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History of South Africa podcast

By: Desmond Latham
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  • Summary

  • A series that seeks to tell the story of the South Africa in some depth. Presented by experienced broadcaster/podcaster Des Latham and updated weekly, the episodes will take a listener through the various epochs that have made up the story of South Africa.
    Desmond Latham
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Episodes
  • Episode 179 - A messianic prophet emerges in 1850: Mlanjeni the Wardoctor

    Episode 179 - A messianic prophet emerges in 1850: Mlanjeni the Wardoctor
    Jul 14 2024
    This is episode 179 and the prophet Mlanjeni is about to emerge. His story is one of the phenomenal tales of our land, he joined an already fairly long list of colonial era fighters who imbued their struggle against encroaching settlers with a combination of christian salvation ethos and a narrative full of amaXhosa ancient mystery and magic.

    If you recall last episode, Mlanjeni had been calling all local spiritual leaders to his home, where they were to pass between two poles that had been cleansed and purified.

    After this other rank and file amaXhosa were being called to be cleansed by Mlanjeni from his — village amongst the Ndlambe people — a people who were now being administered by Commissioner John Maclean.

    As you heard last episode Maclean had written a brief message to Governor Harry Smith about the rising excitement amongst the amaXhosa about Umlanjeni’s prophecies. It was Messianic paradigm, eventually morphing into the a mythos about the triumphant resurrection of the ancestors who were going to drive the English back into the sea.

    This message has been repeated since.

    So let’s take a much closer look at Prophet Umlanjeni. What made him tick?

    By the time he was a youth of 18, he had begun to fast regularly in the manner of all other messianic messengers like Moses or Mohammed — a process guaranteed to lead to hallucination. Without going too far into the weeds here, those who go on hunger strike or fast extensively report there is an incredible psychological impact.

    Fasting beyond 72 hours for example causes a deficiency in nutrients, muscles begin to break down, dizziness and dehydration occur. As the prophet continues to fast, hallucinations can be extreme, as electrolyte imbalances trigger brain malfunction leading to delirium.
    IT was in this delirius state the Umlanjeni found his happy place. And as psychologists will tell you, those with preexisting mental conditions should not fast beyond what is accepted as healthy.

    When Mlanjeni called his people to the two poles for cleansing, he could barely walk he was so frail from his fastidious fasting. It was 18th August 1850 when Maclean first heard about this wardoctor, who at this point merely appeared to be a somewhat misguided youngster with pre-existing mental conditions.
    Mlanjeni, like the previous wardoctor Nxele, had lived in the Cape Colony and heard the messages of Christianity and Islam. When he returned to the Ndlambe people living near the Amatola mountains, people say he had changed. His family said he took to sitting in a nearby river, in the still waters of a pool, sitting here in water up to his neck, musing on the world, refusing to eat.

    He said he was talking to the spirit world, to his ancestors and he was infused with divine powers, endowed with the capacity to relay the messages from the ancients to the amaXhosa. He was told he had to purify his people, and the way he was going to do this was similar to War Doctor Nxele, also known as Makana.
    He said the ubuthi was the root cause of all amaXhosa suffering, linked to disease and death, and he declared “Let us cast it away, and come to me to be cleansed…”

    Normally, a grandiose claim of this sort from a troubled youth would have been ignored, but the amaXhosa across the Cape were ripe and ready for such a message. Their leaders had failed them, the traditional ways had failed them, and here was a messiah, preaching in a manner that was uplifting.

    And a succession of British blunders were to take place which exacerbated the situation.
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    21 mins
  • Episode 178 - A string of forts and Captain Maclean’s amaXhosa police recruits take revenge

    Episode 178 - A string of forts and Captain Maclean’s amaXhosa police recruits take revenge
    Jul 7 2024
    The mid-nineteenth Century was like the calm before the storm with the discovery of diamonds a decade away, and then the wars between the Boers and Brits, and the Brits and amaZulu a glimmer in the imperial eye.

    Moshoeshoe was gaining power amongst the Basotho, and to the east, Mpande continued to dream of crushing the amaSwazi.

    But to the South on Christmas Day 1850, another frontier war in a long and bitter series between the Cape colony and the amaXhosa erupted in the wake of the witchcraft eradication processes enforced by Governor Harry Smith.

    I spent much of last episode explaining the religious and social ethos and differences between the empire and missionaries on one side, and the amaXhosa and their spiritual leaders on the other.

    Mlanjeni one of these spiritual leaders was the driver of this attempt by the amaXhosa to throw off the yoke of the empire. Andries Stockenstrom had been warning the British for some time that their tone-deaf and blunt attempts at destroying the power of the amaXhosa chiefs was not just chafing the people of British Kaffraria, but becoming dangerous.

    Smith had been compelled to maintain a heavy force of patrols in this territory to enforce the removals of the amaXhosa from land now allocated to English farmers and dislodge those who’d returned to places from which they’d already been driven.

    It was like the very definition of madness. The British authorities were repeating exactly what they’d done to the Xhosa before the Seventh Frontier War of 1846 and 1847.

    Since then they’d been very busy.

    The British had laid out an extensive series of roads and forts, centred on King Williams’ Town which was the main pivot for this grid of power in and around the Amatola mountains. The town was about 22 kilometers south of the base of these picturesque peaks, on the banks of the Buffalo River which provided protection against assault from the high ground.
    It was the Boma Pass down to the Keiskamma River that troubled the British soldiers most, it also extended upwards into the Amatola mountains behind the Fort to a point known as Keiskamma Hoek — the source of the Keiskamma where another mission station called Uniondale was located. This is not to be confused with the town of Uniondale in the Karoo.

    After looking out from Keiskamma Hoek, taking in the scenic views, swept up in the wonder of the beauty of this region, you’d climb back on your intrepid pony and head back down the trail past Fort Cox and Burnshill, towards Fort White, and then onwards another 30 kilometers or so to Fort Hare.
    Many military historians have fixated on the British propensity to forget what they’d learned in previous wars, it was a kind of disease of the age, which would become a pandemic during the Anglo-Boer War, then a catastrophic forgetfulness by the First World War.
    The Khoekhoe were now extremely angry at the British authorities for messing around with the Kat River Settlement agreements, and the Boers had been embittered by Harry Smith’s unilateral annexation of the TransOrangia region. This grew into a seething hatred when Smith had a young Boer called Thomas Dreyer executed.
    With so many Boers gone in the Great Trek, the British had to rely on the Khoekhoe and unfortunately for the people of the Kat River, the people now being called the coloured people, opprobrium and malice were heaped upon them. Who needs enemies when the British treated their friends like this?
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    22 mins
  • Episode 177 - The Missionaries position on sex and British administrators refuse to learn

    Episode 177 - The Missionaries position on sex and British administrators refuse to learn
    Jun 30 2024
    We’re plunging into the developments of the 1850s now and this is episode 177.
    In numerology the digits 1 and 7 are significant,1 represents new beginnings and leadership, while 7 is often associated with spirituality and introspection.
    So it’s no mistake this this episode probes spirituality and introspection - and leadership.
    Not that I necessarily ascribe to the tenets of numerology, but its a useful way into a sensitive subject.
    By mid-19th Century, most of the game of the Cape, from the north, the east to the south, had been shot out. The amaXhosa had been driven across the Fish River in 1812, out of the Kat River Valley in 1829, then right past the Keiskamma River in 1847.

    None of the land they lived on west of the Kei was secure, no longer did the sons of the chiefs leave their dad’s homesteads to seek out their own virgin territory because there was none left.
    In the old days, when a man died his hometead was burned down and vacated where as now and the new cattle enclosure was built back to back with the old one. Dwellings were clustered closer together, and not everyone lived near a river unlike the century before.

    This was change, and now drought took on calamatous forms. Before the people could move to water now they were stuck on the landscape. So it was not surprising that given the pressures of people and animals, the first great cattle lungsickness to be registered in this region followed hard on the land losses of 1850 to 1853.

    The amaXhosa men were now labouring for the very people who had supplanted them, deprived of their means of subsistence and independence. Many amaXhosa had worked for the farmers and settlers before this time, and contrary to most reports, many were quite happy to do so because they earned cash, and left when they felt like it.

    The standard of living on these farms determined how long the workers remained at least until this period of our history. The option of leaving at their own discretion eroded rapidly as the access to cattle as wealth eroded. The smaller Xhosaland could no longer support the population. Even within Xhosaland the men and women were now unconsciously working for the settlers by growing forage they sold to the farms, and then making some money to buy textiles and pots and pans.

    Here is the crux of the contradiction in colonialism. That the people who bought the clothing preferred to buy this clothing than manufacture their skin karosses of yore, and yet, by doing so, they were becoming dependent on the cash they made from their labour.

    As colonial intervention increased, a seachange in Xhosa politics took place. The petty rivalries of the various chiefs was encouraged by some of colonial officials, the divide and rule precursor and the new governor Sir Harry Smith was particularly active in his attempts to divide the royal line of the amaXhosa and the commoners.

    This was not working. He’d try to ban lobola, he’d tried to usurp the power of the chiefs, but the commoners did not buy into the British plan. It was such a cynical move that the commoners despite little access to power, preferred their chiefs and an age of proper resistance to colonialism began.
    This is the period that saw the rise of leaders who would be recalled all the way through the struggle period during apartheid, names like Hintsa, Sarhili, Ndlambe, Chungwa, Maqoma, Tyhali and Sandile.
    As I’ve pointed out through this series, the grafting of two types of cosmology together, the ancient African legends and power ethos, with a salvation tale through the story of the cross, featured throughout our history of connection.
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    20 mins
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Profile Image for Rosie J

Gripping History expertly narrated

Excellent history lesson from beginning to end, wry commentary on a subject that I as a Brit knew very little about. Its a really worthwhile listen, great stuff !

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