History of South Africa podcast

Welcome back to the History of South Africa podcast with me your host, Des Latham. This is episode 141. First a little admin - a big thank you to for tuning in. This series has passed one million listens, the response has been staggering. When I began planning the history of South Africa podcast three years ago, it was literally a step into the deep end of audio production. Nothing can truly prepare you for such an enterprise — and this is a solo job. It’s me, the hundreds of books collected over decades, the journals, the papers, the travel, the experience and you, the listener. So without resorting to too much grandiose baloney, let me just say thank you. Without your support and wonderful emails and messages, this would have been an awful lot harder. With that little detour out of the way, back to our story for this week. We need to switch our gaze back to the northern Cape, circa 1838 and 9, and spend time discussing what was going on along the Orange River that in many ways is similar to the Nile and the Niger Rivers. The Orange River is smaller, but it also flows through an extremely arid zone like the Nile and the Niger, and like those waterways, it is a lifeline for animal and human life over a large area. It was towards this riparian zone that the colonists were expanding, and ahead of them the Khoe, the Oorlam, the !Kora. Then the Voortrekkers left in their hundreds, the flood turning to thousands, they weakened the Cape frontier substantially because it was a loss of military power. This happened as the trekkers themselves destabilised the interior of the country, and the British administration feared that they’d face dispossessed Africans who would become a nightmare as they entered the Cape, economic and war refugees. Examples were the amaMfengu who had fled the Mfecane, now they faced more destabilisation as hundreds of men riding horses and carrying guns made their way out of the Cape. By this time in the colony, most of previous Governor Benjamin D’Urban’s comprehensive programme of reforms had been accomplished, including the establishment of a Legislative Council, the introduction of a Revised charter of Justice, emancipation of the slaves and the beginnings of municipal government so that the locals could manage themselves. As we continue with the series, that narrative of haste will be our companion. When we look at the goings on, we must extend our gaze beyond the borders, most of which are merely lines on maps. Regions are tied together through the shared use of water and other resources. In this episode we’re going to look north, and try to understand the link between the people of the Cape, and the people of Namibia. Two people in particular. The San and the Oorlam and their relationship with the Orange River. Between 1800 and 1839 the San had been virtually exterminated as a people. They had stood in the way of the first trekboers through the turn of the century, and the expansion could only continue into the welcoming environment of the eastern transOrangia region after the San of the Sneeuberg had been pacified. This had been both a violent and a subtle and insidious practice, including gift giving, mainly alcohol. Even peaceful trekkers had undermined the San resistance by pure dint of infiltration into their territory. Once the colonists had established themselves beyond the Sneeuberg, the San were unable to prevent the destruction of their lifestyle. It was a similar story for the Khoekhoe. Those who were not killed or captured retreated deep into the deserts or the inhospital areas of Bushmansland so that they could survive. The !Kora were various clans who lived in a fluid situation in the interior of the country, and anyone who chose a raiding, roving mode of existence were likely to be called Koranna regardless of their ancestry. But they had made excellent use of two major introductions into South Africa. The Gun and the horse.

Ten thousand Zulu warriors had appeared at GatsLaager, the headquarters of the Voortrekkers under the brow of the Drakensberg, sent by Dingana and led by Ndlela kaSompiti. In South African history and general memory there are major confrontations which are part of modern consciousness. These would be things like the Zulu defeat of the British at Isandlhwana, the Anglo Boer War, and in the 20th Century, the Border Wars, and the ANC and PAC struggles against Apartheid. However, this battle of Gatslaager — the laager that would be renamed Vegslaaier or fighting laager, is one of the most important that has been forgotten in the annals of time. So it was ten am and swarming down from the hills to the east of the Gatslaager were the experienced and mostly married warriors, the creme de la creme, the most feared. The laager was protected on the east side by the Bushman’s River which was flooding, and if you glanced at a map, the laager was south west of where the town of Escourt is today. Ndlela then issued the command to halt, and the Amabutho stopped well out of range of the Voortrekkers Sannas on open ground to the north and west. He formed his troops up in their classic three tiers, the chest and two horns, taking his time. Inside the laager, Erasmus Smit the predikant and the Volk fell on their knees and prayed. “May he grant us the victory, if we have to fight … strengthen our hearts…” Seventy five Voortrekker men, and a handful of the more hardy women and boys, were now facing the full might of the Zulu army, an army of 10 000. It seemed a hopeless cause. But there were a few things in the Voortrekker’s favour. The flooding Bushman’s River for one. Another was the approaches had been setup so the Amabutho had no place to take cover as they assaulted the wagons. The Boers also had a canon. Meanwhile, Far far away to the north, Mzilikazi Khumalo of the amaNdebele had turned into a violent refugee after being defeated by a force of Boers, Griqua and Barolong in November 1837 at eGabeni. Mzilikazi himself had escaped the attackers by pure chance, he’d gone north in the face of threats by Bapedi-Balaka ruler, Mapela. It wasn’t just the Boers and the Griqua, the Barolong, the Bakwena, and the baTlokwa who were raiding in the highveld and down in what now is modern day Botswana. The amaNdebele had a violent relationship with Batswana.

This is episode 139 and the Grand Army of Natal has marched over the Thukela River to attack the imizi of Ndondakusuka. And if you’re following, you’ll know that a large Zulu army is camped to the north of Ndondakusuka, led by Mpande Senzangakhona. We’re getting straight down to business, its the 17th April 1838 and after crossing the mighty Thukela, the Grand Army surrounded Ndondakusuka. This first engagement was short and sharp. Virtually all the inhabitants, mainly women and children, were killed, and the village was burned to the ground. The Grand army commanders, Robert Biggar and John Cane, failed to take much notice of the scant number of warriors that seemed to be defending this valuable umizi. As I mentioned in Episode 138, it was home to one of Dingana’s most feared warriors, Zulu kaNogandaya who’s experience as a commander stretched back to before Shaka. He was actually on top of a nearby hill watching his home burn to the ground and his people being slaughtered. He was joined by Mpande and the other commanders doing what they always did, viewing the battle from a high point so they could direct their men. The Grand Army of Natal had fallen into Mpande’s trap. 7000 Zulu warriors were ready to go, and on Mpande’s orders, the amabutho began advancing southwards in two columns, then deployed in the classic two horns and a chest formation. Down at Ndondakusuka, the Grand Army was milling about, pillaging what they could find, particularly the cattle. They still did not know what was coming towards them through the Zululand bush. The isifuba or central section was aiming straight at the Grand Army as the invisible two horns or izimpondo approached on either side. There were 18 English, alongside them 30 Khoesan hunters, joined by 400 Africans all armed with muskets standing around Ndondakusuka. In addition, there were 2400 African warriors fighting armed with spears and shields fighting with the white traders against the Zulu. All of them had a bone to pick with the AmaZulu, and the feeling was mutual. The Zulu amabutho were moving quickly through the broken ground out of sight of anyone in Ndondakusuka which had been built la short distance from the Thukela River. So the Grand Army was now in a real predicament because their escape route was growing narrower by the second. The survivors ran back to Durban. Some had managed to make it to where they’d left their horses, and rode into the port that very night, bloodied and cowed. The residents panicked when they saw this bedraggled Grand Army stagger into town, because they knew as sure as the sun would rise from the east that close behind these defeated men was Mpande’s warriors. But by pure chance, a ship called the Comet had anchored in the bay on 29th March, it had sailed from Delagoa Bay after its captain William Haddon had fallen sick and needed to recuperate. Most of the residents and missionaries and their families boarded the vessel, while some citizens remained on shore. More Grand Army stragglers arrived over the next two days, all reporting that the Zulu army was indeed close behind. And so, back to the main group of Trekkers. Their headquarters however remained at Modderlaager, mud laager, which was a very unpleasant place now. It was overpopulated, it stank, disease had spread. It was also not in the best place to defend against an enemy attack. Landman decided to shift the laager to another spot further along the Bushman’s river or the Mtshezi River, to Gatslaager, or hole laager. The trekkers were aware they would probably come under attack again and increased their patrols, searching in particular for Zulu spies. They captured dozens of men, who were interrogated and most were summarily executed, shot and then left on the veld. Most of these were innocent bystanders but the Voortrekkers weren’t considering justice, only survival.

The world was undergoing some other major changes — including the climate. Explosive volcanic eruptions late in the 1790s had led to vast quantities of dust being thrown in the stratosphere and this had a short term effect on temperatures around the world. Nowhere on earth was safe — in southern Africa for example it had exacerbated droughts for most of the first three decades of the 19th Century. The fact that the Voortrekkers were being rained on in 1838 was something of a return to normal after the long dry. According to scientists, the most sustained period of stratospheric dust was between 1807 and 1830, precisely at the period dominated by Shaka and then Dingana in the eastern part of southern Africa. There is a very close link between history and climate. In the northern hemisphere, records were tumbling. Unlike southern Africa there were summers of continuous rain up north, grain harvests failed completely in Germany, France and the British isles. When Tamboro exploded in Indonesia in 1815, it spread ash far and wide — and has now being blamed on what was being experienced by the northern hemisphere. A dust veil swept over the north, and distorted the normal wind patterns. In the Eastern Cape, the drought patterns had complicated British Settler lives between 1821 and 1823 — a searing drought which drove most of the new farmers off their land — to become more embroiled in hunting and commerce. Tree ring analysis shows how precipitously the climatic variation affected Zululand in particular in the first two decades of the 19th Century. While this was not the main reason that the powerhouses of the AmaZulu became so centralised, it was all part of the cause of the social and political changes. By the 1830s the introduction of new farming techniques around Port Natal or what was now being called Durban was a revolution — I’ve mentioned this in earlier podcasts and for good reason. Crop cultivation had increased and surpluses were reported — the growth of the large black peasant society in Natal during the first half of the 19th Century was a significant event. Dingana was outraged by how the former refugees that had fled his rule had apparently appeared to be prefer to live around the Port than return to Zululand. The fact that he had taken to burning down the umizi of chieftans he didn’t like didn’t help his cause either. So the English traders who were now taking up arms against him weren’t just an irritation, they were becoming a centre of power that threatened the Zulu king’s power ethos. While the Boers were considering their next moves, planning to conquer Dingana, the British further south were facing a conundrum. If they left the Voortrekkers to do what they wanted, there was every chance that the interior of southern Africa would become more unstable rather than less. Some may find this difficult to comprehend, but back in the late 1830s the expansion of the trekkers throughout the interior was thought of as a threat not a stabilising factor by the English authorities. They didn’t see it as christians subduing the heathens, rather as unrestrained expansionism by a group of people that were not under their control. Another major event shook the eastern Cape in 1838, Andries Stockenstrom was going to resign — for the second time after he’d taken off back home to Sweden in the previous decade. As Stockenstrom bade his eastern frontier adieu, he was replaced by a military man called Colonel John Hare who arrived in 1838 with a kind of defeatist attitude, and was almost immediately out of his depth. He relied on information from two sources who were like yin and yang. These two chaos-ridden forces were Charles Lennox Stretch and John Mitford Bowker. Meanwhile, the English traders in Durban were planning was an attack on Dingana’s umizi for a second time, their first had gone so well and they were supposed to be coordinating their military manoeuvres with the Boers.

It’s been a harrowing few months in southern Africa back in 1838. All manner of change has rolled in across the veld, there are worlds colliding, roiling, like thunderclouds, seething and churning. And almost allegorical, because lightning from real storms had already killed Boer horses and Zulu warriors in separate incidents as they fought each other. When the settlers in the Cape heard about Piet Retief’s fate followed shortly afterwards by news of the massacres of hundreds of Voortrekkers along the Bloukrans, Bushmans Rivers, many nodded knowingly. The stories of the AmaZulu military prowess had circulated for decades, Shaka first, then Dingana. Many of the Cape citizens had feared for the Voortrekkers, and now their fate seemed to be sealed. The Capenaars said the Voortrekkers had been warned but thought of themselves as immune, protected by God, deterministically predisposed to rule supreme over their fellow black man. Weenen had sent shock waves of existentialism through the Voortrekker consciousness. An immense year, this, 1838 —. Queen Victoria of Britain was crowned at Westminster Abbey in London - and Dingana had referred to the new Queen in his comments to the missionaries before he killed Retief. Alfred Vail and Samuel Morse made the first successful demonstration of the electric telegraph in front of the world - and Morse code was launched which is still in use today. It’s April 1838 and in United Kingdom, the principle of the People’s Charter was drawn up, a charter which called for universal suffrage, for the right of women to vote. It would be a century before that happened of course. Meanwhile, as these technical and social innovations were being cooked up, at Doornkop and Modderlaager, below the brooding Drakensberg, the Voortrekkers were aching for revenge. By now Andries Potgieter had arrived with his posse, joining Piet Uys and his smaller group, and they had contacted the English traders in Durban with a view to conduct a co-ordinated attack on Dingane along two fronts. Ultimately it was decided that the Boers should move out on April 5th and 347 men were to ride in two divisions, with division a symbolic description of this force. They were quite divided and were not going to act in concert in the coming commando which was eventually nicknamed "Die Vlugkommando" for all the wrong reasons.

This is episode 136 — the Zulu army has fallen on the Voortrekkers along the Bloukrans and Bushman’s rivers, close to where Escourt and Ladysmith are to be found today, but right now it’s February 17th 1838. The tributaries of these rivers were renamed Groot and Klein Moordspruit because of the bloody events of that time. By the morning of the 17th most of the families camped along these streams and rivers were dead. Within a few hours the right horn and the centre sections of the army had overrun the outlying Voortrekker camps, now the left horn prepared to assault Gerrit Maritz’s laager. The Zulu army on the left flank initially approached the Viljoen camp, and Gert and Karel Viljoen, Gert Combrink, Izak Bezuidenhout, Meneer Schutte and Strydom, rode out to confront the attackers in an attempt to protect their families. Acting like plovers, the decoys split up in full view of the Zulu warriors, Gert and Izak riding towards the Bezuidenhout camp, and the others towards Englebrecht and Bothma camp. They were looting anything of value as they went, and as I mentioned at the end of last episode, their discipline was slipping. The left horn now rounded on Gerrt Maritz’s laager, which was heavily defended unlike the other trekker camps, and he threw back the first attack. Many narratives of the future were being created about this defence, campfire stories of stoic action, including one where Martiz’s ten year old son armed himself with a pistol and fired on the Zulu while his mother and other women carried ammunition back and forth while still in their dressing gowns. The Boers gathered back at Doornkop and revenge was on their lips. The sounds of weeping filled the air and for the next few days, outlying trekkers staggered towards this safe centre. The Voortrekkers had lost more than 600 of their people. IT was the biggest calamity to befall any of the settler parties by a long way — a significant event in the story of South Africa. The place where the main massacres took place is marked today by the town of Weenen, Place of Weeping. 110 trekker men had died, including the 60 at kwaMatiwane, 56 women were dead, but shockingly it was the number of children wiped out — 185 that really was an abomination and embittered the Boers. The AmaZulu did not fight like the amaXhosa they realised too late. For centuries they’d lived alongside the Xhosa, sometimes within their kraals, and never had they witnessed such cold blooded killing of infants and women. Then there were 250 coloured and Khoesan servants also speared to death by the Zulu — everywhere gore splattered the landscape — the Boers had lost one tenth of their population, and one-sixth of their men. The Zulu had killed everyone and everything, cats, dogs, even the chickens. However, in making a surprise attack, Dingana and his advisors had totally underestimated the Trekker’s fighting spirit and their grit, even when facing odds of 30 or 40 to one. They had discovered that even when at a disadvantage, the Boers provided a sting. So it was with some irony that the first to respond to the Zulu attack on the Voortrekkers were the English who rode out from Durban.

As you heard, Piet Retief and 100 Boers and Khoesan agterryes had been killed by Dingana on the 6th February 1838. Missionary Owen watched the killings through his telescope until he couldn’t take it any more and collapsed in shock. The Zulu king was not done, he’d ordered his amabutho warriors to seek and destroy the Voortrekkers who’d camped along the rivers below the Drakensberg where they’d arrived in large numbers expecting Retief’s negotiations to have ended well. Retief had thought so too, particularly after he’d returned Dingana’s cattle rustled by Sekhonyela of the baTlokwa. About a thousand wagons had descended the passes, and the Zulu were determined the Voortrekkers were not going to remain on the land they’d invaded. The vultures, wild dogs, and hyenas, jackals began to feed on the bodies strewn about kwaMatiwane near emGungungdlovu where Retief’s men had met their grisly end, while Owen and his family trembled with fear nearby. Were they going to be next they wondered. Dingana had sent a message as Retief was killed saying their were safe, but who believed the AmaZulu leader about anything? Meanwhile, some of the warriors were going through the Boers baggage and inspecting the muskets that had been piled outside the main gate. Puffs of dust appeared from the south, and from there two horseman and their small travel party appeared at emGungundlovu. Talk about bad timing. It was James Brownlee who was a very young translator and a trainee missionary, and the American Henry Venables. They had picked a particularly bad time to ride up to Dingana’s Great Place. From a Zulu perspective, Dingana’s orders for his amabutho to kill the Voortrekkers was a matter of business as usual, this was the normal way of things when a chief was disgraced and executed. His family and adherents would be bumped off, or “eaten up” to use the Zulu phrase, so that there would be none alive to avenge the king. The Voortrekker livestock would be seized and the king would redistribute these beasts amongst his amabutho, exactly as the Boers had been doing amongst their Kommando members after the raids on Mzilikazi. And like the Boer raids on Mzilikazi, very few women or children were to be spared by Zulu warriors. The Zulu army of about 5000 crossed a famous river at a famous point, the Mzinyathi or Buffalo River near Rorke’s Drift. How ironic that 42 years later, the very same crossing would see English soldiers fleeing from Cetswayo’s warriors after the Battle of Isandhlwana hunted across this very same Drift. So the 5000 warriors marched along the Helpmekaar heights towards the Thukela River close to the confluence with the Bloukrans through the second week of February 1838. By now most of the trekkers had scattered through this territory, in little family encampments of three or four wagons over a large area. Only a few had taken the English traders warning seriously and established defensible wagon laagers. Most did not, they just outspanned where they were and began enjoying the fruits of the veld. Many of these had headed off on hunts, leaving their families alone with their Khoesan servants, and to them, the AmaZulu warriors were going to do what the amaNdebele had done in August 1836. Fall upon the wagons and kill everyone they could find.

This is episode 134 - and its going to be a massacre. It is also crucial as you’ve heard that we dig deep into the events because today there’s a huge debate about what I’m going to explain next, what documents still exist about what happened, and who owns what when it comes to land in South Africa. Specifically, land in KwaZulu Natal. What exactly did Dingane agree to sell to Piet Retief? Why did he agree to do this when he had told the missionaries and his own people that he wouldn’t part with land at all? It’s incredible to think that this one year, 1838, has sparked so much discussion — and that people today quote one fact after another to back up their political position on this matter. So to the story at hand. Piet Retief had struggled to hold the Voortrekkers together when he’d arrived back at the main trekker encampment at Doornkop. Piet Uys had arrived from the Highveld on the 15th December 1837, having heard that Retief’s visit to the AmaZulu king had gone well and he brought news of just how decisively amaNdebele chief Mzilikazi had been dealt with. Uys was also reclaiming his leadership role over the Voortrekkers of Natal which didn’t go down well with Retief. Gerrit Maritz was his usual refereeing self interjecting between the two, and Uys agreed on the 19th December and after four days of argument to take the oath of the constitution to support Retief’s vision, but only after he consulted with his Volk, his followers. These followers were on their way down the Drakensberg. It one of the life’s ironies that by the time he arrived back in Natal on the 24th January 1838, Uys had completely changed his tune. IT was on that date that he dictated a letter to Governor D’Urban back in Cape Town to the effect that he was now totally against Retief’s “sinister designs…” — and I’m quoting directly. Sinister designs? Over what? Retief it appeared and as we know was true, was planning to launch an independent state in Natal and Uys in what could be called a giant stab in the back, wrote to the British governor that he and his Volk were actually reaffirming their loyalty to the Crown. The English crown. Retief of course was heading to the upper reaches of the Caledon valley on a quest ordered by Dingana to retrieve cattle stolen by the baTlokwa from the amaHlubi. By inference, Dingana wanted Sekhonyela to pay for his transgressions and the Boers believed he was testing their somewhat flimsy relationship. Retief believed that the goodwill that would be generated by returning the cattle would lead to Dingana handing over some of that precious land controlled by the AmaZulu king. He wrote a letter to Dingana informing the Zulu king of the successful raid on his enemy, the baTlokwa. By now, Dingana had almost gone into shock about something else. On the 2nd January he’d been informed by Owen the missionary about Mzilikazi’s fate and the utter thrashing he’d received at eGaneni, how his people had fractured and the erstwhile leader of the Khumalo clan had fled across the Limpopo River. Another enemy, dispatched by the Boers, the Zulu had failed to defeat this man, but not the boers. IT was the 25th January when the Trekkers gathered and prayed for protection, then a few days later, the party of 100 rode out with the cattle, and the 15 Zulu attendants including two indunas. Piet Retief wrote his last letter to his wife on the trail to emGungungdlovu. “I was deeply affected at the time of my departure … It was in no way that I feared for my undertaking to go to the king but I was full of grief that I must again live through the unbearable dissension in our Society, and that made me feel that God’s kindness would turn to wrath…”

It’s a hot day in northern Zululand, in the Mfolozi River valley, where Dingane’s capital emGungungudlovu was situated. When Piet Retief first met the Zulu king, he failed the grasp the extent to which this man’s authority was was based in what historian John Laband calls a combination of mystical ritual and naked power politics. That Dingane was a despot is clear but what was less understood was that his people allowed him to be so — that he could only make major decisions about political strategy with the input of important men and sometimes women, of the kingdom. The small inner sanctum of power, the umkhandlu, was a council that included the abantwana, the princes of the royal house. Alongside these aristocrats were the izinduna, state officials that were appointed as commanders of the Amabutho regiments, some ruled over entire districts and administered justice in the king’s name. Anyone was free to become an induna, unlike the umkhandlu, but only after members of the aristocracy were unavailable to take up that position. Because these induna were appointed, they had more to lose and did the king’s will more amenably. Even so, one of these induna was going to balk when Dingane ordered him to kill Piet Retief and his small party of men that had been negotiating land in the first week of November 1837. More about that at the end of this episode. Dingane’s main induna was Ndlela kaSompiti, his other was Nzobo kaSobadli, and both of these induna were of royal blood - linked to the royal house. Oddly enough, the physical proof of their position was the permission to grow long fingernails. Men of high status grew their nails, particularly thumbnails, longer than an inch and a half as a sign that they did not have to do manual labour, they were freed from having to hold hoes or wield implements. They also wore another symbol of power, the ingXotha, a massive and heavy brass armlet that reached from elbow to wrist and looked a bit like an ancient Greek arm shield. When Piet Retief arrived at emGungundlovu on the evening of 5th November 1837 they would not have noticed these emblems. The Zulu men were essentially semi-naked, only the ornaments, arm bracelets, beads, brass, worn below the knee and around ankles, bands of beads slung over the shoulder, indicated power. You had to look closely to be certain. It so happened that Dingane was fully aware of who had done the rustling but he wanted Retief to pass a test. The Boer leader must embark on a quest, the Zulu king demanded the amaBunu prove themselves to him. The baTlokwa it so happened had been rustling for the last two years anyway, this was not a recent phenomenon. So far, Sikhonyela had refused to send any of the cows back, and had insulted Dingane saying “Tell that impubescent boy that if he wants to be circumcised, let him come and I’ll circumcise him…” The Zulu custom of circumcision had been stopped in Shaka’s time as you know, but the baTlokwa continued with this rite of passage. The baTlokwa lived on the upper reaches of the Caledon Valley, around more than 300 kilometers from where Dingane lived. Retief knew that Dingane knew the real criminals were not him, but also realised it was an opportunity to demonstrate beyond doubt the good faith of the Boers and that Dingane was demanding proof of goodwill beyond mere words or little signed documents.

Just a quick thank you to AJL, as well as Jacque and Nkosinathi for your kind comments and emails - this series is nothing without my wonderful audience. Gangans — which is Khoesan for thank you. Voortrekker leader Piet Retief knew that he had to negotiate for any land in Natal with the Zulu king Dingane. So with that in mind, he left his family on the top of the escarpment as you heard at the end of last episode, taking four of the wagons and a small party of 15 men over the side of the Drakensburg by way of what we now call Retief’s Pass in October 1837. He was still hopeful that Gerrit Maritz would join up with him so he loitered for a while at the base of the Drakensburg. Realising after almost two weeks that it was a futile to continue to delay, he turned for Port Natal, or what was now called Durban. The first negotiations he needed to conduct were not with the AmaZulu, but the fractious and rebellious Durban traders. If any land was going to be seconded to the Voortrekkers, he needed to clear any plans with the semi-desperate crew living around the fledgling port. It took 90 hours to ride from the base of the Drakensburg mountains to Durban - and the exhausted group of trekkers rode into the harbour town on 20th October. Like other visitors, Retief was shocked to note that there were “53 Englishmen, no white women, only black ones…” Dingane was also acutely aware that in military matters, he was in a somewhat weakened position. All the reports he’d heard about the British and how they’d defeated the amaXhosa with their firearms and horses had shaken the Zulu king. He’d also heard about the attack on Mosega, and was about to hear about how Potgieter and Uys had driven Mzilikazi from eGabeni forever. Back in Cape Town, British officials were growing concerned. They heard about the amaNdebele’s fate, and how the Voortrekkers were now heading to Natal. Instead of stabilising things, the Boers appeared to be causing one war after another. Shortly afterwards the Boers saddled up for a much more difficult mission - to approach Dingane to try and get the king’s permission to settle within his land. They couldn’t just ride in, first they sent a message to one of the most important characters of this part of our story, a missionary called Reverend Francis Owen of the Church Missionary Society. Important because he was going to be an eyewitness to brutal events. Owen and his wife were not alone at emGungundlovu. His sister was there too, and an interpreter, an artisan builder and mechanic Richard Hulley, Hulley’s wife and three children as well as Jane Williams, his Khoesan servant. They’d rolled up to Dingane’s great place in the second week of October 1837. This less than a month before Retief was going to show up.

Mzilikazi Khumalo was trying to piece together his shattered amaNdebele after the attack on Mosega in early 1837 by the Boers and their allies the Griqua and Rolong. Then in midyear, he’d been attacked again by Dingana’s impis — he’d managed to survive that invasion but things were looking very bad as he hunkered down in his imizi of eGabeni in the Marico area of what is now north west province. Across southern Africa, movers and shakers were moving and shaking. By now, Durban was a busy place. Dingana was vacillating about its future. Trader John Cane who was well ensconced inside Zulu life managed to negotiate with Dingana to allow the traders some latitude — to remain for now — with assistance from Gardiner despite his invidious position. If you remember, Dingana had told Qadi chief Dube to bring him poles for his palisade, although some Zulu oral tradition says Dingana killed Dube for dancing better than him, but either way there’s no disputing what was now an open clash between the Zulu king and the white traders. Dingana had demanded the Qadi refugees be sent back across the Tugela River, the traders refused and then began to fortify Durban. The crisis now brought into sharp relief the role of ex-military men like Alexander Biggar. The former captain and paymaster of the 85th regiment had been cashiered from the British Army in 1819 following a scandal - he basically misappropriated regimental funds and was stripped of his rank. Dingana’s threats reminded Biggar of Nxele the wardoctor and the amaXhosa, and being military minded, he realised this threat provided him with a perfect opportunity. He was elected as commandant of the Port Natal Volunteers, and organised local men, black and white, into a body of troops, and appointed captains to oversee this group. OF course he appointed his son, Robert, as well as John Cane and Henry Ogle as Captains, and this so-called army began to fortify Durban stockade. Not done, Biggar issued a proclamation in May 1837 calling on the inhabitants of Durban to hold themselves ready in cheerful obedience to his orders. In the third quarter of 1837, Potgieter and Retief were making their way to the edge of the escarpment with the Voortrekkers, from where they were going to split. Retief was going to make his way down the Drakensburg to Natal, and Potgieter was going to turn inland — staying on the high ground. The Voortrekkers were still plodding their way along the Sand River heading in a north easterly direction, and taking note of the empty plains which Mzilikazi had purposefully used as a buffer zone. On the 1st September 1837 they camped near where the town of Senekal is today, then continued east passed where the modern town of Paul Roux lies. Then they arrived at the edge of the escarpment, near Warden in the Free State. While Maritz and Potgieter disagreed, they agreed on one thing, and that was the need to destroy the amaNdebele, determined to evicerate the threat from the Marico region and to claim back their cattle still held by Mzilikazi. They were also obsessing about something else. Maritz and Potgieter wanted to recover the thee very young Liebenberg children who had been seized by the amaNdebele warriors after they were found hiding in the camp overrun by the the year before during the battles along the Vaal. Sara, Anna Maria and Christiaan. .

This is episode 130 and the Voortrekkers are moving inexorably towards Natal, where the Zulu king Dingana awaits. At about the same time and as you’ll hear next episode, a large Voortrekker commando of more than 360 Boers, Griqua and the Rolong warriors were going to gather with the intent of finishing off Mzilikazi Khumalo. The amaNdebele king had arrived back at Mosega in the Klein Marico valley, and had also just fended off an impi sent by Dingana. By now, the number of trekkers arriving at Thaba ‘Nchu area had increased to a few thousand, including a large party under Pieter Jacobs that had left the Beaufort West district. These were the remnants of the Slagter’s Nek rebellion, they were relatives of the Boers who’d been hanged 22 years earlier. I covered the Slagter’s Nek rebellion in episode 74, the bitter resentment about what the British had done had never been forgotten nor forgiven. And here was the result, dozens of families from Beaufort West and elsewhere, determined to escape the might of the British Empire in their little wagons, determined to seek freedom on the expansive veld, the deep African hinterland with all its mysteries and excitement. There was also Jacob de Klerk who’d left the Baviaan’s River district - 62 families in 30 wagons. Another important group were the 100 trekkers led by 72 year-old Jacobus Johannes Uys which had departed from the Uitenghage district in March 1837. The real leader of this group, however, was his son, Piet Uys. He’d befrended Louis Trichardt a few years before - and was called dynamic — energetic — charismatic. Uys had also visited Dingana two years before to sound out the Zulu king’s views on possibly granting land to the trekkers in Natal. Uys was well liked in the eastern Cape — and when he arrived in Grahamstown en route to the hinterland, a deputation of 1820 British settlers turned up to present him with a huge Bible bound in leather from Russia and inscribed with a stirring message that God would guide the Voortrekkers because the Volk had faith. By April 1837, Dingana was even more troubled by the Qadi people and specifically, their chief Dube kaSilwane. They inhabited a small territory to the north of the Tugela in the vicinity of where Kranskop is today. Dube was often referred to a peace-loving, but some say this was post ipso facto because a lot of men killed by Dingana were characterised as peace-loving. But just to explain further, Zulu oral history says that Dingana had Dube killed for no other reason than he excelled during a dancing competition in which the Zulu king was participating. Very ancient rule there. If you have a dancing king, don’t show off and make him look like an amateur. Bad career move. Uvezi, uNonyanda Mgabadeli goes the most famous izibongo zikaDingana, — Vezi Nonyanda, Mgabadeli means the Prancer and this is how the entire 430 line poem about Dingana starts.

We are trundling along late in 1837, and as you heard last week, Dingane was dabbling in cross border raids, or at least, cross Drakensburg raids, and had dealt Mzilikazi a penultimate blow. Coming soon towards the Ndebele, were the Boers intent on delivering a coup de grâce. Time to talk a bit aobut Daniel Lindley the American missionary who had been living at Mzilikazi’s main imizi Mosega in the Klein Marico valley, and who had left in a hurry along with the other missionaries after the Boer raiding party shot up the homestead. If anyone was qualified to attend to both amaNdebele and Boer mission needs it was Lindley. There is even a town named after him in the Free State which unlike so many others, has retained its name from its origin. Lindley actually became more famous administering to the Christian needs of the Boers in Natal — not the Free State — so the Free Stater’s named a town after him. Lindley had been brought up in the American west, he was a dead shot as well as a fearless horseman which made him quite a hit with the Boers of 1837. This was no soft little Englishman, oh no, this was a man of the plains. But he was also an ordained Presbyterian minister, and intellectually stringent. When Potgieter and Maritz returned from their raid on Mzilikazi in early 1837, they relied on Lindley’s skills with animals and his hardy attitude while they had very little time for the other two missionaries who appeared lost on the veld. Daniel Lindley was born in Pennsylvania alongside a tiny stream called Ten Mile Creek in August 1801. His father founded Ohio University, so its no surprise that the lad was quite an academic. Back in southern Africa, by the 1830s the political face of the region north of the Orange River and east of the Kalahari Desert was profoundly transformed. Farming communities in the early phase of these changes — say from 1760 onwards, were comprised of a few hundred chiefdoms, small fluid clans and tribes if you like, but by the 1830s there were three large centralised African kingdoms. The AmaZulu in the East, the abakwaGaza or the Gaza as they’re better known, in the north east and the amaNdebele in the west. But by the 1830s the Swazi were emerging once more as a power player on the veld. Just to remind ourselves, the kingdoms both centralised and less-centralised were characterised by three clear social divisions — and all were definitely not equal. At the top was the aristocracy consisting of the ruling family and a number of other families who were allowed into the rarified atmosphere of elitism through ties of descent, or political loyalty, or a combination of the two. And to the south, Port Natal had become an important stop over for many ships, British traders were interested in this little bay with its excellent products collected by traders who were subject to Dingane’s rule. The traders did not like being ruled by this Zulu king and were making plans to change up the power base of what was to become Natal.Speaking of the English, a Swede-Dutch mixed man was now back in the Cape running the Grahamstown and frontier districts. Andries Stockenstrom had sailed back from his temporary exile in Sweden, and was now the lieutenant governor of the eastern Cape. Lord Glenelg the Colonial Secretary was a liberal and wanted liberals to run the show in Southern Africa and Stockenstrom, despite being a Boer, was also a liberal. Stockenstrom was more in step with the thinking of the missionaries, not the settlers. This was to have repercussions for both the English administration and the 1820 English — and the Boers.

This is episode 128 and the bell is tolling for Mzilikazi Khumalo of the amaNdebele. We’ll also hear about the introduction of Maize by hunter-traders, and the relationship between Dingane and the Portuguese at Delagoa Bay. A compounding problem for Mzilikazi was how he’d treated the indigenous Sotho speaking people of the area north of the Vaal. He’d failed to assimilate them into his system of control completely, rather using some as Hole, who were basically domestic and community menials — servants. Others who were overcome by his warriors were assigned to villages of their own where they herded cattle for him under traditional chiefs but under surveillance of an Ndebele regiment and sometimes, one of his wives. There were those allowed more freedom to pursue their lives automously but paid a tribute. All of this meant that they weren’t his allies, which also meant when the Boers rolled onto the veld, the Sotho viewed them Boers with antipathy, wary but not always as enemies. Mzilikazi had a community of 60 000 people — possibly 80 000 say historians, but only a tiny percentage of these were warriors, perhaps 4 000 in total at the apex of his power. Mzilikazi was, in a word, a despot. But a complicated despot. Mzilikazi demanded a strict adherence to Nguni and Khumalo traditions. Meanwhile, at Blesberg near Thaba ‘Nchu, the Voortrekkers had elected Piet Retief as the new governor and commandant general of the new Volksraad of April 1937. Potgieter had been replaced by Retief, but had no intention of relinquishing power. This is where the almost reverend Erasmus Smit enters our story once more. He met with Retief who told him that the following Sunday he would be formally inducted as the custodian of the Voortrekkers spiritual needs, he would become a full dominee. It would take place, said Retief, after Smit’s sermon. So on the Sunday Smit duly delivered his sermon then waited for the commander to make the announcement. Instead, and to his horror, members of the Volk stood up and shouted objections to his appointment. The humiliation complete, Retief cancelled the inauguration and poor meneer Smit retired to his wagon to quaff a few brandies no doubt. Shattered and disappointed, he was visited by Retief that night who said that they would eventually have to announce him as dominee, because the Voortrekkers were still relying on the Wesleyan missionaries and the American missionary Reverend Daniel Lindley for their marriages, baptisms and funerals. And speaking of the English, they were indeed beginning to view Port Natal with more interest. While Cape Town and Port Elizabeth remained far more important, the hunter traders at Port Natal nagged the governor to consider annexing Natal as a new colony. Their overriding motives were economic and traded hides, furs, Ivory, tallow, horns and plant oil and these folks were linked directly to the British financiers who put up the money for their exploration and their exploits. These hunter traders were the first external group or class of individuals to respond to economic opportunities and the political risks that lay in exploiting the natural wealth of Natal and Zululand. Most of the hunter-traders like Henry Francis Fynn had gone to far as to marry into Zulu society so valuable was this opportunity.

When I started this series off a couple of years ago, it was a dive into the deep end — although it was the sixth podcast series I’d launched — this was the biggest gamble. But the wonderful response I’ve received overall has been a big surprise, a motivator so thank you for your comments. I have a website www.desmondlatham.blog, which is stuttering along and in the future, shall be more responsive as I incorporate some of the ideas sent through by listeners. Back to where we left off in episode 126 — as Gerrit Maritz and Hendrick Potgieter rolled south trying to get away from Mzilikazi Khumalo’s amaNdebele warriors after their audacious raid on his main homestead in the Klein Marico valley. The main target of their raid, Mzilikazi, along with the man known as Kaliphi his 2 IC, were 50 miles north of Marico when they raided and avoided death by Voortrekker musket. The returning party of trekkers were exultant, having dealt the amaNdebele a severe blow, 107 horsemen made their way back along with 58 Baralong footmen carrying shields and assegais herding 6 500 cattle and thousands of sheep, two ox-wagons with the three American missionaries, their two wives, and two young children. The commando trekked through the entire first night away from Mosego in the Klein Marico valley without taking a break. They rested for an hour at 11 :00 the next morning, then trekked on until late the following night. It was imperative for Maritz and Potgieter’s men to make it to the south side, so the trekkers built a raft of tree trunks to ferry the missionaries wagons across the river, everything was now wet, and just to add to their suffering, the drizzle turned to heavy rain. Wagons safely across, the commando stopped at Kommando Drift for a few days — it took that long to herd the remaining cattle across. Then just to celebrate, the burghers shot an ox to eat and hunted game to add to their meagre rations. A preliminary redistribution of the cattle was conducted at Kommando Drift with the Baralong, the Griqua and the Kora receiving their share of the spoils. The victorious raiders triumphant return was going well. The lion share of the raided livestock went to the trekkers, who began divvying up the loot at Blesberg. The Potgieter trek party believed they were owed a greater portion to compensate for the terrible losses at the Vaal River and Vegkop battles. As the bickering worsened, the demographics of this area began to change. A week or so after Potgieter trundled off to seek his fortune across the Vet River, something very important took place further south. On the 8th April 1837 Piet Retief crossed the Orange River leading a significant party of trekkers — 100 wagons with 120 men. Size matters folks, and when he heard about this, Maritz eagerly sought Retief’s support. He knew that Retief was respected, a man who had the ear of even the British back in the Cape. Retief was 57 years old and while not being young, was restless. Retief eventually published a memorable document on 22nd January 1837, his manifesto which functioned as a kind of declaration of independence for the Voortrekker farmers. It has echoed over the ages, and as we cover various political moments in the coming episodes, you’ll hear these echoes. Everything is connected.

The Voortrekkers had survived the trauma of the Battle of Vegkop, they had narrowly survived and as they huddled together in Thaga ‘Nchu a form of unity was required. These different Voortrekker parties under various leaders, Trichardt, Van Rensburg, Cilliers, Potgieter, Maritz, focused their minds on the main threat to their further expansion in southern Africa. Mzilikazi of the Khumalo. The man born in Zululand, the raider of many across southern Africa, he who had defeated numerous clans on the highveld, the Hurutshe, Barolong, Batlokwa. The BaSotho feared him, the BaTswana hated him. The external threat to the Voortrekkers suppressed internal divisions, but that wouldn’t be for very long. Gerrit Maritz had arrived in transOrangia with a huge trek party, 700 men women, children and servants. One hundred of these were Boer men - a relatively large company of soldiers if you take the firepower of the day into account. Gerrit Maritz was not your average trekboer, he was a wagon maker from Graaff-Reinet, prosperous, more middle class if you like than working farmer type. He was well educated compared to other Voortrekkers, and young - in this 30s. A large man, dwarfing most around him, his upper lip clean shaven as was the manner back in these days, but he sported a beard — noticeably darker than his tawny coloured hair. He also painted his wagon light blue, not the usual green adopted by most Voortrekkers which allowed them to blend a little better into the Veld — not for Maritz. He also dressed up, long coat, top hat, latest fashionable trousers. Maritz could crack a joke, but was also a pillar of the Dutch Reformed Church. He regarded the Doppers, the extremist arm of the trekboers, the most thin lipped and orthodox of the church members, with contempt. The amaXhosa had just done that against the English, and the amaNdebele were the new challenge to the Boers. The trekkers also were motivated by a more primordial need - revenge. The amaNdebele had killed their men, women and children. This could not go unpunished. They also wanted to recover their looted livestock and wagons thus sending a message throughout southern Africa like the ripples of a pebble in a pool — do not fight us, there will be a payment. So enter stage left, Erasmus Smit and his memorable wife Susanna. She was also living in Graaff-Reinet when her brother Gerrit suggested they trek out of the colony to escape the clutches of the evil English in 1836. She and Erasmus Smit joined the Maritz trek with her husband in a wagon on loan from her brother. As they travelled, Smit conducted church services three times on a Sunday, and on Wednesday and Saturday evenings. Erasmus was a lay preacher, he’d been trained by the Netherlands missionary Society between 1809 and 1829, but he was never formally inducted. Susanna his wife was the official who greeted churchgoers — the helpmeet as they were known. Susanna Smit wrote in her diary as the family departed for Thaba ‘Nchu “de Heere leide het Kroos der martelaren uit van onder Ingelsche verdrukking” — or The Lord led his progeny of martyrs away from English oppression. And its back to the Kommando we now return. A second section or detachment led by Gerrit Maritz left the following day, with the men wearing distinctive red ribbons around their hats. So who was in overall command? The Kommandant or the President? They were leading two different sections, companies if you like. Historians generally agree that it was Maritz, not Potgieter, who were the leaders although he didn’t have the military experience. As with everything African, leaders get to divvy up the spoils and treasure, so this question was going to emerge later in a pointed fashion. These 107 Voortrekkers, plus 100 auxiliaries, including 40 mounted Griquas under Pieter Dawids, were joined by 60 members of the Barolong tribe on foot led by chief Matlaba.

Last episode, we heard how the battle of Kopjeskraal near Parys had ended, where Mzilikazi’s second in command Kaliphi and his force of 500 men had been repulsed in a close fought affair. This was an important clash, pitting Andries Potgieter’s second in command and brother in law, Piet Botha against Kaliphi, who was responsible for the entire southern reaches of Mzilikazi’s territory. They had failed to overrun the Voortrekkers, but had decimated the Liebenberg party a few kilometers upriver, catching the small group unawares. That was also after destroying the Erasmus party and its wagons, although Petrus Erasmus and his son as well as Pieter Bekker made their escape. But Erasmus had no idea what had happened to his two others sons. They were missing. The other group that was virtually wiped out was the Liebenberg party was under command of Gotlieb Liebenberg senior, a 71 year old man, who’d left the Colesberg district seeking greener pastures. The trek party was made up of his wife, four sons and a daughter — all of whom were married — along with 21 children and a Scottish meester, or school master called MacDonald. Liebenberg’s trek had been overrun from a section of the amaNdebele, the boers desperately rushing to pull their wagons together as the warriors descended. The first inkling that the main Voortrekker party had of their fate was a disselboom that Botha’s laager had seen being dragged past by oxen as you heard last episode. Nkaliphi had sent a smaller force onwards to launch an assault on this little Boer party at the same time that he’d attacked the larger Kopjeskraal laager. All six of the Liebenberg men were killed, along with 12 of their Khoesan servants. Two of the women were killed and six of the 21 children. The others were saved by a miraculous intervention further strengthening the narrative about chosen people. Back at Mosega, near the Marico River, Mzilikazi was indeed planning a second major assault. He wanted the Boers crushed so that none would ever enter his country again, determined to eliminate what he correctly perceived as a real threat to his rule over this valuable land. He mobilised as many of his men as he could. Living with him were American missionaries Doctor Alexander Wilson, Daniel Lindley and Henry Venables. They had all been shocked when tye Ndebele returned with the Boers wagons and cattle, hearing that Stephanus Erasmus’ camp was destroyed and two of his children killed. They were even more horrified when they heard that Mzilikazi was sending thousands of his men back to finish the job. While some have said that he was to mobilise 6000 soldiers, historians believe the number was about 2000. Nkaliphi was placed in charge once more, and received strict instructions. All the Boer men and boys were to be killed, but all the women and girls were to be spared and brought back to Mosega, along with all the Voortrekkers herds of cattle and sheep. A classic amaNdebele raid, kill the possible threats, the men and boys, and bring the valuable women and girls to the king. This was the build up to the incredible Battle of Vegkop, where Mzilikazi's warriors were finally beaten in a major confrontation with the Voortrekkers. This was an historic battle, a seminal moment, it has resonated down the ages.

Last episode we ended with Hendrick Potgieter and Sarel Cilliers riding to try and find a route to Delagoa Bay, and meeting up with Louis Trichardt. If you remember, Potgieter had warned his followers camped the Sand Rivier not to cross the Vaal River into Mzilikazi’s territory, or they’d be attacked. We’ll come back to what happened when a small group decided to ignore his orders in a moment. Some explanation is required about what the difference is between a trekboer, and a Voortrekker. The drosters, or raiders, had preceded the Voortrekkers, and in many ways, they had scarred the landscape and warped the perception of folks who dressed in trousers and carried muskets. The frontiers mixed race groups that had pushed out of the Cape starting early in the 18th Century, more than one hundred years before the Voortrekkers, had ploughed into the people’s of inner southern Africa, and these same people were to become the agterryers of the Boers in the future. The Voortrekker Exodus was one of many early 19th Century treks out of the Cape by indigenous South Africans. There was a northern boundary and the Kora, Koranna, Griqua, basters and other mixed groups expanded this boundary, speaking an early form of Afrikaans, simplified Dutch, indigenised if you like. The Zulus and Ndebele, and others, who were going to face the new threat on the veld, did not have the long history of fighting the Dutch and the English and did not really understand how to avoid suicidal full frontal suicidal attacks on entrenched positions — they were machismo to the max — believing that a kind of furious sprint towards the enemy would overcome everything. The Boers had another system which was perfected on the open plains of southern Africa. They would ride out to within range of a large group of warriors, an ibutho, and fire on them while keeping a sharp eye out for possible outflanking manoeuvres. The warriors would persist in a massed frontal attack, and the Boers would ride in retreat in two ranks. The first would dismount, fire, remount and retire behind the next line of men who would repeat the action. They would load as they rode, some could do this in less than 20 seconds, or they would hand their rifles to their baster agterryers who would hand them their second musket, increasing the volume of fire. They would draw the enemy into the range of the rest of the Boers inside the laager, and these would open lay down a deadly fusillade, usually stalling the enemy’s assault and demoralising the attackers. Sensing victory, the an assault force inside the laager would ride out, routing the enemy. The Voortrekkers departed from these eastern and north eastern locales in more cohesive groups, bound by religion. The differences that emerged the factions, were group based on the leadership of individuals, whereas the trekboers of earlier times had been far more isolated, small nuclear families roaming the vastnesses, the Karoo, the scrublands, the men often taking Khoi and Khoisan mistresses or wives. The earlier frontiersmen were like hillbillies facing off against each other sometimes — squabbling with neighbours. The new moral code that imbued the Voortrekker way demanded conformity, it knitted the Groups together, and there would be no compromise or adaption of the Khoe or Xhosa way of life that had characterised earlier trekkers. Meanwhile, carnage.

Just a quick thank you to the folks at East coast Radio, Diane and DW, for promoting this podcast with listeners to that station, I’m honoured to have cracked the nod and been selected to be part of their ECR podcast platform. Also a big thank you to all the listeners who’ve reviewed this podcast on iTunes and elsewhere, it’s pushed the series into the top 20 or so at least according to Apple, and there’ve been close to 800 000 listens. With that slightly self-serving service announcement, back to the real world of the third decade in the 19th Century. Last episode we heard how Harry Smith was busy ridiculing the amaXhosa culture and religion, and planning to destroy their chiefs in order to ensure they would be pliable to the British government’s needs in the coming years. We’ll get back to Colonel Smith in future episodes. Moshoeshoe’s kingdom had taken shape, and to his north, the kingdom of the BaTlokwa, who were led by Sekhonyela, the son of MaNthatisi. While she had been regal, stately, and charming, he was equally tall, but was surly and aggressive where she had been tactful. He was a capable war leader however, and Moshoeshoe had never managed to defeat him - in fact he had forced the BaSotho leader to hand over Thaba Bosiu to him in 1824. In the continuous war between Moshoeshoe and Sekhonyela, the greatest treasure was the Caledon River Valley - a land of water, pasturage, and defensive buttes and other landscape strongholds. The Batlokwa ruled the upper valley, the north, and by 1835 Sekhonyela had emulated Moshoeshoe in forming alliances with the Drosters - the Griquas and other mixed race groups that were living along the western edge of his land. The Drosters had been repeatedly defeated by Mzilikazi and he stood menacingly in the path of the Trekkers pushing north across the Vaal River - a confrontation was unavoidable. It had been a remarkable journey for Mzilikazi from the area at the headwaters of the Black Mfolozi in north Western Zululand, up on the highveld to the Vaal River. As he roamed, he killed off all competitors, particularly members of his own family, similar to what Shaka and Dingane had done. He ran his kingdom as a Zulu, he also had age based regiments, he also forced his warriors to fight for him before they could marry, usually taking about 10 years, the unmarried men known as the amaJaha. The older men who were the members of the ibutho, had many wives and children, large herds, and took captives from war, who did the chores around the homestead, enslaved. By the early 1830s these Ndebele were happily ensconced north of the Magaliesburg mountains with its excellent water and pastures. And its warmer than other areas of the highveld, with its ridges covered in thick vegetation. Despite controlling territory all the way south of the Vaal and for hundreds of kilometers around this central point, Mzilikazi was paranoid about his safety. is diplomacy was specifically aimed at preventing others like the Drosters heading into his land from the Cape - and here he completely underestimated the Voortrekkers. They conformed to no treaty either, which is not what Mzilikazi had expected. Leading the most significant of these trek parties was Andries Hendrik Potgieter who was a farmer from the Cradock District who’d departed from his beloved Klein Karoo in December 1835. There were 49 armed men and teenage boys over 16, he led 50 wagons, and was joined by Charl or Sarel Cilliers as he became known, who lived near Colesberg. He had 25 adult men in his group, and included a ten year-old Paul Kruger as I’ve mentioned.

Let’s take another look at the push factors driving the Voortrekkers away from their frontier farms. Most had lived on the margins of society for generations, part of the first group of Dutch who began spreading out from the Peninsular in the 17th Century, developing an ethos of independence and a culture of self-reliance. They were naturally anti-establishment if you like, while being presented as ultra conservative in their religion. In modern terms this implies certain characteristics which I creates a classic misreading of who they were. Remember the first trekkers were not averse to marrying Khoekhoe and even amaXhosa women, it was only later that their conservatism morphed into a belief in racial separation. You know enough by now not to make the mistake of double-guessing our ancestors based on modern politics and society’s rules, the prism of the present is a social blindfold when it comes to perception. It gets the crude and raw politician of any epoch into a logic gridlock, an intellectual cul de sac. There was no doubt that the actions of Lord Glenelg when he took over the Colonial Office in 1835 exacerbated the Boers perceptions of the English. Remember how he’d met Andries Stockenstrom the Dutch Swede who had briefed him about how the Khoekhoe servants were treated in the Cape. Glenelg then overturned decisions to move the frontier to the Kei river, an action which marked him both as a blunderer and a misguided liberal. It is true that this story became the most deeply embedded consequence of the war in the colonial pysche, it was an imprint that never faded, it was bitterly mulled over for the next one hundred years, and it was also in an ironic mental shift, the moment that the English speaking settlers became African. They’d been thrown under the colonial bus by both their King and country. They suddenly realised that their homeland was no longer their friend, the political leadership of the British govenrment had turned them into aliens, they no longer recognized themselves as English. This would take another generation or two to play out, but folks, it was a moment. What we have to understand is that while this was going on in relation to the 1820 Settler stock, further north east, in Port Natal, the settlers there were very much in favour of the British government. They were two different sets of English speakers, which we kind of lump together. Interestingly enough, something like this was also going on in Canada and in Australia and New Zealand. The English speakers there were grappling with their own nationality. For the Boers, Glenelg’s decision was easier to cope with than for the 1820 Settlers — the Boers had never trusted the English so it was time to leave. The boers had always directed their own fate, while the 1820 settler was implacably tied to their countries foreign policy. The Boers were interested in land, but didn’t really care for Glenelg’s annexation of the province of Queen Adelaide - they’d still be vassals to the British empire there anyway.

Moshoeshoe’s elder sons were now at a site that was to be named Moriah, 24 miles south of Maseru, chosen by the two French missionaries Arbousset and Casalis for its beauty - and the fact that it was uninhabited. But before we return to what was going on there, we need to swing around southern Africa for a little update about what else was happening circa 1835 and 1836. The Voortrekkers were coming. Dingane was marauding - or more accurately - impis representing Dingane were marauding. Port Natal traders were conniving. The Koranna and the Griqua were expanding. The British were conquering. By now Moshoeshoe of the BaSotho was facing influx after influx, including word that more than 8 000 and possibly as many as 12 000 people mostly of the Rolong chief Moseme had arrived at Thaba Bosiu, his mountain redoubt. But there were also Griqua under Barend Barends amongst these, and Bastaards under Carolus Baatje. He welcomed these immigrants hoping for some protection against the Kora people, brigands who were operating with virtual impunity across the Orange River, predating on African groups as far as Ndebele territory along the Vaal. But the Kora heyday was over, by 1835 Moshoeshoe’s sons Letsie and Molapo were bent on proving their manhood and planned on attacked Kora villages seeking bigger herds and more women. Moshoeshoe got wind of the plan and stopped them, fearing they’d both die in the attempt. And yet, their attitude was a precursor to the Kora’s final comeuppance. Moshoeshoe was an expert at avoiding trouble if he could. He was going to need all his diplomatic skills because his territory was facing buffeting. At the beginning of 1836 as the Voortrekkers were beginning to appear and the Kora who had been strengthened by some Xhosa refugees from the Sixth Frontier War who’d scattered seeking a new home. These Xhosa settled at Qethoane under chief Mjaluza, joining the Kora people living along the Riet River - just west of where Kimberley is today. Soon Moshoeshoe was hearing reports that Mjaluza was demanding a kind of travel and protection toll from BaSotho trying to return to Lesotho from the Cape colony. Mjaluza was also seizing their cattle. A short while later he was informed two of his son Letsie’s councillors had been killed by Mjaluza. That was that for the bandit Xhosa chief. Rumbling along slowly, at 5 miles a day - about 8 kilometers on average, were two main leaders we heard about and will hear about again. Louis Trichardt and Lang Hans Janse van Rensburg passed Suikerbosrand which had been the scene of a recent battle between the Zulu and the Ndebele, then turned towards the Olifants River and descended down the valley through a mountain range they named Sekwati Poort after the Bapedi Chief Sekwadi. He welcomed the travellers, they were passing through after all and he had nothing to fear from the Boers. Travelling so closely however, was proving a problem for Van Rensburg and Trichardt. The Boer leadership had always been prone to infighting and their relationship was no different. The conflict was sparked over Trichardts advice, which as actually good advice in retrospect, that Van Rensburg should stop killing so many elephants. His wagons were now groaning with ivory, wiping out entire herds, and expending a vast quantity of gunpowder. He’d need that to fight off rampaging hordes said Trichardt.

We join Moshoeshoe just before the arrival of the trekkers, as he sought to build his political power once the Ngwane and other roving bands had been defeated. Mzilikazi was attacking the area which would become known as Lesotho, from his headquarters on the Apies River north of modern Pretoria. His regiments were praying on the Shona people across the Limpopo and all the way down to the southern Basotho throughout the mid 1820s into the 1830s. Moshoeshoe was at great pains to avoid fighting the Ndebele impis, and in 1828, he had delivered oxen to Mzilikazi with the message that “Moshesh salutes you, supposing that hunger has brought you into this country, he sends you these cattle, that you may eat them on your way home…” Later Moshoeshoe would send cattle to the British governor Sir George Cathcart in a similar attempt at placating a threatening power. That would not work out - but it did work with Mzilikazi, who did not send another attack on Moshoeshoe, although he continued predating on neighbour Sekhonyela. Mzilikazi had also found it easier to plunder the Shona across the Limpopo anyway. From 1831 the Ndebele chief was also defending himself from attacks by the Zulu because Dingane ordered his impis into the highveld at times. Of course, the Griqua to the south were also of some concern to Moshoeshoe, but the Kora were a much bigger problem. Nothing was quiet in this part of southern Africa in the third decade of the 19th Century. In June 1833, what we know as LeSotho came into being for the first time and their creation was observed by French missionaries who wrote down everything they saw. French Protestants reached Thaba Bosiu from Cape Town via Philippolis, and of these, Thomas Arbousset was probably the most eloquent. On the 29th June 1833 he wrote that Moshoeshoe, “… has a Roman head, an oval face, an aquiline nose .. a long chin, and a prominent forehead, his eye is lively, his speech animated, and his voice harsh….” Later Arbousset’s fellow missionary Eugene Casalis would jot down a few thoughts in his memoirs, and his notes were more exaggerated and flowery “…I felt at once that I had to do with a superior man, trained to think, to command others, and above all himself. ..” And thus, in1833 the two French missionaries arrived, Eugene Casalis and Thomas Arbousset, along with a third Frenchman called Constant Grosselin, Remarkably, because they were tough back in 1834, Arbousset was a Huegenot of only 23, and Casalis was just 20. Grosselin was 33, a Catholic who converted to Protestantism, a mason, a tough subordinate. Krotz the freed slave guided them to Thaba Bosiu and this is where the first proper descriptions were noted about the bones scattered on the veld — and they saw the signs of the devastation that had been visited up these people, it was clear that many battles had been fought along the Caledon valley.

The story of south Africa is incomplete without scrutinising the kingdom of Lesotho, not only because geographic location means the mountains are part of our tale, but also because the entire region is intertwined like lovers, or wrestlers, or snakes that are hell bent on eating each other. Sorry about the graphic description there, but by the time you’ve finished listening to this episode, I’m sure you’ll agree with the somewhat over the top analogy. We must step back in time, from where we left off last episode, 1835, beginning of 1836 just to understand who King Moshoeshoe was, and what he means today. During his dramatic youth, events among the northern Nguni people who lived below the mountain escarpment, were going to impact the people who we now called the Basotho. Before these sudden surges of people and the destruction caused by the Ndebele and the Ngwane, the people of the Caledon valley and into the hills above lived in small segmentary chiefdoms - where the chiefs made political decisions after consulting councillors and headmen. The wars of Zwide, Dingiswayo, Senzangakhona and Shaka, then Dingane after him, had profound repercussions throughout the entire region as you’ve heard. For some on the high veld, the effects were catastrophic, Matiwane of the Ngwane had fled north as Shaka expanded his control, leaving his home along the Umfolozi River and attacking the Hlubi, who lived at the source of the Tugela River on the highlands. Some of these defeated Hlubi made it to Hintsa as you’ve heard, and by 1835 had marched into the Albany District seeking refuge, and being used as labourers. Small world they say. It was into this fractured society that Moshoeshoe had been born. Isolated and conservative, their culture had been utterly disrupted. Fields were not being cultivated and entire ruling family lines had been destroyed, vanished into the African air. Virtually every MoSotho had been driven from their homes, subjected to suffering and deprivation, human remains littered the landscape - and would be found for another decade. Crunch Crunch went the oxwagons in 1836.

Hark! What sound breaks the inscrutable silence of the immense African veld? Dozens of wagons, which would become hundreds. Trundling along at about 5 miles a day, the Voortrekkers were leaving the Cape for their promised lands - albeit yet unidentified. This was a case of being pushed out at least in their minds - culturally, ideologically, fundamentally, they felt they did not belong in the Cape and the Karoo, they had been alienated in the land of their birth by the dreaded English. These initial trundling wagons were the first major parties of Boers under Andries Hendrik Potgieter and Charl Celliers - aka Sarel. We’re going to travel with these men and women, and also join African leaders like Moshoeshoe, Mzilikazi and Dingane, as they watched the approach of heavily armed and well organised settlers. Some of these regents saw the Boers as a threat, others as an opportunity. Andries Hendrik Potgieter was a resolute and single-minded farmer from the Cradock District in the Eastern Cape who had decided to leave with a group of extended family, neighbours and friends - 40 men and boys, about the same number of women and girls, more than a hundred Khoesan slaves all aboard more than 50 wagons. It was December 1835 when they crossed the Orange River, joined in a while by Charl Celliers’ trek party which included 25 men, attenuated by the arrival of Caspar Kruger’s small section - the one in which a very young Paul Kruger travelled. These two parties had crossed the Orange River separately, and it wasn’t a crossing for the faint hearted - the river was flooding and the horses and oxen swam to the northern bank as the wagons and the trekkers and their other goods managed to float across on rafts made of the willow trees that grow along the banks. As the women stepped onto the northern side, they began to sing hymns, here they were arriving on the hallowed land that they’d been hearing about for years. They had left the hated English behind, anything was better than that. More fuel was thrown on the fire of bitterness when word filtered through to the frontier Boers that the English had fibbed about the compensation that was going to be paid to former slave owners after emancipation - less than half of the 3.4 million pounds worldwide was now available, and the British had put a price of 73.9 shillings on each slave. 73.9 shillings and 11 pence to be precise. That’s about 10 rand in today’s currency - a lot of money in 1835 - but almost insulting isn’t it? Ten bucks for a human. The Boers thought so too - they regarded their slaves as far more valuable than a measly 73.9 shillings and 11 pence and were outraged. So no compensation for the war, then what of their slaves? Slavery was banned in December 1834 as you heard, and the slave owners were supposed to be compensated but here was London, reneging on another promise. The British government said that all compensation would only be paid out in England - and Glenelg rejected an appeal from the Cape that payments be made locally. How was that going to work, most of the Boers never travelled to Cape Town, let alone to London? They were brought to the Cape from the first days of the VOC back in 1652. Most were southeast Asian Catholic converts from the island of Ambon, and soon this phrase, Merdeka, came to mean any creole mixed race person, or free black. Just to add a layer of irony here because this is South African history, the first known Merdeka to the Cape was Anthony de Later van Japan who was actually from Japan, and eventually freed along with his wife Groot Cathrijn van Bengale. She was from a region of modern day Bangladesh. Anthony de Later van Japan’s foster parents were Japanese slave owners Johan van Nagasaki and Johanna van Hirado. Anthony it is thought was a child surrendered as debt bondage back in Japan.

There was a great exodus of some people, the movement of the people into the interior of South Africa - a moment that was going to reverberate all the way to the present. The Great Trek as its known had begun by mid-1835, and to be honest, was a medium sized Trek already. It had been a steady flow across the Orange River for decades, led by the trekboers, traders and hunters steadily rolling their wagons inland. They were following the trailblazers, the Kora, Bastaards, Oorlam, Kora. Some of the traders didn’t come back, and not because they died out there on the distant veld. Now, they liked what they saw along the Orange River, across the Klein and main Karoo, over the Drakensburg mountains all the way to Marico, pushing onwards through the Kalahari, into what is now southern Angola, across the Soutpansberg. This episode we’ll hear about the early travellers, the outliers, the adventurers, the dreamers. Humans are naturally motivated to see what’s over the next hill or river, to quench a curiosity thirst, to seek a greener grass. But first, we need to end this Sixth Frontier War, a guerrilla war where the British had been outfoxed across the Kei ravines and Amatola fastnesses by the amaXhosa. The Colonial Office was counting the cost and it was expensive to keep thousands of troops on the move, and to keep paying the Khoekhoe solders. 455 farms had been burned and the losses to the Colonial treasury was already 300 000 pounds, more than one hundred settlers and soldiers had died. Hundreds of xhosa warriors and civilians had been killed, thousands of head of cattle eaten by both sides as they relied on food on the hoof in these times of chaos. Hintsa’s son Sarhili was now Xhosa regent following the shooting of Hintsa. The unpleasant truth for Colonel Harry Smith to accept was that the British army and its auxiliaries were in a bad way. While the Xhosa continued to move about the territory, the British could not. Colonel Henry Somerset was swanning about in Grahamstown, well fed and clothed, but many frontier posts were running out of food and uniforms that had turned to rags. Provisioning was inadequate worsened by disorganisation.

April 1835 is passing swiftly, and still no sign of the 75 000 head of cattle demanded by the British of the amaXhosa - Hintsa remains a hostage of Benjamin D’Urban, although it was Colonel Harry Smith who was looking after the king, as well as his son Sarhili and the king’s brother Bhuru. D’Urban had summarily annexed the troublesome region around the Stormberg mountains and all the way to the Kraai River in the north where 150 Boer families lived - they were now automatically members of the empire. They did not want to be and many would join a Great Trek being planned out of the Cape Colony. D’Urban had also decided to annex the territory extending all the way to the Kei River for the British - and to allow the Mfengu to settle on some of this land as a buffer zone against the amaXhosa. By advancing the Cape Colony’s to the Kei, Sir Benjamin D’Urban was making himself responsible for a huge chunk of southern African territory. At the time, his decision was welcomed by all settlers as well as the military. The dark ravines of the Kei, these high redoubts where the amaXhosa had led the British army on a goose chase, were now within his control, so too the Amatola mountains, where Maqoma and Thyali the Xhosa chiefs had led him on a frustrating slow dance of frustration and angst. The folks who were much more uneasy about all of this was the British political establishment back home - wars cost money and the Frontier War was very expensive. The Mfengu were granted safe passage from Hintsa's TransKei into the Colony. Dozens of wagons trailed him, then came the 16 000 Mfengu on foot, driving 22 000 head of cattle and thousands more goats. Those sitting on the west bank of the Kei would have heard them first, because the mist was thick down along the river, and the Mfengu emerged from the cold dank whiteness, the dawn spectacle complete. Men ahead with the cattle, followed by the young boys who were shoeing the goats along, behind them the women and girls carrying their possessions on their heads - they crossed the river using long sticks to balance, and as they went they were singing a new song called Siya Emlungweni, “We are going to the land of the right people…” they sang, most believing they were going to be as independent as they had been before in northern Zululand before Zwide and Shaka’s violence drove them away almost two decades earlier. Watching this jaw-dropping scene was British officer, Captain James Alexander, who wrote that as far as he was concerned, “Nothing like this has been seen, perhaps, since the days of Moses…” Colonel Smith headed off eastwards with his men, and with Hintsa, the king was supposed to direct the British soldiers to where the Settlers cattle could be found. Of course he was going to do nothing of the sort. By daylight of the 12th May, Smith was beginning to smell a rat. Hintsa had been closely watched by the Corps of Guides, led by one of the more veld aware English settlers called George Southey - at one point another guide called Cesar Andrews had drawn his gun because Hintsa suddenly dismounted his horse and walked up a hill.

It's early 1835 and Cape Governor Benjamin D’urban an his 2000 men were winding their way through the AMatola mountains, searching for Maqoma and Thyali’s warriors. The going was tough albeit the scenery sublime. These glorious mountains were going to lead to one of the more inglorious moments in British military history. By early April 1835 the Boer commandos, Scots 72 highlanders, English settler corps, and the Cape Khoe regiment were trying to dislodge the amaXhosa from their mountain fastness. The strange army of men who distrusted each other, this marching formation of mutual suspicion, began to seize Xhosa cattle and raze their homesteads. Most of the engagements were unremarkable, the Xhosa refusing to stand and fight against overwhelming odds, the British troops becoming frustrated. IT was a stalemate broken here and there by bizarre incidents. Like the clash on April 7th where one of the Scots highlander officers emerged from battle with an assegai stuck out of his back. A soldiers remarked “There’s ane of them things sticken’ in ye, sir!” To his shock. Still, they believed the Xhosa were retreating eastwards to the Kei, towards their regent, Hintsa. In terms of their food and resources, the amaXhosa had suffered hugely, most of their cattle had been taken, they had very little food. What was anathema to the warriors had also been observed - the British had shot women and children. Unable to come to close quarter fighting, the men of the empire had resorted to opening fire on the homes and into the bushes indiscriminately, also firing their canon into the huts. This was not how the Xhosa fought a war. The amaxhosa were taking note about how the British treated women and children when fighting, and that was not good news for British women and children in the future. Colonel Harry Smith spurred his horse across the Kei River at Noon on the 15th April 1835. It was the first time that the British army or a colonial army had entered the country of Gcaleka and the first time that they'd aimed at their king, Hintsa. So in April 1835, the Mfengu chiefs approached Smith’s soldiers, and swore allegiance to the British, now and in the future. A remarkable event really.

We’re going to hear about a man called John Ayliff - a man who has gone down in the annals of South African history about as mixed as a box of smarties. His mission station at Butterworth across the Kei River had been a place of refuge for the Mfengu people - a mysterious group of refugees who had left northern Zululand during the times of Zwide - and over the next twenty years had been buffeted from place to place like the chosen people of Israel, finally arriving in the green rolling hills alongside Butterworth mission where they heard the biblical messages from men in black like Ayliff - and these resonated. Weren’t they of the same - these people who’d been kicked out of their land by the Zulu pharaoh and then sent from pillar to post, first into the hinterland through what we know as the Free State today, then down the side of the Basutho, finally wedged alongside Hintsa; of the Gcaleka. The amaXhosa chief gave them protection, thousands eventually settled, the Ngwane people had found their home. But things were unstable - next door in the Ceded territories, Albany, the former Zuurveld, along the Amatola’s, in the Kei River ravines, the British and the Rharhabe Xhosa were fighting the Sixth frontier war. The Mfengu however were in danger. It was ugly, in Grahamstown in March 1835. Military reinforcements had arrived, the Xhosa had retreated, the hotheads in the town became noisy, a powerful mixture of hatred, connivance and corruption. Ah yes, dear friends, that old South African tradition - now fully restored by our latest government. Corruption. It rolls off the tongue like a rolling blackout does it not? The settlers who had found their voice gathered and looked with decided laser like focus on the recently vacated Xhosa land, particularly the watered slopes of the Amatola Mountains. Holden Bowker wanted this land - and wrote later that “It was far superior to other parts .. far too good for such a race of runaways as the …blacks…” He used a pejorative term here. Even though they were on a war footing, the Grahamstonians decided to light their lamps, shining in the Eastern Cape dark as a sign of their confidence that the amaXhosa had been beaten. After many weeks of hesitation, Sir Benjamin D’Urban finally decided it was time to move into the Amatolas in force. You’ve heard how Colonel Smith had been bush there already, but it was this much bigger army that the British thought was required to finally subjugate the Xhosa. He arrived at the Base Camp of Fort Willshire on 28th March 1835, then the lumbering wagons rolled off towards the Amatolas on the 30th - his convoy stretching five miles which was quite mad because the Amatolas were only 20 miles away.

It’s early 1835 and globally, quite a few fascinating things are going on. For one, America’s National Debt was Zero dollars - for the first and last time in it’s history. It’s president Andrew Jackson survived an assassination attempt in January of that year, also the first but not the last. Mauritius had banned slavery on the 1st February 1835 as South Africa had done in December 1834. The British began their counter attacks on the Xhosa chiefs who’d invaded across the ceded territories, into the Cape, and wreaked so much havoc - the Sixth Frontier War was rumbling on. Another major event had been brewing for some time. The trekboers had been chafing under the rule of the English and each new law that was supposed to protect the Khoekhoe from abuse, then the ban on slavery, led to the Dutch decedents recoiling seeing these as actions designed to destroy their way of life. It was a litany of abuse as far as the Boers were concerned, including the horror of the Slagter’s Nek rebellion, the bungled hanging of the rebels, the use of English as the official language, they were under siege, it was all too much and these were the push factors. But there was the pull factor - those distant landscapes, those far-off mountains that seemed to beckon to the youngsters and those with adventure in mind - this beckoned towards adventurers like an African Medusa. The fact that the land was occupied was of secondary importance, and like Medusa, was imbued with malice and risk. By 1830 the echo of the hills yonder became an obsession for some of the trekboers. 1930 was also the year that the 19 year-old Karel Trichardt met with Hintsa between the Kei and Bashee rivers and asked him for land - and was awarded a 90 year lease on 101 square kilometers near the Kei River. This was not what the British had intended with their segregation of the Colony and the Xhosa areas across the Kei. Trichardt in particular was going to be a thorn in the English side.There were two of the three missionaries still operating amongst the Xhosa, but even these eventually fled. John Brownlee who was safe at his mission station on the Buffalo river, alongside Dyani Tshatshu’s Tinde people, found that they turned against him. Tshatshu himself came to Brownlee one night and said the Tinde were going to war against the British, calling on the missionary to join him. Brownlee said he could not, other missionaries heard about this in Grahamstown and sent wagons to get him out - he refused. He and his family were going to pay for his stubbornness.

The Sixth frontier war was ablaze and now Harry Smith was in Grahamstown rearranging the military furniture. He wasn’t there for long. As a man of action he was determined to chase down the amaXhosa who had begun to retire back east across the Fish River by the end of the first week of January 1835, driving thousands of cattle, sheep and horses before them. The dithering Colonel Somerset was busy trying to secure the road between Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth, and by the end of the first week of January a separate force of 400 armed volunteers had raided Thyali’s Great Place and torched the entire homestead. Way beyond the Kei River, Hintsa glowered as he received reports of his amaXhosa chiefs and their successes against the settlers. For some time he had hesitated in taking up arms against the British and the trekboers who were inexorably moving towards him, but it was now time to make a choice. Hintsa had tried his best to stay out of the encroaching settler cross hairs - telling the British since they’d taken control of the Cape in the early 1800s that he wanted to be friends. He remained neutral during the quarrels between the Rharhabe Xhosa and the British, he’d stopped the Xhosa youngsters fighting against the British in 1819, only to see Nxele the Wardoctor attack Grahamstown. But he’d known for some time that the menace was approaching, land was the treasure and the approaching settlers wanted his land. Things weren’t a simple matter however - remember that he had hated Nqgika the Rharhabe regent and that had fractured a Xhosa response to the colonial expansion. But Now Nqgika was dead and Hintsa’s chiefs were calling for him to get more involved in this Frontier War. ON the other side, Harry Smith’s Peninsular buddy, Major William Cox of the 75 Regiment was leading the charge towards him. Hintsa was told of the destruction wrought on Thyali’s Great Place, his fortress had been torched. Kraals had been burned to within a mile of the missionaries station run by another William, a Chalmers this time. If you recall last episode, Chalmers had written letters in support of Maqoma and Thyali offering peace terms. These were promptly rejected by Harry Smith. This put the missionaries in a rather invidious position, they were now more associated with the colonial government than ever. When Chalmers worked up the courage and approached Maqoma with Harry Smith’s rejection of his peace plan, open hostility was the response. Thyali moved further into the Amatolas after his Great Place was torched, and Chalmers tried to get another message to the amaXhosa chief in what he described as the “lurking place”. Meanwhile, the amaXhosa wave that had washed across the frontier lost momentum. The energy sapping last three weeks had been driven by frustration and anger that had boiled over in the years of ignominy, and like all wars driven by revenge, when the emotion is sapped, the morale tends to wither. At first, Harry Smith was to counter attack in the classic tradition - trying to entice his enemy out of their lair, then defeating their army in one large scale full frontal battle. Smith planned open ground fighting making the warriors emerge from their mountain and thick bush retreats. But the amaXhosa had learned a thing or two about fighting the British and they weren’t going to be sucker punched like this.

ON December 21st 1834 at least ten thousand warriors under Maqoma and Thyali swept all before them as they raided deep into the Cape colony, across a wide front. Fort Beaufort and Fort Willshire were the main centre of British operations to the north of Grahamstown as the war began. Fort Beaufort was particularly strategic because of its proximity to the Kat River Settlement. The amaXhosa avoided attacking this Settlement but that was going to change. They were hoping that the Khoekhoe would rise up alongside the amaXhosa and defeat the settlers, but the Khoekhoe and the amaXhosa had a far longer tradition of competition over land and resources. This was far more deeply etched into the narrative of both people’s than the simple colour of skin debate. Smaller centres such as Bathurst and Salem closer to the coast were also coming under attack, situated between Grahamstown and the sea, or a possible escape route for the settlers and the Boers who could not keep fighting inland. When the British had established the 1820 Settlers, they had densely parcelled these farms together as a forward barriers against the Xhosa who may advance across the Fish River. And now the amaXhosa were advancing across the Fish River but over the last 14 years, the military presence and preparation here had dwindled and the settler unpreparedness for war was almost total. Betrand Bowker wrote scathingly of how the settlers of the Lower Albany region had “scarcely any guns and most of them who did, did not know how to shoot … just us brothers and a few others…” So it was on the sixth day that Sir Harry Smith galloped into town, his 600 mile epic ride at an end but his mission just beginning. When he’d passed a rider hurrying to Cape Town from the frontier, he read the letters and was horrified to read Somerset’s suggestions that Grahamstown be abandoned. When he arrived in that town on the evening of the 6th, he noted the chaotically arranged barricades and he thought it a helpless muddle. He was fresh enough to fight a battle, and his eyes were waspishly alert as Noel Mostert notes - what he saw struck him as ridiculous - so ridiculous that he almost burst out laughing as he rode through town such was the higgledy piggedly nature of the sandbags et al. He didn’t laugh out aloud because watching him were men and women - the settlers - who’d lost family members and who’d lost everything. The town was overcome with melancholy, with consternation. But what made Smith really angry was the unmilitary appearance of the settlers, who he said were “shuffling about like an Irish mob at a funeral…” their firearms slung about their bodies, swords stuffed into belts.

The Sixth Frontier war had started on 21st December 1834 and this would be a dirty affair - a calamity for the amaXhosa. When it began Hintsa the Xhosa regent did not join in, but something that was first called Maqoma’s war was eventually to be known as Hintsa’s war because of what happened to him. The amaxhosa were assaulting the frontier across a wide region from the Winterberg down to Algoa Bay. The English settlers fled to the towns of Bathurst, Grahamstown, Fort Beaufort, Salem. The Boers had setup laagers or entered the towns, the entire frontier was aflame. Governor D’Urban had left it too late to travel to the frontier to intelligence gather, and now there was a full-blown war on the go. The entirely unanticipated invasion of the Colony had unleashed widespread panic and confusion in the Albany, Somerset and Uitenhage districts and the amaxhosa had inflicted significant damage on the settlements. As you heard last episode, the missionaries were left alone by the rampaging Xhosa - who differentiated between an enemy and a friend. Back in Cape Town, Sir Benjamin D’Urban was in a panic of his own. It was at this moment that he turned to one of the most extraordinary men of the age, Colonel Henry George Wakelyn Smith. He'd fought with the Duke of Wellington in Spain where he met his wife who gave her name to Ladysmith. Juana Maria de lost Dolores de Leon was only 14 when he met her. Harry Smith was 24, and within two weeks they were married and basically from then on, she never left his side. I suppose you could say there was only a ten year age difference, but this was 1812. Juana, aka Lady Smith, travelled with Harry in the camps, from battle scene to battle scene, witnessing his fighting at close hand, each battle praying her beloved “Enrique” would emerge unscathed. And each battle he did indeed. Back on the frontier, the shock of the amaXhosa invasion had utterly popped the Settler smugness bubble. The fact that the amaXhosa were not intimidated by the empire and colonial power was frightening to men and women who were afraid of their own bureaucrats. The Settlers had been totally indifferent to the suffering of the amaXhosa on the frontier - and for that they were now paying a heavy price.

It’s December 1834 - the Second of December to be more precise. The British had just emancipated the slaves at the Cape, although real freedom was still some months off as the colonial office decreed that all should first work as apprentices to improve skills before they were set free. On the frontier, a sequence of unfortunate events were to take place which provided the spark that ignited a war. Albany Civil Commissioner in Grahamstown Captain Campbell was a man of the colonies, a settler with their interests at heart although ostensibly in the pay of the empire. Andries Stockenstrom who was one of the more astute frontier experts had left the Cape at the very moment that his deft touch was sorely needed when it came to the amaXhosa. Tensions had also been growing between the British officials of the Cape bureaucracy and settlers about how to treat the amaXhosa and Khoekhoe. The British thought they’d been quite clever over the past few months. They had restricted the flow of gunpowder to the frontier just in case the Boers became even more rambunctious about the coming emancipation - but all the British really managed by doing this is to reduce the colonists firepower on the eve of the Sixth Frontier War. The Cape authorities were trying to limit the supply of muskets and gunpowder to burghers on the frontier because they heard that many of these were supplying weapons to the amaXhosa. Which is true, but for every action there’s an equal reaction as you’re going to hear. Back in England, incidents and accidents, events and fires had shocked the nation and the small colony of the Cape was hardly on the radar of the ruling folks and the citizens. In October of 1834, the British Houses of Parliament or the Palace of Westminster as it was known, had been destroyed by fire - both the House of Commons and the House of Lords of the British Parliament had gone up in flame. Maqoma’s mother Notonto heard about the planned hostilities and walked the thirty kilometres from her house to her son’s to remonstrate and warn him against fighting the British. She had seen too many of her people dying in previous wars against the empire - but Maqoma was beyond reason.

A new Governor was in town, the Cape Sheriff, and he was another Peninsular Campaign Veteran called Sir Benjamin D’Urban. In July 1832 Frontier military commander Colonel Henry Somerset went on leave - his father the former governor Lord Charles had died in 1831 and Henry had to head back to the old country to sort out the extensive estate. Andries Stockenstrom, his nemesis, was also going to leave the frontier in 1833, first to London where he tried to lobby the government to give him more authority - and when the Colonial authorities refused - he sailed back to his ancestral land - Sweden. We should feel a pang of pity for Stockenstrom, his father had been assegai’d to death by the amaxhosa and his only son, an infant, had just died of illness in South Africa. The mental anguish had driven him away from his beloved frontier, and his adopted territory. Another character of the moment arrived in Grahamstown in July 1832 - Colonel Richard England. He was supposed to keep things sunning smoothly while Henry Somerset returned home. Colonel England was not going to run things smoothly, for he immediately stepped up the patrols following up on cattle rustled by the amaXhosa, and thus increased tension. As you know, these raids were supposed to be organised and focused, all they really did was commit the same crime in return - often rustling amaXhosa cattle from villages that had nothing to do with the theft. Their chiefs were first in line when patrols returned and had the most to lose from thieving - other chiefs further away knew this and used them as cover. The instability inland and along the coast was something to behold in the years between 1832 and 1835. South African history is cluttered with the the sound of bones being crunched by hyenas, eyeballs being feasted upon by vultures, and a cacophony of chaos. Forgive the histrionics, but I’m sure you’ll agree once you’ve heard what happened over the next five years. For those who would blame one side or another exclusively, there’s bad news. Everyone was involved in some kind of nefarious activity it was just a matter of the degree of nefariousness, or your support for one side or the many others. IN 1832 Mzilikazi sent an impi northwards, all the way across the Limpopo and into Shona territory in modern day Zimbabwe. The Zulu heard about this, and Dingane thought it an ideal moment to teach the former Khumalo chief a lesson. The Zulu Regent ordered Ndlela kaSompisi along with a large Zulu army to raid Mzilikazi’s territory centred on the Magaliesberg mountains west of Pretoria, at a place called Dinaneni - or Wonderboompoort as we call it today. During fierce fighting close to the Apies River, Ndlela took on Mzilikazi himself in a right royal battle. In November 1833, while Henry Somerset was away dealing with papa Charle’s will and trust, Colonel England arrived in Fort Beaufort to drive Maqoma and his people away from the Mankazana River, below the scenic Anatola mountains. England was more a colonial’s man - a fundamentalist if you like. A two year drought had placed more pressure on the settlers and the amaxhosa. Colonel England didn’t care - and another empire deployee called Colonel Thomas Wade appeared who made matters even worse.

The small settlement of Port Natal had hardly grown by 1830. Dingane had moved his ikhanda which he named uMgungundlovu to the eMakhosini valley, close to Singonyama or Lion hill, just south of the White Umfolozi River. The traders around Port Natal by now had mostly married Khoekhoe or AmaZulu women and were part of the Zulu landscape, but by 1834, colonial authorities were going to become far more interested in this part of southern Africa. By now Charles Maclean aka John Ross was in his late teens - he’d arrived as a 9 year-old, Thomas Halstead had arrived as a 14 year-old in 1825, also living close to the port was were John Cane, Nathanial Isaacs and Henry Ogle. Only one dwelling in the port looked vaguely European, the fort and none had what could be called furniture. Most of the structures were the Zulu beehive design, and the traders wore a combination of Zulu costumes and basic garments sewn from skins, with homemade straw hats. The whites had taken local wives or concubines, known as iziXebe, some had Khoisan wives and servants. The traders had paid lobola for the women, handing over goods and cattle to the bride’s father to pay him for his loss of labour in the family units because it was the women who did most of the work in AmaZulu society. Cape Governor Sir Lowry Cole received a report that the Americans had been trading with the Zulu and seemed to be the vanguard of a possible attempt at seizing this area for themselves. Cole wrote to the Colonial Office saying “how embarrassing such a neighbour might eventually prove…” to the Cape. So he turned to Scottish assistant Staff Surgeon at the Cape garrison, Dr Andrew Smith. There are few official expeditions in the history of South Africa about which less is known than that of Dr Andrew Smiths’ visit to Dingane in 1832. The real motive for the expedition was never outlined, and its a black hole in the South African Archives, as well as the Public Record Office in London. No official report exists. While this was causing some excitement, things were happening at a place called Knysna. The good Ship Knysna was built in the Knysna lagoon starting in 1826 when her keel was laid, and she sailed on her first voyage with a cargo of timber for Cape Town in July 1831. The Knsyna was still sailing around the English coast in 1873.

So here we are - 1830. Maqoma had been ejected from his beloved region below the Amatola mountains of the Eastern Cape, to be replaced by the new Khoekhoe dominated Kat River Settlement - a buffer zone for a buffer zone. It was a time of punitive patrols sent forth by the British to search for rustled cattle, across the Fish River, into amaXhosa territory. Known as the Patrol System, or the Reprisal System, based on the Spoor Law these all described a process where patrols would follow the tracks of stolen cattle. The military patrols were a combination of the British and Khoekhoe cavalry which would seize the same number of cows stolen from settlers farms from the first amaXhosa settlement they came across. Whether the people living within were guilty or not. The authorities supposition was that it was impossible that the people living in the kraal to be unaware as the rustled animals were led past their homes - so they were treated as accessories. The Kat River Settlement had not ended the turbulence along the frontier, because this reprisal system increased tension. The British believed they had no other choice because of the amaXhosa’s intransigence about the frontier, the 1820 settlers distrusted both the British officials and the amaXhosa, and the Khoekhoe. As I’ve mentioned, a frontier is a zone of intersection of cultures with those presuming to be the most developed culture alienating itself from the others. By June 1831, Andries Stockenstrom was firefighting along this frontier, while his nemesis, Colonel Henry Somerset, was setting the region aflame. Somerset began to blur the lines between a patrol and a commando which was to have repercussions for everyone on this frontier. Henry and Andries continued to quarrel about all of this - because the final sanction for any commando rested on Andries Stockenstrom’s shoulders, but Somerset had evaded this chain of command, this organogram, by bypassing Andries and appealing directly to the Governor Sir Lowry Cole. Henry was British, the Governor was British, Stockenstrom was a Swedish-Dutch Boer. You can see where this is going. AS I’ll explain next episode, affairs on the frontier were sinking even faster and deeper into a muddied scene of ignorance, brutality and reactive consequences as the gestures of what Noel Mostert calls “limited military minds” were to show. But now its time to leap back on our trusty trekboer pony, and ride to Port Natal where the traders were learning to deal with the new Zulu king, Dingane. The first traders who met Dingane were afraid of him. He had piercing eyes, keen and quick, nothing escaped him it appeared. Isaacs met him and said that he was quelled by the Zulu kings “piercing and penetrating eyes” which he rolled in moments of anger. Dingane’s Zulu accent was Qwabe, he spoke in the amalala style, the one that Shaka had joked about so much, calling himself Dingane, whereas the official pronounciation amongst Zulu perfectionists was Dingana. This is what his amantungwa purists would have said, Dingana - behind his back of course. Within a few months, the colonists were describing Dingane as weak, cruel, indolent, capricious, and even more prone to human blood than the monster Shaka.

Last we heard about the attack on the Ngwane at Mbholompo west of Umtata, and the destruction of Matiwane’s raiders - sending him home back to Zululand where he was killed by Dingane. After the 1828 battle, Hintsa of the Gcaleka line of the amaXhosa and Nqubencuka who was his rival, fell out spectacularly over the division of the spoils. They had gathered a booty of women, children and cattle. The British took about 70 children back to the Colony, but appeared to be disgusted when the amaThembu and Gcaleka amaXhosa seized civilians after for themselves. Not long after this, Hintsa’s Bomvana allies attacked two of Ngubencuka’s subordinate clans - and the amaThembu gave up their territory closer to the coast and moved further north. Enter Ngqika’s eldest son Maqoma - who will feature over the next quarter of a century of South Africa’s amazing history. He was around 30 years old when he emerged following his father’s death, and his military leadership was going to become legendary. The British afforded him the kind of respect that they’d later afford their Zulu enemies, he was to receive many verbal salutes over the next decade or two. On the frontier, he was regarded by all who met him as gallant and bold - although that didnt’ stop the Cape administration from evicting him from his land. By 1829 however, Maqoma like his father Ngqika, had taken to the bottle - and in particular - to brandy. He moved his Great Place nearer to Fort Beaufort because it had an excellent canteen, and his love of Cape Brandy became notorious. Andries Stockenstrom was the Commissioner-General of the entire frontier, and Colonel Henry Somerset was its military commandant, and technically subordinate to Stockenstrom. However, it was never properly communicated who was in charge of whom. Neither Stockenstrom nor Somerset could operate on the basis other than their own wilfull characters which was going to cause disruption along the Eastern Cape frontier.

South Africa’s history is peppered with chaos and warfare, perhaps more so than is apparent in the modern period. It is fairly difficult to explain how our past intermeshes with the present without focusing on moments of extreme violence, these incidents are part of our psychological make-up without most of us being aware of just how we were forged out of the sound of gunfire and the smell of blood. With that slightly theatrical introduction, let’s delve into one of these moments during the period of the Mfecane - a battle that has taken on various forms in the telling based on what your political persuasion may be. This is the battle of Mbholompo. The battle of what? many listeners would muse. Yes folks, this rumpled sounding clash, the word conjuring up images of wordplay, Mbholompo, has as its main player a man called Matiwane of the Ngwane. We have met him in passing but now we’ll spend time telling at his tale and he has some significant storytellers backing him up. One is Albert Hlongwane who published a book in 1938 called “history of Matiwane and the amaNgwane Tribe, as told by Mzebenzi to his Kinsman, Albert Hlongwane”. Landdrost of Albany, Major WB Dundas, was growing more concerned. Drawing on his experience he first led a commando against Matiwane which was to end in bloodshed - but his main reason to head off into the Transkei was to secure labourers for the settlers of Albany. The British soldiers and Khoekhoe gunmen were joined by the Thembu warriors who then moved east of Mbashe surrounding the Ngwane before dawn on the 27th August 1828.

Last episode we heard how Jan Bloem and Kora leader Haip had launched a raid on Mzilikazi’s Ndebele people arraigned along the southern reaches of the Vaal River in 1830 - and Mzilikazi’s bloody response where he not only recovered his cattle but killed 50 Kora. This was the first of a series of incidents which convinced Griqua captain Barend Barends to put together a massive commando and deal with the Ndebele once and for all. Barends is regarded as the founder of Griqualand, he settled north of the Orange River early in the 19th Century - and was the first Griqua to do this. He was also more adventurous than his fellow people, and was a profoundly focused Griqua nationalist. His spirit still moves the people of Griqualand today - it is a fiercely independent folk who live around Kuruman, to Upington, Kimberley. The land there is fierce as well - only the hardiest people can take the splendid isolation of the searing summer temperates and the freezing winds in winter. Barend Barends had left the Cape because he disliked the Dutch and the colonists generally - and he refused to cooperate with authorities when they demanded he hand back escaped slaves. He was far away from their centre of power - who was going to try and stop him? He became known as a protector of runaway slaves, a man whose name was whispered amongst the slave community of Cape Town, his towns a place for the so-called Hottentots to reach if they could across the barren Namaqua wastes - and past the unfriendly Dutch farms. Barends was also a staunch paternalist when it came to the Tswana around him presuming that his people were a cut above - he was condescending at times. And he was luke-warm about Jan Bloem’s first plan to raid Mzilikazi. Mzilikazi attacked Griqua hunting parties north of the Molopo River. Barends himself had hunted there, and he’d traded with the Hurutshe folk who by now had been turned into one of the Ndebele vassal peoples. Mzilikazi is also reported to have told Barend and his Griquas to steer clear of the Ndebele land which the Griqua had regarded as their ivory hunting grounds. This was not acceptable to the Griqua view of themselves as superiors to the Tswana, the Sotho, the Ndebele. By early 1831 Barend Barends began to talk in messianic terms - that he was sent by God to sweep Mzilikazi and his “gang of blood thirsty warriors from the fine pastures and glens of the Bakone country…” as Robert Moffat the missionary wrote in his book “Missionary Labours”. The Bakone country was the highveld just fyi. Barend said he wanted to emancipate the people of the region from Mzilikazi’s thrall. I’ll return to what Mzilikazi was up to by 1833 and it will be a story of blood, gore, pain and suffering, raiding, raping, pillaging and other inappropriate activities because now allow our gaze to swing south once more. Here the relationship between the missionaries, the amaXhosa and the settlers was growing more and more complex. The missionaries thought amaXhosa were living in sin and cursed by damnation, the amaXhosa thought the missionaries were borderline insane and I’ll explain why - although its nicely summed up by one young woman quoted by the Scots missionaries of the time. “I am young, and in health, I have a husband and we possess corn, and cattle and milk. Why should I not be happy? Why do I need more?” Such disregard for the soul horrified the poor missionaries, so did just about everything about the amaXhosa, their nudity, the circumcision dances, and missionaries reporting that their land “… is filled with fornication, whoredom, and all uncleanness, witchcraft, their doctors, polygamy, conversations full of frivolousness and filth…”

It’s time to delve deeply into the other Ndebele, then what happened when Mzilikazi arrived in the area known as the Trans Vaal - across the Vaal, with his hungry wolves. The development of the highveld to the late 1820s is quite a tale, with the first Tswana people made their way here by the 1100s, although much of the high ground was avoided. However, by the late 1600s, people had moved onto hilltop defensive locations through the region. Rooikrans for example, a small stone-walled Sotho, Tswana and Pedi site on the Waterberg plateau north west of the Witwatersrand. There was also a similar development at Bruma on the Linksfield Ridge right in the heart of Johannesburg. I used to walk up that slope from the back of my house and the original stone settlements had been frittered away by Boer and British defenders during the Anglo Boer war who used the 500 year-old Tswana stone to build Sangars and trenches. So over hundreds of years, the original peoples of the highveld moved about a great deal, sometimes living on hilltops, sometimes in the valleys depending on how politically stable it was. Oral tradition points out the Hurutshe founded the hill-top village of Chuenyane - also called Witkoppies, which is near Zeerust by the early 1500s. By the 17th Century, there was significant Tswana state growth in the west where it is warmer than around Johannesburg, with the rise of the Kwena and Kgatla dynasties, but these shattered in the 18th Century as trading power shifted north. If you’ve followed the series to this point, you’ll remember the descriptions of the trading routes from Delagoa Bay and how they criss-crossed central southern Africa. There were even traders who arrived here from the West Coast, modern day Angola. By the end of the 17th Century, the transvaal Ndebele began to emerge - and by the 18th Century they were regarded as a separate people by the Sotho, Tswana and Pedi speakers. They became known as the Matabele, and they lived on the steepest hills where they built fortifications around the Waterberg plateau. The southern Trans Vaal Ndebele were spread over the Witwatersrand high veld adjoining the Drakensberg, up to where Pretoria is today and they were in this region by the end of the 17th Century. They all trace their history to a man known as Busi, and the dating of this man is around 1630-1670. Busi’s son was called Tshwane, and that’s why we know Pretoria area today as Tshwane - because that was its first name. Oral stories are a bit more murky when it comes to the northern trans vaal Ndebele, who settled west of the Waterberg Plateau in the 1500s. Some headed further west across the Limpopo to the Tswapong hills in eastern Botswana. While they were migrating north west, the other transvaal Ndebele called the LAka aka, Langa, and the Hwaduba, remained behind in the WAterberg plateau. These people clung onto their linguistic identity, they spoke an Nguni language, whereas the others to the west became Tswana, Sotho, and Pedi speakers. One man by the name of Mogale refused to dilute his language, and it is his name that morphed into the Magaliesberg - that wonderful and imposing steep and craggy range of mountains the west of Johannesburg. The very phrase sounds Afrikaans - Magalies, but it is actually an early Ndebele word from the 1500s. By Mzilikazi’s time in the mid-1820s, there was significant jostling for territory and ascendancy around inland southern Africa. A series of small wars amongst the Tswana which have become known as the ivory and cattle and fur wars, and some known as the Wives wars, were on the go around this time.

Port Natal was steeped in fear and loathing in late 1828 follow in Shaka’s assassination on the 24th September 1828 which had thrown the traders into a panic. They anticipated that Shaka’s death would lead to a civil war, and that they’d be targeted in the coming political storm. Most fled their homesteads and clambered aboard the schooner Elizabeth and Susan to depart for Algoa Bay. On the 28th September, word was sent by Shaka’s murderers, his brothers Dingane and Mhlangana, that the traders were assured of friendship and protection - and Dingane in particular had asked them not to leave. However, the traders had seen what happened when the Zulu fought over succession, and understood the power of the regiments so they let caution eclipse valour and most sailed away on the Elizabeth and Susan on December 1st. They returned to Port Elizabeth, but not before Dingane’s messenger arrived - both he and Mhlangana sought the support of Cape officials and with that ringing in his ears, Francis Farewell scarpered. Meanwhile Shaka’s Bhalule imp was still away on campaign, so the abantwana wanted to avoid more conflict with the amaMpondo, the Bhaca, and other neighbours. If the colonists left, and without their powerful army, perhaps these other smaller nations would try and seize cattle or attack the outlying Zulu homesteads. Before he was murdered, Shaka had been raising an entirely new regiment of youths called the iziNyosi the bees - and Dingane and Mhlangana added weight to this young ibutho by forming another called uHlomendlini, the Home Guard. Dingane and Mhlangana began to circle each other like angry lions, mistrust and antagonism developing literally by the day. It had been all very well in killing Shaka, a bit like the moment Caesar was stabbed. Now what? Who is numero uno, and who isn’t? At first, they worked in concert, sending a joint force of the uHlomendlini and iziNyosi under Mbopha’s tight command to deal with Nandi’s other son and Shaka’s half brother - Ngwadi kaNgendeyana. It was in late November when this dispute was brought before the royal house and the nobles of the realm. The main interrogator was Ngqengelele kaMvulana, Shaka’s protege who’d been appointed induna of the Buthelezi people. Sitting near Ngqengelele was Noncoba, Shaka’s half-sister - Nandi’s daughter. Also present, and apparently the person who took control, was aunty Mnkabayi - Nandi’s sister. It is said by the oral storytellers that despite all these powerful men hanging about, it was Mnkabayi who really ran the show. It must have been quite a sight on that day because Mnkabayi arrived at this most symbolic of Zulu gatherings dressed as a man.

For my listeners who’ve lasted a century of podcasts, thank you folks! The series has far exceeded my expectation when it was launched I thought perhaps a few people would respond and that would be that. But no! This series has managed to climb 6 places on Apple’s South African podcast top 20, we’re at 16 on the hit parade and passed 500 000 listens! Sorry, this sounds self-serving, and probably is, it’s just so exciting to see how many people are interested in this unique place called South Africa, with its crazy paving history and characters that Edgar Allan Poe wouldn’t dream up in a thousand years. So with that self-important note - let’s head on back to 1828. Lord Charles Somerset’s perfidious tenure had ended, that period of post Napoleonic nepotism. In Liverpool, the centre of the trading world in the first half of the 19th Century, laissez-fire oceanic liberalism was raising its genteel bewigged head. The principle of free trade was growing. And in conjunction with this new economic free trade a new kind of radical liberalism was surging it was the time of a new philosophy of the rights of the human individual. This is no small matter, as Adam Smith would agree. You could argue that if it wasn’t for Doctor John Philip, with two p’s, one L and no S, South African history would be quite different. By the second half of the 1820s the majority of the Khoekhoe had no other employment than as farm labourers, mainly for the trekboers. Dr John had summed up the situation in the Cape and his grim memorandum had led to the establishment of a commission of inquiry. He was fighting for what he called “the emancipation of the wretched aborigines of South Africa…” If you remember an earlier podcast, Dr John Philip had single-handedly convinced Sir Rufane Donkin the acting governor to take action to protect the Khoekhoe labourers from abuse suffered on farms. Dr John had returned to England by mid-1820s, and was a force of nature, persuading the public there that they should enjoin him in the mission to ensure that all men and women living in southern Africa should be regarded as equal. Andries Stockenstrom was no longer the landdrost of Graaff-Reinet, the British had given him a new title. He was the Commissioner General of the frontier, and his new seat was in Uitenhage. This Afrikaner was one of two colonists appointed to the new Advisory Council which helped govern the colony. He was in his middle thirties and during Dr John Philip’s great trek around the Cape, they’d both spent many days arguing and debating about the rights of the Khoekhoe. And so it was, in April 1828, four months after being installed as Commissioner General, Stockenstrom sent a memorandum to Major General Bourke about the Khoekhoe, and recommended precisely what Dr John Philip had been suggesting. A law that would sweep away all restrictions on the Khoekhoin, and put them on an equal footing with the colonists. Gasp.

First we pick up the point where James Saunders King made his way back to Port Natal following his failed diplomacy on Shaka’s behalf – the result would be catastrophic for Shaka. It provided added incentive for Shaka’s enemies inside the Zulu to move against him, the members of the Royal house were conspiring to kill him and had been for at least four years. Remember in early 1828 Shaka had sent the impi to raid the amaMpondo in an attempt at wiping away the tears of his mother Nandi’s death, and also to keep his army on the move which is often the best option when there is treason in the wind. Once the army had returned from their raiding along the Umtata River, they had no break – Shaka sent them away once more, in the opposite direction. The failed embassy led by James Saunders King returned to Port Natal on 17th August 1828. Sothobe who was Shaka’s emissary bluntly laid the blame for the fiasco in the Cape on King, and Shaka was humiliated. King returned with Isaacs on two ships, the Helicon and the Elizabeth and Susan, and when they hove off Port Natal on 17th August 1828, King was pale and sick. Isaacs had to carry King to his residence at Mount Pleasant. On 19th August Isaacs broke open the boxes supposedly for Shaka which contained a few sheets of copper, a piece of red broadcloth, a few medicines, knives and trinkets. King had added a mirror or looking glass as it was known – and it was also an expensive luxury back in 1928. He also tossed in a few beads. When Isaacs arrived at kwaBulawayo with the presents, Shaka was contemptuous of the gifts and suspicious of the seals being broken. Shaka demanded that each gift be described, and when he was shown the ointments, Isaacs explained they were for healing wounds and the Zulu king exclaimed “do you think we are such scabby fellows as you are…” Later Shaka asked for the medicine that changed the colour of hair, the black oil, otherwise he was totally underwhelmed by the gifts. “…these are of no use to my subjects, they are not troubled with the disorders you mention, the best medicine for them is beef…” While all of this diplomacy was going on, the Zulu king had sent his army to Soshangane kaZikode of the Gaza Kingdom north of Delagoa Bay. This latest impi was going to take a very long trek, heading to the high ground 130 kilometers north west of Delagoa Bay. It overlooked the malaria and tsetse fly infested country of the bushveld around the Olifants .. the Lepelle River – which the Zulu called the Bhalule. This was to be known as the Bhalule expedition, and was Shaka’s last.

With the defeat of the Ndwandwe Shaka had moved to KwaDukuza near the Mvoti River, about 80km from Port Natal – a day and a half’s journey – or two if you were taking it fairly easy. It was a large ikhanda, containing about 1500 huts and accommodating around 3000 amabuthu warriors. The isigodlo where his women lived was vast, built on elevated ground overlooking the entire ikhanda it was 360 meters long and 35 meters wide and housed probably 200 women in about fifty huts. Each hut was of large and kept extremely neat and tidy as was the wont of the women of the king. They were arranged around a series of enclosures of different shapes, oval, circular, triangular – the floors hardened earth and compressed cow dung which turns a kind of dark green and smell’s fresh which is kind of hard for people to believe who’ve never lived in a home comprised of this material. The reason why it was so hard was the earth was from anthills squeezed together with dung – then dried and polished to a glass like consistency that shines like a mirror. It feels like marble, cool to the touch in the shade away from the blazing Zululand sun. It sets as hard as concrete. Shaka knew that the white traders at Port Natal offered him a form of protection and they represented a form of the future, as contradictory as this sounds to us today. He moved away from the north, away from where the Ndwandwe had predated, away from the Portuguese centre of Delagoa Bay, and closer to Grahamstown, which he knew about, also Port Elizabeth which had been described to him, and Cape Town which had been featuring in Zulu stories for some time. Along the Thukela, a few kilometers north of Mvoti, lived the Cele, and his favourite induna Magaye kaDibandlela. But something was bothering this Zulu king – it was the ongoing feud between the traders, King and Farewell which I mentioned last podcast. James King was also showing signs of illness. Farewell and King had by now become part of Shaka’s chiefdoms, he allowed them to develop their own herds, along with Ogle, and Fynn. This was how it was in Shaka’s time. He wanted to send a delegation of his induna to visit the British in the Cape and to discuss future ties.The timing, however, wasn’t great. That’s because it was only a few weeks after they were told of this diplomatic mission that Shaka’s mother Nandi died. This changed everything. She had been managing the zulu king’s domestic arrangements and was central in his life. She passed away in October 1827, although some report it was August – at eMkhindini umuzi which is part of the kwaBulawayo group of umuzi near Eshowe. It’s about five kilometers from the main homestead. Still, the important fact is not the exact spot, the what happened afterwards. Nandi was of the Langeni people, and the descendents have many stories of what he did afterwards. So too do the traders like Fynn and the youngers, Nathanial Isaacs. Each appears to try to outdo the other in the stories of murder and mayhem.

We kick off this episode with Henry Francis Fynn, the trader who’d made his home in Port Natal and was part of a group of Englishmen who’d fought with Shaka against Sikhunyane of the Ndwande. By 1826 Fynn had been living basically as a Zulu at Mpendwini, near the Mbokodwe stream which is close to Isipingo south of Durban. Last week I explained how Shaka had donated three herds of cattle to Fynn so he could set up his important Umuzi. One of the herds was payment for helping defeat the Ndwandwe. Fynn by now was given a Zulu name, Mbuyazi – which means long-tailed finch, a bird, of the bay. One of his praise songs was all about the Finch, a fiscal shrike, which is particularly vicious in how it hunts – by impaling insects on thorns. Fynn was Shaka’s favourite mercenary, a killer, and one of the few that Shaka allowed to kill people without his direct permission. Later Fynn’s descendents would become known as iziNkumbi, the locusts. By 1826 Fynn had four, possibly five, Zulu wives. We don’t know their names because these were never passed down in the usual Zulu oral tradition, not even his great wife. But we know quite about about his children. A son called Mpahlwa was born while Fynn was off fighting the NDwandwe, so he was conceived around December 1825. That was a few months after Fynn’s umuzi had been setup. He adopted the Zulu custom of living, and would send for one of his wives every night, who would come to his hut at nightfall. Only poor men would creep around at dusk to visit their wives. Fynn had thrown off all pretenses of living like a European – unlike some of the other traders such as Maclean the youngster, or Farewell. So by 1826, Shaka was watching these traders with their guns and ships carefully. In the same year, the Zulu king decided to move his entire main umuzi closer to Port Natal – building his new residency on the site of an Umuzi long abandoned by the Cele chieftan Dibhandlela. We’ll come back to what happened there next episode, right now lets swing to the north west deeper– because our old friend – who was actually still quite young by the name of, Mzilikazi of the Khumalo had been a very very busy young man. The remnants of Sikhuyane’s Ndwandwe, shattered by Shaka, joined up with him in the area around the upper reaches of the Vaal River by the end of 1826. The erosion of power of the Buhurutshe people was taking place, the Mzilikazi was also incorporating refugees from the Tswana and Sotho chiefdoms as the area to the south and West of the Vaal became more unstable. The Pedi had also been defeated earlier by Zwide’s Ndwandwe and now Mzilikazi was busy taking advantage of their defeat to raid their old stomping ground. The Khumalo people had become an agglomeration of their original clan from Zululand and the Tswana called them the Matabele – Nguni speakers called them the amaNdebele. amaNdebele means the Marauders. They were indeed, amaNdebele.

We’re dealing with the period 1826 to 1828 and southern Africa was a rich patchwork of expanding trekboers, Shaka setting up his empire in Zululand, the Khoe and basters traveling and raiding along the Orange River, and the amaNdebele on the move into the highveld. Of course 1826 was not a great year if you were Lord Charles Somerset, who was hastened home after his administration been scrutinized with an intense scrute, to quote Spike Milligan. Lord Bathurst had setup the Advisory Council in Cape Town, a kind of forerunner to a cabinet, and the days of the Governor merely printing his edicts as law were over. The council then approached a rather thorny problem of creating a separate council for the Eastern districts, the Eastern cape so to speak. But they held off for the meantime – at least until after slavery was abolished. The new lieutenant Governor replacing Somerset was Bourke who waved Lord Charles off in March 1826 to the relative peace at Brighton back in England. The need for a resident authority further east, along the frontier, was met in a while by a compromise. That was when Dutch speaking Andries Stockenstrom landdrost of Graaff-Reinet, was appointed Commissioner-General at Grahamstown, and was to report on all the affairs of the eastern districts .. including Beaufort West in the Karoo. Farewell along with Henry Francis Fynn Fynn who had taken a liking to Shaka. They spent months hunting elephants, and had bagged a fortune in ivory. Life was hard for the settlers here in the early days of Natal, but the rewards were vast. James Saunders King had rented the Mary, which he’d now managed to wreck, but he was not alone on that humid beach in October. Swimming alongside him were Nathanial Isaacs and Charles Rawden Maclean. Isaacs is an entire podcast series himself, and I said we’d be hearing a lot more from him and here he is. Nathanial Isaacs’ stories about Shaka would form the core narrative of the Shaka mythology, and some of his comments actually still appear in school text books. It’s been a long road to weed out this teenager’s overwritten memories from our consciousness. But he was quite an interesting chap nevertheless.

We’re going to join one of the biweekly market gatherings held at Fort Willshire in 1825 where amaXhosa, English settlers, trekboers and khoekhoe met to exchange goods. Then we bid Cape Governor Lord Charles Somerset adieu. The fair that had been established by Sir Rufane Donkin on the banks of the Keiskamma River was flourishing by 1825. Boxes of beads, brass goods, buttons, coils or wire, looking glasses alias spectacles, scissors, cotton textiles, European clothing and shoes, were exchanged for ivory, gum and cattle hides brought by the amaXhosa and khoekhoe. As the traders travelled to the fair, they would pass elephant that could still be seen roving in the area in great numbers, although the British settlers like the Boers before had taken to shooting these pachyderms down by the dozen so they could also benefit from selling ivory. The great herds were being shot out of the eastern Cape although they could be found until 1919. That’s when the government passed an extermination order and after the blood letting, elephants could only be found deep in the Knysna forests and in Addo. The settlers’ mouthpiece publication called the Grahamstown Journal was now publishing, edited by Robert Godlonton, and called for more English expansion into Xhosa country, and the complete subjugation and dispossession of the amaXhosa. They were also railing against a new Ordanance 9 issued by the British, which regulated the right of colonists to open fire on vagrants, trespassers, deserters and escaped convicts spotted on their land. The settlers were now uncertain about what was lawful if they tried to defend their farms – and the trekboers blamed the English – adding to the bitterness they already felt towards these red coated self serving high and mightier imperialists. Colonel Henry Somerset had served with the Cape Corps as their commander, and fought in the last stage of the Fifth Frontier War, but by 1823 he was installed as CIC of the entire eastern Front. You’ve heard how Governor Charles was facing criticism for his nepotism and spendthrift ways, so we are not surprised by what was going to happen next. The merchants were in his ear, do something, we can’t have these Kosas causing chaos.

Port Natal and Delagoa Bay are far away from Cape Town and appeared even further in the early 1820s. The Cape Governor was inevitably more concerned with what lay immediately beyond the colonial frontiers than in these distant ports. Much of what concerned Lord Charles Somerset – and had concerned his predecessors – already lay along the frontiers. The colony had thrown out an ever increasing fringe of loose cannons, skirmishers, traders, trek-boers, escaped slaves, and even rebellious missionaries. The flood of missionaries turned into a tsunami by the mid-1820s, the London Missionary Society was already at work as you know, and by now they were established along both sides of the Orange River and into the eastern Frontier. The Moravians had arrived and were carving out new parishers even further east, while the Wesleyans were already amongst the far-distant amaPondo people. The Zulu had been raiding these people from Shaka’s centre of power as you know. There were a number of Scots from Glasgow who found living amongst the amaXhosa to their liking, and even missionaries from Germany showed up, particularly from Berlin, and they began living amongst the amaXhosa too. The Rhenish and Paris Evangelicals arrived too, one to work within the colony and the other headed north into Bechuanaland, and then to the Basutho. The LMS and Paris Evangelicals were moving along the first stage of what became known as the Missionary Road which led all the way from the Cape into Central Africa. By now the chiefdoms of the Caledon Valley and the open plains north of the Orange River had been squeezed between three expanding zones of instability and conflict. From the south and south west parties of Griqua, Kora and Boers were raiding for cattle and cheap labour. To the northwest, the rivalries of Batswana chiefdoms were spilling across the Vaal River. To the East, the fighting that had seen the AmaZulu and amaNdwandwe at war, as well as the amaMthethwa, had displaced groups as you’ve heard and some had headed across the Drakensberg. Then Lord Bathurst the Secretary of State set up an Advisory Council in Cape Town which consisted of the Governor, muttering under his bewigged breath, the Chief Justice, the colonial Secretary, the Officer commanding, the Deputy-Quartermaster-General, the Auditor General and the Treasurer. The Council was to deal with quite an interesting proposal, and this was allowing the Eastern Cape to be represented by their own council, by some kind of representative assembly. They fired the first round in what was to become a long-sustained but ultimately unsuccessful battle for separation by Eastern Capers.

Shaka met Henry Francis Fynn and Lieutenant Francis George Farewell in August 1824 and the traders were seeking his permission to live and work at Port Natal. Cape Governor Lord Charles Somerset had rejected Farewell’s request he annex the region, so that was the only option left for the traders. In episode 92 I explained how the amazulu reacted to Fynn and Farewell, how their horses in particular were a shock. The dress code was also a surprise, although their skin colour seemed less of a surprise. These Englishmen by now had been burnt brown by months in the African sun, so there was not much made of their skin colour by the oral history tellers, they were more interested in what the Europeans were wearing. And as you heard, Shaka was able to talk to these traders because of the amaXhosa convict Jacot Msimbithi who was translating. The only problem was, he was not very good at his job. Hlambamanzi as he was known to the Zulu, Swim the Seas, mangled English meaning. However Shaka immediately grasped a few important facts from Msimbithi as they conversed in isiZulu – which is similar to isiXhosa. Firstly, he knew that the traders carried guns and these weapons would be useful. The visitors were also part of a much broader trading powerhouse, Shaka understood that too. He had heard of the power of the British and wanted to approach the empire, he was not into going to war against them although from his comments, we know he believed his warriors would defeat British soldiers anyway. And yet, Shaka quickly realized that using the settlers guns, he could overcome some of the chiefdoms that were still refusing to Khonza him. He welcomed the traders, conferring on them the title of abakwethu, or people of our house, kinsmen, trusted and close confidents. Then someone tried to stab Shaka to death with a spear. He survived the assassination attempt. Farewell rushed to Shaka’s side upon hearing of the incident, along with the master of his sloop the Julia, a man by the name of WH Davis. Somehow, at this point, Farewell managed to convince the Zulu king to grant him a sale of land, which he wrote as “in full possession and perpetuity” for the sole use of Farewell and his heirs. It was signed by Shaka in a huge scrawl, dated both 7th and 8th of August 1824 – pre-dated in other words and witnessed by Hlambamanzi Msimbithi the translator advisor, Shaka’s uncle Mbikwana and two other high ranking members of his counsel. But did the document grant Farewell ownership or guardianship?

As years go, 1824 was one for the history books. Not that the others weren’t, but 1824 is a one of those seminal 12 months in southern Africa history. It was the year that Shaka’s main impi south had a disastrous campaign attempting to subjugate the Mpondo and despite their training and their military prowess, Shaka’s amabutho were not invincible. But more importantly, it was the year that English traders setup their base in Port Natal and immediately altered the social, military and political landscape. Shaka was busy in 1824 with both conquest and raiding. His impi’s however, did not do well in what you could call their away games. The further they were from their base which the more defective their logistics. And now Shaka had setup his main base on the Mahlabatini plain north of the uMhlathuze River – along the Mfolozi. Later the’d move south as we’ll hear, but in 1824 it was near modern day Ulundi. Supply lines for military endeavours are fundamental – Frederick the Great summed it up when he said an army marches on its stomach – or more accurately, he said it marches on its belly. And no it wasn’t Napoleon who said that. Once a chief was defeated, the amabutho had to remain in the field to quash any further resistance and that meant feeding the men. If Shaka wanted to conquer territories, then he needed a quick decisive battle, and that was his strategic intention. As his warriors ranged further, word got out that if you led them on a bit of a song and dance, they’d give up and go home quite quickly. He was also eyeing the trade with the outside world as a part of the growth of his power. He knew that Delagoa Bay was somewhat overtraded and too far away to service successfully, furthermore the Portuguese and their allies had tied up their routes inlands already. He could not expand Westwards because the Sotho people were too strong, and to the south, the Mpondo had cut off his access to the Cape. The Zulu King was acutely aware of the advantage of doing business with the English at the Cape, but accessing them was another matter. He had no ships. And so this is where we return to last episode, because the ships came to him. The Julia in which Henry Francis Fynn would arrive, the Salisbury of Commander King, and the Antelope under Lieutenant Francis George Farewell.