History of South Africa podcast

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 o...

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 Lieut...

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 b...

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 a...

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 c...

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...

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 Buy...

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 Su...

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 Co...

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. Th...

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 leas...

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 th...

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 Yong...

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 fro...

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 messa...

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 1...

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 motiv...

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 am...

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 amaGqu...

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 amon...

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 languag...

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 part...

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 publish...

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 t...

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 becom...