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 205 - A Crimean/Russian Struggle Thread, Two Disabled Free Staters and a Surveyor Surge

    Episode 205 - A Crimean/Russian Struggle Thread, Two Disabled Free Staters and a Surveyor Surge
    Jan 12 2025
    Episode 205 of the series covers the A Russian Struggle Thread, Two Disabled Men in the Free State and a Surge in Surveyors.

    Sprinkled with tales of Hoffman.

    That would be Johannes Hoffman commonly known as Sias Hoffman, the first president of the Orange Free State who signed the Bloemfontein Convention with the British in February 1854.

    Regarded as a shrewd and able merchant, he had been disabled in an accident, but that didn’t stop Hoffmann from wielding political power. He was also a fundamentalist voortrekker, hard core. Hoffman was one of the representatives of the Smithfield District in the Orange River Sovereignty during the negotiations between Boers and British.
    Both Hoffman and his State Secretary Jacobus Groenendal were disabled and their government to quickly gained the nickname 'the crippled government’ which is not only wicked, but wouldn’t fly in today’s equitable lexicon.
    Groenendaal had been born in Holland then travelled to South Africa as a teacher in 1849.
    Hoffman was a friend of Moshoeshoe of the Basotho, conciliatory towards the Griqua who lived in the transOrangia, and pretty distrustful of Pretorius’ more militant Boers. His friendships with the black and coloured people living around the Free State caused deep mistrust amongst his fellow Boers. Hoffman's term in office was also short-lived, just under one year, thus the crippled government epithet.

    As a gesture of good faith, Hoffman had given a present of a keg of gunpowder to king Moshoeshoe. His fellow burghers found this an unwise move, over-friendly and potentially dangerous for the survival of the new state. Relations between the Boers and the Basotho were less than cordial with the border dispute unresolved. What sealed Hoffman’s fate, however, was not the gift itself so much as the fact that he tried to hide his actions from the Volksraad and the Orange Free State parliament.
    Living in the Caledon Valley and Orange River confluence areas were the Thlaping - a combination of Tswana peoples who had gathered in the area during the Difaqane, loosely led by Adam Kok but ostensibly under their chief Lephoi. French missionary Jean Pierre Pellissier set up his station at a place called Bethulie and by 1854 more than 3 000 Tswana, Thlaping and others lived there.

    They were a pretty mixed community, escaped Rolong, Sotho, Tswana and a number of Bastaards as they were known, Khoi and freed slaves — and many of these with special skills. Ironically, many of the former slaves were literate, which made them influential members of the community.
    Inside this sprawling Free State land of 80 000 square kilometres lived 10 000 Boers and English along with about 30 000 Griquas, Rolong and Thlaping.

    While Hoffman focused on local diplomacy, Treasurer Jacob Groenendaal and a 26 year-old Irish land surveyor called Joseph Orpen wrote the Free States’ first constitution. And this was far more sophisticated than the Transvaal Constitution which was based on the Trekker 33 point manifesto and the Old Testament.
    In the Cape, the growing density of farm settlement had led to the post of Surveyor General way back in 1826. This officer would oversee surveys within the colony, promote a trigonometrical survey and then produce a map of the Cape and if possible, beyond.

    Charles Cornwallis Michel who was an energetic colonel of the Royal Engineers set about his task. He also had a perchant for sketch and watercolour. Unfortunately for everyone, except for greedy speculators, he could not complete his task effectively. An enormous backlog of farm and town plot diagrams awaited approval and by mid-1830s, the task was deemed impossible for Michel and his two assistants.
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    24 mins
  • Episode 204 - Planet Earth 1855, the Regal Cetshwayo kaMpande and Natal Land Realities

    Episode 204 - Planet Earth 1855, the Regal Cetshwayo kaMpande and Natal Land Realities
    Jan 5 2025
    Episode 204 - A quick whip around the globe in 1855 and Cetshwayo kaMpande makes his Regal Entrance.

    First up, a quick thank you to Adi Badenhorst at AA Badenhorst family wines in the Swartland of the Cape — your gift was extraorindarily generous and well received. I am truly indebted to you. And to all those folks sending me tips and notes, thank you its gratifying to receive correspondence from such learned people!

    Straight to our episode 2024, Planet Earth 1855, Cetshwayo kaMpande grows powerful and Natal Land Realities.

    A legend is the only way to describe the amaZulu king who was going to dethrone his father Mpande kaSenzangakhona, usurp his brother’s right to rule, and later in life, destroy an entire British column at Isandhlwana. In this episode we’ll deal with the initial years of his life.

    Folks tend to focus on Shaka when it comes to important Zulu warriors, but by the time we’re done, you’ll agree that Cetshwayo was probably more significant. I’ll end the editorialising there - let’s head over to the eastern seaboard of South Africa, into Zululand across the Thukela.

    It’s 1855.

    Mpande had overthrown his half-brother Dingana, and one of his professed goals was to stop the internecine conflict that had riven the house of the Zulu. Peace is what he strived for, and so he set about creating sons unlike Shaka and Dingana who had their offspring killed and tried to insure themselves against being bumped off by their own children by just not getting their wives or concubines pregnant.

    Easier said than done.

    Mpande had at least 30 sons with his wives, believing that protection lay in numbers.

    Problem was, there will always be someone who thinks they’re better than the eldest son of the Great Wife. And the eldest son of the Great Wife will always believe he should be king. Fade up the ominous music.

    And thus, in a nutshell, Cetshwayo.
    The settler port village of Durban had gone through various ructions by the mid-1850s. For some distance around the port and into the interior, English settlers had replaced the original Dutch farmers with the stipulation that a farmer could own only one farm of 2500 acres and security of tenure had improved. Originally tenure was a measly 15 years - then changed to perpetuity. Marking out the farms was done on horseback at walking pace. One hour each way. Four hours later, that was your farm.

    Of course most mustered the fastest horse they could find, some even changed horses, then tried to gallop or canter the four hours. Land sizes could top 5000 acres by cheating in this way.
    Simultaneously a clash of ideas between the indigenous population of South Africa and the British Government was most marked in Natal.

    Most of the region is suitable for farming in some manner — the region can be divided, pretty broadly, into two zones. The interior grasslands and open tree savannah, and the coastal bush and forest. The grasslands were not ideal for arable agriculture, but were great for livestock farming. The coastal zone was a different story — more rain fell along the coast, it was more suitable for farming — and that’s why sugar became such an important story in Natal a little later.
    With that, its time now to step back and peer inscrutably at what was going on internationally in the year 1855. The Panama Railway became the first railroad to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, long before before the time of the Canal which was built between 1904 and 1916.

    In 1855 Alexander the Second ascended the Russian throne while in China, the Taiping Rebellion rolled on — the Taiping army of 350 000 invaded Anhui in the east of the country.

    Van Diemen’s land was seperated from New South Wales and granted selfgovernment and later in the year, renamed Tasmania. For the wine connoissours listening, including Adi Badenhorst I hope, the Bordeaux wine classification system was first listed in 1855.
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    20 mins
  • Episode 203 - The Siege of Makapansgat and Misnomerclature

    Episode 203 - The Siege of Makapansgat and Misnomerclature
    Dec 29 2024
    We’re picking up speed from here on, the fulcrum that was the mid-19th Century is passed and our story is developing quickly - this is episode 203 the Siege of Makapansgat and Reconstituting history.

    It is 1854, almost mid-way through the sixth decade of this momentous century and the region that’s under our gaze is the northern Limpopo territory, the Waterberg. Those who live there today will know of its grandeur, and its extensive mountain ranges, riverine bush, delightful geology.

    Thaba Meetse is the northern Sotho name for the Waterberg, where the average height of the peaks here are 600 meters, rising to 2 000 meters above sea level.

    The vegetation is officially known as dry deciduous forest, or just the Bushveld to you and me. The original people here date back thousands of years, early evolutionary stages of hominid development can be traced here, so in some ways, it’s part of the story of human existence on the planet.

    Its all about the type of rocks here, and the soils. Clamber amongst the red koppies and ravines and you can look out over the bush veld, with it’s minerals such as vanadium and platinum, part of the Bushveld Igneous complex I spoke about in episodes one and two. Tectonic forces forced the rocks upwards, creating the famous Waterberg, the Thaba Meetse ranges, rivers deposited sediment and in these sandstone layers, you’ll find the famous caves surrounded by cliffs hundreds of feet high, rising from the plains.

    Scientists and palaeontologists tracked our very first human ancestors who lived at Waterberg as early as three million years ago, and inside the cave we’re going to hear about, Makapansgat, skeletons of Australopithecus Africanus have been found. Homo Erectus remains have also been found in the cave.

    This site has yielded many thousands of fossil bones, and what is known as The Cave of Hearths preserves a remarkably complete record of human occupation from Early Stone Age “Acheulian” times in the oldest sediments through the Middle Stone Age, the Later Stone Age and up to the Iron Age. It also is where one of the earliest Homo sapiens remains were found, a jaw found in the cave layers by archaeologists. The lime enriched deposits and dry conditions within the cave have allowed for the exceptional preservation of plant, animal and human remains as Amanda Beth Esterhuysen points out in her 2007 Wits University PhD.
    So its really metaphorical — an iconic cave because this is where the Boers and the Kekana people were going to go to war. Part of our story this episode is about a track, a wagon trail, that passed between the ivory hunting centre of Schoemansdal, Soutpansberg and the newly established Boer town of Pretoria and which cut straight through the middle of Kekana chief Mokopane’s territory. And inside this territory is Makapansgat.
    Since the first trekkers had arrived in 1837, the Langa and Kekana people who lived in the Waterberg had watched in some disquiet as the numbers of Boers increased over the years. It was almost two decades after Louis Trichardt had wheeled his wagons through the Waterberg, and by the mid-19th Century there wasn’t a week that went past without hunters or prospectors wandering through.

    It’s a double irony then to relate that both the Langa and Kekana had origins further south, they were part of the amaNdebele who had fled from Northern Zululand during Shaka’s reign, related to the amaHlubi, and had been involved in some land seizing themselves. Don’t simplify history, its more radical than a buffet hall of red berets.
    King Mghombane Gheghana of the Kekana, and Mankopane of the Langa, were not prepared to accept Trekker overlordship like they had fought against Mzilikazi’s overlordship. They rejected the trekker system of labour where every black adult male was supposed to work for the Boers for nothing.
    Mokopane by the way is a northern Sotho form of Mghombane Gheghana, and he was known throughout the territory as Mokopane.
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    24 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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