal Boers and the Vaal Boers had been in dispute — largely because of the difference of opinion between their two leaders, Hendrick Potgieter on the highveld, and Andries Pretorius who had been based in Natal. With the British declaring sovereignty over Natal, many Voortrekkers upped and offed, trekking back over the Drakensberg back to the transOrangia region, and up along the Vaal, while some ended up further north. So we’re going to take a look at this period. In 1849 there was a temporary union between the communities north of the Vaal, who adopted what amounted to the basis of what was to become the Transvaal Constitution. This constitution continued until the foundation of the South African Republic — which was only repealed in 1901 when its provisions ceased to be applicable. That is except for the application of the Roman-Dutch system of law. The thing to keep in mind was that the 33 Articles cannot be regarded as a formal constitution. For a start, there was no definition of various authorities in the State, and most of the 33 Articles were concerned with the procedure in the Courts. When it came to matters of Government, even the most elementary kind, the Articles were silent. Each emergency that arose subsequent to it’s ratification in 1844 led to a rewriting of the Articles to cover for the gaps in how to manage the state. Even the Volksraad was referred to in the vaguest terms possible. Often when disputes arose, another constitution, that of the Winburg Boers, regulated the Articles. Another character we’ve met pops up again. Johan Arnold Smellekamp - a citizen of the Netherlands. If you remember a previous podcast, he’d popped up in Natal and told the Volksraad in Pietermaritzburg that the Dutch Royal family was taking an active interest in the Voortrekkers. He’d stretched the truth to say the least, and had many members of the Volksraad convinced that if they fought the English for Natal, the Dutch would come to their aid. Holland did not. King William II rejected the proposed connection between the Netherlands and the Voortrekkers of Natal and before the year was out he apologised to White Hall for the affray caused by Smellekamp and his activities. That didn’t stop the self-aggrindising Smellekamp, who returned to Natal in 1843 but was refused entry into Port Natal by the British. So he headed to Delagoa Bay instead, and after the creation of the 33 Articles in 1844 and the declaration of independence by the Potch Winburg republic by Hendrick Potgieter, Smellekamp popped up once again, riding into Potch that Winter. This is where things get really interesting. Partly owing to Smellekamp’s persuation, and partly driven by his own obsessions, Potgieter made the fateful decision to organise a new trek at the end of 1844, heading towards Delagoa Bay. After a few weeks they arrived at a site they called Blyde River. Happy River. Potgieter believed that this site was only three days ride from the sea. He was wrong. They setup a new settlement and promptly named it Andries-Ohrigstad. When Potgieter’s wagons rolled onto the hills of Ohrigstad of course, they were not empty of people — and this is again where the story gets more interesting — the plot thickens to a consistency of treacle. Because the people he met there were the baPedi, who’d been forced out of their ancestral land by the amaNdebele of Mzilikazi two decades earlier. Take a look at a map and the location of iSWatini. By now it was being ruled by a very young King Mswati the First.

This is episode 171 and now its time to swing around southern Africa again, because as Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in Canterbury Tales in 1395, “Time and Tide wait for no man”. It’s from the Prologue to the first story called the Clerk’s Tale and the story is imbued with what modern academics call masculine authoritarianism. It’s about women’s power actually, and insubordination — the plot dealing with a woman called Griselda who rises the highest position of hegemonic power. She becomes the honoured wife of a wealthy lord through utter submissiveness and essential silence. To many modern folks, she represents a kind of prescriptive antifeminist propaganda — in other words — a very accurate description of the medieval period. Others say the strong and silent type is fundamentally insubordinate and deeply threatening to men and the concepts of power and male identity. What is this I hear you ask, why is Zwangendaba part of the History of South Africa? Well, as we all know, lines drawn on maps are cartographical magic codes, and the real world has no place for smoke and mirrors. Once again, we must go backwards to go forward. Zwangendaba was a King of a clan of the Nguni or Mungoni people who broke away from the Ndwandwe Kingdom alliance under King Zwide. After defeat of the Ndwandwe forces under his command by Shaka, Zwangendaba gathered his clan and fled their home near modern the town of Pongola. This dispersal was part of the movement of the people we call the Mfecane. Remarkably, Zwangendaba led his people, who took on the name the "Jele", on a wandering migration of thousands of kilometres lasting more than thirty years. Their journey took them through the areas of what is now northern South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi to Tanzania. The Ngoni, originally a small royal clan that left Kwa-Zulu Natal, extended their dominion even further through present-day Tanzania, Malawi, and Zambia when they fragmented into separate groups following Zwangendaba’s death.

This is episode 170 and the sound you’re hearing is the cheering and the flaming hot emotion because Sir Harry Smith is back in town! The town is Cape Town — Sir Harry won’t hang around there for too long, he as you know from the previous episode, has returned to South Africa to take up his new position as Governor of the Cape. Sir Harry was the former civil commissioner of the de-annexed Province of Queen Adelaide in the Eastern Cape and in June 1840 he’d left Cape Town to take up a post as Adjutant-General in India. There is this incredibly long history of connection between India and South Africa, and people like Smith were part of that history. Others of course are people like Gandhi, but that’s a story for further down the road. Smith was courageous, whatever other faults he may have had, and was involved in a sensational victory at the Battle of Aliwal in India on 28 January 1846 during the first Anglo-Sikh War. That victory led to a promotion to Major General, and he was offered an accepted a baronetcy. The British parliament formally thanked Smith, and then returned to England where the extremely bloated ego he’d developed over the past few decades was further fluffed up. While in England he’d spent a lot of time with the Duke of Wellington who’d defeated Napoleon, and with the Duke’s support, he convinced the British government that the festering sore of the Eastern Cape of South Africa could be healed. This expensive disaster after disaster he said could be resolved quickly, and even more importantly, cheaply. When he returned to England in 1847, Harry Smith was treated like royalty, greeted at Southampton by artillery salutes, church bells rang, thousands of people cheered him, a special train was laid on to take him to London, where he received the freedom of the Guildhall. He dined with Queen Victoria, and was pretty much the first authentic military hero of the Victorian era. Waterloo was 30 years earlier, a long way off, and there’d been very little military glory since. Thus, Wellington whispered in the ears of the powerful, and that is how Harry Smith was appointed the new Governor of the Cape, strategically important but infuriatingly complex. All settlers agreed, the Queen had made a perfect appointment. As we’re going to hear, this was going to be possibly her worst appointment anywhere up to then. All the hero worship was going straight to this little man’s head. He was short, so by little I mean horizontally challenged. Doing the hard work of making sense of negotiations were the translators. These were men, black and white, who had a vast influence on our history. Smith said to Sandile that he should leave Grahamstown and go to his people, whereupon the translators claim Sandile said “No — I will stay today near you, my former and best friend…” Historians believe these exchanges were embroidered, altered, and added to the misunderstandings. Many of the translators were sons of missionaries, or settlers who’d grown up speaking amaXhosa fluently. But they fed Smith what he wanted to hear. The very same translators had been at work when Sandile was taken into Grahamstown to be placed under house arrest so you can see that their editorialising was having an effect on history.

First off, a big thank you to those listeners who’ve been sending me emails, a great deal of useful information emerges from our discussions which always improves the quality of this podcast, specifically thanks to John for sending me your book and to Doctor Nkosi for the contact in eSwatini. When we left off in episode 168, pressure was being exerted on the Kat River Settlement by the new Governor, Sir Henry Pottinger. A quick revisit. The Kat River Settlement came into being in I829 after a clash on the eastern border when the authorities of the Cape Colony expelled amaXhosa from land around the source of the Kat River. To prevent them from re-occupying the area when the soldiers withdrew, the colonial government decided to settle it with English settlers and Khoekhoe and bastaards. Andries Stockenstrom who was then the Commissioner General of the eastern districts, wanted to intersperse the two races and give them equal quantities of land. But his superiors insisted on placing the khoe in the most exposed military positions, then gave the Khoe smaller land-grants than the English settlers received. What is really fascinating is how many types of people lived in this small area — people who differentiated themselves based on their ancestry. The party at the confluence of the Kat and Mankanzana Rivers for example belonged to that class of mixed race South Africans known to the colonists as 'Bastaards', who had adopted Dutch clothing, religion, technology and language, and did not associate themselves with their Khoi heritage. In May 1847 Governor Sir Henry Pottinger appoint a bankrupt farmer and a man who was known as a great hater of the Khoekhoe to oversee the Kat River Settlement. Thomas Jarvis Biddulph was appointed magistrate and immediately there were issues. Andries Stockenstrom said Biddulph’s moral character “could not bear scrutiny” and the new magistrate launched into a series of verbal and physical attacks on the Khoekhoe living along the Kat River and Blinkwater. He called them “a lazy set of paupers” and said that they would be better served working as labourers for the English settlers and the Boers. Just to reinforce his view, Biddulph pulled a tax stunt — increasing their tax from eighteen pence to six shillings. From eighteen cents to sixty cents. How about that for a tax hike, that’s 43 percent. If you tried that these days, the scratching sound of matches would be heard across the land. This historic site didn’t have long to go before it would be eviscerated by colonial jealousy. Even the former supporters, the missionaries, appeared to lose faith. One of the most ardent was Henry Calderwood. His idealism had evaporated — living on the frontier had shattered his liberal attitudes, and now he seemed to swap one obsession for another. One of the things that had driven Pottinger up the wall was the fact that the amaNgqika had continued to insist that they were at peace without admitting that they had been defeated, and by Sandile’s refusal to resume negotiations. On the 7th August 1847 Sandile’ had been formally declared a rebel. Then the whole situation worsened, and fast. Pottinger resorted to proclaiming that the amaMfengu, the Boers and the Khoekhoe who fought with his regular soldiers could seize whatever they liked from the amaXhosa. The full-scale invasion of the Amathola’s began again on the 29th September 1847, and every grain pit was emptied, every single animal seized.

This is episode 168 and the world by the middle of the 19th Century was shifting gear, changing rapidly. Southern Africa was caught in the currents of world history and within a few years with the discovery of Diamonds, was going to be very much in the current of world economics. Not that the Cape had not been crucial since the days of the Dutch East India Company, the VOR. As you heard last episode, the British government has fallen, Robert Peel had resigned on 19 June 1846, in the wake of political divisions that followed the repeal of the Corn Laws. The imposition of import duties on foreign corn had been attacked for making bread expensive. And yet, the Laws were more than a concession to farmers and landowners — they were also the symbol of a barrier against free trade. Ah yes, the logic and philosophy of lassaiz faire capitalism. The repeal of these laws and the change going on must not be underestimated. We forget these things, so long ago, at our peril. For we have similar debates going on today, globally. In 1846, the repeal of the laws took place in the midst of the great Irish Famine, which led to so many Irishmen and women fleeing their homeland for America — where they changed that country forever too. While the financiers muttered about all the advantages of free trade, they of course made sure to leave out one country in their calculations. India. This was always the exception. Still, the financiers were pontificating about how the empire itself was sort of redundant, and as everyone glanced around for the good and the bad, many found themselves wondering about southern Africa. This region assumed a pivotal role inside British politics, as it was going to do for the next 150 years. You see, the whole of South Africa was the embodiment of wasteful expenditure without a discernable return on commercial investment. It was a total liability except for the Cape of Good Hope with its strategically important naval base which allowed the British to cover the South Atlantic and the approaches to the Indian Ocean. Into the political breach strode a man who arrived with Lord John Russell’s administration, and he was the third Earl Grey, who took over from William Gladstone as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. Grey was a free trader, imbued with the spirit of the elixhir of cash, the medicine of dosh, and imperial matters were the third Earl Grey’s passionate interest. He was a technocrat with a mission, and wrote a book where he pointed out that the great object of possessing colonies was to also possess a monopoly over the commerce. Grey turned his gaze to Sir Peregrine Maitland. The governor was 70, and the stress of the Seventh Frontier War had turned him into an octagenarian. A younger man was needed. Someone who could sign up young amaXhosa and turned them into Sepoys, and they’d police their own people. This is where another colonial springs into our view, a man who was called a violent-tempered martinet, greedy and ambitious. Sir Henry Pottinger. He’d spent most of his life in the East, and had just retired as the first Governor of Hong Kong. He’d secured Britain’s commerce with that vast country called China, and when he sailed home in 1846, he’d been received as a hero. He’d been given a handsome pension for life and was telling all and sundry he hoped to become the governor of Bombay, which we now call Mumbai. The last thing he wanted was to be sent to South Africa. So when Grey met with Sir Henry, the latter bluntly refused the Cape Governorship. Eventually, Grey was forced to cough up a vast salary of ten thousand pounds a year and promised that the Cape Town post was temporary. Pottinger was to last ten months in South Africa. It’s thought too that his governoship, which was often like a hurricane of unsparing ill-will and excoriation, was also the most significant of the first half of the 19th Century.

This is episode 167 and the British army is clumping along towards the Amathola fastnesses, the deep ravines and steep riverine environment not the most ideal for an army that dragged everything around on wagons. Leading this army were officers steeped in the traditions of empire, and marching under their command were men from across Great Britain and beyond. They were poor, some with debts to pay back home, many were recruited from the haunts of dissipation and inebriation as historian Noel Mostert notes one officer saying in a somewhat sneering tone. But that’s a bit harsh, because when we read the journals of these soldiers, they’re full of character and intelligence, adventurers of their time whatever your political view. Half of these British soldiers were actually from Scotland and Ireland, they weren’t even English. It was the officers who’d neered at the colonials, openly, and it was the officers who symbolised the rotten core of this empire with it’s rampant class lunacy. It was only on rare occasions that rank and file soldiers made it to the heady ranks of the officer corps, and promotion was painfully slow. The officer class was notorious - it took the Crimean War before the British Army was dragged into the 19th Century. Up to the Seventh Frontier War it functioned as it had for hundreds of years — a place where the chinless wonders of the Empire could seek fame and fortune while retaining their artificial edifice of class. Then there was the South African bush which was a frightening experience for the British soldiers, it’s alien succulents a bizarre sight for the British. At night, as they soldiers lay in this bush, they could not light their pipes or a fire. At the first sign of a glimmer, the amaXhosa would open fire from several directions and while their aim was not good, the British didn’t take a chance and spent most of their time in their camp lying down out of sight. Sir Peregrine Maitland’s large army mobilised in June 1846, and lumbered into the Amathola’s looking for Rharhabe chief Sandile. They were also trying to corner Phato of the Gqunukhwebe closer to the ocean, along with Mhala of the Ndlambe — both were lurking somewhere between the Keiskamma and Kei Rivers. Colonel Henry Somerset swept the coastal regions, as Colonel Hare and Andries Stockenstrom scouted the Amatholas. On the 11th August 1846 Maitland made his decision. This was an exact copy of the decision made by Harry Smith in the previous Frontier War, who told then Governor Sir Benjamin D’Urban that a strike across the Kei River was required — a decisive strike. That’s because Harry Smith was a man of action, fully believing in the power of power. In the previous war, the Sixth Frontier War of 1834 to 1836, Smith wanted to strike Hintsa. That highly regarded amaXhosa chief had been killed by the very same Smith. Now here was Hintsa’s heir and his son, Sarhili, facing another British veteran of the war against Napoleon.

The Seventh Frontier war has burst into flame, and across the Ceded Territory and down into the land around Port Elizabeth amaXhosa warriors are on the warpath, the British have been forced into the defensive. If you remember, Sir Peregrine Maitland declared war on the amaXhosa chief Mgolombane Sandile Ngqika on 1st April 1846 — but the eastern Xhosa, the Gcaleka under Sarhili, had remained out of the latest war - at least for now. The amaXhosa have notched up two major victories against the British, one in the Amatola mountains where Sandile ambushed Gibson’s column, destroyed over 60 wagons then attacked a second wagon train from Grahamstown on its way to Fort Peddie with supplies which lay just over sixty east. More than 40 wagons were destroyed in the second attack, and the English cavalry and infantry were forced to shelter inside Fort Peddie with it’s 8 sided earth walls. Phato of the Gqunukhwebe had been particularly successful — but the amaXhosa were going to commit a cardinal error in warfare. Allow hotheaded soldiers to dictate tactics. On the 28th Mary 1846 the largest amaXhosa army in the Eastern Cape since the failed attempt at taking Grahamstown in 1819 surrounded Fort Peddie. The warriors hadn’t needed much convincing, because the British were now torching every single amaXhosa homestead they came across. The fort was a strategic target. It developed from a frontier post established in 1835 and named Fort Peddie, named after Lieutenant-Colonel John Peddie who led the 72nd Highlanders against the Xhosa in the Sixth Frontier War. Eight thousand men from every clan from chieftans west of the Kei River had joined forces and at midday they launched their attack on the strong defensive position. Fort Peddie had been regarded as a relatively safe outpost, surrounded by the resettled amaMfengu people, as well the Gqunukhwebe who had been allies of the British. But no more, Gqunukhwebe chief Phato had switched sides and he was eyeing the amaMfengu for special attention. As the tension rose in the fort, and awaiting the inevitable amaXhosa assault, a terrible incident was recorded which further damaged the British soldier’s honour. It was 26th May and Lindsay unleashed his rage up on a young colonial boy .. a wagon driver .. who had refused to go out and cut wood in fear of the surrounding amaXhosa. In what can only be called a shocking display of bombastic lunacy, Lindsay had this young teen tied to his wagon and was then subjected to 25 lashes. This after the child changed his mind and said he would go out into the bush, preferring to take his chances with the amaXhosa than the lash. Too late said Lindsay, it’s the lash for you. Ten days after the Peddie assault, Siyolo and Mhala moved towards the Fish River crossing points separately. There was enough British ammunition at the strong points on both sides to replenish the amaXhosa’s gunpowder barrels. Henry Somerset, yes the very same man we met so many episodes ago, was leading a force of cavalry nearby. They’d been sweeping the countryside, and came across the tracks of Mhala’s army, after a short skirmish the amaXhosa disappeared. But soon the cavalry came across the soldiers of Siyolo, Mhala’s nephew. Caught in the open along the Gwangqa River. The amaXhosa were to suffer a major defeat.

This is episode 165 — and the atmosphere in Xhosaland was ablaze with indignation. A Mr Holliday had complained in Fort Beaufort that an imaDange man called Tsili had stolen his axe, and if you recall last episode, Tsili had been arrested then freed while under military escort by Tola a headman who lived nearby. Tola had hacked off a prisoners hand to free Tsili from his shackles, the prisoner was thrown into a nearby river and died. The British demanded Tstili and Tola be handed over but imiDange chief Nkosi Bhotomane refused. Rharhabe chief Sandile was approached but he’d had enough of the English authorities, and refused to hand over the two. This was ostensibly what set off the War of the Axe, or the War of the Bounday as the amaXhosa called it. Maitland declared war on April 1st 1846 and lieutenant Governor John Hare launched their preemptive strike into Xhosaland. It took almost two weeks to assemble the troops while the Governor issued orders for all missionaries to leave emaXhoseni. Many white traders had already been killed by this time, the rest scattered from Xhosa territory. On the 11th April Colonel Somerset led three columns across the Great Fish River, then the Keiskamma. He was heading towards Sandile’s Great Place alongside Burnshill — the abandoned Glasgow missionary society’s station on the slopes of the Amathola mountains. That’s east of where the town of Alice is today. The British were advancing in classic British style, 125 wagons each drawn by 24 oxen, a five kilometer long column of men. The Dragoons were mounted on their heavy chargers, dressed in red tunics and their blue forage caps, the Cape Mounted Rifles on their smaller Boer ponies, dressed in green tunics and brown breeches, blending into the countryside. The infantry marched behind, dressed in scarlet jackets with white cross belts and white trousers and their cylindrical hats, called Albert Shakos that tapered to protect against the sun. You can imagine the scene, hundreds of troops on horseback and marching, the dust lifted off the trail, and very soon, the infantry began to discard their thick red coats. These soldiers began this war dressed like they dressed for a European battle, by the end, they would all look very different. They replaced these Albert Shakos with forage caps, or large Boer hats, they ditched their heavy backpacks for much lighter knapsacks, and they put away their leather collars. Somerset was pleasantly surprised to find no amaXhosa warrior in his way as his force arrived at Burnshill. After setting up camp there and leaving the wagons under Major John Gibson, he marched off into the Amathole valley on the 16th April, leading 500 men. Watching him were thousands of amaNGqika warriors, many armed with muskets. They began peppering the British with heavy albeit inaccurate fire. Maqoma was a highly experienced commander and recognized the British had a major weakness. Their baggage train. It was under his prompting that the other Xhosa commanders agreed to strike the wagons rather than aiming at the infantry. IN the late afternoon of the 16th as Somerset was toiling in the Amathola valley the Xhosa made their move.

This is episode 164. Remember when we left off we’d been hearing about the squad of Royal engineers who’d crossed into amaXhosa territory over the Tyhume River in January 1846. They were led by Lieutenant J Stokes — this small team of five were surveying land for the site of the new fort. Little did they know that their crossing of Block Drift into Ngqika country was a small initial skirmish that was going to lead to war. Some say war was coming anyway, however their blatant trespass definitely applied the amaXhosa chief’s minds as you’re going to hear. They’d crossed over from the Ceded Territory where forts were allowed, into Xhosa territory where forts definitely weren’t and why they did this has been debated. Conservative preacher Henry Calderwood if you remember had also been shocked by the news and wrote a letter warning the Cape Governor of this umbrage. Chief Mgolombane Sandile of the Rharhabe was under pressure from other chiefs, and his young warriors. Sandile had been thrown into his role almost a decade earlier and faced crises after crises. His older brother Maqoma despised him, no worse, hated him and mainly for his superior rank. Sandile however, was no fool, his speeches that have been written down prove he was an agile thinker and he determined policy only through consultation with another brother, Anta and a wise counsellor, Thyala. The latter lived near Sandile at the Burns Hill mission. There was an obvious and steady march to war once more on the Eastern Cape frontier. Sandile decided to go and visit the engineers himself to see what they were up to. A lot has been made of this visit — that he arrived with a full war party and was aggressive. It so happened that shortly before he set off, he’d received a letter from the English administrator of the Ceded Territory, Charles Lennox Stretch who was based in Fort Beaufort. It was a letter of complaint about cattle theft and about an incident where Sandile had slapped an trader who’d insulted him, then taken goods from his shop. Sandile sent his reply saying that both the Governor of the Cape Sir Peregrine Maitland and Stretch were rascals, and that the traders were under his feet as chief and he’d do what he liked with them, and those who complained about cattle theft should shut up. It was in this dark mood that Sandile arrived at Block Drift — at the site of the proposed fort. The five British soldiers in the survey camp were shaken by his attitude, and Lieutenant Stokes sent an urgent message to Fort Beaufort for reinforcements. A darkness seemed to hang over the region through that February, the traditional month of thunderstorms which cracked open the skies, and mirrored the sentiment of both amaXhosa and settler. This year was dry, despite these flashing storms, little rain had fallen increasing the sense of foreboding. For the amaXhosa, this constant threat of an invasion of their land appeared to be attached to genocidal intent. The land rooted their ways and the settlers had made it clear that they wanted nothing to do with the Xhosa culture, their ancient way of life was anathema to these new arrivals. As with other areas of the globe, the immigrants were encroaching not only on territory, but on the very idea of autochthonous survival.

This is episode 163, the year, 1845. New Cape Governor Sir Peregrine Maitland had shown he was a man of action — as a veteran of the Peninsular Campaign against Napoleon you’d expect that, particularly as he fought at Waterloo. This new man of action governor had some doubts about a few things here in sunny South Africa. He doubted the effectiveness of Andries Stockenstrom’s Eastern Cape Ceded territory system for a start. He would sort that he thought with the introduction of a new system which was actually an old system. More about that later. Maitland also doubted the effectiveness of two other treaties signed by his predecessor Sir George Napier with Griqua leader Adam Kok the third and King Moshoeshoe the First of the Basotho. But we need to turn south, back to the Eastern Cape Frontier. The 1840s were a high point of settler power in the Eastern Cape and wool was driving development. As the state expanded, pressure grew on the Ceded Territory, between the Fish and Keiskamma Rivers. It was also a time of reinforcing both the military forts around the frontier, and the communication systems. Starting in the mid-1830s, the British had extended their forts and signalling systems. They had been caught off-guard by the amaXhosa who’d raided the Eastern Cape without warning at the start of the Sixth Frontier War and it was imperative they improve their communication. After the frontier war of 1835-6, the planning of the system of frontier defence fell on the Royal engineers including Lieutenant-Colonel Griffith George Lewis and Captain WFD Jervois, as well as a civilian employee of the War Office, Henry L Hall. Lewis commanded the Royal Engineers in the colony at the time. He repeatedly expressed his frustration at the tardiness of the British government in allocating funds for the effective defence of the frontier districts. These funds of course were squeezed out of the British taxpayer, so the political leadership would not always release investments of this sort immediately. Lewis was one of those folks we come across every now and again, someone who seems to understand the big picture and the need for action. He wrote extensively on frontier defence policy, and complained that for years after the close of the war no clear decisions had been taken on how funds were to be utilised. His warnings like those of Sir John Hare the lieutenant Governor of the Eastern Cape were not being heeded. Jervois built the stockades at Peddie, Trompetter’s Drift, Double Drift and fort Brown, all found in the frontier districts of the Eastern Cape. Jervois would end up in the Channel Islands by the way, and designed and built a whole series of fortifications that were to become famous during the Second world War. The imperial government also approved of Lewis’s scheme for ‘signal towers’, and new roads and bridges to improve communications between these forts and the headquarters at Grahamstown where new barracks were to be built on the old Drostdy Ground. Lewis had been instrumental in building a series of towers to improve communications with Fort Beaufort and Fort Peddie, starting from Fort Selwyn in Grahamstown. The survey to establish suitable points on which to erect the stations was done by Henry Hall, stationed in the Eastern Cape in the period 1842–1858. Robert Godlonton had decided that his Grahamstown Journal was going to up the ante once more when it came to both the Kat River settlement where the khoekhoe lived, and the Ceded Territory. Appropriating the language of civilisation, Godlonton wrote in the journal that “…Colonisation would be then synonymous with civilisation, and the natives instead of being depressed or destroyed, would be raised from their wretched grovelling condition and participate in all the advantages which civilised government is calculated to bestow.” The fact that the amaXhosa people did not regard themselves as in a grovelling condition was utterly ignored by Godlonton.

This is episode 162. First, some housekeeping. A huge thank you to all my supporters, the podcast just passed 1.3 million listens, so there’s a large number of folks out there who’ve found this series useful. I’m so delighted that our crazy tale here on the southern tip of Africa has resonated with so many people. The response has utterly stunned me, thinking when I started that being so battered by headwinds as we are at the moment, cynicism would sink the show. But it’s the opposite. To all the hundreds of listeners sending emails over the last 24 months, your personal stories and responses are all noted and stored. There’s a treasure trove of stuff which I’m going to try and use where appropriate. If you’d like to contact me please send a mail to [email protected] Or head off to my site desmondlatham.blog there’s a contact form there and a newsletter sign-up. And now back to the mid-1840s. When we left off, Moshoeshoe and Adam Kok had signed a Treaty with the Cape Governor which gave them formal power over their territory. And as you know if you listened to episode 161, the definition of exactly what was their territory was somewhat hazy. By now the BaTlokwa, the Koranna and the Voortrekkers amongst others, had taken issue with this treaty, saying Moshoeshoe and Kok had no control over their people. There was a flourishing trade across the Orange, tying Cape Towns like Beaufort West, Graaff-Reinet and Grahamstown were directly linked to the settlements to the north by these trade routes. The Griqua received their gunpowder from these towns and sold their cattle and ivory there for example. The Orange River was a significant challenge, at this stage there was no bridge or ferry and when it flooded, weeks could pass before wagons could cross. The British presence was concentrated in Colesberg where the civil commissioner with the wonderfully memorable name of Fleetwood Rawstone served for 21 years. He was subordinate to the Lieutenant Governor of the eastern Province held through the crucial years of the 1840s by Lieutenant Colonel Hare who lived in Grahamstown. After the return of Jan Mocke, Jan Kock and the Modder River Boers from Natal, life became more difficult for the British commissioner. The Treaty signed between the Griqua and the Cape Colony in 1843 was supposed to bring permanent peace to the Transorangia region but was predicated on the fact that the Griqua were supposed to pacify the Boers. The Boers totally rejected that premise. In November 1844, the Boers had enough and a commando was assembled under Jan Kock which rode to Philippolis, where a Griqua commando had been also been assembled and awaited their arrival. A Mexican standoff developed. It’s defined as a confrontation where no strategy exists that allows either party to achieve victory. Just as an aside, the cliché of a Mexican standoff is best known in Westerns, and probably the most memorable would be Sergio Leone’s 1966 Classic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Governor Maitland was deep in thought back in the Cape. He’d quickly assessed the rising tension across the Orange, as well as in the eastern Cape. He was another Peninsular war vet, commanding a Brigade at the Battle of Waterloo. Maitland had been part of the army that defeated Napoleon and his bravery during that Battle had brought him a formal vote of thanks from the British House of Commons.

This is episode 161 — and what’s this I hear? The sound of wind whipping and howling through the mountain recesses, snow-capped mountains, where the rivers have torn deep ravines in the geography, terraphysics scraping rocks, rushing waters plunging from the escarpment into the eastern cape and free state, foaming and roiling. It must be the home of the BaSotho. Many South Africans make the fatal mistake of thinking that Lesotho is such a small place, reliant on its big neighbour, it is basically another province of the RSA. My friends, harbouring that misconception will get you in deep trouble. Its not size that matters, its pure unbridled pride. Moshoeshoe and his descendents have fought long and hard for independence, albeit in a nation surrounded by a single other nation. By the mid-1940s, Moshoeshoe had turned to the British authorities and their policies were more favourable to him than those of the Boers. The British at least at this point showed no sign of coveting his land, nor had they ill-treated his people, unlike the amaXhosa to the south. Moshoeshoe was being kept up to date about diplomatic events by the influential Frency missionary, Eugene Casalis. By 1843 the Paris missionaries had realised that the biggest threat to Moshoeshoe and his Basotho were not the English, despite the bad blood between the French and the English, but the trekboers. This is important because the Boers didn’t see the Basotho as original owners of the land, they say the owners as San. In the years of discussions, letters, meetings, official notes, logs, missionary biographies, it became obvious that to the Boers, the San being the original owners, meant that the Basotho couldn’t really own the land at all. Basotho national existence began in the midst of what we’d call settler colonialism as well as the intra-African wars between rulers like Mzilikazi, Mantatisi, Shaka. It’s remarkable because this is one of the African states that grew out of a response to invasions by brown, black and white. Sotho oral tradition speaks of the royal family line of Bakoena Ba Mokoteli — which forms the totemic core of Basotho aristocracy, and existed way before these invasions. Casalis and his colleagues became Moshoeshoe’s external voice, writing his communications, and despite their patriotism as Frenchmen, they regarded the British in the Cape as their allies. The reason is simple. France had zero interests in southern Africa by now, so this decision to sidle up to the Brits in Cape Town was not a contradiction. By 1844 treaties with Adam Kok and Moshoeshoe were concluded, with the eye-catching line in both agreements where each undertook to be “the faithful Friend and Ally of the colony…” This was not regarded as a valid claim by the trekboers. Nor Moshoeshoe’s implacable enemy, Sekonyela of the Batlokwa people among others.

This is episode 160 and we’re breathing the spicy smells of the semi-desert, and taking in the exotic and wonderous scenary of the Richtersveld, Namaqualand, and the stunning area around south westn Free State in the 840s. Last episode we heard about the period 1840-1843 in the southern Caledon River valley, and how the Voortrekkers like Jan Mocke were flowing into land that Moshoeshoe of the BaSotho believed was his. That was setting up a classic situation where land was the core of the ension. A lot of what we’re looking at today is centred on a town largely forgotten these days, Philippolis. If you drive along the N1 between Bloemfontein and Colesburg, turn off at Trompsburg and head south west along the R717 for around 45 kilometres. It’s not far from the Orange River, and it’s history is certainly chequered. It’s also the home town of writer and intellectual Laurens van Der Post and former Springbok Rugby player Adriaan Strauss. On the 22nd October, 1842, the country beyond the Orange River to the north-east of the Cape Colony was proclaimed British Territory and the sphere of operations of the Cape British military garrison was considerably enlarged. The emigrant Boers based in this region reacted with anger, it was Adam Kok the second the Griqualand leader who had requested protection from the British because of the increased numbers of trekkers in his vicinity. Between 1826 when Kok arrived and the 1840, Kok had managed to get along with the Boers, but the Great Trek had changed everything. The London Missionary Society had founded Philippolis in 1823 as a mission station serving the local Griqua people, named after the man you heard about last episode, Dr John Philip, who was the superintendent of the Society from 1819 to 1849. Adam Kok II settled in Philippolis with his people in 1826 and became the protector of the mission station, on condition that he promised to protect the San against the aggression of the Boers. Kok was supposed to promote peace in the region, at least that was the brief from the London Missionary Society. Instead, carnage ensued as the Griqua used Philippolis as a base for a number of deadly commandos against the San people - virtually wiping them out in the area. Ironically, the Griqua worked with Boers to conduct their raids. This violated the agreement made between the London Missionary Society and Adam Kok II and eventually the San were driven out of the area. When the Voortrekkers began showing up nearby at Colesberg which was one of the main jumping off points of the Great Trek and tension grew between the trekkers and the Griqua. 1844 - like 2024 - was a leap year. And coming up was a momentous moment. In May 24 1844 the first electrical telegram was sent by Samuel Morse from the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. to the B&O Railroad "outer depot" in Baltimore, saying "What hath God wrought”. Considering that the telegram and later the radio led to television and then social media, perhaps we should all wonder What Hath God wrought. In June of 1844 the Young Men’s Christian Association was formed, the YMCA, setting off a chain of events culminating in the song of the same name by the Village People. History is not all skop skiet and donder. Back on the dusty flatlands around Philippolis, Adam Kok and the Boers were blissfully unaware of the significance of all of these births and deaths across the Atlantic Ocean. Further south, in the Cape, the newly created road boards were hard at work as I mentioned, building new routes out of Cape Town, connecting the Colony to the most important port in the southern hemisphere. By this point, there were steamships operating between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, which oftened called in at Mossel Bay. Other ships began flocking in huge numbers to a bunch of islands off Namaqualand .. the Great Guano Rush had started at the end of 1843 and really got going in 1844. It was discovered that vast deposits of guano on uninhabited island.

This is episode 159. If we take out a map of south Africa and reconsider the regions, it will become quite apparent that the main demarcation is geographical, geological, the main points of reference are the rivers and the mountains, the desert and semi-desert, the good soils and the bad. Take a look at a map of the region to the south west of the Drakensberg, for its this area way down to the Orange River and extending towards the Kalahari and the Richtersveld that we’re going to focus on in this episode. There is a direct correlation between the British seizing Natal from the Boers, and the effect on the Basotho, the Griqua, the baTlokwa amongst others. The Voortrekkers who refused to take an oath of allegiance to the British Queen Victoria trekked back up over the Drakensberg. And it was the vast majority. Some of these would head north, some south west. Most headed back south were not going to where they began, the Cape Colony, but to try and negotiate or seize land between the Cape and Natal. This was not empty land and I’m going to explain what happened after 1843, after the English flag began to flutter from the Fort in Durban. Slow as wagon travel was, the speed with which the Boers had spread themselves across so much of southern Africa in such a short time had taken everyone by surprise - it had taken six years. The Cape Governors were totally unprepared for this migration. Their narrative had been that these Europeans would find inland Africa far too unforgiving and then return to the Cape where they’d settle down and pay their taxes. When they left in the late 1830s, Cape Governor Sir Benjamin D’urban was anxious, his successor Sir George Napier was even more so. The Boers trundled into the interior and directly into the seething hinterland, shattered as it had been by Mzilikazi, Shaka, the BaTlokwa, and of course, the Griqua and Bastard raiders who travelled like Boers, on horses, with hats and guns. It’s hard for many to fathom these days in the 21st Century, post-apartheid, in a land so riven by what seems to be race-based antagonisms, that back in 1843 by far the most caustic, acrimonious, begrudging and irreconcilable emotions were those felt by the Boers against the British. Their anti-British sentiments were fixed although on an individual basis, the two people seemed to get along. When deserting British soldiers appeared in their midst, Boer mothers and fathers were not averse to their daughters marrying these men. The Boers began to concentrate on the high Veld and across the orange, but for many, the crucial state was Natal. They had gained bloody victories over the amaZulu here, Blood River was their covenant, a lasting affirmation of God’s great plan for the Boers, part of their Exodus narrative, his support of them in smiting the Philistines, the heathens, their dark enemies. Jan Mocke was one of these men on the extreme edge of this sentiment. What had emerged to startle the British, was the power of the voices of Boer Women. They had seen the resistance of their husbands weakening, they’d heard the disparate arguments, the egos where their men had come to blows after a couple of brandies, and told British offiicals to their faces that they’d walk out of Natal Barefoot across the Drakensberg if necessary to die in freedom. As Noel Mostert points out, the Boer women, like amaXhosa women who’d also been busy stiffening their men’s spines, were force that could never be ignored. They were active, demanding and the handmaidens to their history.

This is episode 158 and we’re taking an epic regional tour into the along the Limpopo River to meet with the Venda and other groups of folks who hail from the province we now call Limpopo. Thanks to listener Mushe for the suggestion. By the mid-fifteenth century Shona-speaking immigrants from Zimbabwe settled across the Limpopo River and interacted with the local Sotho inhabitants. As a result of this interaction, Shona and Sotho led to what is now regarded as a common Venda identity by the mid-sixteenth century. Venda-speaking people live mainly in the Soutpansberg area and southern Zimbabwe, but they also once lived in south-western Mozambique and north-eastern Botswana. Venda grammar and phonology is similar to Shona, particularly western Shona and Venda vocabulary has its greatest equivalent in Sotho. Phonology is the branch of linguistics that deals with systems of sounds within a language or between different languages. According to most ethnographers it is not only the Venda language, but also certain customs, such as the domba pre-marital school, that distinguish them from surrounding Shona, Sotho-Tswana and Tsonga communities. First a quick refresh. We heard in one of earlier podcasts about the Mapungubwe kingdom which lasted until the 13th Century - following which Shona speaking people’s moved southwards into the Soutpansberg region over the centuries. Archaeologists have established that by the fourteenth century, or the late Mapungubwe period and what is known as and the Moloko, the early post Mapungubwe kingdoms emerged in northern Transvaal. This is where the forebears of the Venda come in. Zimbabwean ceramics help a lot here, they were produced by Shona speakers and their fourteenth century distribution demarcated the Shona trading empire centred around Great Zimbabwe. The rulers at Great Zimbabwe controlled most of the country between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers until smaller trading states broke away in the fifteenth century. I’ve covered this in great detail in Episodes 5, 6 and 7 if you want to refresh memories. We also know that trade between these early kingdoms and the east coast was established, goods like gold, ivory, and copper were traded with Arabic and Portuguese merchants. The Venda were directly impacted by this trade, along with another unique group called the Lemba who are directly related to ancestors who actually traded all the way from Yemen in the Middle East. More about them in a few minutes. Ceramics help us piece together the past more effectively, the period of Shona and Sotho interaction eventually involved into more than a mere overlap of these ceramic styles, because for the first time different stylistic elements appeared on the same vessels. These Letaba pots have also been unearthed in the eastern Transvaal or Limpopo Province as its now known. It is interesting that these ceramics are still produced today, these Letaba pots and ceramics are made by the Venda, the Tsonga, the Ndebele, but anthropologists and historians believe the style itself is distinctly Venda in character. The Venda kingdom pretty much stretched from the Limpopo River in the north to the Olifants and Ngwenya River, or Crocodile River, in the south, but by the time Louis Trichardt rode through their land in 1836, the great Venda empire had almost vanished, torn up by external threats — damaged by the amaNdebele and even amaZulu raiders. The second group who could be found in this territory are the Lemba. They remain one of the self-defining groups of the region who have a stunning origin story. I am going to tread quite carefully here because there’s science and then there’s oral tradition. As you’ll hear, the Lemba believe they are related to the lost Tribes of Israel, and have recently demanded that they be recognized as such. Their narrative and origin story links them to the Middle East and the Judaism and there is DNA evidence to back them up.

This is episode 157 - where Dick King and Ndongeni ka Xoki ride to out of Durban carrying a dispatch from besieged British commander, Captain Smith, surrounded by Boers, in real danger. On the 24th May 1842 King and ka Xoki snuck out of the Port Natal region heading to Grahamstown in the south. That was a thousand kilometre journey which was going to take 10 days. Averaging 100 kilometres a day on a horse was some feat. Ndongeni Ndongeni Ka Xoki had already given King his Zulu nickname -Mlamulankunzi which loosely translated means a peacemaker among bulls. This was regarded as a mark of respect and admiration and there’s a lot to admire about King as well as Ka Xoki. They had agreed to take a dispatch to Lieutenant Governor Colonel Hare in Grahamstown for Captain Thomas Smith who’d been shamed by the Boers at the Battle of Congella which I covered last episode. King was young and adventurous, he was an elephant hunter and a trader and came to South Africa as an 1820 Settler at the age of six. He was a frontiersman and an excellent rider who could and did turn his hand to anything it seems. Ndongeni ka Xoki had worked for King for a few years by this time. There’s also been a great deal of hooplah, disinformation and propaganda about King’s ride. The popular view of Dick King over the decades has been moulded by the Durban public memorial - it is an equestrian statue on the Esplanade - now Margaret Mcadi Avenue. The main Dick King statue presents the sole figure of King as the heroic if exhausted rider, but there is a missing Ndongeni on his horse. Protestors who defaced the statue in 2015 of course had no idea about that, they were throwing paint at all colonial era artefacts - equal opportunity statue painters. It was midday on the 24th June when Boer lookouts spotted a schooner called the Conch rounding the Bluff and sailing into the bay. It was a trading ship not a war ship, so the boers relaxed. They shouldn’t have, because the wily and wicked English had a surprise up their sleeves. Crouching below decks were 100 Grenadiers of the 27th Regiment under command of Captain Durnford, a few others were on deck but dressed in civilians clothes. Trickery and deceit — how very English.

When we left off last episode, Captain Thomas Smith and two companies of the 27th Inniskilling Regiment, an 18 pounder that had just arrived by ship, two six pounder field guns, a small section of the Royal Artillery, a hand full of Royal Engineers, Sappers and miners, along with a company of Cape Mountain Rifles had formed their laager at level area to then north of Durban CBD today - where the Old Fort can be seen. Just a note - the 27th Inniskilling were an Irish infantry regiment of the British army, formed in 1689 so they’d been around the block so to speak. Boer commander Andries Pretorius had called his men to where he’d setup camp at Congella and by the time this battle commenced, there’d be more than 200 ready to face Smith’s professional soldiers. The British were hopelessly optimistic in their plans as you’re going to hear. Some of the English traders left at Port Natal, Henry Ogle for example, had warned Captain Smith that his force was somewhat underwhelming and that the Boers were not to be taken lightly. Smith unfortunately had no choice but to impose himself. He’d marched to Durban from Umgazi, and the last orders he’d received from Cape Governor Sir George Napier was to secure the bay for the British Empire. I’ve already explained that back in England, the Secretary for War and the Colonies Lord Stanley had changed his mind and ordered Smith back to base but his letter was going to arrive woefully too late. Captain Smith was aware of the Boer capacity to fight in bush, so he ordered his men to march along the beachfront. A stunning full moon was shining, causing the waves to fluoresce. Anyone who’s marched on a beach knows that its very difficult, made worse by the horses and of course, dragging the three guns along - while they were obviously now clearly visible to anyone lurking in the bush on the dunes. It was low tide, so the going was good at first as the hard sand made things a little easier. The British also deployed a howitzer on a long boat from the Mazeppa which was how folks made difficult trip between ships at anchor in Durban Bay and across the dangerous sandbar to the beach. Smith was hoping that the longboat could row to the beach at high tide to offload the howitzer — but that was seven hours away. There were a lot of what if’s that dogged Smith’s plan as you can see. Pretorius had also given strict orders that no Boer should fire until the British troops were within 100 metres of the camp. The burghers waited until at Pretoriu’s command, five shots rang out. An ox at each of the three gun carriages was shot dead by the sharpshooters only a few metres away in the bush. That wasn’t all, Lieutenant Wyatt and a private of the Inniskilling regiment were both shot in the head and killed instantly. Pandemonium broke out in the British ranks. The surviving oxen panicked, but were now dragging the gun and a dead ox with them, while the canon were actually pointed away from the Boer laager so couldn’t even be brought to bear and fired. The British in their redcoats dived onto the sand, firing back into the darkness. The soldiers were caught in the full moon light which back in these days of zero light pollution, was like a flare in the sky. The English were in big trouble.

Welcome back to the History of South Africa podcast with me your host, Des Latham - it’s episode 155 and the Cape economy is growing in leaps and bounds. The years between 1840 and 1843 were a fascinating mix of economic development and military endeavour. We will be returning to the arrival in Port Natal aka Durban of Captain Smith and his 263 men and unfortunately, there’s going to be fisticuffs, bullets, death and traitorous acts. But it is true that the most significant development in South Africa after 1835 was the expansion of agricultural production. Luckily for us, an organisation called eGSSA, founded in 2004, is the virtual branch of the Genealogical Society of South Africa, and provides a virtual home for everyone from the beginner to the most advanced family historian. And buried in their digital archives are digitalised copies of the Cape Frontier Times, a publication that began it’s life in Grahamstown in 1840. In between notices about births, marriages and deaths, that are known by old school editors as hatches, matches and dispatches, is a great deal of material about money, commodities, the economy. Americans had also just discovered what was known as Cape Gum. This weeps from a tree known as Acacia Karoo or the Karoo thorn, or if you’re into Latin, the Vachellia karroo. What was going on as well was the genesis of an African peasant producer of agricultural goods — and these producers of food would become very important as our story progresses through the 19th Century. Moving along. You heard last episode how Cape Governor, Sir George Napier, the one-armed veteran of the peninsular wars against Napoleon, had signed an order for Captain Thomas Smith and his 263 to march to Port Natal, and seize the valuable port for the British. That of course, was going to be opposed by the Boers. Adding fuel to the propaganda fire apart from the Volksraads decision in Pietermaritzburg to kick amaZulu out of southern Natal and the midlands, was the sudden an unexpected arrival in Port Natal of an American ship called the Levant.

This is episode 154 and the amaBhaca people under chief Ncapayi have just raided the Boers along the upper Bushman’s river and near their new town of Weenen. Joining the Bhaca were the San raiders you heard about in episode 152. The area around the Umzimvubu River had been unstable ever since the amaBhaca fled to the region during Shaka’s time, and the amaBhaca now lived west of the amaPondo who were ruled by chief Faku ka Ngqungqushe. It’s important to note that both the amaMpondo and the amaBhaca used to live further north in Natal before Shaka’s fractious wars began and led to the movement of the people known as the Mfecane. The amaPondo did not trust the amaBhaca, calling them thieves. The arrival of the Boers in Natal meant they had a powerful new possible ally — but they quickly learned that the Boers were not to be trusted either as you’re going to hear in this episode. Faku regularly communicated with the Voortrekkers, and now that the amaBhaca had made the fatal decision to steal more than 700 head of cattle from the trekkers near Weenen, along with 50 horses, the Volksraad in Pietermaritzburg had had enough. They met in November and ordered Andries Pretorius and commandant Hendrik Stephanus Lombard to lead a commando of 260 Boers to extract maximum revenge from the amaBhaca. Chief Fodo of the Nlangwini who lived between the Bhaca and the Boers had also been raided, so he and about a hundred of the Nlangwini warriors joined the Boer commando seeking their own form of restitution. In the ensuing attack, 26 men, ten women and four children were killed, and the boers seized 3 000 cattle as well as 2 000 sheep. The numbers have been contested over the years, but the fact that women and children died was confirmed. However, it was their decision to seize at least 17 of the amaBhaca children they said had been orphaned in the attack that was going to lead to a great deal of interest by the anti-slavery lobby in the Cape — and in England. Chief Faku wrote a letter around this time to Governor Sir George Napier, expressing his fear that he would be next, that the Boers were seizing livestock and children willy nilly south of the Umzimvubu River, and that matters could not continue and begged to be placed under the protection of the British Government. on August 2nd 1841, the Raad took the rather unwise decision to force all these amaZulu squatters off the farms. It went further, ruling that none had any right to claim any part of Natal at all. They should be removed, resolved the Volksraad, to the tract of land between the Umtamvuna River and the Umzimvubu River. ON the surface, this appeared to be a reasonable suggestion, the land is excellent here, enough water and good soils. However, no-one had bothered to ask the local African clans what they thought of this basically, forced removal and furthermore, someone already lived there. On August 21st, Lord John Russell instructed the Governor to make arrangements for the reoccupying of Port Natal. This is where Captain Smith would make his appearance and the coming march overland to Port Natal was going to be arduous indeed.

1840 was a leap year, and in November David Livingstone had left Britain for Africa. His story of exploration and commitment is extraordinary. While he would go on to become better known for his attempts at finding the source of the Nile River in east Africa, it was his formative phase of life at mission stations in southern Africa that we’re interested in. Born on 19 March 1813 in Blantyre, Scotland, he was the second of seven children and employed at the age of ten in the towns’ cotton mill. This was way before rules about these things, and this ten year-old worked twelve hours days as a piecer, who’s job it was to lay broken cotton threads on the spinning machines. He was drawn to the teachings of local evangelist, Thomas Burke. He studied medicine, and then was ordained as a minister of the church at the Charing Cross Medical School. A chance meeting with south African Scots missionary Robert Moffat in London was to change his life. Moffat was running the London Missionary Society’s station at Kuruman, and Livingstone asked him if he “would do for Africa” as in survive. “I said he would” Moffat wrote later, “if he would not go to an old station, but would advance to unoccupied ground, specifying the vast plain to the north where I had sometimes seen in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary had ever been…” Forgive my pathetic attempt at a Scots accent. Young David Livingstone was going to take that to heart over the next few decades and would become known as the greatest missionary in Africa, even though the truth is he converted only one person to Christianity. He left England for the Cape in November 1840, and spent most of his time on board studying Dutch and seTswana. Joining him on board was someone else we’re going to hear quite a bit about in coming episodes, another LMS missionary called William Ross. You know how everything connects one way or another. So we have Livingstone and Ross sailing to southern Africa - imbued with the concepts of evangelical christianity with it’s core message Influenced by revivalistic teachings in the United States, Livingstone entirely accepted the proposition put by Charles Finney, Professor of Theology at Oberlin College, Ohio, that "the Holy Spirit is open to all who ask it". For Livingstone, this meant a release from the fear of eternal damnation. And being an earnest young man, he felt that folks should hear about this. Initially he wanted to go to China, but the looming first Opium War led to the London Missionary Society directors deciding southern Africa was safer. Livingstone and Ross landed in Simon’s Bay in March 1841 after a stop off in Brazil. Livingstone stayed at Dr Philip’s home in Cape Town. Philip spoke quite a bit about how he believed in the policy that all people were equal before God and the law and Livingstone believed that too. Clearly then Livingstone was not going to be welcomed by the Boers and British settlers most of whom by now definitely did not believe this message. Livingstone sailed up the coast to Algoa Bay in May and then he took a two month ox-wagon trek along with William Ross to the Kuruman Mission. There he immersed himself in Tswana life and trekked more than a thousand kilometres to Mabotse in modern day Botswana which is near Zeerust. The Boers in Pietermaritzburg had gone through a combination of good and bad. In 1839 more than half a dozen people had died when a candle tipped over in one of the houses there, burning down 13. The blaze was made worse by the gunpowder stores in most of the houses, and the fire was so intense, it set fire to nearby wagons. Hendrick Potgieter based on the high veld had still not reconciled with Andries Pretorius - but things were about to change.

This is episode 152, we’re going to dig into a story that is not often told — the amaTola San raiders of the Drakensberg. They emerged by the end of the third decade of the 19th Century as a result of a mish-mash of forces at play on the veld. And what a remarkable story this is so hold onto your horses! Literally as it would appear. What has been re-discovered recently is the identification of a plethora of mounted frontier raiding groups and how these had impacted the interior of Southern Africa, and in particular, the mountains north-east of the Cape Colony. Certain frontier raiding groups often referred to simply as ‘Bushmen’ were really comprised of members from many formerly distinct ethnicities, and included the progeny from subsequent inter-marriage. Cultural and ethnic mixing, the advent of the horse, the increased access to guns and ammunition, and the need for identity to adapt to these changes, resulted in a volatile mix indeed. There were freed slaves, Khoesan, San, and English soldiers who’d gone AWOL, as well as descendants of former VOC soldiers who were Swedish, German, Swiss, and Dutch. There’s a correlation here with the American Frontier experience, where men and sometimes women, armed with muskets, bows, and spears, wearing feathered headgear or wide-brimmed trekboer hats and riding horses, raided their neighbours for cattle and horses or exchanged these valuable resources for corn, tobacco, dogs and alcohol, much like other nineteenth century frontiers. There the roaming bandits were the Jumanos, the Lakota, the Metis, all became seminal in the B-grade Western movies of the 1950s. South Africa’s bandits and raiders were arraigned across a large area, but perhaps the most interesting were those living in the amaTola mountains, a mixture of people who were on the fringes of society. Because horses were only introduced to the Drakensberg in the 1830s and production of hunter-gatherer rock art in that region had almost entirely ceased by the 1880s, horse paintings are comparatively tightly pinpointed in time, unlike virtually all other categories of images in southern African rock art. San paintings of this time reveal quite an astonishing fact, these people had a mixed material culture, the paintings who San and others who were not San working together, carrying firearms, riding horses with their dogs running alongside, carrying spears and bows, and importantly, dancing their trance dances. The area I’m addressing lies between the Mzimvubu River and the Tina River, across the central Drakensburg in other words, across both sides of the escarpment, stretching from Giants Castle in modern Kwa-Zulu Natal to Mount Fletcher in the Eastern Cape and Matsaile inside Lesotho. Glancing at a map, and tracing folks living in this area in 1840 you’d find the Voortrekkers arraigned inland from Port Natal, around Pietermaritzburg, and up to the headwaters of the Umgeni, the Mooi River and Bushman’s River just below Giant’s Castle. From here the San Raiders controlled the landscape, along the ridges of the Drakensberg south westerly to Mount Fletcher, in the slopes above the Senqu River or the headwaters of the Orange Riverif you prefer. This overlooked where the Bhaca lived, south east of them, the amaMpondo, further south the Mpondomise, then further the amaThembu, to their east and south the amaXhosa could be found and to their south, the English settlers in Albany. I hope you can feel the proximity of these amaTola raiders because everyone in these areas were somewhat fearful of the gangs of men on horses. The San raiders were based in that mountain redoubt between Giant’s Castle and Mount Fletcher and they were surrounded by enemies but also prospective allies. This mountain redoubt was getting a bad name, and soon would be identified on maps from the 1840s onwards as nomansland.

Episode 151 and we’re into the 1840s - and its time to analyse some issues. One is education, the other, roads. Given our crisis in education these days, its perhaps another of our historical ironies that state funded schooling was offered by 1839 and 1840 in the Cape, something that was unparalleled at the time except for Prussia and a handful of New England states in America. No-where else in the world at the time could state funded free education be found. Yes, you heard that right, South Africa was an early adopter of free education. Another growing phenomenon at this moment was the building of roads, something that was sorely required in a region as vas as southern Africa. After the Sixth Frontier war of 1834-5, municipal government began to develop, and a new Legislative Council was struggling to make sense of the existing political system. All members of the council were appointed by the Governor, and only gained the right to alter the Charters of Justice, or the law, in 1844. Christoffel Brand, editor of die Zuid Afrikaan, and Robert Godlonton editor of the Grahamstown journal, both talked of an elective assembly. Godlonton added that he preferred to see the Eastern Cape achieve independence from the Cape. These erstwhile journalists were merely repeating conversations that were taking place across the British Empire in the fourth decade of the 19th Century. In Australia for example, the 1840s were years of conflict, as British settlers increasingly moved out away from towns seeking new farmland, First Nations fought back and resisted this expansion. Violence ensued. Squatters, who leased large pastoral lands from the colonial governments in New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria and into Queensland and South Australia, increasingly gained political and economic influence. They became wealthy off the land leased at low rates, stocking them with thousands of sheep, with their fleeces sold into the British market. Many squatters, with time and money, stood for election to parliament to set the laws and rules in their favour. Wool was also going to become the Cape’s main resource shortly. The gloom of the trekkers leaving the province had been replaced by an economic upturn — the Cape Colony finances were in a much healthier condition than they had been ten years earlier. Governor D’Urban, who’d left for home, had earlier launched a campaign to simplify the fiscal system and by 1840 the campaign had begun to bear fruit. The collection of taxes by Colonial Secretary John Montagu resulted in the Cape finally wiping off its public debt and re-paying the British government in full. Customs revenues were rising, the slave compensation fund had helped, and the delivery of stores during the Sixth Frontier war bolstered imports, while exports grew. Wine farms had experienced a drop in sales starting in 1825, but wool had largely replaced this commodity. Merino sheep had been acclimatised in Albany district around Grahamstown just before the war of 1834, and suddenly there was a lot of money to be made farming these animals for their wool. Within ten years, by the 1850s, wool would outstrip all other Cape exports put together. Just like in Australia. To his credit, Sir George Napier wanted to improve this situation and following a report prepared by Colonial Secretary John Bell for his predecessor D’Urban, Napier turned to a fascinating man called Sir John Herschel. He was a famous astronomer, who was collaborating with Thomas Maclear, the Cape Astronomer Royal at the private observatory at Claremont near Cape Town. And this of course, is why we call Observatory Observatory. Loved by the students, loathed by their parents, a place of excellent entertainment to this day, Obs is a seminal party centre, characterised by the smell of cannabis on Lower Main Street. Sir John Herschel had a cunning plan. He began to develop a system that bore his name, whereby two classes of schools were recognised.

For those who’ve lasted the journey thus far, thank you for listening. The number of downloads is approaching 1 and a quarter million, which by itself is quite a shock. Adding to the selfserving histrionics, Episode one of this series has just made to Spotify’s fourth most listened to podcast in South Africa for 2023. More gasps of disbelief. When I began this enterprise in February 2021 it was a giant leap into a possible abyss, a leap into the unknown, and possibly a foray into catastrophe. One person’s historian is another person’s spin doctor you could say. As 2024 beckons, I need to mention that my site, desmondlatham.blog has a donation panel. The hosting services are not free and so far I’ve tried to avoid mentioning moolah — its base and depraved. However, debasing and depraving is required as the cost of all of this has to be covered some how. So you’ll see a donate button on desmondlatham.blog, click on there and there’s a Paypal QR code on the page. If you’d prefer to EFT or something, send me an email at [email protected]. With that slightly odious begging bowl moment out of the way, back to our tale. We’re going to hear about Dingana’s death, It’s late January 1840, and word reached the Voortrekker BeesKommando that Dingana had been defeated at amaQongqo, he was on the run. Although commandant Andries Pretorius believed this was true, the Boers wanted to follow up on the amaZulu King’s defeat to deal with the remnants of his army. AS you know, Ndlela kaSompiti the general had paid for the defeat with his life, Dingana had him killed but the surviving army was still out there, on the flat lands west of the Lebombo Mountains. But by throwing Ndlela’s body out for the wild dogs, the jackals, the hyenas and the vultures, Dingana had broken the tradition of burying respected elders and royalty. Many of his own followers took exception to this act and realised that his behaviour belied his weakness, so more decided to throw in their lot with Mpande kaSenzangkhona. On 3rd February, 220 Boers detached from the BeesKommando for a quick recon towards the Pongolo river after being informed that Dingana’s general Nongalaza was chasing Ndlela’s shattered impi south. Maybe they’d catch these warriors in a pincer, there were reportedly around 3000 still alive and unhurt — at least 2000 others had either died or were wounded and no longer a threat. Hundreds of warriors were indeed in the vicinity, heading back home towards the Mfolozi from the Pongola River, but this was summer and summers are often characterised by thick mist in the valleys. It was under cover of this mist belt that that warriors managed to avoid the Boers, hiding in the kloofs and caves and inside the dense riverine bush. A small group of men and women were caught in a cave, the men were killed, the women seized. Then 250 burghers were mounted up in a larger commando and headed north east from the White Mfolozi to the Pongola river to join up with Nongalaza’s amaZulu. They met up with Nongalaza on the 5th February, who told them that Dingana had made it across the Pongola River and was fleeing into amaSwazi country with a few close adherents and his mother and some sisters. He was headed towards the Lubombo Mountains. Now anyone who has travelled here will know of the Ghost mountain, the combination of blunt hills and thick sub-tropical bush, the sandy trails and possibly, the ghostly stories. When he realised that Nongalaza’s men had turned around, he stopped with his retinue at a small hilll south of the Lubombo Mountains called Hlathikhulu. Peering at these mountains in February 1840 was Dingana, who took stock as he settled in to a makeshift royal residence on the forested slopes. His isigodlo was put in place and he named this eSankoleni, a place of seclusion, the secluded spot. This was his last place, and instead of seclusion, it was going to be a place of execution.

This is episode 149 and Mpande kaSenzangakhona and the Boers are going after Dingana. We’re entering the 1840s where momentous events would continue to shape South Africa’s future. After Shaka’s death in 1828 his half-brother and murderer, Dingana, was supposed to usher in stability. Instead, Dingana embroiled the AmaZulu in one war after another, trying to defeat Mzilikazi of the amaNdebele, fightign the baTlokwa, the amaSwazi, the Boers, and now, his own Royal line. By ordering Mpande’s assassination, he had set off a chain of events that was going to boomerang on him and the coming Zulu Civil War had been in the offing for some time. He’d also set off his own demise by failing to kill Mpande, who then fled across the Thukela River with over 17 000 adherents and about 35 000 cattle. Mpande had met Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius and negotiated with the Voortrekkers as the man they now called “The Reigning Prince of the Emigrant Zulus”. A Boer deputation of 28 men under the leadership of F Roos had visited him at his homestead not far from Port Natal in October 1839, where he offered to pay them the cattle owed by Dingana, over 19 300, and ceded the bay of St Lucia to the Boers. Mpande also promised not to undertake any military activity without Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius’ knowledge. Then as if to reinforce his power, he turned a blind eye to the killing of a much feared induna called Mpangazitha kaMncumbatha who was of the amaNdwandwe. Zwide’s people. Mpangazitha had become an influential and brutal induna operating alongside Dingana, and one day he was killed in full view of the trekkers. This shocked the visiting Boers, who watched as the induna was dragged, then beaten by successive men armed with fighting sticks, his blue robe spattered with blood as he was bludgeoned to death. Mpande later said he didn’t order this killing, Mpangazitha had brought it on himself by his bullyboy tactics — the other induna just had enough of this egotistical man who’d committed a long list of human rights abuses against other people’s over the past decade. Live by the sword, die by the knobkerrie I guess. By Christmas, however, the British were gone from the garrison at Port Natal, Captain Jervis had sailed away with the British administration now mistakenly of the belief that the violence in Natal had dissipated. Then Dingana sent a famous message to the Boers in Pietermaritzburg by the end of 1839, trying to discredit Mpande. “He is not a man…” the messengers said “…he has turned away his face, he is a woman. He was useless to Dingana his master, and he will be of no use to you. Do not trust him, for his face may turn again…” Coming from a man as pernicious as Dingana was rather hypocritical. Ndlela’s impi on paper at least, looked the better of the two. Dingana had pulled together the top notch amabutho, the iziNyosi, the uDlambedlu, the imVoko which had remnants of the umKulutshane regiment. They’d been joined by the uKhokhoti, who’d also been at the Battle of Blood River/Ncome. Mpande’s general Nongalaza led amabutho like the imiHaye who’d joined up with remnants of the imVoko who’d switched sides as well as the uZwangendaba who were a bit like a mercenary division drawn from the homesteads called the umLambongwenya, uDukuza and isiKlebhe. Mpande’s army included the veterans iziMpohlo, formed during Shaka’s time, these were older men, scarred in battle and seeking one more victory before they’d retire to their imizi. Not only were Mpande’s men feeling more optimistic, they knew that somewhere to their west the Voortrekkers were heading their way. Between these two organisations, most warriors fighting for Mpande were convinced they were going to win. The canny Mpande had pulled off a diplomatic move of note. Had he waited for the Boers to arrive, he would have lost face — by striking first he was waging war without the muskets and the horses.

This is episode 148 and there’re negotiations afoot between Dingana and the Voortrekkers, at the behest of Captain Henry Jervis who led the small detachment of British troops based at Port Natal. Their role was to stabilise the Natal region after a year of extreme violence, the Voortrekkers and the AmaZulu king Dingana were fighting tooth and nail. Jervis as you heard was one of the characters in our history that crop up here and there and are able to act as neutral arbitrators between different factions. Gambusha the trusted inceku sent by Dinanga had arrived at the British camp on 23 February 1839 and said that the AmaZulu were on the brink of ruin and would accept any terms that Jervis would propose. Gambusha also asked for the British to consider allying themselves with the AmaZulu to oppose the Voortrekker expansion, Dingana wanted British protection. Jervis could not do this, saying that his role was to act as a go-between and could not take sides. Gambusha took that message back to the Zulu king. On the 23rd March two inceku called Gikwana and Gungwana returned to Port Natal with 300 of the Boer horses they had captured in the year of fighting as a sign of good faith. Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius then arrived as you heard, calling himself the “Grand Commandant of the Right Worshipful the representative assembly of the South African Society at Natal.” Had business cards been a thing back in 1839 that title wouldn’t fit on one side. Nevertheless, peace talks were now underway. Eventually the terms were agreed — that Dingana would return all the muskets, horses, sheep and 19,300 cattle he’d taken from the trekkers and allow them to live unmolested south of the Thukela River. IN turn, the Boers would assist the Zulu should they come under attack. It was also agreed that from now on, all AmaZulu emissaries who crossed the Thukela River should carry a white flag indicating who they were, and that those found without this pass would be shot on sight. Pretorius also demanded that Dingana should send a messenger directly to him in Pietermaritzburg when they were ready to hand over the cattle and other goods. The British were to be left out of future meetings. The problem for Dingana, is that he was now trying to carve out new territory that was in the name of the Swazi king Sobhuza the First. And the reason why it was a problem was the Swazi could fight like the amaZulu. And yet, Dingana was also using Pretorius’ final demand as part of his political strategy, because when men married, they would have to be given land for their homesteads. By occupying vast tracts of Swazi land, Dingana would also be reinforcing his own political power, colonising new vistas for the Zulu. There was another reason why Dingana was focusing on the amaSwazi, a people whom the AmaZulu looked down on. Attacking them would be part of an ihlambo, a washing of the spears, a purification ceremony bathed in blood marking the end of the period of mourning set off by the humiliation of being defeated by the Boers. This washing of the spears would mean the evil spirits that caused the defeat, the umnyama, the evil influence, would be pushed away into the territory of the foe.The Swazi now faced a amaZulu invasion which began in the winter of 1839, a far more threatening action than any of the previous raids. This was an attack of colonial occupation by four Amabutho, the umBelebele, the uNomdayana, umKulutshane and the imVoko. Klwana kaNgqengele led these regiments, a man from one of the most powerful chiefly houses, the Buthelezi. It was Mpande kaSenzangakhona who was going to change the equation. Dingana’s half-brother had been in hiding after another attempt on his life by the capricious Zulu king, and in September 1839 he had fled across the Thukela River with 17 000 people, and 25 000 head of cattle.

Cape Town was burgeoning — and trade was starting to pick up. There was also a paradox, the real effects of the emancipation of slaves back in 1834 was only really felt in 1838 because it was in that year the 38 000 slaves were finally allowed to leave their masters. The abolition of slavery led to the creation of several private commercial banks, which then offered cheap credit to wage-labour employers. The British parliament allocated £20 million as compensation for those who had previously owned slaves and were now stripped on their erstwhile ‘property’ in inverted comma’s — to be shared out across it’s territories. Of the twenty million, £1,247 000 was allocated to the Cape. Though a certain proportion of this money got stuck in Great Britain in the hands of agents as we’ve heard in previous episodes, the amount that arrived in the Cape Colony, mainly in 1836–37, quintupled the sum of money in circulation. This in turn caused a raising of prices, it was inflationary, and also led to increased labour costs. Some of the money was invested in new banks, as well as providing capital to build new houses around the Cape. One of these was the Eastern Province Bank which launched in 1838 in Grahamstown - which went on to become Barclay’s Bank, and during the sanctions period of apartheid, it morphed into First National Bank. Compensated emancipation at the Cape was a major social rupture, ending as it did 182 years of legal slavery, changing the legal status of these 38 000 people. The slave-like apprenticeship period that followed emancipation in 1834 had now expired. Khoi, and other members of the free black community continued to work mostly in farm employment, although a few became market gardeners or joined the small but growing artisanal class in the villages of the Western Cape.’ Emancipation at the Cape freed slaves into the category "free black," which encompassed all people of colour native to the Western Cape: "Hottentots" was the colonial term for the Khoi and "Bushmen" the colonial term for the San, "Bastards" were those who had a white father, Khoi mother and "Bastard Hottentots" were those who had a slave father and Khoi mother. By the time of emancipation, the slave population of the Western Cape was predominantly creole, including descendants of slaves brought from the west and east coasts of Africa, Madagascar, India, and the Dutch East Indies, and children born of a slave mother and a free father. The close cultural and social relations between Khoisan and slaves and the incorporation of the Khoisan into the Cape colonial economy, also contributed to the heterogeneous culture of the rural poor at this stage. The introduction of "prize negroes," who had been "rescued" from other nations' slave ships by the British and brought to the Cape from 1808 to 1815 and then again in the 1830s to remedy the labor shortage in the Western Cape, also served to increase the polyglot nature of the rural poor of the Western Cape. This diversity of geographical and cultural origins affected the emergence of an official racial terminology to cover all of these groups to simplify matters. Thus while the category of "free black" continued to be used into the 1840s in government correspondence regarding labor legislation. But from 1837 the statistical Blue Books began listing people of Khoi and San descent, free blacks, “prize negroes," and freed people under the category “Coloured." The slave owners were a leisure class and now slaves were free, it was the start of the fourth decade of the 19th Century. The slaves had the skills, the leisure class, did not, and now this leisure class really needed the new banks. So the abolition of slavery resulted in the liquidation of at substantial portion of the capital that had been invested in the individuals who were enslaved.

Andries Pretorius had won a major encounter with the Zulu army, which was now in full retreat and the way to emGungungundlovu was wide open. A day after the Battle on the 17th December 1838, Commandant General Pretorius had two Zulu captives brought before him. According to Voortrekker records, he gave them a piece of white calico with his name written on it in black ink, and told them to take it to Dingana. They should inform the king that the trekkers were approaching and that he should sue for peace, and to send messengers back to start negotiations and they should carry this cloth. Ndlela kaSompisi the general had ordered messengers on ahead of the Amabutho who were now force marching back to the east, to the Great Place. The izinceku advisors rushed back warning Dingana that he should evacuate his beloved emGungundlovu as the Voortrekkers were on their way — his army had suffered a terrible defeat. Msiyana kaMhlana who led the imVoko Amabutho regiment had told the izinceku that the king should make for the south side of the drift across the white Mfolozi, to a place called emVokweni. IT was one of his larger homesteads, and gave him the option to make a loop north if pursued. It was a day later that another messenger hurried up to Dingana and told him as he hunkered down at emVokweni that Pretorius and his WenKommando had arrived at the Mhlatuze River, and was about to cross. The Zulu king ordered that his beloved emGungundlovu be raised to the ground, along with two other large amaKhanda nearby. On the morning of the 20th they saw emGungundlovu in the distance, wreathed in smoke, much of it still burning. It was a vast complex, the fire would burn for days. About half an hours ride away, they stopped once more and formed a laager near the place of death, KwaMatiwane. At that point they were unaware that the bones of their comrades were lying in the open only a short distance away. The trekkers began to loot what they could from the smoky ruins of Dingana’s great place, and there was a great deal that had survived the fire. First however, they were determined to find out where the colleagues lay. One of the men found Retief’s leather briefcase and peered inside. This is where the story is disputed by some historians because the Boers pulled out a document, the treaty apparently ceding Natal to the trekkers. I have explained how this document is of historical interest, but utterly irrelevant in the debate about land in Natal. Dingana as you know by now, had signed it to pacify Retief, to lull him into his final meeting where the Zulu king had managed to convince the Boers to leave their guns outside, only to be murdered. It was a chance discovery on Christmas Day that almost brought calamity to this WenKommando. Pretorius was suffering from the wound he’d received at the Battle of Blood river, but was alert enough to interrogate a man who’d been discovered hiding close to their camp at emGungundlovu. This was no ordinary man however, he was a decoy. Bongoza kaMefu of the Ngongoma people had realised that the trekkers were after the king’s cattle, and their determination to seize the property booty of this entire campaign could be their undoing. Bongoza approached Dingana and suggested a plan to lure the Kommando onto the thornbush veld around the White Mfolozi, where they’d be susceptible to ambush. Nzobo kaSompithi who had rejoined the king’s main retinue agreed.

This is episode 145 - we’re joining the AmaZulu and the Voortrekkers at the apocalyptic clash on the River Ncome, which was soon renamed Blood River. This battle has seared its way into South African consciousness — it is so symbolic that its reference frames modern politics. Just when someone comes along and pooh poohs Blood River’s importance, events conspire against them. And so, to the matter at hand. We join the two forces preparing for battle on the evening of 15th December 1838, the amaButho arraigned in their units below the Mkhonjane Mountain east of the Ncome, and the 464 Voortrekker men waiting inside their 64 wagons. Joining them was Alexander Biggar the Port Natal trader and 60 black levies, Biggar wanted revenge for the death of his son Robert killed by the AmaZulu at the Battle of Thukela. Also at hand were Robert Joyce and Edward Parker, aiding Voortrekker commander Andries Pretorius as intelligence officers. Both were fluent in Zulu and had already passed on vital information to Pretorius about Prince Mpande who had to flee into exile. Dingane had tried to have his half-brother assassinated - the paranoid Zulu king thought Mpande was planning to oust him as he had done to his half-brother, Shaka. The scene was set folks for this seminal battle at a picturesque place. The laager had been drawn up in an oval shape on the western bank of the Ncome river, to its south was a deep donga about fifty meters away that had been scoured by rain, and this ran into the Ncome with banks that were over two meters high. While AmaZulu warriors could hide in this donga, it really worked in the trekkers favour because it broke up the ground - they could not charge the wagons but had to clamber over the trenchlike ledge and were then easy pickings for the Boer sharpshooters. The Eastern side of the laager faced the Ncome River - about 80 meters away and this was regarded as even more difficult to assault. The River bank was muddy, and covered in reeds, making the approach almost impossible to achieve with any speed. Almost half a kilometer upstream, this river broadened into a marsh dotted with deep pools and crossing at that point would be almost impossible. Downstream from the laager was a very deep hippo pool or seekoeigat as it was known, so deep that the Boers couldn’t feel its bottom with their long whipstocks. No AmaZulu warrior would be crossing there either. More than half a kilometer downstream was a well used drift, and south east of the Ncome was a broad open plain dotted with small marshes and pools, and further south east lies the Shogane ridge, more than a kilometer away. It was summer, and the rains had come. The river was flooding which was to further complicate the AmaZulu assault. On the other side of the River, near Mthonjane mountain, Zulu commander Ndlela kaSompisi and his two IC Nzobo were finalising their plans on the night of 15th December 1838. IT was well before dawn on the 16th December that Ndlela ordered his warriors to rise and prepare.

This is episode 144 and a momentous event is about to take place. One that will shape Boer Zulu relations for centuries to come. The Battle of Blood River - or Ncome River - is etched in the consciousness of South Africans. While the gory details are not contested, its historical significance has been seized on by different political factions since the 16th December 1838. The day itself is a public holiday which we now call the Day of Reconciliation. Before that it was known as Dingane’s Day or the Day of the Covenant, or the Day of the Vow. Anything thought of as a covenant or a vow comes with baggage. Gert Maritz had died at the age of 41 on 23 September - suffering from dropsy, heart disease and half of the Voortrekkers had setup a second laager across the Little Thukela River, fearful of leaving their fort in case another Zulu army bushwhacked them. They had sent a deputation to elicit support from other trekkers in the transOrangia region, and in the highveld along the Vaal River. Only Karel Landman remained as a senior leader in Natal, but help was on its way in the form of a man who was half dragoon, part brigand, mostly hero. And that was Andries Pretorius. He was born in Graaff-Reinet and his family had prospered, owning several farms around the frontier town. He was fifth generation southern African, his ancestors dated back all the way to the early Dutch settlement in Table Bay. His ancestor, Johannes Pretorius was the son of Reverend Wessel Schulte of the Netherlands. Schulte had been a theology student at the University of Leiden when he changed his name to the Latin form of Schulte and therefore became Wesselius Praetorius, with an ae, then later Pretorius. His deep connection with Africa leant weight to his other important characteristics, an imposing man, tall and imbued with a captivating personality to boot. He was a skilled commander of men, adept at the irregular nature of frontier warfare.There was a lot of movement at the end of 1838, because not only had the British soldiers arrived in Port Natal and Pretorius’ kommando had headed off to Dingane, but Prince Mpande was on the run from his half-brother Dingane as well. He wasn’t alone - Mpande was joined by an estimated 17 000 of his followers after Dingane had made moves to assassinate his half-brother he regarded as an increasing threat to his rule. Dingane’s actions followed the defeat of his army by the trekkers at Veglaer, weakening his power in the eyes of his subjects. On 6 December 1838, 10 days before the Battle of Blood River, Pretorius and his commando including Alexander Biggar as translator had a meeting with friendly Zulu chiefs at Danskraal, so named for the Zulu dancing that took place in the Zulu kraal that the Trekker commando visited. It was during this relatively friendly occasion that important information was passed along, and now Pretorius became aware of Prince Mpande’s new refugee status, an important character in the coming power play. It was immediately apparent to Pretorius that the Zulu king was in a more precarious position than he had been a few months earlier.

This is episode 143 and we’re back in Cape Town, it’s late 1838, our new British Governor Sir George Napier is in the hot seat and he’s already regretting taking up the position. He was trying to make Andries Stockenstrom’s eastern Cape Treaty System a success and this was not an easy task. Napier’s main pressure however was financial. Before he left Britain, the Colonial office had made it clear that they would not accept another war in the Eastern Cape. IT had cost the government dearly, 14 years after the English settlers landed the British were forced to defend their subjects during the the Sixth Frontier War. Hundreds of soldiers and their material had cost tens of thousands of pounds. The cost of the colonies was a major factor in the government's financial difficulties. The British Empire was vast and expensive to administer — someone had to pay for the upkeep of the colonial military, the infrastructure, and the salaries of colonial officials. In the period of 1834-1838, the British government spent an average of £12 million per year on the colonies. This represented a significant portion of the government's budget - in 1837 for example the government spent £12 million on the colonies plus £15 million on the army. According to the Hansard archive of the House of Commons, the British government's budget in 1838 was £51,524,110 with the largest categories of expenditure the army, navy, and interest on debt. These categories accounted for over 70% of the total budget. The cost of the colonies had a number of consequences for British politics. Lobby groups were — and remain — a powerful force in British politics, and they opposed any policies that would increase the cost of the colonies, while helping the maintain a system that was dominated by the aristocracy. Overall, the cost of the colonies was a major factor in the British government's financial difficulties and it also had a significant impact on British politics and the economy in the period of 1834-1838. The British national debt grew significantly in the period from the £796 million to £829 million or 4.2%. On the other hand, Britain was benefiting from the colonial access to raw materials, such as cotton, sugar, and timber. These were used to support British industries, particularly textiles manufacturing and shipbuilding. Of course, the colonies created new markets for manufactured goods which actually help boost the economy and create jobs as well. For investors, the entrepreneurs and connected royalty, it was an opportunity to earn large returns from these seized territories by building infrastructure, developing new industries, and starting new ventures. The strategic importance of its colonies also helped England maintain its global power and influence. For example, Gibraltar was a key naval base that helped England to control the Mediterranean Sea, India was also a key strategic asset, as it helped England to maintain its power and influence in Asia and Cape Town remained a strategic asset on its main supply routes to the far east. It’s time to cast our eyes further afield, as we do in this series just to understand how southern African events were often part of a much broader scope. This was the period of burgeoning colonial expansion globally and those who lived on the land before the arrival of European settlers were fighting for their survival. Early settlers could also begin to take advantage of iron based tools being manufactured in Britain - particularly ploughs. There were many examples. Cast iron ploughs for example which were inexpensive to produce although they were relatively brittle.

This is episode 142. It would be remiss of me not to say Congratulations Bokke on a gritty win over the All Blacks to become world champions for a record fourth time. With that said, picture the scene. We are standing on the western slopes of the Drakensberg, looking out across the Caledon Valley. The rivers we see here flow westward, into the Atlantic Ocean. Far to the south east lie the villages of the amaThembu on the slopes of the mountains that are now part of the Transkei. This is a follow up episode of a sort from episode 141, because last week we spoke about the Orange River, and the Caledon River is a tributary of the Orange. It rises in the Drakensberg, on the Lesotho–South Africa border, and flows generally southwest, forming most of the boundary between Lesotho and Free State province. The Caledon flows through southeastern Free State to join the Orange River near Bethulie after a course of 480 km. Its valley has one of the greatest temperature ranges in South Africa and is an excellent place to grow maize or other grains. But in April 1835 Moshoeshoe was eyeing the equally verdant land to his south, amaThembu land and led a powerful and large expedition of more than 700 men along with a hundred pack-oxen loaded with food south easterly over the Maloti mountains towards these people. At first his raid went according to plan, he seized a rich booty of cattle. The amaThembu were also facing raids from the other direction, the British who were conducting their Sixth Frontier War so they were in a rather invidious position. Moshoeshoe was blooding his sons Letsie and Molapo in battle. They had become restless back at his Morija headquarters and their frustration grew when Moshoeshoe denied them permission to attack the Kora who’d setup camp nearby. As the Basotho withdrew after the raid, they were ambushed by the amaThembu and lost most of their livestock. Worse, Moshoeshoe’s brother Makhabane was killed and he suffered heavy casualties. Moshoeshoe would never again send another full-scale expedition into amaXhosa or amaThembu territory. This change of strategy was fully supported by the missionaries who had begun living with Moshoeshoe’s people. What followed would be a remarkable partnership which is still hotly debated today and the interests of the missionaries would be further expanded or extended by the interests of the Basotho leader. Another interesting change was taking place for the people of this mountain territory, driven by missionaries both the French and the English. This is because the religion of the 19th-century Sotho speakers was defined chiefly by its outward manifestation, the signs on the land, the animals, things going on that you can hear, smell, touch, see. Religion, as the Sotho term ‘borapeli’ illustrates, was what people did and not what they believed. This is a fundamental foundational difference that stymied the first missionaries at first. The translation of molimo as God inaugurated a new era where there was a fixation on linear progression in an age of evolutionary thinking, where Protestantism was the theology. How did Molimo interlink with Tlatla-Mochilo? For the missionaries, this was an immense philosophical wrestling match. This is where Tsapi, a man described as Moshoeshoe’s advisor and diviner re-enters our story for a moment. Thanks to one of my listeners who is a descendent of Tsapi by the name of Seanaphoka for providing some more background. Tsapi was actually the first son of the Bafokeng Tribal Chief Seephephe. Tsapi had a sister called Mabela, who was Moshoeshoe’s first wife and as Queen Consort she took the name MmaMohato. Tsapi became Advisor and Senior Council member of Moshoeshoe.