History of South Africa podcast

Things were beginning to move along the eastern Cape frontier, through the region known previously as the Zuurveld, the Albany district, with its rocky rivers and ravines, thorny bush covered recesses, rolling grasslands and magnificent mountains. The Great House of the amaGcaleka had sorted out its differences, these were the amaXhosa based east of the Kei River, and Hintsa had managed to take control of clans who were drifting away. He did this by both guile and blood, for example Hintsa engineered the massacre of 17 councillors of the Ngqosini clan who had been tricked into joining a hunting expedition. Things weren’t all happiness and light in Xhosa country, however stunning the landscape appeared. Hintsa then looked westwards, and naturally his eyes alighted on the territory controlled by Ngqika, and Ngqika’s nephew and his opponent Ndlambe. It was time to take sides in their decades old dispute and Hintsa decided to support Ndlambe, basically because he hated Ngqika who had humiliated him in the past as he grew up. Hintsa decided that he’d humiliate Ngqika in turn, and recognized Ndlambe as the rightful ruler of the amaRharhabe branch of the amaXhosa. Ndlambe was also on the move, so to speak, he’d reconciled with his son Mdushane who’d been vacillating about whether he’d support his dad, or his uncle Ngqika. Uncle Ngqika was angered by Hintsa’s slight. A local war was brewing. It wasn’t the only man who’d come to appreciate Ndlambe’s rule – the other was an amaXhosa commoner called Nxele, who’d become known as a wardoctor. The past fifty years had seen the amaXhosa and the colonials clashing constantly, with the amaXhosa forced to watch their land being overrun by these strange people from across the sea. The amaXhosa began to seek supernatural help in their mission to reverse this loss. The problem was, amaXhosa ancient otherworldly forces appeared too weak to do the job, they needed a new and more diverse bit of magic, and along came Nxele and others who were to mould Christianity and amaXhosa animism in a unique new philosophy.

It had taken twenty years from the initial British landing on the Cape for the occupation to become permanent. So by August 1814, following the first abdication of Napoleon, the Netherlands regained independence with the Prince Orange re-installed as sovereign. The British duly restored some of his colonies to him – but not the Cape. In 1803 Lord Nelson had said the Cape was not essential, but by 1814 this had changed. The problem for the Cape was that colonies were supposed to balance their own budgets – and the British had tried to help this little African back-water by allowing Cape wine growers to import their product into Britain for free. By 1813 sales had risen, and eventually and something that you’d probably be surprised to hear, by the time of the 1820 settlers, 10 percent of all wine drunk in the UK came from the Cape. The big issue was most of this came from Crown lands, run on behalf of the government, not from independents. With such a vast territory, why were the cash receipts from the Cape so low? Sir John Cradock was busy reforming the loan farm system you heard about last episode which was supposed to lead to more productivity and sales as proper leases were signed. Cradock was replaced by Lord Charles Somerset who took up the mantle of this farm improvement campaign. He was a descendent of the Plantagenet kings, and had lived a comfortable life at a place called Badmington. Somerset had also proved that soldiering in drawing rooms was safer and more profitable than actually doing any fighting. Somerset travelled to the frontier to impose his policy of separation – and summoned Ngqika, Ndlambe, and lesser chiefs to meet him on the banks of the Kat River – the same place by the way that VOC governor Janssens had met Ngqika in 1802.

It’s the second decade of the 19th Century - the trekboers as you heard last episode were alarmed by the British decision to drop loan farms – and using the quit-rent system to reinforce land ownership. Governor Somerset had arrived to take over the management of this new system, and to oversee the new Circuit Court process where justice was supposed to be provided for the long-suffering Khoe servants and slaves of the farmers. It was that double change that drove some trekboers on the frontier to rebellion which forms the core of the Afrikaner-nationalist tradition and narrative to this day. The interference of the English, the escalation of human rights to include blacks, and the influence of religion in this saga cannot be underestimated. A handful of rebellious trekboers had approached the amaXhosa in 1814 then again in 1815 to join them in a plan to overthrow British rule on the frontier. IT was by all accounts, a ramshackle jumble of emotions rolled into a dilapidated strategy undermined by a confused motivatio. As Johannes Bezuidenhout, Henrick Prinsloo and others fomented the spirit of rebellion, authorities in the Cape were soon briefed about what was going on. It was impossible for this business to be kept secret, the trekboers were prone to panic, rumour and gossip and perhaps all three emotions were part of the blabbing that reached the authorities. Naturally, ringleader Hendrik Prinsloo was arrested. His sidekick, Johannes Bezuidenhout was on the lamb, still trying to motivate Xhosa leader Ngqika to join his rebellion and had sent another delegation to his Great Place, pleading for support and inviting the Xhosa to reenter the Zuurveld, the Albany region. The British finally were going to make an example of the frontier trekboers, They arrested five of the main ringleaders, including Hendrick Prinsloo, and they were sentenced to death by hanging. What was to follow was a dreadful scene that drives emotions to the present.

So, in 1817, Shaka had been forced to flee his home as Zwide’s Ndwandwe attacked repeatedly – and he found himself south of the Thukela. He needed to forge a stronger relationship with the people to the north, and in particular the Qwabe who were found south of Umhlatuzi river, near his mother’s clan, the Langeni. What doomed Phakathwayo was the fact that his older brothers were gumbling about their treatment – he’d scuffled with his brother Nomo – while their father Khondlo was still alive. Nomo was the heir designate, but Nomo’s mother was an Mthethwa, not a full-blooded Qwabe. The Qwabe powers that be thought this disqualified Nomo. He duly headed off to Dingiswayo of the Mthethwa for help, although their first impi was defeated by Phakathwayo. Shaka was lurking by now, and some Qwabe had crossed over to join him, recognizing a powerful man in the making I guess. One was Sophane kaMcinci and the other was Nqetho kaMcinci – both khonza’d Shaka just before Phakathwayo was to face his sternest test. Right now, we need to swing back to the Cape. We left off in 1812, with the British Governor Sir John Cradock having used the Boers to great effect and subdued the Albany amaXhosa. He had named the new town of Grahamstown after his military steamroller, Lieutenant colonel John Graham. Both men had happily sent the trekboers as their shock troops to rid the Albany thickets of the amaXhosa and rebellious Khoekhoe. Jacob Cuyler, the Uitenhage landdrost, had taken to appreciating the Boers hard life, and had changed his view from calling them “a set of vagabonds and murderers…” to embracing their world view.

By the 1810s, Zwide had built a powerful centralized kingdom and reinforced this power using his extensive family. He also formed feared amabutho such as the amaPhela, the abaHlakabezi, and isiKwitshi and the amaNkaiya. Most of these were around before Shaka became king of the Zulus, and the Ndwandwe were so large that they split into semi-autonomous sections such as the Nxumalo, the Manqele and the Phiseni. At first, Zwide concentrated has raids to the north, around modern day Iswatini. The Ndwande attacked Sobhuza of the Dlamini-Swazi north of the Phongolo River many times, but the 1815 attack was characterized by extreme violence. Sobhuza was forced to flee along with his umuzi and his people were almost destroyed. The description of the ill will makes little sense because Zwide had married off one of his daughters to Sobhuza. The Dlamini were already facing raids from the east, from closer to Delagoa Bay. The Ndwandwe were regarded as bandits and destabilized that part of southern Africa, then turned their attention further South. Zwide attacked the Khumalo people living between the Mkhuze and White Mfolozi rivers and eventually, Donda of the Khumalo was killed by Zwide. The year 1815 is seen as highly significant because it was then that Matiwane of the Ngwane was driven out of what he’d thought was a well-defended area between the Bivane River and Upper Mfolozi. Matiwane relaxed after some years of building his power base, including concluding an alliance with the Hlubi and then the Mthethwa. Out of the blue, Zwide dispatched his men and they fell upon the amaNgwane, driving them out of their homes. This moment is regarded as the first of many destabilizing events between the Thukela and the Ponghola that led to a movement of people across the country – the sub-continent, and migration epic oral storytelling. It’s called the Mfecane.

This is episode 71 and Shaka has just been installed as the Zulu regent in 1812. There is even debate about this as the year – some say it was more like 1816. However, I believe historian Dan Wylie’s earlier date is probably the right one – by the way 1812 is the same year that Napoleon advanced on Moscow in his disastrous Russian campaign. How dating worked in southern Africa prior to the use of the Gregorian calendar requires quite a bit of explanation. Folks have asked me how this all worked, how did the Khoekhoe or the Zulu keep track of important months. They didn’t really think in days as you’re going to hear. It's quite a story, and so let’s start with Traders Francis Farewell and Henry Francis Fynn. They fixed Shaka’s installation as Zulu chief happening in 1816 because once again we don’t really have a firm year if you anlayse this using the Zulu lunar calendar. Farewell and Fynn came to a different year, 1816, by counting the number of annual umkosi or first fruits ceremonies that Shaka was supposed to have officiated – which was 8 before the hunters arrived in 1824. Zulu oral tradition marked months peppered with important events – birth of a king, death of a king, a drought, a flood. And before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, the isuZulu calendar was mainly based on the cycles of the moon, like many cultures across the globe. Zulu months are dated from the appearance of the new moon – which means that months are 28 days long and there are 13 months in the year. The Zulu names of the months are usually derived from phenomena occurring in the natural world. Take the first month of the Zulu year which begins with the new moon of July, uNcwaba, which means glossy green or attractive – perhaps linked to the fact that the Zulu burn the veld on the mountains at that time, and the first shoots that appear after the burn are a deep green.In pre-modern society, the moon was also crucial.

This is episode 70 and we’re walking with Shaka. He spent the bulk of his early and teenage years in Zulu country, that area to the north of the Umhlatuzi, between the Langeni and the white Mfolozi rivers. Towards the end of his youth things became increasingly difficult for him, although the history is rather murky. There are hints in oral tradition as to what was going on, and specific events can only be covered in a tentative manner. The relationship between the Zulu and the Langeni people was complicated. Mgabhi the chief of the Langeni was independently minded, and Senzangakhona was trying to compete with him for the allegiance of others nearby, including the Mthethwa who were the power bloc in the region. There were also the Thuli to the north east, between the Langeni and the Mthethwa zone of control. Mghabi died in around 1795, Shaka’s uncle on his mothers side, Nxazonke took over as regent until one of Mgabhi’s sons’ came of age. Nxazonke appointed Mfundeko as the new chief but the majority of the Langeni preferred Makhedama, or at least, that’s according to Zulu oral tradition. It was Makhedama who’d been known as Shaka’s bully as a boy, and the story of how he apparently insulted Shaka continued. When Makhedama arrived to take up his position after living amongst the Xulu people, his attendant by the name of Nsindwane played a belittling game – this story is really an allegory folks because its highly unlikely that post-adolescents would have played this game called Stones in a Kraal. Given the inevitable Zulu oral tradition debate – this is what is likely to have happened. Senzangakhona was sent for by Dingiswayo and he showed up sometime after the Nkomo incident with his senior Zulu council Mudhli and the amakosikazi, his great wives. A hut was set apart for him, and he duly sat inside meeting with Dingiswayo. Then a large number of young men entered on a prearranged signal, and amongst them was Shaka.

This is episode 69 and we’re hunting the origins of Shaka. Throughout the area north of the Thukela River the main medium of exchange in terms of goods was no longer cattle by 1810 – it was beads. These glass objects manufactured in Europe had flowed through southern Africa starting in the first days of contact between Europe and Africa – way back in 1480s. More than 300 years later, these beads could be found in every corner of the continent. And one of those corners was Zululand. By the time of Shaka’s rise, starting in the second decade of the 19th Century, beads had become one the main medium of exchange paticularly when a man acquired a wife – lobolo, in conjunction with cattle. But beads were not the only trade item, things like copper and iron were mined locally and traded as well, while the people along the coast were expert at salvaging these metals from the numerous ship wrecks that dotted the Indian Ocean sands from north of Mozambique to Cape. Metals were directly linked to status. As you’ve heard in our earliest podcasts, African people were using iron and copper as ornaments – and the metals were worn by warriors as a sign of bravery. So trade with Europeans was therefore directly associated with the stratification of society from the earliest days with the most important members owning the most copper and brass, gold and even iron. However, there was not enough trade with Delagoa Bay to say with certainty that trade in these kinds of products alone drove the amaNdwandwe and the amaMthethwa, then the AmaZulu, to rise as powerful centralized kingdoms. Major trading emanated from Delagoa Bay, and the Dutch took advantage of this. Ivory was the main product, not slaves, with beads exchanged in return. Gold dust was also traded from far in the interior. Tsonga traders from around Delagoa Bay pitched up as far south as the Mfolozi River. Some made it 1500km into the interior!

We heard last episode how the fourth Frontier War of 1811/12 had been a short sharp affair and the anger bubbling away amongst amaXhosa leadership about the brutal emptying of the Albany district, so recently called the Zuurveld. We need to close a chapter here for a while to return to the incredible happenings further north east as Shaka began to impose himself along with Dingiswayo on the people of the region north of the amaThukela – that part of the country which goes by the name of Zululand. Before doing so, that commando which had been created to force the straggling amaXhosa out of the Albany district led by Lieutenant Colonel John Graham’s fellow Cape Regiment officer, Captain George Fraser. Cattle raiding was increasing sharply by the end of 1812 despite the amaXhosa being removed, or mostly removed, from the district, but the drought which really began to bite in 1813 had forced many back into the green pastures. The harsh landscape seemed to evince more brutality from both sides, a country thorny and unwelcome, prickly with succulents, stubby bush that tripped up the fleetest footed horse, dark moody ravines, rocky unproductive mountains, almost surly with looming geological sedimentary brows. By now, the Boers had developed a real fear about what the British intentions were in their land. Many believed that Governor Cradock had called them out simply to press them into military action, they were expendable in his English eyes. While the Khoekhoe, amaXhosa, English and Boer were slugging it out in the Cape, the powerful centralized kingdoms were beginning to build a name for themselves further north east. In the years between 1800 and 1810, there is a curious gap in the knowledge of what happened between the Thukela and Pongola river catchment areas. While we have a great deal of oral history before this period, and afterwards, the ten years saw a combination of world events affected documentary evidence output for this region.

Graham’s war in the Eastern Cape had sent the amaXhosa hurrying eastwards over the Great Fish River, with Ndlambe settling near where East London is today. Not surprisingly, however, the 1812 explusions caused an increase in cattle raiding rather than more stability because the power of the chiefs had been removed from the area. While the British were putting their faith into the Rharhabe chief Ngqika, he was now a weak leader and no longer appeared to represent the views of the amaXhosa. By now, the local ladndrost Cuyler and all British officials had preconceived notions of good Ngqika, bad Ndlambe to put it simply. They were going to be obstinate in their dislike of the latter despite his repeated attempts at making a separate peace with the Colony. The war of 1811 and 12 was brief but of unprecedented ferocity. The amaXhosa chiefs request to stay on until the summer crops were fully harvested was deliberately turned down “We chose the season of corn being on the ground…” said Graham. In the years immediately following 1812, political leadership passed from the hands of the chiefs into the hands of prophet-figures. As we know from contemporary politics, popularists are bit like prophets, they lead with a simple message and have enablers that spread the message. It was now the time of wardoctors – traditional medicine men and some women. These wardoctors were ancient, they’d been credited over time with the ability to turn spears into water, and the people were searching for a solution to the colonists guns.

This is episode 66 – it’s late 1811 and Sir John Cradock has just dispatched Lieutenant Colonel John Graham into the eastern Cape frontier to rid the Zuurveld of the amaXhosa. Cradock suffered from none of his predecessors inhibition against taking military action. This did not reflect a change of policy in London – in fact, far from it. As you’ll hear next podcast he was subsequently reprimanded by the government and sharply reminded that his main aim was to keep all the troops available for the defence of Cape Town. But the colonists applauded him, along with Major Jacob Cuyler the Uitenhage landdrost. As you heard last episode, by December Graham had assembled 167 light dragoons, 221 infantry of the line, 431 men of the Cape Regiment and a detachment of Royal Artillery. His troops were joined by 450 mounter burgher volunteers on commando and about 500 of their agteryers. Anders Stockenstrom, the landdrost of Graaff-Reinet, had been posted north of the Zuurveld with the trekboers, just beyond the Zuurveld proper, in order to defend Bruintje’s Hoogte and its farms. When he received Graham’s message on the night of 27th, he questioned the wisdom of concentrating all the British firepower on the thickets.

This is episode 65 and we’ll spend time with the amaXhosa, and hear about Lieutenant Colonel John Graham. I mentioned last episode that he was going to introduce what he would call a proper degree of terror in the Zuurveld where the British adopted an ethnic cleansing campaign in 1811 and 1812. All the important players in this terrible drama have been met – Jacob Cuyler the Uitenhage landdrost, Governor Cradock, Ngqika, Ndlambe, Chungwa of the Gqunukhwebe, Stockenstrom of Graaff-Reinet. So when Cradock, who’d been dispatched to southern Africa after being removed as commander of the English forces in the Spanish Peninsular, decided to launch his own military excursion, he believed the might of the European musket and military would easily overcome the amaXhosa. It was now a matter of selecting someone to bring what he called “the horrible savages” to order. Jacob Cuyler was first on the list as the landdrost in the Zuurveld, and a former military man himself. He had experience of the area and was initially thought of as the likely candidate to lead an operation of this kind. Instead, Cradock selected Lieutenant Colonel John Graham. The Governor had only been in the Cape for three weeks and wanted to personally brief the officer involved – and was also aware of the propensity for the colonials on the frontier to default to cattle raiding instead of conducting a proper war. Because he was in a rush and there would have been no time to head off to Uitenhage, or to have Cuyler come to Cape Town for a briefing, that meant John Graham got the job. Between 1793 and 1811, Chungwa had managed to negotiate the thorny relationship with three different colonial governments, and with the trekboers. In the 1780s Chungwa and his father Tshaka had firmly established the area between the Fish and the Sunday’s Rivers as Gqunukhwebe territory. Just for orientation, the Sunday’s River flows into Algoa Bay near Port Elizabeth, or Gqeberha as we call it today.

This is episode 64 and we’ve rejoined Lieutenant colonel Richard Collins and Governor Caledon in Cape Town. If you remember last episode we heard about Collins’ military intelligence gathering trip to the eastern Frontier.He’d returned with two main ideas about what to do about the amaXhosa still living in the Zuurveld. His report of 6th August 1809 is another one of those key moments in South African history. In response, Caledons first initiative was to setup a mechanism to regulate the employment of the Khoekhoe labour force called the Hottentot Proclamation of November 1809. The Caledon Code as it became known decreed that work-contracts had to be drawn up before a magistrate, thus according the Khoekhoe some form of legal protection from exploitation. But this was negated almost immediately by the fine print – that the Khoekhoe had to register a fixed place of abode which forbid their movement without a certificate issued by a landdrost. The pass system’s first proper installation was at hand. This meant the Khoekhoe had to live and work on farms which meant they could no longer live the life they’d been used to roaming about on the landscape which they’d done for thousands of years. However, Caledon was loathe to enforce Collin’s second proposal. In the interest of preserving peace in the eastern districts, all future contact between colonists and amaXhosa would be prevented by expelling all amaXhosa beyond the Fish River. And he went further. As some former VOC and British officials had suggested, he wanted a rigid boundary backed up by powerful fortifications along the river. Lord Caledon’s response was negative -but he had also resigned. And now, at this crucial juncture, a new Governor arrived. Lieutenant-General Sir John Cradock with one D disembarked in Cape Town on 5th September 1811. It took him only three weeks to declare war on the amaXhosa. He was a man of action, a military man, and he was being advised by fellow soldiers.

Last episode we spent some time back in Zululand hearing about the amaMthethwa, the amaNdwandwe, the amaHlubi, the amaQwabe and that tiny little chiefdom called the amaZulu. They were largely irrelevant in the history of South Africa at the time, until Zwide’s amaNdwandwe began pushing southwards into Mthethwa territory. Then Dingiswayo’s amaMthethwa needed to bolster their flank and that’s when the AmaZulu became much more important. We’ll also return to the Cape where Governor Caledon was going to send a military man into the frontier to collect intelligence. First, it’s time to feel the ancients, smell the south eastern coastal regions of the Zulu once more, my homeland. By the time of Shaka’s emergence as a teenager, the area was covered with thousands of scattered imizi, looking like circular villages if seen from the air, dotted through the countryside. Each married man or umnumzane lived in each of these umuzi with his two or three wives and children. A man of extreme wealth may have up to a dozen wives, and the umuzi would look more like a large compound with a dozen or more huts. The changes coming which we’ll hear about in future podcasts were under way before Shaka, but he put the finishing touches on the system. This was to gain control of the self-sufficient imizi by regulating marriage. IN Zulu society, an adult man could not free himself from his father’s umuzi and head off to establish his own homestead without marriage. In October 1808, the Jij rebellion or “she” rebellion, broke out when the enslaved people of the Cape rose up. It wasn’t all slaves and Khoe involved, there were two Irishmen who joined the uprising. Meanwhile the Fish River was the key to security so Governor Caledon sent 33 year-old lieutenant colonel Richard Collins to spy on the amaXhosa.

We’re hustling towards the year 1807. If you remember last episode, we heard that the young Shaka had grown up in amaZulu chief Senzangakona’s house – the Zulu chief – but by 1802 he’d fled. By the early 1800s only about 2000 people were part of the AmaZulu and they lived between the upper Umhlatuzi and white Umfolozi Rivers. Remember that Shaka who was Senzangakona’s illegitimate son, was showing signs of being a troublemaker, at least that’s the view of oral historians, and by now the future amaZulu king was in his late teens. Senzangakona planned to kill him, but he got wind of the plan and fled to Jobe kaKayi who was a well known nkosi of the Mthethwa. While he languished at Jobe’s kraal, Shaka knew that the accepted route to power for all men was honour in battle, this increased his attractiveness to women, his standing in society, and as a child who’d lived a constant life of what was seen as his mother’s dishonour, he was motivated to set the record straight. He’d been living with his mother Nandi in the Mhlathuze Valley where the Langeni people resided – close to where I lived as a child by the way. Here, growing up fatherless, traditional story tellers recount how Shaka was the victim of humiliation and cruel treatment by the Langeni children, The rivalry between the amaMthethwa and the amaNdwandwe under Zwide was notorious. Then to make matters worse, the countryside was riven by the Great Famine in 1802 known as the Madlantule. We’re still hovering around the first decade of the 19th Century, and a great deal was going on back along the Cape frontiers. So let’s head back to the Zuurveld. In 1809 Ngqika took the egregious misstep that changed the balance of power among the Xhosa chiefdoms of the frontier.

This is episode 61 and the English are back in Cape Town. This was a momentous moment for southern Africa. Gone was the VOC and its chaos, in its place a world superpower had arrived and it was going to exploit the region in various ways over the next century. This led much later in the 19th Century to what became known as the Scramble for Africa. In January 1807 David Baird who’d seized the Cape made the great mistake of sending an expedition under Brigadier General Beresford and Commodore Sir Home Popham against Buenos Aires without the approval of the authorities in England. As soon as this became known, Baird was court-martialled and hustled back to Britain handing over the reigns of power to Irish Peer, Du prez Alexander, second Earl of Caledon. While the Governors were playing 19th Century musical chairs, in the eastern Cape at Uitenhague the new landdrost Jacob Cuyler was beginning to improse himself. As an embittered loyalist who’d been forced to flee his homeland of America during the revolution, he was going to seek conflict immediately with the missionaries at Bethelsdorp On November 1st 1808, Caledon offered a compromise in dealing with the issue of labour, and the Khoekhoe. It offered the Khoekhoe the full protection of the law,and at the same time, tried to satisfy the demand for labour. From that date onwards, Khoekhoe employed by farmers had to be given written contracts that stipulated their wages. Caledon’s law, which became a kind of Magna Carta for the Khoekhoe, stipulated further that the contract had to be for a year, and farm workers could not be forced to stay on longer because of debt or because of any other subterfuge. As with all laws, however, there was a catch. The Khoekhoe at the same time had to stop wandering around like their ancestors and settle down. Their nomadic lifestyle, shattered already by the arrival of colonialism, was now prescribed.

Its January 1806 and the British have dispatched a fleet of 61 vessels to Cape Town under the charge of Commodore Home Popham to seize the port. As you’ve heard that was after the war between England and France reignited in 1805 after a the briefest of lulls. On the 2nd October 1805 Admiral Nelson overcame the combined French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar and his victory helped put some of the fears of an invasion of England to rest. But this meant Cape Town and other colonial backwaters faced more ambitious projects Seven thousand troops were going to be deposited on the shores of the Peninsular. The fleet had arrived off Losperd’s Bay, now called Melkbosstrand, twenty five kilometers north west of Cape Town. The wild Atlantic surf was heavy and 36 members of the Highland brigade drowned that morning when their boat capsized – leading to a quote from Captain Graham last episode where he said all went down singing. Perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration – they were probably screaming for help but Graham is infamous for his histrionics as you’ll hear. The British troops were armed with muskets and their usual regimental colours, including feathers, plumes and pompoms. Waiting for them was Dutch Governor Janssens and he was not welcoming. He had 1700 troops – 1258 of them regulars but his problem was all were unreliable. Erratic displays of courage had been the bane of the VOC Governors lives for 200 years already so no surprise there. Meanwhile, the missionaries James Read and Johannes van der Kemp were made aware of the arrival of a new master. At first, the two thought of it as an act of God in their favour, and just in time.

The Batavians trying to setup a formal long-term administration that was rooted inside the Cape rather than in Europe. Unfortunately, their tenure was to be short. International events were conspiring to upset this plan – with the renewal of the war between the English and the French – old enemies with a propensity for blood-letting. While the Cape was safe from immediate attack by the English until 1805, the effect of a world war could not be escaped. Some would feel the effects less than others, and these some were living in the area we now call Zululand. It’s not generally well-known but African monarchy of various forms is an ancient institution in the continent. There were the Negus of Ethiopia, the Kyabazinga of Busoga, the Mwenemutapa of Mutapa whom we’ve heard about already, the Ngwenyana of Swaziland, the mubongo of Matamba, the ngola of Ndongo, the alafin of Oyo, abosu of Dahomey, the emir of Ilorin, the sarki of Kano, the sultan of Sokoto, the bey of Tunis. Mostly male, often the societies would be led by a woman of exceptional power despite the patriarchies. Power was localized, in the form of chiefs. A paramount chief ruled more widely although those on the periphery of his power would likely vascillate more than those in the centre. The most powerful of these leaders would be called King, ruling over a large territory in a centralized state and commanding an army. For the Zulu, King Goodwill Zwelethini who passed away in 2021 was only the eighth Zulu monarch since the Kingdom formally began in 1816. By the standards of the amaXhosa, they are newcomers on the southern African power bloc. Senzangakhona was the father of Shaka, and his father was Jama, and his great-grandfather was Ndaba. Before Ndaba, oral tradition takes over from oral history as John Laband points out and various royal genealogies surface.

For on 18th May 1803, ten days after Janssens had reached Algoa Bay on his long journey overland to the frontier from Cape Town, Malta in the Mediterranean became a flashpoint. This little island was the first step on a Mediterranean passage from Europe to India as far as both Napoleon and the British were concerned. Under the Treaty of Amiens, Britain undertook to hand Malta back to the Knights of St John, who had ruled it before Napoleon and the British began fighting over it. But then the British had a change of heart as they watched Napoleon continue to consolidate control over Europe - the Batavian Republic was virtually his vassal state. English Prime Minister Pitt had vacillated over the Cape’s return to the Dutch, now he was convinced it had been a mistake as war clouds gathered once more. As Historian Eric Walker notes, the period of direct rule by the Batavian Republic is one of the more tantalizing in South African history. Some regard it as the dawn of a golden age, all too soon overcast by the second coming of the British. The reason is pretty simple. The Batavians wanted the Cape to be a permanent place of itself so to speak – rather than a thing dangling at the end of a colonial master.

Last episode we dealt with the arrival of the new representatives of the Batavian Republic who’d come to take over the Cape Colony from the British. While the British received commissioner-General Jacob Abraham Uitenhage de Mist who was a brilliant organizer and administrator, things did not go well at first. de Mist was to install a new administration then hand over to a new governor called Lieutenant-General Jan Wilhelm Janssens once the new executive and judicial machinery were in place. So the idea was for the British to hand over power formally on the evening of 31st December 1803 so that the Dutch would begin their Batavian Republic rule on the 1st January 1803. As both sets of officials dined together on New Years’ Eve, a British ship hove into view and anchored. Then an urgent message was sent ashore. British governor Dundas was told to defer the transfer of ownership of the Cape until further notice. These orders had sailed from England on 17th October, a week after the Dutch officials had left Holland for Cape Town. By 18th April 1803 a Dutch military force arrived by sea at Algoa Bay to take over Fort Frederick, while Governor Janssens rode out to the Fort all the way from Cape Town. He eventually arrived at Algoa Bay on 8th May well versed by now in some of the settler narratives. The position on the frontier had changed completely compared to 50 years earlier. Now large groups of Rarabe amaXhosa were in the Zuurveld particularly those following Ndlambe. He had well and truly split from his nephew Ngqika and their difference of opinion was violent. For the trekboers and other settlers, Ndlambe was a major problem because he was regarded as the best amaXhosa military leader and now he was living west of the Fish River. Remember the main aims for all colonial governments since the first trekkers arrived in the eastern Cape was to remove all amaXhosa from the Zuurveld.

Last episode we heard about Doctor Somerville’s expedition to Dithakong which was interesting but a failure in terms of its main aim. That was to secure cattle – he came back with only around 160 or so when the Cape needed a few hundred at least. Also on the move was the London Missionary Society’s Johannes Theodorus van der Kemp – remember him? He had arrived in Graaff-Reinet in May 1801 joined by James Read replacing poor Edmonds who had a nervous breakdown while at Ngqika’s Great Place. After the barren prothelytising disappointments of the Zuurveld, Graaff-Reinet offered something new. The village and its outskirts were packed with Khoekhoe seeking protection from the Boers and the Khoesan bandits and who responded eagerly to the van der Kemp’s preaching. ON hand was commissioner Maynier – encouraging and helping them. Staring at all of this and aghast, were the Boers of the region. It was a seething hotbed of trekboer resistance to British rule. Maynier’s principal task was to restore stability along the frontier. This meant getting the fugitive Boers back on their farms and reviving the economy so that they could supply meat to the Cape. Unfortunately for the Khoekhoe, it also meant convincing them to go back and work for the trekboers. To help balance things and motivate the Khoe, Maynier opened an employment register where wages were written down for the first time. Cases of ill-treatment of workers were also listed and there was recourse to the law. It’s easy enough to criticize this treatment, what about the Khoe abused by the Boers you’d ask? Were they not to receive justice? Ndlambe was on the lamb after escaping from Ngqika’s Great Place in February 1800 and had reunited with his adherent in the Zuurveld. He was reestablishing his power at the same time but it was hard work. Chungwa of the amaGqunukhwebe was resisting his advances both metaphorically and physically.

Welcome back to the History of South Africa podcast, with me your host Des Latham - this episode 55. We’ll follow Doctor William Somerville on his way home from the expedition you heard about last episode and there’s a lot of action. First we’ll spend time with the Scots doctor as he spent time at Dithakong, that Great Tswana city of the Tlhaping. They had entered Griqua country By November 21st and made their way towards Dithakong cautiously. First they sent a guide ahead “…the inform the Horde of the Briquas of our arrival and to invite them to come to our encampment… The whole fate of our expedition depending upon the impression that our messenger should make upon his countrymen…” They waited anxiously. Remember this long and arduous trip was ostensibly to buy cattle from the Griqua and the Tswana and so far all they had found was drought. Things were not looking very good. On the evening of the 21st November 1801 the messenger returned with information that the Chief would see them. But not before the people had fled as the messenger was wearing western clothes. That tells you something – the people who’d visited in European outfits were usually raiding or pillaging. Eventually, on the 6th May 1802, Somerville and Truter’s six wagons made it back to Cape Town after seven months spent traveling slowly across the vast southern African semi-desert of the northern Cape.

World events has once again conspired to interrupt the flow of events in southern Africa by the early 1800s. The British were going to withdraw from the Cape of Good Hope and their move began far away in Ireland. As part of the price for Irish agreement to parliamentary union with Britain in 1800, Prime Minister William Pitt had promised to liberate Roman Catholics from the restrictions of their civil liberties imposed since the 16th Century . Three hundred years of English yoke through Protestantism was seen through a very religious and nationalist lens in Ireland. The future of the Cape was in great doubt. Lord Nelson was one of those voicing his opinion that the Peninsular was of no real use. Back in sunny Southern Africa circa 1800, great powers were beginning to emerge across the landscape. And extremely sunny it was in 1800 because parts of southern Africa were gripped by a terrible drought. Across the northern regions of the Cape, the Namaqualand and along the Orange River, the Afrikaander gang led by Khoesan leader Jonker Afrikaander was going village to village, homestead to homestead, and plundering as they went. The severe dought meant that the Boer commando’s couldn’t operate effectively so it increased banditry across the frontiers. But it also meant that the groups of Khoe and Khoesan who’d been trying to disentangle themselves from both the trekboers and the British, and even the local Tswana people, were forced to operate along the great river. The expedition also found it very difficult to locate water. What they did find record was signs of anarchy caused by both the drought and the Afrikaander groups who’d descended on the Griqua and Tswana – wiping out villages as they went. I have the diary of William Somerville who jointly led the expedition with chief commissioner PJ Truter – and an interesting 200 or so pages it is.

This episode we return to the eastern coastal region of what would become Zululand – but first we’ll cover the trekboers quick getaway in the Zuurveld. It’s crazy town time at Ngqika’s Great Place after Ndlambe his uncle makes off westwards and the Khoe in the area decide it’s time to fight the trekboers once more. By the end of 1800 Coenraad de Buys had convinced all trekboers and the missionary Van Der Kemp it was time to leave the amaXhosa king’s /Great Place before he killed them all. Ngqika’s vascillations between were unnerving and so when de Buys suggested they all leave through a cunning plan he had devised, Van Der Kemp was ready to go. The reason is not too difficult to fathom. In more than a year of prothelitising, Van der Kemp had managed a scant conversion of five Khoekhoe women and their children. Not one amaXhosa had converted to Christianity, furthermore, van Der Kemp had been forbidden to preach to the amaXhosa. And the Boers living in the Great Place were also no help – in fact while his back was turned some were helping themselves to his property and were caught doing this. However, it’s time to leave our intrepid missionary and to head back north eastwards, to what would become known as Zululand. Up to 1800 the situation on the coastal section and the plateau had been radically transformed and this transformation would accelerate over the coming years. There were three overlapping phases of change taking place starting from the last quarter of the 18th Century and running through until after 1870 with the British Zulu wars dominating events in the latter period.

We’re heading into a new and most momentous century – the 1800s. When we left off last episode, Ngqika was still trying to decide what to do about the missionaries camping near his Great Place – somewhere east of King Williamstown and south of Hogsback today. The British had managed to stabilize the Eastern Cape at the end of 1799 but this was a false peace as you’re going to hear. Coenraad de Buys the giant Trekboer was still living with Ngqika and muttering sweet horribles into his ear about the English, the trekboers of Graaff-Reinet were deep in their cups of resentment. The amaXhosa in the Zuurveld, Chungwa of the amaGnunukhwebe for example, were smiling smugly having apparently secured their rights to the grasses of the Eastern Cape west of the Fish River from the British much to the chagrin of the local trekboers. Ngqika’s lethal impulses were growing more difficult to gauge and the missionaries were becoming more afraid by the day. They truly believed they would not make it out of the Great Place alive. De Buys too realized that he was in immediate danger. But the cunning man had a few tricks left after Ngqika’s chief councillor arrived with the news that the king would no longer admit de Buys to his presence.

So this war was set off by the blunt British instrument called Packenham Vandeleur as we heard in Episode 50. The Zuurveld farmers were now in a defenceless state since their supply of powder and lead had been stopped by the British who were trying to stymie the Graaff-Reinet trekboer rebels. Some Khoe and Bastaard were also fighting with the amaXhosa who had been confronted by Vandeleur on the Sunday’s River. To use a more modern and yet English phrase, everything had gone pear shaped. By now 29 settlers had been killed by the amaxhosa and Khoe uprising, the survivors were on the run towards the Gamtoos River where Jeffrey’s Bay is today. As for Vandeleur, he had lost the initiative and was pinned down with 200 troops in his camp near the Swartkops River just north of Port Elizabeth stroke Gqbetha. He’d built a large starshaped earthwork to repel the amaXhosa attacks and his men were running short of provisions. The ships in Algoa Bay had left, so he was stranded. Then the war ended - and no-one except Chungwa of the amaGqunukhwebe got what they wanted in the Zuurveld. So he naturally responded by co-operating with the British colonial authorities in trying to police the region against cattle thieves whether Khoe or amaXhosa. Or he collaborated to use a loaded 20th Century phrase much loved by the bourgeois guerrilla chic. Meanwhile the LMS missionaries had arrived at Ngqika’s Great Place close to the Thyume and Keiskamma Rivers in September 1799. That would be South of Hogsback and East of Fort Beaufort today. However their reception was not a good one.

This is episode 50 and the British have mobilized the dragoons to end a trekboer uprising in Graaff-Reinet. That will spark what is known as the Third Frontier War. But first we'll have a quick look at a powerful party that arrived in 1799 that was going to change everything on the frontier. The Missionaries. The idea started earlier, on November 4th 1794, when a small group gathered in Baker’s Coffee House, Change Alley, London. The outcome of this gathering was the London Missionary Society which was formed to “attend the funeral of bigotry and propagate the gospel among the heathen…” It was to be of no particular religious denomination and launched as an umbrella organization which would be left to “the minds of the Persons whom God may call .. to assume for themselves such form of Church government as to them shall appear most agreeable to the word of God…” These people would be hated by the colonists eventually as you’re going to hear. Then the trekboers in the Zuurveld – the eastern Cape - rebelled once more in 1799 – with the elderly Adriaan van Jaarsveld freed from British captivity by the rebels as he was dragged back to Cape town to face a trial for fraud. But the British did manage to cobble together a detachment of Dragoons as you know which was shipped to Algoa Bay and ordered to crush this uprising of around 200 trekboers. The grandly named Brigadier-General Thomas Packenham Vandeleur landed on the scenic shores of Algoa Bay along with his blue-jacketed dragoons and fifty "Hottentot" Corps soldiers dressed in the finest British military tunics.

This is episode 49 and Khoe and Oorlam Afrikaaner uprising of 1799. Keep in mind at this point in South African history, Afrikaaners are the mixed race band of former Khoe, mixed race, slaves and Namaqua living in the northern Hantam and at times, raiding Namaqualand. When we left off last episode things were sliding towards war as the settlers of the Hantam and the Khoe were thrown into chaos. This episode we’ll hear also pick up the story further east in the Zuurveld where Coenraad de Buys who’d taken to living amongst the Khoe and basters. His fortunes had been mixed but changed after 1795 when Xhosa chief Ngqika who’d recently defeated his uncle Ndlambe, decided he must acquire a white advisor to help him obtain guns and horses. 1799 was a momentous year in Southern Africa history as you’re going to hear because not only did the Khoe rise up and the Boers, further north the proto-Zulu groups of the Mthethwa and Ndwandwe were also growing their power quickly.

This is episode 48 and we’re following the sagas of the Visagies and others in the Hantam, that rough and ready part of the northern Cape. This chaotic land had spawned another by the name of Petrus Pienaar of the Afrikaaners. Regarded as one of the most influential men of the frontier, Pienaar emerged as the spokesman of the Hantammers. He was closely linked to the Afrikaaner Oorlams from at least the 1780s and was capable of incredible feats of physical endurance even by the standards of the day. In 1790 he wrote a letter to the Landdrost of Stellenbosch outlining the crisis in the Hantam and suggesting solutions. Some of these would be what we now call .. a final solution particularly when it came to the San. He wanted more firearms and ammunition delivered to the local Interestingly, Pienaar wanted the mixed people – those who were known as the Bastaards and as he said “both baptised and unbaptised” – to be supplied with firearms along with the farmers. Meanwhile the authorities in the Cape launched what would eventually become a settler tradition in South Africa – the passbook system. It meant carrying a pass, or Inboek as it was known in the 1790s, where Khoesan and Bastaards entering the Cape had to carry this document, and were prohibited buying arms from the trekboers. Ironically, Klaas Afrikaaner was soon registered as a Hottentot Corps as a Khoikhoi chief in 1793. This will come as a surprise of struggle political experts, who view Klaas as a kind of forerunner of the ANC and SWAPO in Namibia. He actually was a collaborationist – along with his followers which will disappoint fundamentalists across the race divide. SWAPO saw Klaas Afrikaaner as a proto-Namibian nationalist, resisting white power, but it was his descendants who would be synonymous as colonial resisters in the 19th and 20th Century. Right now they were collaborators - but not for long.

This is episode 47 and we are concentrating on a mysterious and contradicted part of southern Africa, the Hantam. We’re also going to meet a German sailor who’d deserted and ran away to the Orange River in the 1780s by the name of Jan Bloem. He worked as an overseer, a Knecht, at Sandfontein farm owned by Petrus Pienaar. Groups of white hunters were also now resident in the area to the south of the Orange by this stage and we’ve already heard about how the Kora, the Griqua and the Oorlams had begun moving into areas dominated by the Great Namaqua. Now we’re going to drill down into examples of how lives intersected particularly about the important trekboer Adriaan van Jijl of the Hantam. This district derived its name from the solitary mountain at the northwestern edge of the Onder Roggeveld. To the south west lay the Bokkeveld Mountains, to the north west Namaqualand. And between Hantam Mountain and the Orange River which lay due north were miles of Bushmanland. Today’s modern town of Calvinia is just south of Hantams Piek.By 1790 the complaints of white inhabitants in the Bokkeveld became a chorus – alarmingly groups of Khoekhoe were trekking to and from the Orange River with herds and flocks of livestock in search of good grazing. The trekboers in these areas watched with misgiving and it must have been nerve wracking watch these large groups of people appear on the land with their even larger herds. We'll also hear about Elsie Visagie had trekked from the Orange River to Cape Town with a few Khoe servants as companions in 1791 – it’s almost 900 kilometres - but the folks were tough back in the day. She had some cattle and two wagon loads of products. When Elsie Visagie was ordered to Stellenbosch to give evidence in connection with raids her husband had apparently carried out, she ended up under house arrest.

This is episode 46 and it’s about Namaqualand, the Oorlam Afrikaaners and the Griquas But first a note about the British occupation. We know that they arrived in 1795, defeated the Dutch forces and then attempted to take control of events on the frontiers. As the Dutch had found, this was not an easy undertaking. The new Governor Sir George Yonge had replaced the acting Governor Macartney and Yonge was a stiff formal Englishman. But he was also a man of ideas and experimented with farming, and believe it or not, vaccinations. The smallpox epidemic earlier in the 18th Century had decimated the Khoekhoe and white population and he didn’t want a return of the dreaded disease. Many on the frontier took issue with both his farm experiments and his vaccination campaign – yes folks, there were anti-vaxxers around 220 years ago. We heard about the Einiqua, the Korana and the people first called the Bastaards who were to become the Griqua. As the 18th Century progressed, the frontier began to close on the latter people, even in Namaqualand that zone between the mountains and the sea west of Bushmanland. These fugitives began to form themselves in different groups of what were initially called drosters. This is a word from the Dutch word Drossen, to run away or desert. They became the symbol of the Cape frontier and their influence on the local Einiqua, the Khoisan societies, was considerable. They were mostly disruptive, disturbing an ancient equilibrium. One of the most influential of the Oorlam groups by the end of the 18th Century was the Griqua who were descended from the remnants of the original Grigriqua Khoekhoe. The founding father of the Griqua Khoekhoe was Adam Kok the First, who is believed to have been a freed slave. The last group I’ll mention this episode were far more malevolent and far less welcome at least as far as the Cape authorities were concerned. They were known as the Afrikaaners.

This is episode 45 and it’s time to turn our attention to Namaqualand. This is an area which is not spoken of very often, the wild northern frontier where bandits rode oxen and escaped slaves, white ex-soldiers and black clans joined forces – or fought each other. The brigands and Badlands here are exotic to say the least as you’re going to hear. Folks fixate on the tales from the eastern Cape frontier for good reason that’s true. And yet, much of the rich history of southern Africa encompasses the Orange River and its tributaries as well as the Namaqualand, the Karoo, the mystical and mythical geography lending beauty to what was an extraordinarily dangerous period in the last quarter of the 18th Century. As you know by now, the area known as the Namaqualand was generally referred as the home of the Little Namaqua or Klein Namaqua. Great Namaqualand was the home of the Great Namaqua and was across the Orange River – today known as Namaland. The first Europeans to settle in Namaqualand arrived in the 1750s – but before them ivory and other hunters had passed through regularly. By February and March of 1750, Jan Overholster, Jan Meyer and Jan Venter had registered loan farms here which they called Lieliefontein and Groene Rivier. One of the dialects of the Einiqua was spoken by the people of the Namynkoa who lived along the rivers – their riverine lifestyle made them distinct from the other people of the region although they were pastoralists who ate fish and river shellfish amongst other foods. Most other Khoe away from the River were purely pastoralists. Further east, heading deeper into the interior, lived the Korana groups who could be found in the vicinity of Kheis. They were the Kouringeis or Little Korana, otherwise known as the Hootstanders or Proud People. But a hundred years earlier in 1779 trekboers who had arrived in Namaqualand were married to local Khoe women and this union created another group - the "Bastaards".

This is episode 44 and we continue to travel about the Zuurveld and beyond with Englishman John Barrow. Remember he’d arrived in Graaff-Reinet with landdrost FR Bressler and their entry into the mud and daub village marked the restoration of Cape control after an interval of two and a half years. That was late 1797. Because they were accompanied by a small group of Dragoon light cavalry, the message was clear. Authority is back. But the trekboers and particularly the giant Coenraad de Buys were in no mood to hear that message. The eastern frontier of the Cape colony in 1797 was a confused and distracted region – war with the San and the Xhosa had been followed by the Boers’ own revolution and then the British had arrived. The turmoil of these events had been compounded by the Xhosa civil war which led to the settlers becoming involved in their internal bickering. And watching all of this in turn was Ngqika’s mother, Queen Nojoli. Her influence must not be underestimated as she was fully involved in these negotiations and the diplomacy because Barrow gave her exactly the same gifts he gave Ngqika. Within a year of this visit, trekboer Coenraad de Buys would be living at Ngqika’s Great Place, married to Queen Nojoli and exerting an influence on both her and her son. Buys as we’ve seen had a long relationship with the Xhosa’s on the frontier, his familiarity goes back to some time.

This is episode 43 and we’re dealing with the arrival of the English at the Cape. As you know, the Peninsular had become more important in the eyes of the English as they fought a lengthy war against France at the end of the 18th Century – a war that was to continue through until Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in 1815. The British would occupy the Cape twice of course and when they arrived in 1795 the region was convulsed by disorder on the frontiers. The Khoekhoe rose up twice in conjunction with the amaXhosa as we’re going to hear, while the frontier settlers were already in revolt by the time the British arrived. Lady Anne Barnard had accompanied her husband – Macartney’s colonial secretary Andrew Barnard to the Cape. Also present on behalf of George Third was John Barrow – a man who was to have a significant effect on the South Africa and world affairs. He was described as extremely intelligent, an amateur scientist, naturalist, geographer, a man of the enlightenment if there ever was one. He’d already revealed great gifts of intelligence gathering during his time in China and would now be called on to collect more intelligence on the frontier of South Africa.

This is episode 42 and the English have just seized the Cape. Remember at the time they were in a world war with the French and revolutionary fervour had swept the world with its populist refrain, its’ berets of southern France and Liberte Equalite Fraternite narrative. This had swept the globe – all the way to Graaff-Reinet in the upper Zuurveld on the Cape frontier where the trekboers were motivated to throw off the corrupt yoke of the VOC – and then in turn, the new English rule. As we heard last episode, Major General Craig had ensconsed himself in Cape Town as the military governor and was about to take action against the Boers in Graaff-Reinet when intelligence reports indicated in January 1796 that the Batavians and their French allies were fitting out an expedition to retake Cape Town. As you’ve also heard, the British sent a strong naval and infantry force to the Cape and by July 1796 there were 8 400 troops stationed there with another 1000 on their way. There were now fourteen warships patrolling the seaways around the Cape. So the Batavian squadron of eight warships and a cargo vessel took five months to sail to the Cape because its commander, Rear Admiral Engelbertus Lucas had to evade British patrols. On the 6th August 1796 he anchored in Saldanha Bay on the west coast north of Cape Town. Lucas had anticipated support from a French squadron but they had decided to bypass mainland Africa and head straight to the Isle de France – or Mauritius as we know it today. By the 1790s a powerful farmer by the name of Jacob Van Reenen had built his fortune in landholdings, meat trade and the production and sale of alcohol. On his death in 1793, Jacob left a number of sons, all of whom rose to prominence in Cape society. One son called Dirk, built the largest and most successful wine businesses there, while two others sons, Jacobus Gijsbert and Sebastiaan, went into the lucrative meat merchanting business.

This is episode 41 and we’re dealing with two main things – firstly the shift in power amongst the Xhosa at the end of the 18th Century, then the arrival of the English in South Africa. Remember we’ve been focusing on the Zuurveld as the trekboers and the amaXhosa both expanded their interest in the region. The fate of these contending parties would remain undecided for twenty years and for the amXhosa, it was their fractured politics that weakened them precisely at the moment their greatest threat appeared. The indecisive Second Frontier War had left Ndlambe the most powerful Xhosa chief in the west but he couldn’t seize ultimate control of the Zuurveld – the trekboers were returning to their farms razed during the war. Although they did not return in the same numbers initially, the tension was set to rise once more. In 1795 Ngqika turned 17 and he immediately took action against his uncle Ndlambe who as we know had been ruling on his behalf until he came of age. Ngqika was not to be trifled with although young. He was ambitious and pretty ruthless as you’re going to hear. As the tension rose amongst the amaXhosa groups, it wasn’t long before a mini civil war broke out. Upheavals far away in the world were going to have a major impact on this sleepy little southern African backwater shortly. The first attempts by the British at seizing the Cape failed miserably back in 1781 as we’ve heard with the brilliant but obese French commander Bailli de Suffren defeating the English fleet at the Cape Verde Islands. The British had no real interest in the Cape as such during this phase, they wanted the ports and the refreshment stations. There was no idea of colonizing this somewhat dangerous part of the world. The major strategic aim was to hold the Cape to prevent it from being seized by the French to use as a naval base as part of the crucial logistics route to and from India and China.

This is episode 40 and we’re dealing with the Second Frontier War. The Zuurveld Boers were indignant at the reluctance of the distant government of the Cape to come to their aid as the amaGqunukhwebe swept onto their farms. Remember Xhosa king Ndlambe was trying to bring them to heel and had ordered the amaGqunukhwebe and Langa’s amaMbalu to move westwards across the Fish River. Instead the amaGqunukhwebe headed in the opposite direction to get away from the Xhosa kings warriors. Graaff-Reinet’s new landdrost Honoratus Maynier was prompted to act. He was well educated and fluent in several languages, and was also highly aware of suffering and injustice that had been metered out to the San and the Khoe in particular. Much has been written about Maynier over the years – mostly bad. However he was probably ahead of his time in quite a few areas – specifically human rights. The trekboers were trying to convince him to mobilise forces to fight the amaGqunukhwebe and he was resisting, in addition to be highly sceptical of most reports of theft and losses. Maynier kept telling farmers who visited his Drosdy mud and daub building in Graaff-Reinet that it was inadvisable to oppose force by force – it would merely bring the Xhosa down on the farms. So Field Cornet Barend Lindeque decided to take action himself and put together a commando without the VOC or Maynier’s permission. Lindeque approached Xhosa chief Ndlambe and suggested they work together to rid the Zuurveld of the amaGqunukhwebe. Of course the Xhosa king was only too happy to work with the trekboers. It served his interests. The deal was struck and on 18th May 1793 the first action of what was to become known as the Second Frontier War was recorded. In the Cape, the Dutch East india company was also unable to assist – it was falling apart at that stage, the VOC empire was collapsing.

This is episode 39 and we’re going to meet one of the country’s most incredible characters who’s activities on the frontier in the late 1700s were to be forgotten. Coenraad de Buys was probably one of the most African of all trekboers as you’re going to hear and the saga of his life was written out of text books long before apartheid. That was because he married Khoe and Xhosa women and lived amongst both people quite comfortably. At the same time he was still a trekboer as you’ll hear. He was also the original rebel, an ex-soldier who was nearly 7 feet tall. Coenraad de Buys is the most legendary, rougher, dominating and ruthless of all rebels, his presence on the frontier of the Cape colony dominated twenty years of South African history and he also as I said last episode symbolizes a lost route of Afrikaner history. In the gallery of traditional Afrikaner heroes, de Buys has no place. He is merely a footnote in most writings including modern revisionist texts because he fits neither the race-obsessed romantic colonial historian nor the race-obsessed Pan-Africanist historians of the 21st century. The first Frontier War had ended in 1781 with the belief that Adriaan van Jaarsveld who we met last episode had expelled the Gqunukhwebe and Mbalu from the Zuurveld. But these people moved back through the 1780s – and in fact it was doubtful that Tshaka’s Gqunukhwebe had ever left they just moved away from the commando led by van Jaarsveld, then returned almost immediately after it disbanded. The Gqunukhwebe believed they had a right to the territory – and at this point mother nature conspired to increase resource pressure. A major drought took place in the mid-1780s and many more Xhosa began appearing in the Zuurveld pastures. In 1789 for example, one description by an explorer spoke of 16 000 cattle on one Xhosa farm alone, inhabited by several thousand Xhosa people.

This is episode 38 and we’re focusing on the first war between the isiXhosa and the settlers which took place in 1781. Rharhabe had proposed an alliance between himself and the Colony – in return for Boer assistance against the imiDange clan who he had represented as rebels. Rharhabe framed the conversation as offering “friendship and peace upon a permanent footing” which spoke the settler language. Local strongman Adriaan van Jaarsveld had responded positively, but then Rharhabe missed another important meeting. Meanwhile Rharhabe’s implacable enemy and uncle, Ndlambe, had found a Boer ally in Barend Lindeque who was a lieutenant in the commando. Friction is endemic in frontier situations and neither the Xhosa nor colonists were going to be innocent in the coming conflicts. You could take the stance modern politicians take that the colonists were outsiders and therefore always to blame – but that would be somewhat historically ill-informed. The Boers feared the weight of Xhosa numbes and resented being pestered for presents by the roving bands of Xhosa men – they also had been given permission by Rharhabe to use pastures and yet Xhosa clans not aligned to Rharhabe would occupy these lands.

This is episode 37 and we’re continuing the saga of late 18th Century Xhosa kingdoms. By late in the 18th Century, the Zuurveld was home to small groups of San, some khoekhoe chieftans, several Xhosa chiefdoms and the trekboers. They were mixing up together in a fairly confined territory and jostled each other increasingly angrily to secure the summer and winter grazing. While the San weren’t particularly interested in the grazing as they did not keep livestock, the pressure on the land was increasing. Cultural ignorance concerning each others understanding of the nature of land ownership made things worse. Colonists had a sense of private property and they were spreading across the territory using the concept of Leningsplaatsen – loan farms – that we’ve heard about. For the trekboer, the leningsplaatsen was not a shared space – it belonged to a single person or investors and had defined boundaries which could be mapped. In contrast, the amaXhosa saw land as communal property with its usage to be allocated by a chief. Where the cattle-owning parties saw their herds and flocks as their capital assets and indication of wealth and power, the temptation was to supplement their livestock through raiding or violence. And Governor Van Plettenberg decided he'd take a trip to the Zuurveld along the Great Fish River to see how things were going between the Dutch settlers and the amaXhosa.

This is episode 36 and its time to return to Xhosaland. Before we do that, let’s step back a little and consider the effect of action beyond Africa that was having an influence on the continent, particularly the southern reaches. Adam Smith may have been somewhat bemused, as American historian Noel Mostert writes in his book frontiers, to find that the very year in which his masterwork was published saw the start of a struggle on the seas that rested on his own declared twin pillars of global destiny – America and the Cape of Good Hope. The American colonies were in the process of being lost to Britain as Smith published his work – and a wider war was buffeting the seas. The Cape had been drawn into the American War of Independence which changed the destiny of Southern Africa. It’s not well remembered these days, but as America’s early history is interwoven with South Africa’s. As all of this was taking place on the high seas, the colonists in the Cape found themselves at war on two fronts with two different groups of people. The Xhosa and the San. As the Dutch East India company feebly tried to stop trekboers from advancing beyond the Gamtoos river near Algoa Bay, a true frontier had developed from 1770 onwards. It was a loose, ill-defined area along the south east coast and the Dutch colonists had now hit a human barrier that stopped their freedom of movement. That barrier was the Xhosa people.

This is episode 35 and we’re going to focus on the forerunners of the Zulu – the Mthethwa and Ndwandwe, the Qwabe and how they emerged in the region between the Tugela and Pongola rivers in northern KwaZulu Natal or what became known as Zululand. By the first few centuries AD the migrations of farmers moving into the area between the Drakensburg, the Mzimkhulu river south of modern Durban and up to Pondoland took place. There had been a steady growth of farmers here until the first phase of the development of more powerful kingdoms. The second phase saw the people there divide into numbers small patriarchal clans which lived alongside each other in relative peace although there were many minor incidents. The third phase began with the rise of the Zulu Kingdom by around 1810. I’ll get to the third phase in future podcasts. The fourth phase of course was the arrival of the British traders from the Cape – and from the sea. The Ndwandwe lived In the area around Nongoma in 1780s and 90s while to the south, between the modern town of Empangeni and straddling the black Mfolozi to the north lived the Mthethwa. To their west lived the Qwabe – and those were the ancestors of the people I grew up with in the Nkwalini valley on the Umhlatuzi. As the struggle for dominance grew at the end of the 18th Century, it corresponded with the expansion of the major groups like the Mthethwa, Ndwandwe and the Qwabe – then later the Zulu into a variety of grazing types.

This is episode 34 and we’re going to take a close look at what was going on in the region bounded by the Orange River, the Kalahari Desert and the Indian Ocean. This is where the Zulu emerged but the story is not the simple tale most of us know about Shaka. As with other areas we’ve investigated, the popular narrative over time is not always an accurate reflection of real history. This will become very apparent particularly as we unearth facts about the period between 1760 and 1800. It’s fairly recently in historical research that we’ve come to understand what was going on – earlier historians tended to pay very little attention to the decades before 1810 and the emergence of Shaka’s Zulu. Before then the Zulu were a tiny clan washing around in a much bigger pool of tribes and clans. An important feature we all agree on now is that the upheavals of the early 1800s were not all about Shaka, it was caused partly by the increasing interaction between European commercial and colonial expansion and indigenous communities, as well as the expansion of Zulu and Ndebele and other warlike people. Traders and settler numbers rose swiftly as we’re going to hear. Trading and raiding was always part of the southern African landscape, hundreds of years before Jan van Riebeeck setup shop in 1652. The processes of reorganisation and expansion of increasingly centralized kingdoms can be tracked to this time. While these changes were taking place between the Drakensberg and Indian Ocean, they were also happening among the Tswana speaking societies on the south eastern fringes of the Kalahari Desert. I’ve outlined the most important clans in the last podcast – don’t forget these – they were the Bafokeng, Bahurutshe, Bakgatla, Bakwena, Bangwaketse, Barolong and Bathlaping.

This is episode 33 and we’re focusing on the Cape after spending last episode partly in Xhosaland. By 1771 the inn on the sea – the town in Table Bay – was being referred to as Cape Town for the first time by travellers. It appears there was not even a formal process, just the town at the foot of the mountain emerged over the preceding 120 years and by 1772 there were approximately 7000 people living there. Four thousand whites including 1700 sailors, and 2000 free blacks and slaves. Part of this episode is going to be viewed through the eyes of botanist and Scots gardener and explorer Francis Masson who journeyed through the Cape three times. He arrived in October 1772 to find the acting governor was Joachim van Plettenberg. The newly appointed governor, Pieter van Rheede van Oudshoorn, had died at sea on the way out from Amsterdam. And right there are the men whose surnames would be two future towns – Plettenberg bay and Oudtshoorn. 1772 was an important year because that’s when foreign shipping numbers increased significantly because of the American War of Independence which I mentioned last episode. French ships in particular were sailing through the bay regularly because they were supporting the American rebels who were fighting the British. Cape Town was already known as a pretty and orderly locale, it’s layout admired by most who visited.

This is episode 32 and we’re swinging back to the Cape frontier through the last few decades of the 18th Century. I am going to thoroughly probe this period because so many crucial things were unfolding across southern Africa such as the development of new centralized powerful kingdoms in the East, the acceleration of land occupation by the trekboers and the first real clashes between the isiXhosa and settlers. That is far too much to chew on in just one episode I’m sure you’ll agree. First we need to step back and take a wide-angle view of the region. By the mid-1700s the eastern Cape frontier was a vaguely defined area east of the Gamtoos river. This is where black South African’s speaking a Bantu language first encountered white settlers as distinct from traders and missionaries. It was also here that policies which have had a profound influence on southern Africa were first formulated and applied. It was also a cultural frontier between warring states and had many characteristics of frontiers elsewhere across the world at that time. One of course was in north America

This is episode 31 and we’ll now take a broader look at what was going on across southern Africa after a few episodes peering closely at the northern Cape. We’ll also take a closer look at how the Cape government was expanding. Sleeping giants were to awaken by the last quarter of the 18th Century, with the emergence and expansion of a number of increasingly centralized chiefdoms in the region between the northern and central Drakensberg and the Indian Ocean. A similar process was taking place at pretty much the same time among the Tswana-speaking societies on the southeastern fringes of the Kalahari Desert. There is not much documented evidence from this region which makes the telling of the story slightly more difficult. But as we’ve heard over the course of this series already, the wonders of archaeology have begun to paint a scientific picture – and historians have pieced together some of the emerging states of this time. We also hear about the growing role of the Dutch Reformed Church. The experience of VOC political institutions particularly the local government, formed part of this heritage. But the strongest unifying institution both emotionally and intellectually, was provided by the Dutch Reformed Church. The doctrine of this church was primitive Calvinism as embodied in the Heidelberg catechism and the decrees of the synod of Dort. Its emphasis was on the old testament and the doctrine was heavily weighted towards the concept of predestination. This particularly suited the colonial whites struggling to survive in a tough environment and accustomed from birth to treating nonwhites as slaves or serfs, and more often than not, enemies.

This is episode 30 and we’re covering the mid-18th Century, including tales of shipwrecked sailors, the art of making amasi and dealing with the amatakati or witches. We’ve heard much about the developments in the north of the Cape, the bokkeveld and the Roodezand up to 1740. Now we’ll swing our gaze to observe what was going on at the same time in the Eastern Cape frontier. It’s vaguely defined at least at this time as the area lying east of the Gamtoos River. This is important because its here that black South Africans speaking a Bantu language first encountered white settlers as distinct from traders or even missionaries. The Nguni people however had a much longer connection with Europeans. Survivors of shipwrecks starting around 1554 lived amongst the Xhosa until they met survivors from other wrecks or from expeditions sent to find them. Many of these former sailors refused to return home. They were living as Thembu or Xhosa and had found the lifestyle to their liking. For example in 1705 an expedition sent to Natal to look for timber found an Englishman living with African wives there who was so well satisfied that two of the crew actually deserted to join him instead of the other way around. Two other men who survived from an early 18th Century wreck on the Mpondo Coast became progenitors of the clan still known as the Lungu – short for Abelungu in other words, the white clan. A girl wrecked with them later married Mpondo chief Xwabiso. Her daughter in turn was met by explorer Jacob van Reenen in 1790. By then she was an old woman. But she wasn’t the only European woman who’d been saved by locals as we’ll hear. And if you consider the statistics regarding shipwrecks off the South African coast as a whole you’ll begin to understand how these first contacts between Nguni and European developed.

This is episode 29 and we’re dealing with the pacification of the Khoisan in 1739. The Bushman War of that year had broken out as we’ve heard over repeated incursions into Khoi territory by settlers who’d abused the hospitality of Captain Gal of the Great Namaqua – then shot him and eight of his family for good measure before driving off most of his cattle. This was the last straw for Khoi who rose up and began burning Dutch farms along the Olifant’s River. Not to be confused with the Olifants River in the far north of the country – Limpopo province – in fact the Olifants flows through the Kruger Park. No, our Olifants is in the Cape. The Olifants here rises in the Winterhoek Mountains near modern day Ceres and flows northwesterly through a deep valley that widens downstream near Clanwilliam and drains into the Atlantic ocean. Remember last week we heard that the Frenchman and company deserter Estienne Barbier had been hiding out in this area protected by various frontier’s folk as he tried to instigate a settler uprising against the VOC. Ranged against him were men of the company including the powerful owner of many farms, Kruywagen. The latter had been hunting Barbier and trying to pacify the Khoi at the same time and when his commando returned to Stellenbosch at the end of May 1739, Barbier was still on the run. The Governor had declared Barbier enemy number one and placed a bounty on his head – dead or alive. The northern frontier zone was unstable but the major military operation required to end the fighting would only begin in Spring. In the meantime the pressure on trying to maintain some kind of semblance of law and order fell on the shoulders of the various veldkorporaals like Barend Lubbe. He was in charge of the Olifant’s River and was instructed to make sure he did not antagonize the “Hottentot Pokkebaas Claas” or any other peaceful Khoi.

This is episode 28, the Bushman War of 1739. Last episode we heard about the growing number of clashes reported in the run up to this full-scale war that did not last long – but extended in a great arc from the Piketberg in the north-west to the valley of the Langeberg in the south-east. It was the most extensive war between the settlers and the Khoisan since Van Riebeeck had arrived in 1652. Settlers were chased out of almost 60 cattle stations and farms, and more importantly, the stated aim of the Khoisan was to drive the Dutch out of their land and possibly – out of South Africa. More alarmingly, some of the Khoisan raiders were armed with muskets instead of their spears and bows and arrows. Many of the Khoisan leaders were also former servants of the Dutch farmers – which made for a particularly bitter confrontation as you’ll hear. The alarm bells rang back in Stellenbosch when they heard a notorious settler trouble-maker had arrived in the northern frontier zone – the deserter and former Company sergeant, Estienne Barbier. Frontier farmers joined him as he called for a rural rebellion against the VOC, and social banditry accelerated. The Boers on the frontier now began lashing out at all Khoi nearby. This was not going to end happily for anyone

This is episode 27 and we’re dealing with the period in the first half of 1700 – give or take a decade. Last episode we heard how the TrekBoer economy had developed and a new farmer had emerged on the landscape called the Boer. The descendents of Dutch and French immigrants were beginning to expand their footprint across southern Africa and of course the repercussions were enormous. Remember last episode we heard the minister of the Church at Drakenstein Petrus van Arkel who had written an extraordinary letter to Governor De Charonnes based in Cape Town. The minister had been shocked by a report he’d just received about the actions of a settler raiding party which made it all the way to Algoa Bay in the Eastern Cape and they had been particularly brutal in their treatment of the Khoi. A party of 70 barterers – or as the Minister pointed out – murderers and robbers – had taken 200 rixdollars worth of goods with them when they setout from Stellenbosch and headed to the Gonakkens as the Dutch called them – the Gonaqua near present day Qeberga or Port Elizabeth. The tribe was massacred and all their cattle and sheep were carried off. The Gonaqua who survived followed the Dutch raiding party and begged to be killed or taken captive as they were going to starve to death without their animals. Van Arkel back in Drakenstein was briefed by the shocked Khoi from the Peninsular who had joined the raiding expedition not realizing it was going to be a murdering expedition.