History of South Africa podcast

This is episode 196 and we’re covering the movement towards sef-government and the first Cape Constitution which included what’s known as a qualified Franchise. A trend had been sweeping British colonies by the mid-nineteenth century where the coming commonwealth was intent on running its own affairs on a country-by-country basis. The first self-governing colony of the British Empire you could say was Massachussett’s in 1630 showing how long the Americans had been tugging at the British leash before they began their war of independence. But to be strictly accurate it was really the Province of Canada in 1841, and all colonies of British North America became self governing between 1848 and 1855 — except Vancouver Island. Australia was a bit more complex, there were six settler colonies which each achieved self-governing status over quite a long period, between 1852 and 1901. Well Seven if you include New Zealand, sorry Kiwis, the English system kind of lumped Australasia together. There had been a tension growing between the mother-country with it’s erratic political system, and the colonies. The plethora of politics that blew back and forth on the headlands of the British voter was head spinning - but by 1850 the British bureaucracy began to gain prominance and in the halls of power, it was whispered that public jobs were going to be based on merit rather than patronage. As this liberalisation of the system back home began to shake the dusty and cobweb strewn hallways of ancient Britain, the philosophy drifted outwards, like an informed mist, towards the distant colonies. The problem for the colonists was the liberals wanted black people to have rights, the conservatives vacillated. Settlers almost to a man preferred indigenous people of the colonised territories to avail themselves as labour without recourse to the same rights as themselves. You’ll remember last episode we met new Cape Attorney General William Porter, an Irish democrat who wanted to extend the rights afforded white colonists to all who lived in the Cape. He arrived in Cape Town in 1839 and was acutely aware of the changing winds back home when it came to bureaucracy. Confounding a quick solution to the debate about who should be allowed to vote was the fact that officials in the Cape couldn’t get along. Chief Justice Wylde wanted to have a seat on the proposed lower house of a new Cape Legislature, even though he was a technocrat. Porter himself hankered after a seat in the House of Assembly proposed as Attorney General that officials should be allowed to stand for election without being held responsible to Parliament for their official acts. Everyone agreed however that the concept of a franchise system was important, and the franchise must be low enough so that everyone had a shot of being allowed to vote. Disallowing coloureds the vote had been the major reason at least two Colonial Secretaries had delayed self-government in South Africa. This was known as the Cape Qualified Franchise. What we must keep in mind is that the ideology of utilitarianism mixed with evangelicalism was characteristic of the new order. However, it was tempered by fear. There were two factions debating this in 1850 through to 1853. One faction sought a narrowly based electorate to be achieved by high property qualification, and the other a widely based electorate to be achieved by a low property qualification. Speaking of the war, it was about to come to an end. Burned itself out so to speak. When Lieutenant Colonel Cathcart had arrived in the Eastern Cape, his initial strategy of ending the war was to do what other British commanders had done, start building fortified posts.

A quick note to the SA Podcaster’s Guild, thank you for the History podcast of the year silver award — I shared the honour with the 30 Years of Democracy Podcast, part of the TimesLive stable. It’s heart warming to receive some sort of recognition, and thanks mainly to you the listener. With that it’s back to episode 195 and we’re swinging back to the east, to Zululand, where Chief Mpande kaSenzangakhona of the AmaZulu has not been idle for the last two years. When we last heard about Mpande, after a few years of relative quiet once he took over from Dinging as king of the AmaZulu, he began to plot against the Swazi in late 1840s. As he planned and plotted, in the British outpost called Natal, this territory that abounded Durban, two men had arrived who were to alter South African history. Theophilus Shepstone and Hans Schreuder. More about them in a moment. Mpande thought of Eswatini, Swaziland, as a source of treasure, booty, and a future place of refuge for his people just in case the Boers or the British should advance further into Zululand. The good relations between the Boers and the Swazi, at least running up to the mid-19th Century, meant that Mpande was forced to hold off most of his plans to invade King Mswati’s land. It was also along a corridor coveted by not only the AmaZulu and the Swazi, but also by the boers. So his first aim was north west, towards smaller kingdoms where the booty was thinner on the ground, not exactly a plethora of cows, rather a smattering but better than nix. The amaHlubi bore the brunt of Mpande’s expansionist aims when he attacked Langalibalele kaMthimkulu who had told his people that from now on, it was he and not Mpande who would control the function of rainmaking. Mpande disagreed. The disputes going on Swazi territory gave the AmaZulu king an opportunity to interfere. If you remember a previous podcast, I’d explained that after Mswati was declared the new young king of the amaSwazi, the senior regent Malambule tried to cling onto power — and was backed in his clinging by Mpande. Enter stage left, a missionary who was on a mission. Enter stage right, a second missionary on another mission. Cast member number one, stage left, Theophilus Shepstone, or Somtseu as the Zulu called him. The other, stage right, was lesser known Norwegian Missionary Society’s Hans Schreuder. The latter was well over six feet tall, a powerful man, with a powerful temper. He may have been a bible-wielding man of God, but that didn’t stop the Viking blood pumping him up when he was crossed. Schreuder would establish 7 mission stations across Zululand and was going to be extremely useful as Mpande’s diplomat. Shepstone’s role in our story is a complex combination of missionary, Zulu-phile, Anglophone civiliser in chief — a vast figure in our tale. He would suffer many a baleful settler glare, the colonists believed his pro-Zulu politics were dangerous to their almost infinite demand for labour and land. As the Cape colonials moved towards self-government, Natal became a problem child.

This is episode 194 and we’re marching towards Thaba Bosiu with Lieutenant General George Cathcart. Or sitting on horseback among King Moshoeshoe’s Basotho warriors, armed with a musket. Take your pick. We’re going to hear about the Battle of Berea, and the outcome would underline the Basotho mastery of their land, leading to Lesotho’s independence. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, first things first. AS you heard last episode, soldiers from various regiments in the British army and the Cape Mounted Rifles totalling 2500 troops were invading Moshoeshoes’ kingdom. The British were trying to secure the northern parts of the Cape Colony and believed that by crushing Moshoeshoe, the TransOrangia would be rid of raiding and chaos. The fact that a whole range of people were raiding and causing chaos seemed to have escaped the attention of Cathcart and his commanders. As you know, there was a long list of these renegades. But because Moshoeshoe was the most organised African leader in the territory, it stood to reason that it must be his people causing the trouble. The Basotho’s main opponent weren’t the Boers under Pretorius or the Rolong under Maroka or the Griqua, no they weren’t the Bastaards under Pieter Davids and Carolus Batjoe, or even the Kora Bandits under Gert Taaibosch. No, the Basotho regarded Sekonyela’s Batlokwa as their main opposition in the area. And it was Sekonyela’s complaints to the British about Moshoeshoe that set off this recent marching business. Sure, there’s no debate about whether or not Moshoeshoe and his allies had been carting off Boer stock, raiding when they could, this was true. What was really going on was that Cathcart wanted to end the ongoing 8th Frontier War and thought that by hammering Moshoeshoe, a possible future conflict could be avoided and he could concentrate on the amaXhosa further south. Cathcart moved off during daylight, and it was going to take his force hours to reach their first objectives. That was more than enough time for Moshoeshoe to recover from what was a heinous break from English military tradition — no war was declared after all. The Basotho king moved fast and within an hour, his 3000 warriors were on their horses, muskets loaded. The King had also not been idle in recent years, his people had been studying and practicing how to fight a mobile army moving inside his mountain kingdom, particularly the tactics used by the British. Instead, the British commander looked around him and counted the cost. Thirty-eight British soldiers died, the most in any engagement thus far in South Africa. He had 5000 Basotho cattle, hardly a small number, and yet something to boast about. The Basotho king in turn had lost around 50 men, dozens more injured and written a letter that Cathcart could wave about - peace in our time!

First off, congratulations to Gcina Mhlophe who is DStv’s content Creator podcaster of the year — I was so happy to shortlisted and incredibly happy for her. Gcina’s African Storytelling podcast is ground breaking please look out for it on all podcast platforms. And a big shout out to all the other finalists, I was amazed at just how many people in South Africa are making a living out of creating their own content, their own stories. Things sure have changed in the media space! Back to 1852. Planet earth had seen quite a few interesting events in that year. Henry Wells and William Fargo put a few dollars together and launched Wells Fargo and Company, in Boston Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Smith And Wesson the firearms manufacturer was founded, and the Taiping Rebellion in China was gaining momentum,. The British parliament passed the New Zealand Constitution Act of 1852 which granted the colony self-government — something the settlers in South Africa had been trying to achieve for the Cape. The First Yale Harvard boat race was held in 1852, and French engineer Henri Giffard made the the inaugural airship trip taking off in Paris and flying to Trappes, Leo Tolstoy published his first book called Childhood in 1852, then a deadly tsunami triggered by an earthquake killed thousands in Banda in the Dutch East Indies, what we know as Indonesia. This is where the echoes of history could be heard more than 150 years later when one of the deadliest tsunami’s ever recorded slammed into Banda Aceh province on Boxing Day of 2004 — killing 228 000 people. Geology is a swine and geological history definitely repeats itself. There is no doubt that at some point in the future, Banda Aceh will be struck by another massive earthquake, and tsunami. In 1852, France opened the doors to the dreaded Devil’s Island penal colony made famous by Steve McQueen in the movie Papillon in 1973. And 1973 was three years before 1976, when a postulation made in 1852 was eventually proven true. Amazingly, this postulation, or problem, is at the heart of our lives today. Let me explain how an apparently obscure event that took place in October 1852 led to a host of technical developments in the 20th Century — and continues to drive innovation today - and it has a South African link. University College of London student Francis Guthrie studying under the much admired mathematician Augustus De Morgan postulated the question of proving mathematically that no more than four colours would be needed to provide separate tones to shapes that bordered each other on a map. He thought about maps a lot because he also studied botany and ended up earning a Bachelor of Arts and became a lawyer. Guthrie’s postulation almost flippant in its apparent ludicrousness, was far more complex than it sounded. Don’t roll your eyes just yet, hang in there. What appears simple eluded geniuses of maths for a century and a half. Even Minkowski who was Einstein’s mathematics instructors had a go and gave up - after dismissing previous attempts as the work of second class mathematicians. Little did the world know, but Guthrie had created a question that would revolutionise computer theory amongst other things like improving sports scheduling, sorting out mobile phone frequency allocation and is the basis of how AI works. Of course, just to add a twist in the tail, there’s a South African connection. Now back to the maps of 1852 which had just been marked with the newest independent state of the Transvaal in various colours. Next door neighbours of the Transvaal took note. One was Moshoeshoe of the Basotho. Another was Mzilikazi of the amaNdebele, and Mpande of the amaZulu. Simultaneously, a cry went up around the British Empire amongst settlers demanding self-government, New Zealand was not going to be alone in the moves towards proportional representation of some sort.

This is episode 192 and what a packed episode it is! The Sand River Convention and the Battle of the Berea await. The former created a new state called the Zuid Afrikaans Republiek and the latter reinforced the Basotho power under Moshoeshoe which would ultimately lead to the kingdom of Lesotho being born. Two events that too place at the book ends of 1852 - the Convention signed in January, and the Battle of the Berea in December - left their indelible marks on South African history. The decision by the British government to sign a Convention with the Boers of the Transvaal was the result of two local officials, William Samuel Hogge and Charles Mostyn Owen. Because the 8th frontier war against the amaXhosa was going so badly, it was imperative for the British to deal with other possible threats. When they had reached Bloemfontein in November 1851, Hogge and Owen were assailed by conspiracy and tales of intrigue, some of which I explained last episode. Hogge was the senior of the two, and realised pretty quickly that the biggest problem was the annexation of the Orange River Sovereignty by Harry Smith. The Governor, said Hogge in a letter, was either “deceived or deceived himself in supposing that the majority of the white people here ever desired British authority to be extended over them…” That was the last thing the Boers wanted. He also realised that the other challenge to any authority in the Orange River Sovereignty was the chaos between different groups of people and involvement of various British officials in these conflicts.We’re dealing with 1852, January. There were two centres of power at this point, one around Andries Pretorius and the other around Hendrick Potgieter. The main cause of conflict was Potgieter’s belief that his position of Commandant-General of the Voortrekkers was a post for life. Pretorius and his adherents feared the concentration of military power in one man’s hand and Potgieter’s adherents believed Pretorius had an insatiable power lust. Each of these two believed they were entitled to be numero uno, Nommer een, die generaal, and each believed the other was kortbroek, not substantial enough to equal themselves. Eventually the convention was set for January 16th 1852 at Venter’s Farm near the junction of the Cool Spruit, the Coal Spruit, and Sand River. Here the Boer delegates gathered, as the enigmatic forgerer Van Der Kolff fled, with Pretorius and his 300 followers. IT is with some amazement then folks, that this crucial gathering, this fundemental moment in south Africa, lasted just a day. One day — and that one day changed the history of the country.

First off, some news! This series has been selected as one of the five finalists for the DStv Content Creators podcast of the year awards which is taking place on October 12th 2024. I feel completely out of place folks - a kind of imposter syndrome - finalists include the hugely successful series called True Crime South Africa with the glorious Nicole Engelbrecht and African Story Magic with magnificent Gcina Mhlophe. I had to rub my eyes when I received the email and immediately thought it was a nasty bit of malware that had crept into my system — but after a follow up call from the organisers I realised it was true. So thanks to all of my listeners for helping promote this podcast series — I owe you all a great deal. With that shameless self promotion out of the way, back to the real world of South Africa mid-19th Century. Momentous moves were afoot. The vicious 8th Frontier war was still bubbling away in the eastern Cape as Andries Stockenstrom set off from his farm under the Amatholas. The old man of the frontier had decided to travel to London to lobby politicians there and the ruling elite concerning self-government for South Africa. Journalist John Fairbairn joined him in the mission. For the settlers back on the frontier, Stockenstrom was both loved and hated. He was respected as an elder who had survived all the frontier Wars, but now colonists were taking aim at the former administrator of the Albany region, and the Zuurveld. Every single farm had been burned down by the amaXhosa in the district, but they’d left Stockenstrom’s home alone. The amaNqgika people were faithfully adhering to their old chief’s promise to Stockenstrom that he would not be attacked — even in the throes of this dreadful war. Stockenstrom had set off at the end of 1851, but when he returned from his political mission, he was greeted by a smouldering wreck that used to be his magnificent home on his farm called Maasstrom. It was a shock from which he did not recover. At first he thought it was the amaXhosa who burned his home but then the truth emerged, which shocked him all the more. It was deliberately burned down by a British officer and his patrol — who had been instigated by Grahamstown Journal Editor Robert Godlonton. To the north, in the mountains along the Caledon Valley, Moshoeshoe had been building his base of power and was trying to keep out of the British way. Major Warden as you know, was based in Bloemfontein with a company of British troops, and the Major had been skirmishing with Moshoeshoe’s allies along the southern flank of the Orange River, the border with British Kaffraria. While the British were being kept busy in the 8th Frontier War, Andries Pretorius had been in touch with Major Warden and with Moshoeshoe. Emissaries from Moshoeshoe had visited Pretorius a few times to ask for the Boers to join the Basotho in an uprising against the British - particularly after Warden’s repeated attempts to subjugate the Basotho King. While this was going on, a separate group of Boers decided to take the matter into their own hands and rode to Thaba Bosiu, where they negotiated their own Peace Treaty with Moshoeshoe. They didn’t tell Pretorius, and he was angry. Once again the fractured nature of the Voortrekkers was highlighted. Moshoeshoe realised this, but took the emissaries at face value when they said they’d avoid conflict with the Basotho and other groups. Pretorius who was in Mooi River, was angry about this matter because he had been trying to stabilise the trekker relationship with the British. Here were Vermaak and Linde doing their own thing, clearly a threat to Major Warden - so the following day — 4th September — Pretorius wrote to Warden expressing a commitment to a lasting Peace with the British.

Episode 190 is about the ocean, and a staggering event. The sinking of the HMS Birkenhead off Gansbaai, south of Cape Town - and event which led to the famous phrase women and children first in maritime lore. All of course also linked to the fierce 8th Frontier War of South Africa because there were hundreds of troops on board this ship when it went down - it is believed 445 drowned or were killed by sharks. The chronicle of what happened is riveting. The terrifying ordeal for the survivors of this ship became part of the mid-nineteenth century Victorian consciousness. The sinking of the Birkenhead also remains one of the greatest maritime disasters off South Africa's coast. But the fact that every one of the women and children aboard survived the wreck owing to the gallantry and discipline of the men on board has been immortalised in maritime lore. The soldiers of the British Army regiments, and the sailors and marines under Captain Robert Salmond, jeopardised their own chances of survival by putting the 'women and children first’. It stems from the ongoing 8th Frontier War I’ve been covering now for a couple of episodes. The British fighting the amaxhosa were in need of reinforcements, particularly the 74th highland Regiment which had already borne the brunt of the fighting along the Amatola ridges and valleys. Mount Misery had caused hundreds of casualties. In many ways, The Birkenhead was also a symbol of the age of innovation, she was one of the first iron-hulled ships ever built for the Royal Navy and was converted into a troop ship. As she was being laid down the Navy switched it’s main propulsion to propellor from paddle wheels, so the vessel ended up converted from frigate to troop carrier. The Birkenhead was among the early attempts to marry sail and steam and rigged as a brigantine with two masts, a third being added later. She was powered by two 564 horsepower steam engines from Forrester & Co that drove a pair the 6-metre paddle wheels. . As part of her conversion to a troopship in 1851, a forecastle and poop deck were added to increase her accommodation, and a third mast was added, to change her sail plan to a barquentine. Although she never served as a warship, she was faster and more comfortable than any of the wooden sail-driven troopships of the time, making the trip from the Cape in 37 days in October 1850. However, it was a journey HMS Birkenhead would make for the last time in January 1852. Under command of Captain Robert Salmond, it steamed to Portsmith in the first week of January to pick up troops from ten different regiments, including the 2nd and the 74th. On the 5th January she sailed across the Irish Sea to Queenstown and picked up officers wives and children. All told there were 479 soldiers on board and more than 50 women and children, as well as a crew of 125. That was a total of 693 people stuffed into an iron hull less than 64 metres long and just over eleven metres wide - about the width of a tennis court. Even though she was thought of as well built, the early iron used in shipbuilding was quite brittle and tore easily compared to iron of later ships. Upon arrival at Simons Bay, most of the civilians disembarked, leaving only seven women and 13 children on board. Fuel, food and nine horses and forage were loaded along with more passengers, then HMS Birkenhead set sail again at 18h00 on the 25th February, heading for Algoa Bay and East London. Captain Salmond made a few hasty calculations and sailed close to the the coast heading south east towards Cape Agulhas. Time was of the essence, but two factors transpired against the ship. One was the compasses were registering small errors making navigation tricky, and the other was a strong south-east current was sweeping into Walker Bay and carrying the ship closer to shore than the crew realised. The were heading towards Danger Point, and the rocks.

1851 it is, and the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition took place in Hyde Park, London, from 1 May to 15 October 1851. It was the first in a series of World's Fairs, exhibitions of culture and industry that became popular in the 19th century. Famous people of the time attended the Great Exhibition, including Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Michael Faraday, Samuel Colt, writers like Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Alfred Tennyson, and William Makepeace Thackeray. Schweppes was the official sponsor. The Great Exhibition was a celebration of modern industrial technology and design - mainly for the British who were trying to show how through tech, the world would be a better place - leading the nations in innovations so to speak. Six million people, equivalent to a third of the entire population of Britain at the time, visited the Great Exhibition, averaging over 42 000 visitors a day, sometimes topping 100 000. Thomas Cook managed the travel arrangements for the Exhibition, and made the equivalent of 33.2 million pounds in today’s cash - or 186 000 pounds back in 1851, and promptly used the money to found the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Science Museum, as well as the Natural History Museum. Inventor Frederick Bakewell demonstrated a precurser to something that we know as a Fax Machine. The New Zealand exhibit was well liked, featuring Maori crafts such as flax baskets, carved wooden objects, eel traps, mats, fish hooks and the scourge of the British army in Kiwiland, their hand clubs. A couple of conservative politicians let it be known they were not happy about the Exhibition, saying visitors would turn into a revolutionary mob. Considering that Karl Marx was part of the visitors - perhaps not unsurprisingly. But did Karl Marx use the services of Thomas Cook? Not exactly a question destined for a dissertation. This Exhibition went on to become a symbol of the Victorian Era. Meanwhile … a serious War in one of its colonies, the Cape was more than disquietening - it appeared this war was more a Victorian error. AS in mistake. amaNgqika chief Maqoma was causing Harry Smith sleepness nights, and Colonel Fordyce and his colleagues were fighting for their lives along the Amathola mountains. The Waterkloof ridges — in a place to the west of Fort Beaufort — was where the Khoekhoe and coloured marksmen made their greatest impact. The ex-Cape Mounted Rifles members amongst the rebels had other uses. They understood the British bugle calls, having been trained by the British, further exasperating men like Henry Somerset and Colonel Fordyce. The amaXhosa and Khoekhoe rebels were also much more organised than in previous wars against the invaders. They targeted the Messengers reading updates from British commanders intended for Grahamstown and been reading the reports, and some of the rebels were actually being supplied directly from Grahamstown itself. Then Henry seemed to receive an injection of spine - of determination. On November 6th 1851 he massed two large columns, one under Colonel Fordyce, and the other led by Colonel Michel. Unbeknownest to him, this was to be Fordyce’s last mission. Michel’s column had to advance up the Waterkloof aka Mount Misery, while Fordyce’s column would wait above, on the summit. Michel would drive the rebels up the mountain, Fordyce would trap them and voila! Victory. It didn’t quite work that way.

We’re into an extremely tough time in our past, 1851, and about to hear about the struggle for control of an area of the Amatolas that the Boers had named Waterkloof - better known by local amaXhosa as Mtontsi. It was a case of jungle warfare as you’re going to hear. The area of operation was only 40 square kilometers and yet it remained out of Britains control for most of the 8th Frontier War. If you have an old steam driven hard copy map of the area, or can fire up your trusty digital device of choice, go to Google maps and focus on the area between the Kat and Koenap Rivers, to the west of the town of kwaMaqoma which used to be known as Fort Beaufort. Just to add a bit of post-modern spice here, nearby Cookhouse wind Farm is one of the largest in South Africa on the high ridge east of the Great Fish River. The Waterkloof itself is a deep, narrow valley, six kilometres long, bounded by the Kroomie Heights to the south and to the north by a second series of majestic ridges falling away to a rolling plateau. Running roughly south-east and open at its western side, it comes to a head in a high, grassy tableland fringed with bushes and gigantic trees. To the east, this tableland falls away into another deep, heavily-forested gorge, known as Fuller's Hoek. It was in this gorge, in a gigantic overhanging cave of a type that proliferates in the area, that amaNqika chief Maqoma had his headquarters. The plateau is linked to the Kroomie by a narrow ridge and where this joins the plateau is a 'horseshoe-shaped flat', approximately a square kilometre in area and fringed by towering forests. In due course it would be named 'Mount Misery' by the British troops who fought in or near there. In the mountain fastnesses above, there are two reserves today - Mpofu and Fort Fordyce. Here you’ll still find the Chacma baboon, black wildebeest on the escarpment, blue duiker, mountain reedbuck. If you’re lucky you’ll spot the Cape Parrot, and eagles, while the playful Knysna Loeries abound. The Caracal is the largest predator there these days, but in the past leopards would stalk here - eating a snack of rock dassie. By February 1851 the bitterness of the 8th Frontier War was becoming more evident with descriptions of British troops being captured and tortured to death by the amaXhosa. Settlers and regular troops marched through the Thyumie valley in February in revenge, burning everything and carrying a flag which had the word “Extermination” emblazoned for all the see. Governor Sir Harry Smith had advocated extermination of the amaXhosa and the Khoekhoe in letters and conversations - he was panikcing besieged in King Williams Town and chaos was the order of the day - the governor was lashing out. No quarter was being given by either side - man against man. Somerset was stung into action. On 7th September he sent a large patrol into the Waterkloof, 600 men from the 74th Highland Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Fordyce. The man who was to give both his name and his life to these mountains.

This is episode 187 - it’s 1851. Time to take stock of what’s going on across southern Africa which as you know was in the throes of the 8th Frontier War. A significant war. After that we’ll return to Thomas Stubbs who had turned himself into a useful night raider and was about to show the British how to fight in the Albany thickets. To the north, in the mountains of the BaSotho people, King Moshoeshoe the first was not idle in early 1851and his patience with his own kith and kin as well as with the Boers and the British had worn out. When word of Mlanjeni the prophet reached the BaSotho - and how his new message of salvation through a mixture of Christianity and amaXhosa religion had resonated with so many, Moshoeshoe kept a clear head. He had allowed the French missionaries and Casalis in particular to operate within his kingdom and trusted the man in black, but now the exuberant revival of traditional customs and rituals and warfare began to sweep through LeSotho — a millenarian moment. Mlanjeni’s reputation caused a relapse among the BaSotho converts, led by a local diviner called Mantsopa who began to build a formiddable reputation as a soothsayer. She could predict victories in war it was said, and in 1850 and 1851 the revivalist movement grew more powerful. Moshoeshoe was always cautious when to came to religion, as you’ll hear when we return over the coming episodes to the mountain kingdom. Mlanjeni’s reputation caused a relapse among the BaSotho converts, led by a local diviner called Mantsopa who began to build a formiddable reputation as a soothsayer. She could predict victories in war it was said, and in 1850 and 1851 the revivalist movement grew more powerful. Moshoeshoe was always cautious when to came to religion, as you’ll hear when we return over the coming episodes to the mountain kingdom. Moshoeshoe took note of this reaction and how the racial and political message was deeply felt by his people. And yet he continued to attend French missionary Casalis’ church services out of good faith, and ensured that the missionaries were protected. He also reinforced to all that he was a man of his word. This is the really incredible thing, whereas most others around him were quite ready to go on some terminal quest to kill all the invaders, he was first and foremost, a realist. This all began to come to a head as the 8th Frontier war exploded when the British officials in the Orange River Sovereignty demanded restitution for cattle raiding. And now it’s time to return to the story of Thomas Stubbs. His part in this epic drama is seemingly insignificant, and yet it is more important at second glance. What, would you say, could really be important about a small-scale import export trading rebel who was a part-time saddle artisan from Albany ? A man who’s father Henry made money trading illegally with the amaXhosa? As I mentioned in passing last episode, in some ways, Stubbs set off a series of what became known as special force tactics in the British Army. He wasn’t alone in the period, the British Army was coming up regularly against unconventional soldiers experts in their own bush and veld. In India, Canada, Australia, the middle East. But what was really important about Thomas Stubbs was how he approached tactical issues in the bush. The entire British military experiment in the mid-19th Century was all about seeing what was going on— marching around — bugles, classic red tunics, polished buttons flashing in the midday sun where they’d strut about. You know the saying, no-one goes out in the midday sun except mad dogs and Englishmen.

Episode 186 it is - we’re taking a closer look at theological suppositions, ecclesiastical superstitions, magic and myth. Some housekeeping - first thanks to John for taking the time to send a note regarding ecclesiastical and to Mphuthumi for your message about Nkosi Maqoma - I’ll get hold of your book, The Broken River Tent published in 2017. In this episode we’re going to plunge into a sea of mystery because we’re going to investigate the incredibly diverse history of situations where people believe they can turn bullets into water - or where traditional methods were deployed to deflect incoming projectiles. These are widely held beliefs which surface in popular ‘millenarian’ movements – usually uprisings against colonial conditions. You’ve heard how Mlanjeni’s philosophy had motivated so many to take up arms against the invaders, his message of salvation had spread throughout the Cape. amaXhosa and other people felt it resonated with personally, so they gravitated towards the prophet. amaXhosa chiefs like Maqoma and the paramount Sandile realised that Mlanjeni had the power of persuasion and visited the prophet. But they weren’t alone because by the mid-nineteenth century, charismatic men and women like Mlanjeni of the amaXhosa had taken to mixing Christianity and animist faiths to create a new way to deal with colonisation. This is a classic process in social structures. The old ways were failing — how could assegai’s beat artillery? Turn to enchantment, wizadry, spellcraft, mysticism. The missionaries had closely interwoven their Christian message with western civilisation, diametrically opposed to traditionalism. So prophets like Mlanjeni seized part of their narrative, the salvation message, and merged it rather than opposed it using traditional views to distinguish themselves from the missionaries, to coopt the power so to speak. An ancient philosophy rooted in a world view now threatened by a new industrial powerhouse alter itself, took hold of the strengths of the invader and mixed the message. Missionaries had preached salvation and many of these millenarian movements used part of the story of the Bible, exodus, the crucifixion, Christ rising from the dead, combined with their own ancient myths and legends, to create a really potent new doctine that made sense. This is all linked to what anthropoligists and psychologists call Cognate epistemology. It was identified as something that occured between southern African hunters, herders and farmers, San Khoe and bantu speakers. Cross-cultural convictions emerge amongst people who share a common landscape. Cognate epistemology is the study of knowledge—how we know what we know — exploring questions like "What is knowledge?" and "How do we acquire this knowledge?” I am by no means denegrating those who believe this. Because another way of thinking about cognate epistemology is how folks like to dive deeply into that pool of disinformation called X and or WhatsApp, sharing social media bilge. The very idea of an influencer itself, correlates almost exactly with those who seek cognate connectivity — advertisers also deploy this concept constantly. So go tell your favourite influencer on TikTok that they’re indulging in Cognate Epistemology. When Fort Hare was attacked at 9am on the morning of 21st January 1851, six thousand warriors were yelling Bolowana as they descended on the fortified post. This was going to be the most decisive event of the 8th Frontier War and amaXhosa chief Sandile knew it.

Cape Governor Harry Smith had made his escape from Fort Cox to King Williams’ Town, and was now hoping for help in the form of 3000 Zulu warriors. The British had mucked things up on the frontier, and most of their old allies the Khoekhoe of the Kat River Settlement had decided to rise up, along with the amaXhosa. The Boers were also not in any mood to send help, in fact, the destabilisation was in their favour, it drew English troops away from the transOrangia Region. Mlanjeni the prophet had told the Xhosa that this was the time to drive the English into the sea - and Maqoma the amaRharhabe chief of the amaNhlambe was all to ready to do just that. It was new Year, 1851. In a few days, the Taiping Rebellion - or Civil War as some call it - would begin in China. And like the uprising in the Cape, a man who claimed super powers was behind this war in Asia. Hong Xiuquan was an ethnic Hakka man who claimed to be related to Jesus Christ and was trying to convert the local Han people to his syncretic version of Christianity. Xiuquan was trying to overthrow the Qing dynasty and the Taiping rebels were hell bent on should I say, heaven bent on upending the entire country’s social order. Eventually the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom based in Nanjing managed to seize a significant portion of southern China. It was to become the bloodiest war of the 19th Century, lasting 14 years. Back on the eastern Cape frontier, the settlers were facing the amaXhosa rage and fury, frustration that had built up over generations burst into the 8th Frontier War. Maqoma had warned the errant missionary George Brown that a war was coming of cruelty never seen before in southern AFrica. Some called it the first war of colour, a general war of the races. The Kat River people rebelled, some Khoekhoe soldiers rebelled, some of the famous Cape Mounted Rifles men mutinied, the amaThembu people under Maphasa, so important to Xhosa tradition, joined the Xhosa. amaNhlambe chief Siyolo, the best soldier amongst the amaXhosa, had cut off the road between King WilliamsTown and Grahamstown. And yet, in this frontier war it wasn’t just black versus white - oh no. As you’ll hear, Black South Africans fought for the British, and there were incidents of British soldiers who mutinied and joined the amaXhosa. amaNgqika men upset at how they’d been treated by their own countrymen worked for the colonists in this war, not the mention the amaMfengu people who the amaXhosa regarded as illegal immigrants on their land - there was no love lost between these two either. To merely describe this war as blacks versus whites is to commit historical incongruity. Sandile met with Maqoma in the first days of 1851 in order to work out a series of offensive moves against the British. Hermanus Matroos, who you met last episode was leading a powerful battalion sized group of amaXhosa and Khoesan fighters. Willem Uithaalder, former Cape Mounted Rifles cavalryman, was also fighting the British — his knowledge about how to go about focusing attacks was key.

This is episode 184 and we’re picking up our story on old year’s eve 1850. Last episode, we heard how Cape Governor Harry Smith was holed up in Fort Cox, and the amaXhosa were in control of most of British Kaffraria - the 8th Frontier War was in full flow. There were fears amongst the settlers that the war would spread as far as the Cape Colony, and the five thousand British troops stationed in southern Africa were spread as far as across the Orange River. What was also unclear was what was going on across the Kei, had the Gcaleka and Paramount chief Sandile decided to join in with Maqoma and Mlonjeni? Also unclear was the situation in all the villages and towns, and what about the amaGqunukhwebe - were they going to remain neutral? Missionary George Brown was still searching for his wife Janet and their infant — he didn’t know yet that she’d was on her way to Fort White and was safe. When we left off, Brown had been accosted close to his mission station at Iqibira, where Chief Maqoma who led the rebellion demanded he answer questions. We had also met Maqoma’s main translator who historians believe was Hermanus Matroos although he never formally introduced himself to Brown. The reason why we’ve spent some time talking about Matroos is because he had convinced many in the Kat River Settlement Khoekhoe to join the uprising against the British. One raid too many by the redcoats into the Kat River, following years of being bad mouthed by the English Settlers led by the odious editor of the Grahamstown Journal Robert Godlonton, had pushed the Khoekhoe over the edge. Mlanjeni the prophet had preached that an uprising against the British would succeed and so far he appeared to be 100 percent correct. It was Sunday 29th December and on that very day, Colonel Henry Somerset — commanding officer of the frontier forces and commanding officer of the Cape Mounted Rifles, was on his horse heading towards Fort Cox. He was trying to save Governor Sir Harry Smith who was besieged there - out although his dispatch riders had failed to pierce the amaXhosa warrior perimeter the previous night. Somerset was in his 60s, and quite a sight he was. Large handlebar moustache, was dapper in dress, but regularly almost useless in his actions. This was the man upon which the entire British response dangled. Somerset’s father was Lord Charles, who had returned home after his stint as Governor of the Cape between 1814 and 1826 and died in 1837 at the age of 63. His men loved him because he preferred sending them to the beach with a band than into the bracken with a rifle. By now he was seen as the beau ideal of a cavalry officer of the old regime. One trooper wrote that he was “…a fine looking old man, a regular Vieux d’Afrique…” Or "Old Man of Africa" And to make things worse, the defeat of the 91st was not the only bad news on Sunday 29th December 1850 — Somerset was to hear that Hermanus Matroos had convinced his fellow Khoekhoe and coloured brethren in the Kat River Settlement to join the amaXhosa uprising. Attention turned quite swiftly to the Khoekhoe men of the Cape Mounted Rifles where some had already joined the Xhosa war.

Episode 183 it is, and we’re going to take stock as we enter 1851. In war, truth is the first casualty. It’s a military maxim attributed to Aeschylus, the father of Greek tragedy. Aeschylus actually fought in the front lines against the Persians at Marathon in 490 BC. We don’t know much about the rest of his life, but we do know that his work called 'Persians' which was financed by Pericles was such a success that he was invited to Sicily by Hieron of Syracuse to restage the play. His life bridged the Archaic and Classical ages. Considered even by the ancients to be difficult and old-fashioned, Aeschylus was also quite innovative in the structures, personnel, and even subjects of his 89 plays, of which we have only seven. Later, in In 1758 the famous lexicographer Samuel Johnson penned a short item in “The Idler" which included the following statement .. ‘ “Among the calamities of War may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.” Credulity. A willingness to believe whatever is dished up. The lovers of social media are infected by a disease called credulity. In this series I have endeavoured to avoid relying on credulity by constantly referring to original sources, documents, oral history, cross-referencing where I can. There is nothing more important than deploying verification. Credulity is the tendency to be too ready to believe that something is real or true, often without sufficient evidence or critical examination. It refers to a person's inclination to accept claims or assertions with little skepticism or questioning. Southern African history is full of credulity being punctured by reality. Most politicians make a living out of abusing credulity. With that melodromatic introduction, let us dive into the deep pool of tangibility regarding Mlanjeni’s War, the 8th Frontier War which broke out on Christmas day 1850. The military villages along the Thyumie River were gone, burned down, dozens of British soldiers were dead, killed in Boma Pass or killed in their military villages named Auckland, Juanasburg and Woburn. In the mountains above Thyumie River, missionary Niven and his family had walked out of Keiskamma hoek and straight into a party of amaXhosa warriors. It is true that respected Rharhabe chief Ngqika had declared the missionaries and their homes protected, but that was twenty years ago and the respected chief was long gone. Into our story steps one of the most remarkable characters we’ve heard about thus far, a man called Hermanus Matroos. Brown was to remark later later that Matroos “… spoke English more precisely than I have ever heard any other native do…” Hermanus Matroos, otherwise known as Ngxukumeshe enters our tale, a large and imposing man, broad shouldered, powerful. Hermanus means army man, warrior, brave warrior and comes from the German, Herman. Matroos means sailor. And Ngxukumeshe means in the vanguard - at the front. These names fit the man, a warrior born of a slave sailor, a man who was always at the front of everything.

Welcome to the History of South Africa podcast with me your host, Des Latham, this is episode 182. 182 is a triangular number meaning it can be arranged in an equilateral triangle — specifically it is the 13th triangle number because 13x4 Divided by 2 is 182. And it’s a death triangle that the British were facing now - facing amaXhosa prophecy, a blazing hot environment not conducive to their warfare, and the amaXhosa chiefs who were stacking up against the invaders. When we left off, the British column under Lieutenant Colonel George Mackinnon was trying to make it back to Fort White having been whipped by the amaXhosa in the Boma Pass. It’s important to note that all 12 British killed in that ambush were shot. Previously in the first seven Frontier Wars, most soldiers were stabbed by amaXhosa wielding assegais, but now the boot was on the other foot. And yet in the coming months of war, the Xhosa would use their trusty assegai’s to good effect as you’re going to hear. It was Boxing Day 1850, a year in which the transportation of British convicts to Western Australia had begun just as it was being phased out in other parts of that territory. In June 1850 Former Twice-Served British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel fell off his horse and died. Mayer Lehman sailed from Germany to join his two brothers in the United States, who were running a dry-goods business, a pre-cursor to the doomed Lehman Brothers bank which collapsed in 2007 and took the world’s economy with it. Also in the United States, Edward Ralph May delivered a speech to the Indiana legislature where he called for African-Americans to be given the right to vote. This was a period when slavery was still legal in the U.S., ten years before the civil War. In southern Africa, Mackinnon’s men had been shot at through Christmas by Sandile’s warriors who were imbued with Prophet Mlanjeni’s magic - and now the troops were trying to escape what looked like certain doom. They’d bivouacked overnight at the Uniondale mission station at Keiskamma Hoek. It hadn’t helped that Mackinnon stuck to his original orders like a limpet to a rock. Governor Sir Harry Smith had ordered that the men should march with firearms unloaded to avoid any accidents, and despite the fact that a large army of amaXhosa were now tailing the British as they were force marched to Fort White, the muskets remained unloaded. In nearby Woburnin for example, homes had been built at Ngqika’s warrior son Thyali’s grave. As you’ve heard the ex-British soldiers living there had opened up and desecrated the grave. For the Ngqika line of the Rharhabe - this military village would be their first main target. The amaNgqika had watched the vets till their land, they lived cheek by jowel. The land that had recently been their forefathers. The little river between Woburn and the amaNgqika was easy to cross except when in full spate, and a large amaXhosa army crossed the river on Christmas Day 1850, and laid waste to Woburn which they attacked at nine in the morning. Sixteen ex-soldiers farmed here some with families, and they were overrun in less than an hour - the women and children spared, the men speared or shot. The nearby military village of Auckland was attacked at two in the afternoon, it lay in a a bowl at the head of the Thyumie River valley and this was a trap from which none of the soldiers would escape. There was no clear view down into the valley which meant they had no idea what was taking place they could not see the smoke from Woburn and the little village of Juanasberg. When a Khoekhoe woman struggled up the path on Christmas morning and told the inhabitants of Auckland she had spotted smoke from the other villages, she was ignored. Across the other side of the Amatola mountains, the British troops who’d managed to make it out of Boma Passthen marched off from Keiskamma hoek heading to Fort White, were suffering in the mid-summer heat.

Shots fired! We’re with the amaXhosa under Maqoma and Sandile, and the British soldiers under Lieutenanat Colonel George Mackinnon, fighting on the steep cliffs of Boma Pass. When the firing began, one of the companies of 73rd Regiment had just entered the pass and it’s Captain JC Gawler explained later about the confusion. Last episode we heard all about the long column of British troops strung out more than two kilometers up this pass, and how Mackinnon, along with the Xhosa police fighting alongside the British and the Coloured Cape Mountain Rifles had emerged at the top. Bugles were blasting off below, sounding the advance call, but the British troops were not sure what that meant - either run up the slopes, or turn to fight their attackers. What was even more bizarre in spite of the volleys going off and the sounds of Xhosa muskets echoing off the rocky cliffs, Mackinnon refused to believe that his column was being attacked. This was supposed to be a show of force said Governor Harry Smith, not a real attempt at arresting Sandile the Ngqika chief. Major John Jarvis Bisset managed to convince the lieutenant Colonel the Xhosa were in fact attacking — Mackinnon regarded the amaXhosa as savages who couldn’t properly organise a fight of this sort. He’d also convinced himself that Maqoma and others who’d been hell bent on war were being ignored by the amaXhosa chiefs, a very bad miscalculation. His hesitation some say was actually caused by shock, then having to accept the truth. Only the very best commanders and leaders are able to quickly rally themselves in a time of crisis and I’m afraid Mackinnon was not one of those. Bisset was, however, and he appeared to take over matters to some extent. It was his duty he said to plunge back down the gorge to take command of the ragged column and Mackinnon agreed. But a quick word about Tiyo. He’d been the first black minister to be ordained overseas, and overseas happened to be Scotland. He’d married a Scots Woman, and been the first to translate an English classic into isiXhosa. And which classic? Pilgrims’ Progresss. The firsts continue- his eldlest son was the first black doctor in the Cape, his second eldest son Johna Henderson Soga is revered as the first amaXhosa historian. Third son was a vet. All his sons were educated in Scotland. But that was in the future. Right now, Tiyo had made his way back to Keiskamma Hoek with his Scots bride, aged 21. As the lovebirds disembarked from their voyage in Port Elizabeth, a settler shouted they were “the shame of Scotland”.

Episode 180 it is then so let’s get cracking. Or crackling, which was the atmosphere in late 1850 as Xhosaland and British Kaffraria was seized by the exploits of prophet Mlanjeni. He’d combined world views, his messianic emergence shook the land as far away as Cape Town. AS a sickly young man from near King Williams Town, he’d disappeared to work in the Cape Colony and returned in 1850 claiming to have been living under the sea. Not quite Sponge Bob because unlike that loveable kids character, Mlanjeni said it was during his stint underwater that God spoke to him. You’ll remember how I explained that Mlanjeni took to sitting in pools in nearby rivers and streams, the water lapping against his face as he sat deep in thought. At first he seemed to be in sync with the missionaries and the Governor Harry Smith, saying the amaXhosa should abandon witchcraft, avoid raiding settler cattle and so on. However his message morphed as I explained, and very soon he was exorting his numerous adherents to stop burning the wood of gum trees — an invasive species — he believed the exotic tree symbolised white influence. Word spread, and some began saying that Mlanjeni had miraculous powers, he could light his pipe from the sun, he wore his face on one cheek so he could spot witches and paralyse them. When the missionaries heard that he was also saying that he could heal the sick, give sight to the blind, to make the mute speak and the lame walk. He refused to accept gifts, and the chiefs and commoners streamed to his home. Then the British tried to arrest him and he disappeared, thus growing more power in the eyes of his adherents. We need to focus on these religious matters, so a quick return to the men in black. The missionaries were in a spot. Robert Niven of the United Presbyterian Church was holding forth in Keiskamma hoekDown the road was a man who you could say was taking his position as missionary into the missionary position. George Brown lived on the plains below the Amatolas, not far from the Thyumi valley, arriving in early 1849. At first people noted how he had a kind and manly appearance. But very soon, however, the manly appearance took on a reverential lust — a scandalous man as you’ll hear. But first, he seduced the young Janet Chalmers, William Chalmers daughter, and John Forbes Cumming hated him so much for this act, that the two men spoke only through letters. Brown was forced to marry Janet Chalmers in August 1850, five months pregnant.Harry Smith by now was on the frontier, and Sandile’s mother Sutu who was Ngqika’s widow, went to the Thyumi mission station on 9th December to speak with him. She asked why the English wanted another war. Smith said that the chiefs were not paying fines and she warned “You have taken away all my power, you take away the power of the chiefs, and then you find fault with us for not keeping the people in order…” Christmas Eve was the date selecte by Harry Smith as the day his intimidatory force as Noel Mostert Called it, up the Boma Pass into the Amatola mountains. It was exactly sixteen years to the day of the outbreak of the Frontier War of 1834.

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.

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?

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.

This is the period of the utilitarian liberal, not of the democrat, it’s 1850 and in the Cape, a newly ninted constitution had been drafted by the attorney general, William Porter. This was based on a nonracial qualified franchise - all adult males who had occupied property worth at least twenty five pounds for a year were eligible to vote. Porter had toiled on the draft of this document for the also newly minted Governor, Sir Harry Smith, who sent it to London. Porter later in 1850 had a complete change of heart as utilitarian liberals tend to do, he denounced the option of univesal suffrage — at least for men of all colours — as threatening to the colony with its in his words, “communism, socialisms, and red republicanism which had caused so much mischief in France….” There had been an attempted major communist revolution in France in 1848, which spilled over into other parts of western Europe including the land that would become known as Germany. This horrified utilitarians everywhere, no less so in the Cape Colony. As the ship bearing Smith’s new constitution headed north, another was heading south and crossed each other somewhere out there on the wild untamed ocean. It was a dispatch from Colonial Secretary Earl Grey who proposed sending Irish convicts to the Cape. Smith announced this proposal to the horrified residents of Cape Town and immediately aroused a storm of agitation against the Governor. The settlers had been considering representative government for some time and this suggestion of Irish convicts arriving backfired — driving many more of the moderate thinkers into the arms of those who were agitating for some form of independent governance. The colonists regarded the Irish as a threat to their respectability and citizens used the concept as a weapon to attaack the oligarchy that ran the Cape at the time. It was a legislative council, nominated by Governors not elected by the people so it had been tainted constantly by allegations of corruption, nepotism, and a host of other maladies associated with power wielded too long by men who were mostly too greedy. The convicts duly arrived on a ship called Neptune, but they were refused entry to Cape Town, and the men sat in chains in Simon’s Bay for five months. Eventually in 1850 the ship was ordered to sail away. One of the main antagonists in this crazy story was a man called John Montagu. He had been alarmed by how the Irish convict idea had radicalised even his mild-mannered friends, and so he demanded that Smith reimpose some kind of authority and stop this movement towards representative government. Montagu argued that the whole idea was anti-English, not what the British should be supporting, so Smith delayed the implementation. But what was going on was very very interesting. The hullabaloo had revealed two very distinct political movements inside the Cape. One was conservative, pro-English and pro-British government, led by Montagu, joined by the big merchants of Cape Town. They were also joined by the Eastern Cape settlers led by their flag bearer, Grahamstown Journal Editor and land speculator Robert Godlonton. Another powerful figure joined this conservative echelon, and that was the newly arrived Anglican Bishop, Robert Gray. A newspaper called the Cape Monitor was launched in October 1850 by these conservatives. The second political movement were the radicals, both British and Afrikaner, led by John Fairbairn, Christoffel Brand, Francis William Reitz and Andries Stockenstrom. They regarded the conservatives as a corrupt bunch of nepotists, an oligarchy, but they were divided by what to do about frontier policy. Fairbairn used his newspaper the South African Advertiser to defend the rights of blacks, while Brand preferred to defend the rights of the Dutch descendents against the oppression of old-English money elites. Stockenstrom had his own varied approach to both.

This is episode 175 - and we’re back in the Cape circa 1849 and thereabouts. Before we dive into the latest incidents and events, let’s take a look at what was going on globally as everything is connected. In France, citizens are able to use postage stamps for the very first time, a series called Ceres, which is also a place in the Western Cape. The Austrian Army invades Hungary entering the countries two capitals, which back in 1849 were called Buda and Pest. Next door, Romanian paramilitaries laid into Hungarian civilians, killing 600 in what we’d call ethnic cleansing. The second Anglo-Sikh war was on the go in India, and the British suffered a defeat at the Battle of Tooele, while across the ocean in Canada, the Colony of Vancouver Island was established. This is important because that’s where one of my ancestors eloped later in the 19th Century for the metropolis that was Beaufort West. Elizabeth Blackwell was awarded her M.D, thus becoming the first women doctor in the United States, and the Corn Laws were officially repealed by the UK Parliament. These were tariffs and trade resctrictions on imported food — including all grains like Barley, wheat and oats. I mention this because the repeal spelled the death knell to British mercantilism — skewing the value of land in the UK, raised food prices there artificially, and hampered the growth of manufacturing. The Great Famine of Ireland between 1845 and 1852 had also revealed a real need to produce alternative food supplies through imports. It was this change that led to free trade finally being ushered into Britain — and of course this created opportunities for Southern African farmers. It’s also the year the first Kennedy arrives in America, a refugee of the Irish Famine. More prosaic perhaps, in New York on a cold February day, President James Knox Polk became the first president to have his photograph taken, while Minnesota became a formal US territory and the settlement of Fort Worth in Texas is founded. In July, a slave revolt at the Charleston Workhouse breaks out led by Nicholas Kelly, but plantation owners manage to suppress the revolt and hang 3 of the leaders including Kelly. Later in September, African-American abolitionist and hero Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery. And importantly for our story, Sir Benjamin D’Urban, after whom Durban in KZN is named and one of the Governors of the Cape, died in Montreal, Canada. Back to the Cape, because the anger at Harry Smith’s new policies were curing, nay, ripening, stewing, brewing amongst the amaXhosa. Arriving in the Eastern Cape, Harry was committed to reinstating the D’Urban system with which he had been associated - and which Lord Glenelg back in the colonial office has rejected. But now Earl Grey was in the colonial hot seat back home and he gave the thumbs up. Smith set to work sorting out the administration, appointing members of the settler elite to official positions including Richard Southey as his personal secretary. AS a close colleague of Grahamstown Journal Editor and rabid anti-Xhosa Robert Godlonton, he was chosen for his anti-black bias. If you remember how Smith had arrived, placing his foot on amaXhosa chief Maqoma’s neck, and his new edicts including the creation of British Caffraria — the previously known ceded territory —you can imagine how he was regarded further east. What is not common knowledge these days is that there was great demand for children under the age of ten to work in the Western Cape. Of course, this was not a proper labour environment, and the shift meant that these young boys and girls, and their mothers and fathers, were being turned into indentured labourers. This was a free market situation of the amaXhosa being able to hawk their labour for a fair price. Many were told they would be paid a wage, only to find that the terms of contract were vague, they were now receiving unspecified promises and the fabric of rural life based on marriage and female

This is episode 174. First off, a big thank you to all the folks who’ve supported me and for sharing so many personal stories of your ancestry. Particularly Jane who is a font of knowledge about the Williams family, and John who’s been communicating about the Transkei. Please also sign up for the weekly newsletter by heading off to desmondlatham.blog - you can also email me from that site. When we left off episode 173, King Mswati the first was running out of patience with his elder brother Somcuba. Voortrekker leader Hendrick Potgieter had also left the area north of the Swazi territory, settling in the Zoutpansberg. It was his last trek. He’d signed a treaty with Bapedi chief Sekwati, which had precluded any proper agreement with the other Voortrekkers around Lydenburg. With Potgieter gone, however, things were about to change. We need to swing back across the vast land to the region south of the Vaal River because dramatic events were taking place in 1848 - clashes between the British empire and the trekkers. By now, the area between the Orange and the Vaal was an imbroglio, elements of every type of society that existed in southern Africa for millennia could be found scattered across the region. Hunters and gatherers, pastoralists, farmers, San, Khoesan, Khoekhoe, BaSotho, Afrikaners, Boers, mixed race Griqua and Koranna, and British settlers could be found here. In some cases different combinations of these peoples lived together cheek by jowel, many combinations of cultures, languages and political systems. A classic frontier situation, with intermingling and very little structured relationship charactersing the mingling. Some of the San, Khoekhoe and even Basotho were now incorporated as servants of the Boers, and each of those groups were divided into rival political commuties. Bands of San still hunted through this area, despite attempts to eradicate them, a kind of ethnic cleansing you’ve heard about. In the south east, on either side of the Caledon River, rival Sotho states existed, under Moshoeshoe, Moletsane, Sikonyela, and Moroka — each of these had their own tame missionary living alongside as an insurance policy against each other and the British and Boers. By 1848 the new Governor of the Cape, Sir Harry Smith, had begun to experiment with British expansionism that he’d observed in India, assuming British culture and traditions, the empire’s institutions, were superior to all other. Smith loved to oversimplify complex problems, and the made him a natural expansionist and a man likely to make big mistakes. Within two months of arriving in Cape Town in December 1847, he had extended the frontiers of the Cape Colony to the Orange River in the arid north west of the Cape. This was between the area known as Ramah and the Atlantic Ocean. He’d annexed the land between the Keiskamma River and the Kraai River Basin in the east, booted out the amaXhosa, and annexed two contiguous areas as seperate British colonies — British Caffraria between the Keiskamma and the Kei River, and a second area that became known as the Orange River Sovereignty between the Orange and Vaal Rivers. Pretorius was so incensed that he began fanning the flames of anti-British opposition, or probably to be more accurate, anti-Smith opposition. This resentment boiled over in July 1848 when Pretorius with commandants Stander, Kock and Mocke led a powerful force of 200 Transvalers and about 800 Free Staters along with a 3 pounder artillery gun into Bloemfontein. The preamble to the Battle of Boomplaats had begun.

This is episode 173 and we’re in what was called the north eastern transvaal, modern day Mpumalanga and Limpopo. Last we heard how Hendrick Potgieter’s Voortrekkers had camped at a new town they named Ohrigstad in 1845, after leaving the are around Potchefstroom. Potgieter wanted to move further away from the British, and he sought a new port to replace Durban which had been annexed by the English. The area around Ohrigstad had a major drawback, apart from the fact it was already populated by the Bapedi. The lowlands were rife with malaria. Within a few weeks of arriving in the rainy season of 1845, men women and children began dying. The trekkers realised they had to move once more so families packed up their wagons and trekked to higher ground 50 kilometers south. The named the new town Lydenburg and established a new Republic named after the town. The Boers were gathered across the Vaal now, deep into the lowveld, spreading out across southern Africa. They had congregated around towns like Winburg, Potchefstroom, Ohrigstad, Lydenburg. Local African chieftans had to decide how they were going to face this arrival, was it a threat or opportunity? Later it would obviously become clear that the boers arrival was a threat, but this wasn’t the case at first in spite of modern assumptions. They were new power brokers, thinly spread, a minority on the ground and the Bapedi Chief Sekwati quickly came to the conclusion that the trekkers were an opportunity rather than threat. So when Hendrick Potgieter and his trekkers rolled onto the landscape, a meeting was arranged between the Boer leader and the Bapedi chief. On the 5th July 1845 a Vredenstractaat was signed - a treaty - which granted the Boers the land east of the Steelpoort River. As I pointed out last episode, many of the Boers who had trekked with Potgieter took exception to this treaty. They said he was acting dictatorially, and wanted more of a say in how these treaties were being signed. King Mswati of the Swazi’s who lived south east of this region was aware of what was going on. The Boers understood that he also laid claim to the Steelpoort, and had been fighting constantly with Sekwati about who had the right to this region. Mswati met with this group of disatissfied Boers, and told them that the Bapedi were his subjects, he’d defeated them. The Boers under Potgieter and the second group who regarded themselves as independent of Potgieter’s actions continued to settle on Bapedi land and friction developed. The Bapedi took a liking to the Boer cattle, and raids escalated quite quickly into full-blown attacks between the two groups on the veld. Sekwati had heard about the Boers and Mswati’s recent talks, so naturally he was suspicious of their motives. The Bapedi king encouraged the raiding of Boer cattle so by 1846 bad faith seemed to imbue all negotiations. Then an incident occurred that escalated matters. According to the Bapedi annals, the Boers complained that in joint Boer-Bapedi hunting parties the Bapedi had taken more than their allotted share of game. The Boer annals report something much more violent. That was the Bapedi raid on a Boer laager at Strydpoort, just south of modern day Polokwane. The trekkers were particularly angry because the Bapedi raided the laager on a day that most of the men were away hunting with a section of Bapedi, leaving the women alone. It was the women who fought off the attackers. There are poignant stories told by trekkers who survived how the women were knocked flat on their backs every time they fired these huge heavy muskets, leaving them bruised and battered but unbowed. There is further intrigue. The Trekkers had no idea about who owned which bit of land, they naturally assumed that Mswati was the overlord considering his people’s military social structure, similar to the amaZulu who by now, they knew well. What followed was intrigue, mystery, myth and of course, war.

This is episode 172 and we’re galloping back to cover the effect of the Boers 33 Articles, approved by the Volksraad on April 9th 1844, and thus installing the little Republic of Potchefstroom. Some of the articles and the fledgling laws and rules were going to crop up throughout the history of South Africa, all the way through to the time of apartheid, and even to the present. If you recall, the Natal Boers and the Vaal Boers had been in dispute — largely because of the difference of opinion between their two leaders, Hendrick Potgieter on the highveld, and Andries Pretorius who had been based in Natal. With the British declaring sovereignty over Natal, many Voortrekkers upped and offed, trekking back over the Drakensberg back to the transOrangia region, and up along the Vaal, while some ended up further north. So we’re going to take a look at this period. In 1849 there was a temporary union between the communities north of the Vaal, who adopted what amounted to the basis of what was to become the Transvaal Constitution. This constitution continued until the foundation of the South African Republic — which was only repealed in 1901 when its provisions ceased to be applicable. That is except for the application of the Roman-Dutch system of law. The thing to keep in mind was that the 33 Articles cannot be regarded as a formal constitution. For a start, there was no definition of various authorities in the State, and most of the 33 Articles were concerned with the procedure in the Courts. When it came to matters of Government, even the most elementary kind, the Articles were silent. Each emergency that arose subsequent to it’s ratification in 1844 led to a rewriting of the Articles to cover for the gaps in how to manage the state. Even the Volksraad was referred to in the vaguest terms possible. Often when disputes arose, another constitution, that of the Winburg Boers, regulated the Articles. Another character we’ve met pops up again. Johan Arnold Smellekamp - a citizen of the Netherlands. If you remember a previous podcast, he’d popped up in Natal and told the Volksraad in Pietermaritzburg that the Dutch Royal family was taking an active interest in the Voortrekkers. He’d stretched the truth to say the least, and had many members of the Volksraad convinced that if they fought the English for Natal, the Dutch would come to their aid. Holland did not. King William II rejected the proposed connection between the Netherlands and the Voortrekkers of Natal and before the year was out he apologised to White Hall for the affray caused by Smellekamp and his activities. That didn’t stop the self-aggrindising Smellekamp, who returned to Natal in 1843 but was refused entry into Port Natal by the British. So he headed to Delagoa Bay instead, and after the creation of the 33 Articles in 1844 and the declaration of independence by the Potch Winburg republic by Hendrick Potgieter, Smellekamp popped up once again, riding into Potch that Winter. This is where things get really interesting. Partly owing to Smellekamp’s persuation, and partly driven by his own obsessions, Potgieter made the fateful decision to organise a new trek at the end of 1844, heading towards Delagoa Bay. After a few weeks they arrived at a site they called Blyde River. Happy River. Potgieter believed that this site was only three days ride from the sea. He was wrong. They setup a new settlement and promptly named it Andries-Ohrigstad. When Potgieter’s wagons rolled onto the hills of Ohrigstad of course, they were not empty of people — and this is again where the story gets more interesting — the plot thickens to a consistency of treacle. Because the people he met there were the baPedi, who’d been forced out of their ancestral land by the amaNdebele of Mzilikazi two decades earlier. Take a look at a map and the location of iSWatini. By now it was being ruled by a very young King Mswati the First.

This is episode 171 and now its time to swing around southern Africa again, because as Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in Canterbury Tales in 1395, “Time and Tide wait for no man”. It’s from the Prologue to the first story called the Clerk’s Tale and the story is imbued with what modern academics call masculine authoritarianism. It’s about women’s power actually, and insubordination — the plot dealing with a woman called Griselda who rises the highest position of hegemonic power. She becomes the honoured wife of a wealthy lord through utter submissiveness and essential silence. To many modern folks, she represents a kind of prescriptive antifeminist propaganda — in other words — a very accurate description of the medieval period. Others say the strong and silent type is fundamentally insubordinate and deeply threatening to men and the concepts of power and male identity. What is this I hear you ask, why is Zwangendaba part of the History of South Africa? Well, as we all know, lines drawn on maps are cartographical magic codes, and the real world has no place for smoke and mirrors. Once again, we must go backwards to go forward. Zwangendaba was a King of a clan of the Nguni or Mungoni people who broke away from the Ndwandwe Kingdom alliance under King Zwide. After defeat of the Ndwandwe forces under his command by Shaka, Zwangendaba gathered his clan and fled their home near modern the town of Pongola. This dispersal was part of the movement of the people we call the Mfecane. Remarkably, Zwangendaba led his people, who took on the name the "Jele", on a wandering migration of thousands of kilometres lasting more than thirty years. Their journey took them through the areas of what is now northern South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi to Tanzania. The Ngoni, originally a small royal clan that left Kwa-Zulu Natal, extended their dominion even further through present-day Tanzania, Malawi, and Zambia when they fragmented into separate groups following Zwangendaba’s death.

This is episode 170 and the sound you’re hearing is the cheering and the flaming hot emotion because Sir Harry Smith is back in town! The town is Cape Town — Sir Harry won’t hang around there for too long, he as you know from the previous episode, has returned to South Africa to take up his new position as Governor of the Cape. Sir Harry was the former civil commissioner of the de-annexed Province of Queen Adelaide in the Eastern Cape and in June 1840 he’d left Cape Town to take up a post as Adjutant-General in India. There is this incredibly long history of connection between India and South Africa, and people like Smith were part of that history. Others of course are people like Gandhi, but that’s a story for further down the road. Smith was courageous, whatever other faults he may have had, and was involved in a sensational victory at the Battle of Aliwal in India on 28 January 1846 during the first Anglo-Sikh War. That victory led to a promotion to Major General, and he was offered an accepted a baronetcy. The British parliament formally thanked Smith, and then returned to England where the extremely bloated ego he’d developed over the past few decades was further fluffed up. While in England he’d spent a lot of time with the Duke of Wellington who’d defeated Napoleon, and with the Duke’s support, he convinced the British government that the festering sore of the Eastern Cape of South Africa could be healed. This expensive disaster after disaster he said could be resolved quickly, and even more importantly, cheaply. When he returned to England in 1847, Harry Smith was treated like royalty, greeted at Southampton by artillery salutes, church bells rang, thousands of people cheered him, a special train was laid on to take him to London, where he received the freedom of the Guildhall. He dined with Queen Victoria, and was pretty much the first authentic military hero of the Victorian era. Waterloo was 30 years earlier, a long way off, and there’d been very little military glory since. Thus, Wellington whispered in the ears of the powerful, and that is how Harry Smith was appointed the new Governor of the Cape, strategically important but infuriatingly complex. All settlers agreed, the Queen had made a perfect appointment. As we’re going to hear, this was going to be possibly her worst appointment anywhere up to then. All the hero worship was going straight to this little man’s head. He was short, so by little I mean horizontally challenged. Doing the hard work of making sense of negotiations were the translators. These were men, black and white, who had a vast influence on our history. Smith said to Sandile that he should leave Grahamstown and go to his people, whereupon the translators claim Sandile said “No — I will stay today near you, my former and best friend…” Historians believe these exchanges were embroidered, altered, and added to the misunderstandings. Many of the translators were sons of missionaries, or settlers who’d grown up speaking amaXhosa fluently. But they fed Smith what he wanted to hear. The very same translators had been at work when Sandile was taken into Grahamstown to be placed under house arrest so you can see that their editorialising was having an effect on history.

First off, a big thank you to those listeners who’ve been sending me emails, a great deal of useful information emerges from our discussions which always improves the quality of this podcast, specifically thanks to John for sending me your book and to Doctor Nkosi for the contact in eSwatini. When we left off in episode 168, pressure was being exerted on the Kat River Settlement by the new Governor, Sir Henry Pottinger. A quick revisit. The Kat River Settlement came into being in I829 after a clash on the eastern border when the authorities of the Cape Colony expelled amaXhosa from land around the source of the Kat River. To prevent them from re-occupying the area when the soldiers withdrew, the colonial government decided to settle it with English settlers and Khoekhoe and bastaards. Andries Stockenstrom who was then the Commissioner General of the eastern districts, wanted to intersperse the two races and give them equal quantities of land. But his superiors insisted on placing the khoe in the most exposed military positions, then gave the Khoe smaller land-grants than the English settlers received. What is really fascinating is how many types of people lived in this small area — people who differentiated themselves based on their ancestry. The party at the confluence of the Kat and Mankanzana Rivers for example belonged to that class of mixed race South Africans known to the colonists as 'Bastaards', who had adopted Dutch clothing, religion, technology and language, and did not associate themselves with their Khoi heritage. In May 1847 Governor Sir Henry Pottinger appoint a bankrupt farmer and a man who was known as a great hater of the Khoekhoe to oversee the Kat River Settlement. Thomas Jarvis Biddulph was appointed magistrate and immediately there were issues. Andries Stockenstrom said Biddulph’s moral character “could not bear scrutiny” and the new magistrate launched into a series of verbal and physical attacks on the Khoekhoe living along the Kat River and Blinkwater. He called them “a lazy set of paupers” and said that they would be better served working as labourers for the English settlers and the Boers. Just to reinforce his view, Biddulph pulled a tax stunt — increasing their tax from eighteen pence to six shillings. From eighteen cents to sixty cents. How about that for a tax hike, that’s 43 percent. If you tried that these days, the scratching sound of matches would be heard across the land. This historic site didn’t have long to go before it would be eviscerated by colonial jealousy. Even the former supporters, the missionaries, appeared to lose faith. One of the most ardent was Henry Calderwood. His idealism had evaporated — living on the frontier had shattered his liberal attitudes, and now he seemed to swap one obsession for another. One of the things that had driven Pottinger up the wall was the fact that the amaNgqika had continued to insist that they were at peace without admitting that they had been defeated, and by Sandile’s refusal to resume negotiations. On the 7th August 1847 Sandile’ had been formally declared a rebel. Then the whole situation worsened, and fast. Pottinger resorted to proclaiming that the amaMfengu, the Boers and the Khoekhoe who fought with his regular soldiers could seize whatever they liked from the amaXhosa. The full-scale invasion of the Amathola’s began again on the 29th September 1847, and every grain pit was emptied, every single animal seized.

This is episode 168 and the world by the middle of the 19th Century was shifting gear, changing rapidly. Southern Africa was caught in the currents of world history and within a few years with the discovery of Diamonds, was going to be very much in the current of world economics. Not that the Cape had not been crucial since the days of the Dutch East India Company, the VOR. As you heard last episode, the British government has fallen, Robert Peel had resigned on 19 June 1846, in the wake of political divisions that followed the repeal of the Corn Laws. The imposition of import duties on foreign corn had been attacked for making bread expensive. And yet, the Laws were more than a concession to farmers and landowners — they were also the symbol of a barrier against free trade. Ah yes, the logic and philosophy of lassaiz faire capitalism. The repeal of these laws and the change going on must not be underestimated. We forget these things, so long ago, at our peril. For we have similar debates going on today, globally. In 1846, the repeal of the laws took place in the midst of the great Irish Famine, which led to so many Irishmen and women fleeing their homeland for America — where they changed that country forever too. While the financiers muttered about all the advantages of free trade, they of course made sure to leave out one country in their calculations. India. This was always the exception. Still, the financiers were pontificating about how the empire itself was sort of redundant, and as everyone glanced around for the good and the bad, many found themselves wondering about southern Africa. This region assumed a pivotal role inside British politics, as it was going to do for the next 150 years. You see, the whole of South Africa was the embodiment of wasteful expenditure without a discernable return on commercial investment. It was a total liability except for the Cape of Good Hope with its strategically important naval base which allowed the British to cover the South Atlantic and the approaches to the Indian Ocean. Into the political breach strode a man who arrived with Lord John Russell’s administration, and he was the third Earl Grey, who took over from William Gladstone as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. Grey was a free trader, imbued with the spirit of the elixhir of cash, the medicine of dosh, and imperial matters were the third Earl Grey’s passionate interest. He was a technocrat with a mission, and wrote a book where he pointed out that the great object of possessing colonies was to also possess a monopoly over the commerce. Grey turned his gaze to Sir Peregrine Maitland. The governor was 70, and the stress of the Seventh Frontier War had turned him into an octagenarian. A younger man was needed. Someone who could sign up young amaXhosa and turned them into Sepoys, and they’d police their own people. This is where another colonial springs into our view, a man who was called a violent-tempered martinet, greedy and ambitious. Sir Henry Pottinger. He’d spent most of his life in the East, and had just retired as the first Governor of Hong Kong. He’d secured Britain’s commerce with that vast country called China, and when he sailed home in 1846, he’d been received as a hero. He’d been given a handsome pension for life and was telling all and sundry he hoped to become the governor of Bombay, which we now call Mumbai. The last thing he wanted was to be sent to South Africa. So when Grey met with Sir Henry, the latter bluntly refused the Cape Governorship. Eventually, Grey was forced to cough up a vast salary of ten thousand pounds a year and promised that the Cape Town post was temporary. Pottinger was to last ten months in South Africa. It’s thought too that his governoship, which was often like a hurricane of unsparing ill-will and excoriation, was also the most significant of the first half of the 19th Century.

This is episode 167 and the British army is clumping along towards the Amathola fastnesses, the deep ravines and steep riverine environment not the most ideal for an army that dragged everything around on wagons. Leading this army were officers steeped in the traditions of empire, and marching under their command were men from across Great Britain and beyond. They were poor, some with debts to pay back home, many were recruited from the haunts of dissipation and inebriation as historian Noel Mostert notes one officer saying in a somewhat sneering tone. But that’s a bit harsh, because when we read the journals of these soldiers, they’re full of character and intelligence, adventurers of their time whatever your political view. Half of these British soldiers were actually from Scotland and Ireland, they weren’t even English. It was the officers who’d neered at the colonials, openly, and it was the officers who symbolised the rotten core of this empire with it’s rampant class lunacy. It was only on rare occasions that rank and file soldiers made it to the heady ranks of the officer corps, and promotion was painfully slow. The officer class was notorious - it took the Crimean War before the British Army was dragged into the 19th Century. Up to the Seventh Frontier War it functioned as it had for hundreds of years — a place where the chinless wonders of the Empire could seek fame and fortune while retaining their artificial edifice of class. Then there was the South African bush which was a frightening experience for the British soldiers, it’s alien succulents a bizarre sight for the British. At night, as they soldiers lay in this bush, they could not light their pipes or a fire. At the first sign of a glimmer, the amaXhosa would open fire from several directions and while their aim was not good, the British didn’t take a chance and spent most of their time in their camp lying down out of sight. Sir Peregrine Maitland’s large army mobilised in June 1846, and lumbered into the Amathola’s looking for Rharhabe chief Sandile. They were also trying to corner Phato of the Gqunukhwebe closer to the ocean, along with Mhala of the Ndlambe — both were lurking somewhere between the Keiskamma and Kei Rivers. Colonel Henry Somerset swept the coastal regions, as Colonel Hare and Andries Stockenstrom scouted the Amatholas. On the 11th August 1846 Maitland made his decision. This was an exact copy of the decision made by Harry Smith in the previous Frontier War, who told then Governor Sir Benjamin D’Urban that a strike across the Kei River was required — a decisive strike. That’s because Harry Smith was a man of action, fully believing in the power of power. In the previous war, the Sixth Frontier War of 1834 to 1836, Smith wanted to strike Hintsa. That highly regarded amaXhosa chief had been killed by the very same Smith. Now here was Hintsa’s heir and his son, Sarhili, facing another British veteran of the war against Napoleon.

The Seventh Frontier war has burst into flame, and across the Ceded Territory and down into the land around Port Elizabeth amaXhosa warriors are on the warpath, the British have been forced into the defensive. If you remember, Sir Peregrine Maitland declared war on the amaXhosa chief Mgolombane Sandile Ngqika on 1st April 1846 — but the eastern Xhosa, the Gcaleka under Sarhili, had remained out of the latest war - at least for now. The amaXhosa have notched up two major victories against the British, one in the Amatola mountains where Sandile ambushed Gibson’s column, destroyed over 60 wagons then attacked a second wagon train from Grahamstown on its way to Fort Peddie with supplies which lay just over sixty east. More than 40 wagons were destroyed in the second attack, and the English cavalry and infantry were forced to shelter inside Fort Peddie with it’s 8 sided earth walls. Phato of the Gqunukhwebe had been particularly successful — but the amaXhosa were going to commit a cardinal error in warfare. Allow hotheaded soldiers to dictate tactics. On the 28th Mary 1846 the largest amaXhosa army in the Eastern Cape since the failed attempt at taking Grahamstown in 1819 surrounded Fort Peddie. The warriors hadn’t needed much convincing, because the British were now torching every single amaXhosa homestead they came across. The fort was a strategic target. It developed from a frontier post established in 1835 and named Fort Peddie, named after Lieutenant-Colonel John Peddie who led the 72nd Highlanders against the Xhosa in the Sixth Frontier War. Eight thousand men from every clan from chieftans west of the Kei River had joined forces and at midday they launched their attack on the strong defensive position. Fort Peddie had been regarded as a relatively safe outpost, surrounded by the resettled amaMfengu people, as well the Gqunukhwebe who had been allies of the British. But no more, Gqunukhwebe chief Phato had switched sides and he was eyeing the amaMfengu for special attention. As the tension rose in the fort, and awaiting the inevitable amaXhosa assault, a terrible incident was recorded which further damaged the British soldier’s honour. It was 26th May and Lindsay unleashed his rage up on a young colonial boy .. a wagon driver .. who had refused to go out and cut wood in fear of the surrounding amaXhosa. In what can only be called a shocking display of bombastic lunacy, Lindsay had this young teen tied to his wagon and was then subjected to 25 lashes. This after the child changed his mind and said he would go out into the bush, preferring to take his chances with the amaXhosa than the lash. Too late said Lindsay, it’s the lash for you. Ten days after the Peddie assault, Siyolo and Mhala moved towards the Fish River crossing points separately. There was enough British ammunition at the strong points on both sides to replenish the amaXhosa’s gunpowder barrels. Henry Somerset, yes the very same man we met so many episodes ago, was leading a force of cavalry nearby. They’d been sweeping the countryside, and came across the tracks of Mhala’s army, after a short skirmish the amaXhosa disappeared. But soon the cavalry came across the soldiers of Siyolo, Mhala’s nephew. Caught in the open along the Gwangqa River. The amaXhosa were to suffer a major defeat.

This is episode 165 — and the atmosphere in Xhosaland was ablaze with indignation. A Mr Holliday had complained in Fort Beaufort that an imaDange man called Tsili had stolen his axe, and if you recall last episode, Tsili had been arrested then freed while under military escort by Tola a headman who lived nearby. Tola had hacked off a prisoners hand to free Tsili from his shackles, the prisoner was thrown into a nearby river and died. The British demanded Tstili and Tola be handed over but imiDange chief Nkosi Bhotomane refused. Rharhabe chief Sandile was approached but he’d had enough of the English authorities, and refused to hand over the two. This was ostensibly what set off the War of the Axe, or the War of the Bounday as the amaXhosa called it. Maitland declared war on April 1st 1846 and lieutenant Governor John Hare launched their preemptive strike into Xhosaland. It took almost two weeks to assemble the troops while the Governor issued orders for all missionaries to leave emaXhoseni. Many white traders had already been killed by this time, the rest scattered from Xhosa territory. On the 11th April Colonel Somerset led three columns across the Great Fish River, then the Keiskamma. He was heading towards Sandile’s Great Place alongside Burnshill — the abandoned Glasgow missionary society’s station on the slopes of the Amathola mountains. That’s east of where the town of Alice is today. The British were advancing in classic British style, 125 wagons each drawn by 24 oxen, a five kilometer long column of men. The Dragoons were mounted on their heavy chargers, dressed in red tunics and their blue forage caps, the Cape Mounted Rifles on their smaller Boer ponies, dressed in green tunics and brown breeches, blending into the countryside. The infantry marched behind, dressed in scarlet jackets with white cross belts and white trousers and their cylindrical hats, called Albert Shakos that tapered to protect against the sun. You can imagine the scene, hundreds of troops on horseback and marching, the dust lifted off the trail, and very soon, the infantry began to discard their thick red coats. These soldiers began this war dressed like they dressed for a European battle, by the end, they would all look very different. They replaced these Albert Shakos with forage caps, or large Boer hats, they ditched their heavy backpacks for much lighter knapsacks, and they put away their leather collars. Somerset was pleasantly surprised to find no amaXhosa warrior in his way as his force arrived at Burnshill. After setting up camp there and leaving the wagons under Major John Gibson, he marched off into the Amathole valley on the 16th April, leading 500 men. Watching him were thousands of amaNGqika warriors, many armed with muskets. They began peppering the British with heavy albeit inaccurate fire. Maqoma was a highly experienced commander and recognized the British had a major weakness. Their baggage train. It was under his prompting that the other Xhosa commanders agreed to strike the wagons rather than aiming at the infantry. IN the late afternoon of the 16th as Somerset was toiling in the Amathola valley the Xhosa made their move.

This is episode 164. Remember when we left off we’d been hearing about the squad of Royal engineers who’d crossed into amaXhosa territory over the Tyhume River in January 1846. They were led by Lieutenant J Stokes — this small team of five were surveying land for the site of the new fort. Little did they know that their crossing of Block Drift into Ngqika country was a small initial skirmish that was going to lead to war. Some say war was coming anyway, however their blatant trespass definitely applied the amaXhosa chief’s minds as you’re going to hear. They’d crossed over from the Ceded Territory where forts were allowed, into Xhosa territory where forts definitely weren’t and why they did this has been debated. Conservative preacher Henry Calderwood if you remember had also been shocked by the news and wrote a letter warning the Cape Governor of this umbrage. Chief Mgolombane Sandile of the Rharhabe was under pressure from other chiefs, and his young warriors. Sandile had been thrown into his role almost a decade earlier and faced crises after crises. His older brother Maqoma despised him, no worse, hated him and mainly for his superior rank. Sandile however, was no fool, his speeches that have been written down prove he was an agile thinker and he determined policy only through consultation with another brother, Anta and a wise counsellor, Thyala. The latter lived near Sandile at the Burns Hill mission. There was an obvious and steady march to war once more on the Eastern Cape frontier. Sandile decided to go and visit the engineers himself to see what they were up to. A lot has been made of this visit — that he arrived with a full war party and was aggressive. It so happened that shortly before he set off, he’d received a letter from the English administrator of the Ceded Territory, Charles Lennox Stretch who was based in Fort Beaufort. It was a letter of complaint about cattle theft and about an incident where Sandile had slapped an trader who’d insulted him, then taken goods from his shop. Sandile sent his reply saying that both the Governor of the Cape Sir Peregrine Maitland and Stretch were rascals, and that the traders were under his feet as chief and he’d do what he liked with them, and those who complained about cattle theft should shut up. It was in this dark mood that Sandile arrived at Block Drift — at the site of the proposed fort. The five British soldiers in the survey camp were shaken by his attitude, and Lieutenant Stokes sent an urgent message to Fort Beaufort for reinforcements. A darkness seemed to hang over the region through that February, the traditional month of thunderstorms which cracked open the skies, and mirrored the sentiment of both amaXhosa and settler. This year was dry, despite these flashing storms, little rain had fallen increasing the sense of foreboding. For the amaXhosa, this constant threat of an invasion of their land appeared to be attached to genocidal intent. The land rooted their ways and the settlers had made it clear that they wanted nothing to do with the Xhosa culture, their ancient way of life was anathema to these new arrivals. As with other areas of the globe, the immigrants were encroaching not only on territory, but on the very idea of autochthonous survival.

This is episode 163, the year, 1845. New Cape Governor Sir Peregrine Maitland had shown he was a man of action — as a veteran of the Peninsular Campaign against Napoleon you’d expect that, particularly as he fought at Waterloo. This new man of action governor had some doubts about a few things here in sunny South Africa. He doubted the effectiveness of Andries Stockenstrom’s Eastern Cape Ceded territory system for a start. He would sort that he thought with the introduction of a new system which was actually an old system. More about that later. Maitland also doubted the effectiveness of two other treaties signed by his predecessor Sir George Napier with Griqua leader Adam Kok the third and King Moshoeshoe the First of the Basotho. But we need to turn south, back to the Eastern Cape Frontier. The 1840s were a high point of settler power in the Eastern Cape and wool was driving development. As the state expanded, pressure grew on the Ceded Territory, between the Fish and Keiskamma Rivers. It was also a time of reinforcing both the military forts around the frontier, and the communication systems. Starting in the mid-1830s, the British had extended their forts and signalling systems. They had been caught off-guard by the amaXhosa who’d raided the Eastern Cape without warning at the start of the Sixth Frontier War and it was imperative they improve their communication. After the frontier war of 1835-6, the planning of the system of frontier defence fell on the Royal engineers including Lieutenant-Colonel Griffith George Lewis and Captain WFD Jervois, as well as a civilian employee of the War Office, Henry L Hall. Lewis commanded the Royal Engineers in the colony at the time. He repeatedly expressed his frustration at the tardiness of the British government in allocating funds for the effective defence of the frontier districts. These funds of course were squeezed out of the British taxpayer, so the political leadership would not always release investments of this sort immediately. Lewis was one of those folks we come across every now and again, someone who seems to understand the big picture and the need for action. He wrote extensively on frontier defence policy, and complained that for years after the close of the war no clear decisions had been taken on how funds were to be utilised. His warnings like those of Sir John Hare the lieutenant Governor of the Eastern Cape were not being heeded. Jervois built the stockades at Peddie, Trompetter’s Drift, Double Drift and fort Brown, all found in the frontier districts of the Eastern Cape. Jervois would end up in the Channel Islands by the way, and designed and built a whole series of fortifications that were to become famous during the Second world War. The imperial government also approved of Lewis’s scheme for ‘signal towers’, and new roads and bridges to improve communications between these forts and the headquarters at Grahamstown where new barracks were to be built on the old Drostdy Ground. Lewis had been instrumental in building a series of towers to improve communications with Fort Beaufort and Fort Peddie, starting from Fort Selwyn in Grahamstown. The survey to establish suitable points on which to erect the stations was done by Henry Hall, stationed in the Eastern Cape in the period 1842–1858. Robert Godlonton had decided that his Grahamstown Journal was going to up the ante once more when it came to both the Kat River settlement where the khoekhoe lived, and the Ceded Territory. Appropriating the language of civilisation, Godlonton wrote in the journal that “…Colonisation would be then synonymous with civilisation, and the natives instead of being depressed or destroyed, would be raised from their wretched grovelling condition and participate in all the advantages which civilised government is calculated to bestow.” The fact that the amaXhosa people did not regard themselves as in a grovelling condition was utterly ignored by Godlonton.

This is episode 162. First, some housekeeping. A huge thank you to all my supporters, the podcast just passed 1.3 million listens, so there’s a large number of folks out there who’ve found this series useful. I’m so delighted that our crazy tale here on the southern tip of Africa has resonated with so many people. The response has utterly stunned me, thinking when I started that being so battered by headwinds as we are at the moment, cynicism would sink the show. But it’s the opposite. To all the hundreds of listeners sending emails over the last 24 months, your personal stories and responses are all noted and stored. There’s a treasure trove of stuff which I’m going to try and use where appropriate. If you’d like to contact me please send a mail to desmondlatham@gmail.com Or head off to my site desmondlatham.blog there’s a contact form there and a newsletter sign-up. And now back to the mid-1840s. When we left off, Moshoeshoe and Adam Kok had signed a Treaty with the Cape Governor which gave them formal power over their territory. And as you know if you listened to episode 161, the definition of exactly what was their territory was somewhat hazy. By now the BaTlokwa, the Koranna and the Voortrekkers amongst others, had taken issue with this treaty, saying Moshoeshoe and Kok had no control over their people. There was a flourishing trade across the Orange, tying Cape Towns like Beaufort West, Graaff-Reinet and Grahamstown were directly linked to the settlements to the north by these trade routes. The Griqua received their gunpowder from these towns and sold their cattle and ivory there for example. The Orange River was a significant challenge, at this stage there was no bridge or ferry and when it flooded, weeks could pass before wagons could cross. The British presence was concentrated in Colesberg where the civil commissioner with the wonderfully memorable name of Fleetwood Rawstone served for 21 years. He was subordinate to the Lieutenant Governor of the eastern Province held through the crucial years of the 1840s by Lieutenant Colonel Hare who lived in Grahamstown. After the return of Jan Mocke, Jan Kock and the Modder River Boers from Natal, life became more difficult for the British commissioner. The Treaty signed between the Griqua and the Cape Colony in 1843 was supposed to bring permanent peace to the Transorangia region but was predicated on the fact that the Griqua were supposed to pacify the Boers. The Boers totally rejected that premise. In November 1844, the Boers had enough and a commando was assembled under Jan Kock which rode to Philippolis, where a Griqua commando had been also been assembled and awaited their arrival. A Mexican standoff developed. It’s defined as a confrontation where no strategy exists that allows either party to achieve victory. Just as an aside, the cliché of a Mexican standoff is best known in Westerns, and probably the most memorable would be Sergio Leone’s 1966 Classic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Governor Maitland was deep in thought back in the Cape. He’d quickly assessed the rising tension across the Orange, as well as in the eastern Cape. He was another Peninsular war vet, commanding a Brigade at the Battle of Waterloo. Maitland had been part of the army that defeated Napoleon and his bravery during that Battle had brought him a formal vote of thanks from the British House of Commons.

This is episode 161 — and what’s this I hear? The sound of wind whipping and howling through the mountain recesses, snow-capped mountains, where the rivers have torn deep ravines in the geography, terraphysics scraping rocks, rushing waters plunging from the escarpment into the eastern cape and free state, foaming and roiling. It must be the home of the BaSotho. Many South Africans make the fatal mistake of thinking that Lesotho is such a small place, reliant on its big neighbour, it is basically another province of the RSA. My friends, harbouring that misconception will get you in deep trouble. Its not size that matters, its pure unbridled pride. Moshoeshoe and his descendents have fought long and hard for independence, albeit in a nation surrounded by a single other nation. By the mid-1940s, Moshoeshoe had turned to the British authorities and their policies were more favourable to him than those of the Boers. The British at least at this point showed no sign of coveting his land, nor had they ill-treated his people, unlike the amaXhosa to the south. Moshoeshoe was being kept up to date about diplomatic events by the influential Frency missionary, Eugene Casalis. By 1843 the Paris missionaries had realised that the biggest threat to Moshoeshoe and his Basotho were not the English, despite the bad blood between the French and the English, but the trekboers. This is important because the Boers didn’t see the Basotho as original owners of the land, they say the owners as San. In the years of discussions, letters, meetings, official notes, logs, missionary biographies, it became obvious that to the Boers, the San being the original owners, meant that the Basotho couldn’t really own the land at all. Basotho national existence began in the midst of what we’d call settler colonialism as well as the intra-African wars between rulers like Mzilikazi, Mantatisi, Shaka. It’s remarkable because this is one of the African states that grew out of a response to invasions by brown, black and white. Sotho oral tradition speaks of the royal family line of Bakoena Ba Mokoteli — which forms the totemic core of Basotho aristocracy, and existed way before these invasions. Casalis and his colleagues became Moshoeshoe’s external voice, writing his communications, and despite their patriotism as Frenchmen, they regarded the British in the Cape as their allies. The reason is simple. France had zero interests in southern Africa by now, so this decision to sidle up to the Brits in Cape Town was not a contradiction. By 1844 treaties with Adam Kok and Moshoeshoe were concluded, with the eye-catching line in both agreements where each undertook to be “the faithful Friend and Ally of the colony…” This was not regarded as a valid claim by the trekboers. Nor Moshoeshoe’s implacable enemy, Sekonyela of the Batlokwa people among others.

This is episode 160 and we’re breathing the spicy smells of the semi-desert, and taking in the exotic and wonderous scenary of the Richtersveld, Namaqualand, and the stunning area around south westn Free State in the 840s. Last episode we heard about the period 1840-1843 in the southern Caledon River valley, and how the Voortrekkers like Jan Mocke were flowing into land that Moshoeshoe of the BaSotho believed was his. That was setting up a classic situation where land was the core of the ension. A lot of what we’re looking at today is centred on a town largely forgotten these days, Philippolis. If you drive along the N1 between Bloemfontein and Colesburg, turn off at Trompsburg and head south west along the R717 for around 45 kilometres. It’s not far from the Orange River, and it’s history is certainly chequered. It’s also the home town of writer and intellectual Laurens van Der Post and former Springbok Rugby player Adriaan Strauss. On the 22nd October, 1842, the country beyond the Orange River to the north-east of the Cape Colony was proclaimed British Territory and the sphere of operations of the Cape British military garrison was considerably enlarged. The emigrant Boers based in this region reacted with anger, it was Adam Kok the second the Griqualand leader who had requested protection from the British because of the increased numbers of trekkers in his vicinity. Between 1826 when Kok arrived and the 1840, Kok had managed to get along with the Boers, but the Great Trek had changed everything. The London Missionary Society had founded Philippolis in 1823 as a mission station serving the local Griqua people, named after the man you heard about last episode, Dr John Philip, who was the superintendent of the Society from 1819 to 1849. Adam Kok II settled in Philippolis with his people in 1826 and became the protector of the mission station, on condition that he promised to protect the San against the aggression of the Boers. Kok was supposed to promote peace in the region, at least that was the brief from the London Missionary Society. Instead, carnage ensued as the Griqua used Philippolis as a base for a number of deadly commandos against the San people - virtually wiping them out in the area. Ironically, the Griqua worked with Boers to conduct their raids. This violated the agreement made between the London Missionary Society and Adam Kok II and eventually the San were driven out of the area. When the Voortrekkers began showing up nearby at Colesberg which was one of the main jumping off points of the Great Trek and tension grew between the trekkers and the Griqua. 1844 - like 2024 - was a leap year. And coming up was a momentous moment. In May 24 1844 the first electrical telegram was sent by Samuel Morse from the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. to the B&O Railroad "outer depot" in Baltimore, saying "What hath God wrought”. Considering that the telegram and later the radio led to television and then social media, perhaps we should all wonder What Hath God wrought. In June of 1844 the Young Men’s Christian Association was formed, the YMCA, setting off a chain of events culminating in the song of the same name by the Village People. History is not all skop skiet and donder. Back on the dusty flatlands around Philippolis, Adam Kok and the Boers were blissfully unaware of the significance of all of these births and deaths across the Atlantic Ocean. Further south, in the Cape, the newly created road boards were hard at work as I mentioned, building new routes out of Cape Town, connecting the Colony to the most important port in the southern hemisphere. By this point, there were steamships operating between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, which oftened called in at Mossel Bay. Other ships began flocking in huge numbers to a bunch of islands off Namaqualand .. the Great Guano Rush had started at the end of 1843 and really got going in 1844. It was discovered that vast deposits of guano on uninhabited island.

This is episode 159. If we take out a map of south Africa and reconsider the regions, it will become quite apparent that the main demarcation is geographical, geological, the main points of reference are the rivers and the mountains, the desert and semi-desert, the good soils and the bad. Take a look at a map of the region to the south west of the Drakensberg, for its this area way down to the Orange River and extending towards the Kalahari and the Richtersveld that we’re going to focus on in this episode. There is a direct correlation between the British seizing Natal from the Boers, and the effect on the Basotho, the Griqua, the baTlokwa amongst others. The Voortrekkers who refused to take an oath of allegiance to the British Queen Victoria trekked back up over the Drakensberg. And it was the vast majority. Some of these would head north, some south west. Most headed back south were not going to where they began, the Cape Colony, but to try and negotiate or seize land between the Cape and Natal. This was not empty land and I’m going to explain what happened after 1843, after the English flag began to flutter from the Fort in Durban. Slow as wagon travel was, the speed with which the Boers had spread themselves across so much of southern Africa in such a short time had taken everyone by surprise - it had taken six years. The Cape Governors were totally unprepared for this migration. Their narrative had been that these Europeans would find inland Africa far too unforgiving and then return to the Cape where they’d settle down and pay their taxes. When they left in the late 1830s, Cape Governor Sir Benjamin D’urban was anxious, his successor Sir George Napier was even more so. The Boers trundled into the interior and directly into the seething hinterland, shattered as it had been by Mzilikazi, Shaka, the BaTlokwa, and of course, the Griqua and Bastard raiders who travelled like Boers, on horses, with hats and guns. It’s hard for many to fathom these days in the 21st Century, post-apartheid, in a land so riven by what seems to be race-based antagonisms, that back in 1843 by far the most caustic, acrimonious, begrudging and irreconcilable emotions were those felt by the Boers against the British. Their anti-British sentiments were fixed although on an individual basis, the two people seemed to get along. When deserting British soldiers appeared in their midst, Boer mothers and fathers were not averse to their daughters marrying these men. The Boers began to concentrate on the high Veld and across the orange, but for many, the crucial state was Natal. They had gained bloody victories over the amaZulu here, Blood River was their covenant, a lasting affirmation of God’s great plan for the Boers, part of their Exodus narrative, his support of them in smiting the Philistines, the heathens, their dark enemies. Jan Mocke was one of these men on the extreme edge of this sentiment. What had emerged to startle the British, was the power of the voices of Boer Women. They had seen the resistance of their husbands weakening, they’d heard the disparate arguments, the egos where their men had come to blows after a couple of brandies, and told British offiicals to their faces that they’d walk out of Natal Barefoot across the Drakensberg if necessary to die in freedom. As Noel Mostert points out, the Boer women, like amaXhosa women who’d also been busy stiffening their men’s spines, were force that could never be ignored. They were active, demanding and the handmaidens to their history.

This is episode 158 and we’re taking an epic regional tour into the along the Limpopo River to meet with the Venda and other groups of folks who hail from the province we now call Limpopo. Thanks to listener Mushe for the suggestion. By the mid-fifteenth century Shona-speaking immigrants from Zimbabwe settled across the Limpopo River and interacted with the local Sotho inhabitants. As a result of this interaction, Shona and Sotho led to what is now regarded as a common Venda identity by the mid-sixteenth century. Venda-speaking people live mainly in the Soutpansberg area and southern Zimbabwe, but they also once lived in south-western Mozambique and north-eastern Botswana. Venda grammar and phonology is similar to Shona, particularly western Shona and Venda vocabulary has its greatest equivalent in Sotho. Phonology is the branch of linguistics that deals with systems of sounds within a language or between different languages. According to most ethnographers it is not only the Venda language, but also certain customs, such as the domba pre-marital school, that distinguish them from surrounding Shona, Sotho-Tswana and Tsonga communities. First a quick refresh. We heard in one of earlier podcasts about the Mapungubwe kingdom which lasted until the 13th Century - following which Shona speaking people’s moved southwards into the Soutpansberg region over the centuries. Archaeologists have established that by the fourteenth century, or the late Mapungubwe period and what is known as and the Moloko, the early post Mapungubwe kingdoms emerged in northern Transvaal. This is where the forebears of the Venda come in. Zimbabwean ceramics help a lot here, they were produced by Shona speakers and their fourteenth century distribution demarcated the Shona trading empire centred around Great Zimbabwe. The rulers at Great Zimbabwe controlled most of the country between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers until smaller trading states broke away in the fifteenth century. I’ve covered this in great detail in Episodes 5, 6 and 7 if you want to refresh memories. We also know that trade between these early kingdoms and the east coast was established, goods like gold, ivory, and copper were traded with Arabic and Portuguese merchants. The Venda were directly impacted by this trade, along with another unique group called the Lemba who are directly related to ancestors who actually traded all the way from Yemen in the Middle East. More about them in a few minutes. Ceramics help us piece together the past more effectively, the period of Shona and Sotho interaction eventually involved into more than a mere overlap of these ceramic styles, because for the first time different stylistic elements appeared on the same vessels. These Letaba pots have also been unearthed in the eastern Transvaal or Limpopo Province as its now known. It is interesting that these ceramics are still produced today, these Letaba pots and ceramics are made by the Venda, the Tsonga, the Ndebele, but anthropologists and historians believe the style itself is distinctly Venda in character. The Venda kingdom pretty much stretched from the Limpopo River in the north to the Olifants and Ngwenya River, or Crocodile River, in the south, but by the time Louis Trichardt rode through their land in 1836, the great Venda empire had almost vanished, torn up by external threats — damaged by the amaNdebele and even amaZulu raiders. The second group who could be found in this territory are the Lemba. They remain one of the self-defining groups of the region who have a stunning origin story. I am going to tread quite carefully here because there’s science and then there’s oral tradition. As you’ll hear, the Lemba believe they are related to the lost Tribes of Israel, and have recently demanded that they be recognized as such. Their narrative and origin story links them to the Middle East and the Judaism and there is DNA evidence to back them up.

As we heard last episode Mapungubwe emerged from the increased trade between central south Africa and the East Coast seaboard including ivory, skins and eventually, gold around 1000AD. Unlike areas of Africa further north and north west, slave trade did not impact this region for a number of reasons. The main is distance. Each mile further south from the main Arabian, Asian and European – then American centers of slavery meant was a threat to the survival of those unfortunate souls seized as slaves by intermediaries. So Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe were not crucial in the trade of humans over the centuries, their power lay in goods rather than people. We heard too how by the start of the eleventh century Mapungubwe culture had shifted from the Complex Cattle Pattern where each settlement featured a large cattle kraal in the centre – to something very different. The spatial expression of status and the greater social distance between elite and commoner was expressed through the trade and storage of valuable products that replaced cattle as items regarded as most important. While ivory had been traded for hundreds of years, gold became extremely important to the Mapungubwe people. Gold plated rhino statuettes, a bowl and scepter have been found in the grave or what we think was a royal cemetery on the Mapungubwe main settlement hilltop. In more modern Shona ethnography, the black rhino is a symbol of political power and leadership so there is some speculation that the golden rhino found in the grave pointed to an important burial site. These royal burial sites are also smothered in some thing else … thousands of gold and glass trade beads By 1000AD the first Tsotho/Tswana people and Nguni arrive - the latter following a course along the KwaZulu Natal coast.

The distinction between the eastern and well-watered part of the country with summer rainfall and good soils, and the more arid western region with its mainly winter rainfall is critical to understanding the spread of domesticated grains and livestock. Pastoralists who farmed cereals are called Agro-pastoralists and these people preferred the Eastern region with its higher rainfall. Sheep and later cattle herding pastoralists favoured the west initially. This is one of separation points in South African history because the western people never did manage to manufacture their own iron-implements they merely bartered these when required. They exchanged iron products from the Tswana and Sotho as well as the isiXhosa who were able to manufacture iron implements and weapons. Then cattle arrived in the Cape and it looks like these came from the north east with early Tswana and Bantu pastoralists. This migration accelerated along with the increased size of settlements around 1000 years ago. Remember by this time, people living in the latter part of the first millennium had already been trading constantly with the entrepots to the East, the Indian ocean ports, for generations. This trade intensified after 1000AD first with Swahili-speakers based along the seaboard from modern Mozambique and north along the East African coast where Arab and other merchants would ply their trade from Zanzibar – through to the Red Sea. The coastlines of East Africa as far South as Madagascar and of west Africa as far south as Sierra Leone were known to the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans. The East African coast had a string of Hindu settlements hundreds of years before the Christian era. Until the 4th Century AD, the Sabaean kingdom of Southern Arabia controlled the east coast of Africa.

This is episode 4 and we’re at the point where the first farmers arrived in Southern Africa 2000 years ago. AS we now know, prior to this event, there was broad cultural continuity in the hunter-gatherer groups going back another 10 000 years at least. The movement of farmers into the eastern summer rainfall areas in the first one thousand years AD took place as the climate stabilised. The ancestors of these first farmers domesticated sorghum and millet in the Sahel north of the equator and then brought their new skills southwards as they migrated. When Bantu-speaking people arrived in southern Africa they integrated at times with the local population– the San and Khoe. This is proven by the incorporation of the hunter-gatherer clicks in both Zulu and Xhosa. You don’t assimilate parts of foreign languages without adopting something of the culture. We heard last episode how important pottery has been in tracking what happened and when. On the basis of the style of pottery, three separate streams of movement into South Africa have been investigated. They’re known as the Phillipson’s Chifumbase Complex and is the research into deposits of shards of pottery that represent migrating people traveling and living from place to place on the landscape. Two of the streams have a common origin in East Africa known as the Urewe Tradition. The least controversial of the three is called the Kwale Branch linked to two distinct phases. One was the Silverleaves which dates between 250 AD to 430AD and the second, the Mzonjani between 420AD to 580AD. The pioneer phase involving these agriculturalists was centred on the coastal plains of southern Africa and many were found in present day KwaZulu Natal particularly around the Tugela River.

This episode we’re moving forward into the early stone age as it’s known and much of our story covers the period after the last ice age which ended 10 000 years ago. Prior to this the oceans had subsided as ice covered much of the world – leading to the coastline along the Indian and Atlantic seaboard of South Africa moving around one hundred kilometers out to sea beyond today’s beaches. That poses a challenge as we investigate origins of man and woman on the sub-continent. Much of the archaeological evidence is now under hundreds of feet of sea water way offshore. We do have some material inland, as well as the shellfish middens that began to appear much later in the record which allows us to piece together an increasingly accurate picture of what was going on. South Africa’s prehistory has been divided into a series of phases based on broad patterns of technology. The primary distinction is between a reliance on chipped and flaked stone implements which is referred to as the Stone Age which begins with the peolithic period 2.5 million years ago – that’s the early stone age. The middle stone age starts 150 000 years ago and ends around 30 000 BC, while the late stone age ends 2000 years ago. That is when new people arrived in South Africa who had the ability to smelt iron weapons and tools – the Iron Age had arrived with these farmers from central Africa. The first peoples of the region predated both the San and Khoe and of course we have no clear idea of their language. But we do have Mitocondrial DNA evidence and cultural artifacts. First, let’s consider Hunter-gatherers who foraged along the seashore for shells and fish, and cooked seafood over fire -the original people of this land. As there are a lot of hollowed caves along the South Eastern coastline of South Africa, many were extended and improved by the people living in them.

This is episode 2 and we’re continue our geostrophic tour around the beautiful landscape of Southern Africa after a brief geology excursion in episode 1. Like the rest of Africa south of the Sahara, the landscape features a dominant high central plateau surrounded by coastal lowlands. Any glance at a proper map will show you that. One of the more prominent features is the Great Escarpment between KwaZulu Natal and Lesotho otherwise known as the Drakensburg. That was caused by lava flows which are more resistant to weathering than conglomerates or sandstone. Most of this lava has eroded away but a small patch remains and covers much of Lesotho today. This mountainous area has a major part to play in our story, although these days South African’s are pretty disparaging about the tiny mountain kingdom. Some regard it as the tenth province. That would be an historical mistake although Lesotho is utterly dependent on South Africa for its income – but that wasn’t always the case. Consider what happened when the Boers first arrived at Basotho King Moshoeshoe’s door. The trekkers were escaping from British rule in the 1830s. The Boers bartered meat and other goods for grain from the Sotho. At that point migrating Dutch were not very good at planting or growing grains in sustainable volumes but much better at livestock management. They were more like the Khoekhoe and San – less like the Xhosa and Zulu. This fact will sit most uncomfortably with those who believe some races are somehow genetically predisposed to be more effective farmers than others. The Lesotho mountains were eroded in the south West by tributaries of the Orange River which drain the highlands away from the escarpment, making it rugged and particularly scenic landscape as the rivers head off to the Atlantic Ocean. These mountains can rise to ten thousand feet with the highest peak of Thabana Ntlenyana at 11 500 feet.

This is episode one of what is going to be a fairly lengthy series which by could extend over more than three years as we burrow deeply into a truly unique part of planet earth. Each podcast will take around 20 minutes and at times I’ll be drawing on guests to provide expertise. Just a note of thanks to one of the most unique and informed people I’ve ever met – apart from my wife of course!! Through the academic year of 2000 and 2001 I was fortunate to attend a series of lectures at Harvard University delivered by the remarkable Professor John Stilgoe who is the Robert and Lois Orchard Professor in the History of Landscape Development. Just to give you some idea about how erudite and informed he is – John was the youngest tenured professor ever at Harvard at age 24. His understanding of historical connections through a broad array of sources and his factual precision was life-changing. I dedicate this series to John Stilgoe thank you for those 2 hour lecturers that kept me enthralled with your sophisticated idiosyncratic presentation style and facts which remain with me for the rest of my life. So to the topic – In this episode will begin with pre-history where we understand that humans are merely a recent layer of mammal on top of ancient rocky outcrops. Parts of South Africa feature some of the oldest rocks you will find anywhere on the planet. And the oldest rocks bequeath the greatest wealth and southern Africa is especially well endowed. 2 billion years ago volcanic spasms squeezed magma through the crust and laid it down – an island of solid rock 400 kilometers long and 10 kilometres thick. It was one piece. This is crucial to understand what treasures it containes and have been tapped by Africans and then Europeans.

This is episode 157 - where Dick King and Ndongeni ka Xoki ride to out of Durban carrying a dispatch from besieged British commander, Captain Smith, surrounded by Boers, in real danger. On the 24th May 1842 King and ka Xoki snuck out of the Port Natal region heading to Grahamstown in the south. That was a thousand kilometre journey which was going to take 10 days. Averaging 100 kilometres a day on a horse was some feat. Ndongeni Ndongeni Ka Xoki had already given King his Zulu nickname -Mlamulankunzi which loosely translated means a peacemaker among bulls. This was regarded as a mark of respect and admiration and there’s a lot to admire about King as well as Ka Xoki. They had agreed to take a dispatch to Lieutenant Governor Colonel Hare in Grahamstown for Captain Thomas Smith who’d been shamed by the Boers at the Battle of Congella which I covered last episode. King was young and adventurous, he was an elephant hunter and a trader and came to South Africa as an 1820 Settler at the age of six. He was a frontiersman and an excellent rider who could and did turn his hand to anything it seems. Ndongeni ka Xoki had worked for King for a few years by this time. There’s also been a great deal of hooplah, disinformation and propaganda about King’s ride. The popular view of Dick King over the decades has been moulded by the Durban public memorial - it is an equestrian statue on the Esplanade - now Margaret Mcadi Avenue. The main Dick King statue presents the sole figure of King as the heroic if exhausted rider, but there is a missing Ndongeni on his horse. Protestors who defaced the statue in 2015 of course had no idea about that, they were throwing paint at all colonial era artefacts - equal opportunity statue painters. It was midday on the 24th June when Boer lookouts spotted a schooner called the Conch rounding the Bluff and sailing into the bay. It was a trading ship not a war ship, so the boers relaxed. They shouldn’t have, because the wily and wicked English had a surprise up their sleeves. Crouching below decks were 100 Grenadiers of the 27th Regiment under command of Captain Durnford, a few others were on deck but dressed in civilians clothes. Trickery and deceit — how very English.

When we left off last episode, Captain Thomas Smith and two companies of the 27th Inniskilling Regiment, an 18 pounder that had just arrived by ship, two six pounder field guns, a small section of the Royal Artillery, a hand full of Royal Engineers, Sappers and miners, along with a company of Cape Mountain Rifles had formed their laager at level area to then north of Durban CBD today - where the Old Fort can be seen. Just a note - the 27th Inniskilling were an Irish infantry regiment of the British army, formed in 1689 so they’d been around the block so to speak. Boer commander Andries Pretorius had called his men to where he’d setup camp at Congella and by the time this battle commenced, there’d be more than 200 ready to face Smith’s professional soldiers. The British were hopelessly optimistic in their plans as you’re going to hear. Some of the English traders left at Port Natal, Henry Ogle for example, had warned Captain Smith that his force was somewhat underwhelming and that the Boers were not to be taken lightly. Smith unfortunately had no choice but to impose himself. He’d marched to Durban from Umgazi, and the last orders he’d received from Cape Governor Sir George Napier was to secure the bay for the British Empire. I’ve already explained that back in England, the Secretary for War and the Colonies Lord Stanley had changed his mind and ordered Smith back to base but his letter was going to arrive woefully too late. Captain Smith was aware of the Boer capacity to fight in bush, so he ordered his men to march along the beachfront. A stunning full moon was shining, causing the waves to fluoresce. Anyone who’s marched on a beach knows that its very difficult, made worse by the horses and of course, dragging the three guns along - while they were obviously now clearly visible to anyone lurking in the bush on the dunes. It was low tide, so the going was good at first as the hard sand made things a little easier. The British also deployed a howitzer on a long boat from the Mazeppa which was how folks made difficult trip between ships at anchor in Durban Bay and across the dangerous sandbar to the beach. Smith was hoping that the longboat could row to the beach at high tide to offload the howitzer — but that was seven hours away. There were a lot of what if’s that dogged Smith’s plan as you can see. Pretorius had also given strict orders that no Boer should fire until the British troops were within 100 metres of the camp. The burghers waited until at Pretoriu’s command, five shots rang out. An ox at each of the three gun carriages was shot dead by the sharpshooters only a few metres away in the bush. That wasn’t all, Lieutenant Wyatt and a private of the Inniskilling regiment were both shot in the head and killed instantly. Pandemonium broke out in the British ranks. The surviving oxen panicked, but were now dragging the gun and a dead ox with them, while the canon were actually pointed away from the Boer laager so couldn’t even be brought to bear and fired. The British in their redcoats dived onto the sand, firing back into the darkness. The soldiers were caught in the full moon light which back in these days of zero light pollution, was like a flare in the sky. The English were in big trouble.

Welcome back to the History of South Africa podcast with me your host, Des Latham - it’s episode 155 and the Cape economy is growing in leaps and bounds. The years between 1840 and 1843 were a fascinating mix of economic development and military endeavour. We will be returning to the arrival in Port Natal aka Durban of Captain Smith and his 263 men and unfortunately, there’s going to be fisticuffs, bullets, death and traitorous acts. But it is true that the most significant development in South Africa after 1835 was the expansion of agricultural production. Luckily for us, an organisation called eGSSA, founded in 2004, is the virtual branch of the Genealogical Society of South Africa, and provides a virtual home for everyone from the beginner to the most advanced family historian. And buried in their digital archives are digitalised copies of the Cape Frontier Times, a publication that began it’s life in Grahamstown in 1840. In between notices about births, marriages and deaths, that are known by old school editors as hatches, matches and dispatches, is a great deal of material about money, commodities, the economy. Americans had also just discovered what was known as Cape Gum. This weeps from a tree known as Acacia Karoo or the Karoo thorn, or if you’re into Latin, the Vachellia karroo. What was going on as well was the genesis of an African peasant producer of agricultural goods — and these producers of food would become very important as our story progresses through the 19th Century. Moving along. You heard last episode how Cape Governor, Sir George Napier, the one-armed veteran of the peninsular wars against Napoleon, had signed an order for Captain Thomas Smith and his 263 to march to Port Natal, and seize the valuable port for the British. That of course, was going to be opposed by the Boers. Adding fuel to the propaganda fire apart from the Volksraads decision in Pietermaritzburg to kick amaZulu out of southern Natal and the midlands, was the sudden an unexpected arrival in Port Natal of an American ship called the Levant.

This is episode 154 and the amaBhaca people under chief Ncapayi have just raided the Boers along the upper Bushman’s river and near their new town of Weenen. Joining the Bhaca were the San raiders you heard about in episode 152. The area around the Umzimvubu River had been unstable ever since the amaBhaca fled to the region during Shaka’s time, and the amaBhaca now lived west of the amaPondo who were ruled by chief Faku ka Ngqungqushe. It’s important to note that both the amaMpondo and the amaBhaca used to live further north in Natal before Shaka’s fractious wars began and led to the movement of the people known as the Mfecane. The amaPondo did not trust the amaBhaca, calling them thieves. The arrival of the Boers in Natal meant they had a powerful new possible ally — but they quickly learned that the Boers were not to be trusted either as you’re going to hear in this episode. Faku regularly communicated with the Voortrekkers, and now that the amaBhaca had made the fatal decision to steal more than 700 head of cattle from the trekkers near Weenen, along with 50 horses, the Volksraad in Pietermaritzburg had had enough. They met in November and ordered Andries Pretorius and commandant Hendrik Stephanus Lombard to lead a commando of 260 Boers to extract maximum revenge from the amaBhaca. Chief Fodo of the Nlangwini who lived between the Bhaca and the Boers had also been raided, so he and about a hundred of the Nlangwini warriors joined the Boer commando seeking their own form of restitution. In the ensuing attack, 26 men, ten women and four children were killed, and the boers seized 3 000 cattle as well as 2 000 sheep. The numbers have been contested over the years, but the fact that women and children died was confirmed. However, it was their decision to seize at least 17 of the amaBhaca children they said had been orphaned in the attack that was going to lead to a great deal of interest by the anti-slavery lobby in the Cape — and in England. Chief Faku wrote a letter around this time to Governor Sir George Napier, expressing his fear that he would be next, that the Boers were seizing livestock and children willy nilly south of the Umzimvubu River, and that matters could not continue and begged to be placed under the protection of the British Government. on August 2nd 1841, the Raad took the rather unwise decision to force all these amaZulu squatters off the farms. It went further, ruling that none had any right to claim any part of Natal at all. They should be removed, resolved the Volksraad, to the tract of land between the Umtamvuna River and the Umzimvubu River. ON the surface, this appeared to be a reasonable suggestion, the land is excellent here, enough water and good soils. However, no-one had bothered to ask the local African clans what they thought of this basically, forced removal and furthermore, someone already lived there. On August 21st, Lord John Russell instructed the Governor to make arrangements for the reoccupying of Port Natal. This is where Captain Smith would make his appearance and the coming march overland to Port Natal was going to be arduous indeed.

1840 was a leap year, and in November David Livingstone had left Britain for Africa. His story of exploration and commitment is extraordinary. While he would go on to become better known for his attempts at finding the source of the Nile River in east Africa, it was his formative phase of life at mission stations in southern Africa that we’re interested in. Born on 19 March 1813 in Blantyre, Scotland, he was the second of seven children and employed at the age of ten in the towns’ cotton mill. This was way before rules about these things, and this ten year-old worked twelve hours days as a piecer, who’s job it was to lay broken cotton threads on the spinning machines. He was drawn to the teachings of local evangelist, Thomas Burke. He studied medicine, and then was ordained as a minister of the church at the Charing Cross Medical School. A chance meeting with south African Scots missionary Robert Moffat in London was to change his life. Moffat was running the London Missionary Society’s station at Kuruman, and Livingstone asked him if he “would do for Africa” as in survive. “I said he would” Moffat wrote later, “if he would not go to an old station, but would advance to unoccupied ground, specifying the vast plain to the north where I had sometimes seen in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary had ever been…” Forgive my pathetic attempt at a Scots accent. Young David Livingstone was going to take that to heart over the next few decades and would become known as the greatest missionary in Africa, even though the truth is he converted only one person to Christianity. He left England for the Cape in November 1840, and spent most of his time on board studying Dutch and seTswana. Joining him on board was someone else we’re going to hear quite a bit about in coming episodes, another LMS missionary called William Ross. You know how everything connects one way or another. So we have Livingstone and Ross sailing to southern Africa - imbued with the concepts of evangelical christianity with it’s core message Influenced by revivalistic teachings in the United States, Livingstone entirely accepted the proposition put by Charles Finney, Professor of Theology at Oberlin College, Ohio, that "the Holy Spirit is open to all who ask it". For Livingstone, this meant a release from the fear of eternal damnation. And being an earnest young man, he felt that folks should hear about this. Initially he wanted to go to China, but the looming first Opium War led to the London Missionary Society directors deciding southern Africa was safer. Livingstone and Ross landed in Simon’s Bay in March 1841 after a stop off in Brazil. Livingstone stayed at Dr Philip’s home in Cape Town. Philip spoke quite a bit about how he believed in the policy that all people were equal before God and the law and Livingstone believed that too. Clearly then Livingstone was not going to be welcomed by the Boers and British settlers most of whom by now definitely did not believe this message. Livingstone sailed up the coast to Algoa Bay in May and then he took a two month ox-wagon trek along with William Ross to the Kuruman Mission. There he immersed himself in Tswana life and trekked more than a thousand kilometres to Mabotse in modern day Botswana which is near Zeerust. The Boers in Pietermaritzburg had gone through a combination of good and bad. In 1839 more than half a dozen people had died when a candle tipped over in one of the houses there, burning down 13. The blaze was made worse by the gunpowder stores in most of the houses, and the fire was so intense, it set fire to nearby wagons. Hendrick Potgieter based on the high veld had still not reconciled with Andries Pretorius - but things were about to change.

This is episode 152, we’re going to dig into a story that is not often told — the amaTola San raiders of the Drakensberg. They emerged by the end of the third decade of the 19th Century as a result of a mish-mash of forces at play on the veld. And what a remarkable story this is so hold onto your horses! Literally as it would appear. What has been re-discovered recently is the identification of a plethora of mounted frontier raiding groups and how these had impacted the interior of Southern Africa, and in particular, the mountains north-east of the Cape Colony. Certain frontier raiding groups often referred to simply as ‘Bushmen’ were really comprised of members from many formerly distinct ethnicities, and included the progeny from subsequent inter-marriage. Cultural and ethnic mixing, the advent of the horse, the increased access to guns and ammunition, and the need for identity to adapt to these changes, resulted in a volatile mix indeed. There were freed slaves, Khoesan, San, and English soldiers who’d gone AWOL, as well as descendants of former VOC soldiers who were Swedish, German, Swiss, and Dutch. There’s a correlation here with the American Frontier experience, where men and sometimes women, armed with muskets, bows, and spears, wearing feathered headgear or wide-brimmed trekboer hats and riding horses, raided their neighbours for cattle and horses or exchanged these valuable resources for corn, tobacco, dogs and alcohol, much like other nineteenth century frontiers. There the roaming bandits were the Jumanos, the Lakota, the Metis, all became seminal in the B-grade Western movies of the 1950s. South Africa’s bandits and raiders were arraigned across a large area, but perhaps the most interesting were those living in the amaTola mountains, a mixture of people who were on the fringes of society. Because horses were only introduced to the Drakensberg in the 1830s and production of hunter-gatherer rock art in that region had almost entirely ceased by the 1880s, horse paintings are comparatively tightly pinpointed in time, unlike virtually all other categories of images in southern African rock art. San paintings of this time reveal quite an astonishing fact, these people had a mixed material culture, the paintings who San and others who were not San working together, carrying firearms, riding horses with their dogs running alongside, carrying spears and bows, and importantly, dancing their trance dances. The area I’m addressing lies between the Mzimvubu River and the Tina River, across the central Drakensburg in other words, across both sides of the escarpment, stretching from Giants Castle in modern Kwa-Zulu Natal to Mount Fletcher in the Eastern Cape and Matsaile inside Lesotho. Glancing at a map, and tracing folks living in this area in 1840 you’d find the Voortrekkers arraigned inland from Port Natal, around Pietermaritzburg, and up to the headwaters of the Umgeni, the Mooi River and Bushman’s River just below Giant’s Castle. From here the San Raiders controlled the landscape, along the ridges of the Drakensberg south westerly to Mount Fletcher, in the slopes above the Senqu River or the headwaters of the Orange Riverif you prefer. This overlooked where the Bhaca lived, south east of them, the amaMpondo, further south the Mpondomise, then further the amaThembu, to their east and south the amaXhosa could be found and to their south, the English settlers in Albany. I hope you can feel the proximity of these amaTola raiders because everyone in these areas were somewhat fearful of the gangs of men on horses. The San raiders were based in that mountain redoubt between Giant’s Castle and Mount Fletcher and they were surrounded by enemies but also prospective allies. This mountain redoubt was getting a bad name, and soon would be identified on maps from the 1840s onwards as nomansland.

Episode 151 and we’re into the 1840s - and its time to analyse some issues. One is education, the other, roads. Given our crisis in education these days, its perhaps another of our historical ironies that state funded schooling was offered by 1839 and 1840 in the Cape, something that was unparalleled at the time except for Prussia and a handful of New England states in America. No-where else in the world at the time could state funded free education be found. Yes, you heard that right, South Africa was an early adopter of free education. Another growing phenomenon at this moment was the building of roads, something that was sorely required in a region as vas as southern Africa. After the Sixth Frontier war of 1834-5, municipal government began to develop, and a new Legislative Council was struggling to make sense of the existing political system. All members of the council were appointed by the Governor, and only gained the right to alter the Charters of Justice, or the law, in 1844. Christoffel Brand, editor of die Zuid Afrikaan, and Robert Godlonton editor of the Grahamstown journal, both talked of an elective assembly. Godlonton added that he preferred to see the Eastern Cape achieve independence from the Cape. These erstwhile journalists were merely repeating conversations that were taking place across the British Empire in the fourth decade of the 19th Century. In Australia for example, the 1840s were years of conflict, as British settlers increasingly moved out away from towns seeking new farmland, First Nations fought back and resisted this expansion. Violence ensued. Squatters, who leased large pastoral lands from the colonial governments in New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria and into Queensland and South Australia, increasingly gained political and economic influence. They became wealthy off the land leased at low rates, stocking them with thousands of sheep, with their fleeces sold into the British market. Many squatters, with time and money, stood for election to parliament to set the laws and rules in their favour. Wool was also going to become the Cape’s main resource shortly. The gloom of the trekkers leaving the province had been replaced by an economic upturn — the Cape Colony finances were in a much healthier condition than they had been ten years earlier. Governor D’Urban, who’d left for home, had earlier launched a campaign to simplify the fiscal system and by 1840 the campaign had begun to bear fruit. The collection of taxes by Colonial Secretary John Montagu resulted in the Cape finally wiping off its public debt and re-paying the British government in full. Customs revenues were rising, the slave compensation fund had helped, and the delivery of stores during the Sixth Frontier war bolstered imports, while exports grew. Wine farms had experienced a drop in sales starting in 1825, but wool had largely replaced this commodity. Merino sheep had been acclimatised in Albany district around Grahamstown just before the war of 1834, and suddenly there was a lot of money to be made farming these animals for their wool. Within ten years, by the 1850s, wool would outstrip all other Cape exports put together. Just like in Australia. To his credit, Sir George Napier wanted to improve this situation and following a report prepared by Colonial Secretary John Bell for his predecessor D’Urban, Napier turned to a fascinating man called Sir John Herschel. He was a famous astronomer, who was collaborating with Thomas Maclear, the Cape Astronomer Royal at the private observatory at Claremont near Cape Town. And this of course, is why we call Observatory Observatory. Loved by the students, loathed by their parents, a place of excellent entertainment to this day, Obs is a seminal party centre, characterised by the smell of cannabis on Lower Main Street. Sir John Herschel had a cunning plan. He began to develop a system that bore his name, whereby two classes of schools were recognised.

For those who’ve lasted the journey thus far, thank you for listening. The number of downloads is approaching 1 and a quarter million, which by itself is quite a shock. Adding to the selfserving histrionics, Episode one of this series has just made to Spotify’s fourth most listened to podcast in South Africa for 2023. More gasps of disbelief. When I began this enterprise in February 2021 it was a giant leap into a possible abyss, a leap into the unknown, and possibly a foray into catastrophe. One person’s historian is another person’s spin doctor you could say. As 2024 beckons, I need to mention that my site, desmondlatham.blog has a donation panel. The hosting services are not free and so far I’ve tried to avoid mentioning moolah — its base and depraved. However, debasing and depraving is required as the cost of all of this has to be covered some how. So you’ll see a donate button on desmondlatham.blog, click on there and there’s a Paypal QR code on the page. If you’d prefer to EFT or something, send me an email at desmondlatham@gmail.com. With that slightly odious begging bowl moment out of the way, back to our tale. We’re going to hear about Dingana’s death, It’s late January 1840, and word reached the Voortrekker BeesKommando that Dingana had been defeated at amaQongqo, he was on the run. Although commandant Andries Pretorius believed this was true, the Boers wanted to follow up on the amaZulu King’s defeat to deal with the remnants of his army. AS you know, Ndlela kaSompiti the general had paid for the defeat with his life, Dingana had him killed but the surviving army was still out there, on the flat lands west of the Lebombo Mountains. But by throwing Ndlela’s body out for the wild dogs, the jackals, the hyenas and the vultures, Dingana had broken the tradition of burying respected elders and royalty. Many of his own followers took exception to this act and realised that his behaviour belied his weakness, so more decided to throw in their lot with Mpande kaSenzangkhona. On 3rd February, 220 Boers detached from the BeesKommando for a quick recon towards the Pongolo river after being informed that Dingana’s general Nongalaza was chasing Ndlela’s shattered impi south. Maybe they’d catch these warriors in a pincer, there were reportedly around 3000 still alive and unhurt — at least 2000 others had either died or were wounded and no longer a threat. Hundreds of warriors were indeed in the vicinity, heading back home towards the Mfolozi from the Pongola River, but this was summer and summers are often characterised by thick mist in the valleys. It was under cover of this mist belt that that warriors managed to avoid the Boers, hiding in the kloofs and caves and inside the dense riverine bush. A small group of men and women were caught in a cave, the men were killed, the women seized. Then 250 burghers were mounted up in a larger commando and headed north east from the White Mfolozi to the Pongola river to join up with Nongalaza’s amaZulu. They met up with Nongalaza on the 5th February, who told them that Dingana had made it across the Pongola River and was fleeing into amaSwazi country with a few close adherents and his mother and some sisters. He was headed towards the Lubombo Mountains. Now anyone who has travelled here will know of the Ghost mountain, the combination of blunt hills and thick sub-tropical bush, the sandy trails and possibly, the ghostly stories. When he realised that Nongalaza’s men had turned around, he stopped with his retinue at a small hilll south of the Lubombo Mountains called Hlathikhulu. Peering at these mountains in February 1840 was Dingana, who took stock as he settled in to a makeshift royal residence on the forested slopes. His isigodlo was put in place and he named this eSankoleni, a place of seclusion, the secluded spot. This was his last place, and instead of seclusion, it was going to be a place of execution.

This is episode 149 and Mpande kaSenzangakhona and the Boers are going after Dingana. We’re entering the 1840s where momentous events would continue to shape South Africa’s future. After Shaka’s death in 1828 his half-brother and murderer, Dingana, was supposed to usher in stability. Instead, Dingana embroiled the AmaZulu in one war after another, trying to defeat Mzilikazi of the amaNdebele, fightign the baTlokwa, the amaSwazi, the Boers, and now, his own Royal line. By ordering Mpande’s assassination, he had set off a chain of events that was going to boomerang on him and the coming Zulu Civil War had been in the offing for some time. He’d also set off his own demise by failing to kill Mpande, who then fled across the Thukela River with over 17 000 adherents and about 35 000 cattle. Mpande had met Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius and negotiated with the Voortrekkers as the man they now called “The Reigning Prince of the Emigrant Zulus”. A Boer deputation of 28 men under the leadership of F Roos had visited him at his homestead not far from Port Natal in October 1839, where he offered to pay them the cattle owed by Dingana, over 19 300, and ceded the bay of St Lucia to the Boers. Mpande also promised not to undertake any military activity without Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius’ knowledge. Then as if to reinforce his power, he turned a blind eye to the killing of a much feared induna called Mpangazitha kaMncumbatha who was of the amaNdwandwe. Zwide’s people. Mpangazitha had become an influential and brutal induna operating alongside Dingana, and one day he was killed in full view of the trekkers. This shocked the visiting Boers, who watched as the induna was dragged, then beaten by successive men armed with fighting sticks, his blue robe spattered with blood as he was bludgeoned to death. Mpande later said he didn’t order this killing, Mpangazitha had brought it on himself by his bullyboy tactics — the other induna just had enough of this egotistical man who’d committed a long list of human rights abuses against other people’s over the past decade. Live by the sword, die by the knobkerrie I guess. By Christmas, however, the British were gone from the garrison at Port Natal, Captain Jervis had sailed away with the British administration now mistakenly of the belief that the violence in Natal had dissipated. Then Dingana sent a famous message to the Boers in Pietermaritzburg by the end of 1839, trying to discredit Mpande. “He is not a man…” the messengers said “…he has turned away his face, he is a woman. He was useless to Dingana his master, and he will be of no use to you. Do not trust him, for his face may turn again…” Coming from a man as pernicious as Dingana was rather hypocritical. Ndlela’s impi on paper at least, looked the better of the two. Dingana had pulled together the top notch amabutho, the iziNyosi, the uDlambedlu, the imVoko which had remnants of the umKulutshane regiment. They’d been joined by the uKhokhoti, who’d also been at the Battle of Blood River/Ncome. Mpande’s general Nongalaza led amabutho like the imiHaye who’d joined up with remnants of the imVoko who’d switched sides as well as the uZwangendaba who were a bit like a mercenary division drawn from the homesteads called the umLambongwenya, uDukuza and isiKlebhe. Mpande’s army included the veterans iziMpohlo, formed during Shaka’s time, these were older men, scarred in battle and seeking one more victory before they’d retire to their imizi. Not only were Mpande’s men feeling more optimistic, they knew that somewhere to their west the Voortrekkers were heading their way. Between these two organisations, most warriors fighting for Mpande were convinced they were going to win. The canny Mpande had pulled off a diplomatic move of note. Had he waited for the Boers to arrive, he would have lost face — by striking first he was waging war without the muskets and the horses.

This is episode 148 and there’re negotiations afoot between Dingana and the Voortrekkers, at the behest of Captain Henry Jervis who led the small detachment of British troops based at Port Natal. Their role was to stabilise the Natal region after a year of extreme violence, the Voortrekkers and the AmaZulu king Dingana were fighting tooth and nail. Jervis as you heard was one of the characters in our history that crop up here and there and are able to act as neutral arbitrators between different factions. Gambusha the trusted inceku sent by Dinanga had arrived at the British camp on 23 February 1839 and said that the AmaZulu were on the brink of ruin and would accept any terms that Jervis would propose. Gambusha also asked for the British to consider allying themselves with the AmaZulu to oppose the Voortrekker expansion, Dingana wanted British protection. Jervis could not do this, saying that his role was to act as a go-between and could not take sides. Gambusha took that message back to the Zulu king. On the 23rd March two inceku called Gikwana and Gungwana returned to Port Natal with 300 of the Boer horses they had captured in the year of fighting as a sign of good faith. Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius then arrived as you heard, calling himself the “Grand Commandant of the Right Worshipful the representative assembly of the South African Society at Natal.” Had business cards been a thing back in 1839 that title wouldn’t fit on one side. Nevertheless, peace talks were now underway. Eventually the terms were agreed — that Dingana would return all the muskets, horses, sheep and 19,300 cattle he’d taken from the trekkers and allow them to live unmolested south of the Thukela River. IN turn, the Boers would assist the Zulu should they come under attack. It was also agreed that from now on, all AmaZulu emissaries who crossed the Thukela River should carry a white flag indicating who they were, and that those found without this pass would be shot on sight. Pretorius also demanded that Dingana should send a messenger directly to him in Pietermaritzburg when they were ready to hand over the cattle and other goods. The British were to be left out of future meetings. The problem for Dingana, is that he was now trying to carve out new territory that was in the name of the Swazi king Sobhuza the First. And the reason why it was a problem was the Swazi could fight like the amaZulu. And yet, Dingana was also using Pretorius’ final demand as part of his political strategy, because when men married, they would have to be given land for their homesteads. By occupying vast tracts of Swazi land, Dingana would also be reinforcing his own political power, colonising new vistas for the Zulu. There was another reason why Dingana was focusing on the amaSwazi, a people whom the AmaZulu looked down on. Attacking them would be part of an ihlambo, a washing of the spears, a purification ceremony bathed in blood marking the end of the period of mourning set off by the humiliation of being defeated by the Boers. This washing of the spears would mean the evil spirits that caused the defeat, the umnyama, the evil influence, would be pushed away into the territory of the foe.The Swazi now faced a amaZulu invasion which began in the winter of 1839, a far more threatening action than any of the previous raids. This was an attack of colonial occupation by four Amabutho, the umBelebele, the uNomdayana, umKulutshane and the imVoko. Klwana kaNgqengele led these regiments, a man from one of the most powerful chiefly houses, the Buthelezi. It was Mpande kaSenzangakhona who was going to change the equation. Dingana’s half-brother had been in hiding after another attempt on his life by the capricious Zulu king, and in September 1839 he had fled across the Thukela River with 17 000 people, and 25 000 head of cattle.

Cape Town was burgeoning — and trade was starting to pick up. There was also a paradox, the real effects of the emancipation of slaves back in 1834 was only really felt in 1838 because it was in that year the 38 000 slaves were finally allowed to leave their masters. The abolition of slavery led to the creation of several private commercial banks, which then offered cheap credit to wage-labour employers. The British parliament allocated £20 million as compensation for those who had previously owned slaves and were now stripped on their erstwhile ‘property’ in inverted comma’s — to be shared out across it’s territories. Of the twenty million, £1,247 000 was allocated to the Cape. Though a certain proportion of this money got stuck in Great Britain in the hands of agents as we’ve heard in previous episodes, the amount that arrived in the Cape Colony, mainly in 1836–37, quintupled the sum of money in circulation. This in turn caused a raising of prices, it was inflationary, and also led to increased labour costs. Some of the money was invested in new banks, as well as providing capital to build new houses around the Cape. One of these was the Eastern Province Bank which launched in 1838 in Grahamstown - which went on to become Barclay’s Bank, and during the sanctions period of apartheid, it morphed into First National Bank. Compensated emancipation at the Cape was a major social rupture, ending as it did 182 years of legal slavery, changing the legal status of these 38 000 people. The slave-like apprenticeship period that followed emancipation in 1834 had now expired. Khoi, and other members of the free black community continued to work mostly in farm employment, although a few became market gardeners or joined the small but growing artisanal class in the villages of the Western Cape.’ Emancipation at the Cape freed slaves into the category "free black," which encompassed all people of colour native to the Western Cape: "Hottentots" was the colonial term for the Khoi and "Bushmen" the colonial term for the San, "Bastards" were those who had a white father, Khoi mother and "Bastard Hottentots" were those who had a slave father and Khoi mother. By the time of emancipation, the slave population of the Western Cape was predominantly creole, including descendants of slaves brought from the west and east coasts of Africa, Madagascar, India, and the Dutch East Indies, and children born of a slave mother and a free father. The close cultural and social relations between Khoisan and slaves and the incorporation of the Khoisan into the Cape colonial economy, also contributed to the heterogeneous culture of the rural poor at this stage. The introduction of "prize negroes," who had been "rescued" from other nations' slave ships by the British and brought to the Cape from 1808 to 1815 and then again in the 1830s to remedy the labor shortage in the Western Cape, also served to increase the polyglot nature of the rural poor of the Western Cape. This diversity of geographical and cultural origins affected the emergence of an official racial terminology to cover all of these groups to simplify matters. Thus while the category of "free black" continued to be used into the 1840s in government correspondence regarding labor legislation. But from 1837 the statistical Blue Books began listing people of Khoi and San descent, free blacks, “prize negroes," and freed people under the category “Coloured." The slave owners were a leisure class and now slaves were free, it was the start of the fourth decade of the 19th Century. The slaves had the skills, the leisure class, did not, and now this leisure class really needed the new banks. So the abolition of slavery resulted in the liquidation of at substantial portion of the capital that had been invested in the individuals who were enslaved.

Andries Pretorius had won a major encounter with the Zulu army, which was now in full retreat and the way to emGungungundlovu was wide open. A day after the Battle on the 17th December 1838, Commandant General Pretorius had two Zulu captives brought before him. According to Voortrekker records, he gave them a piece of white calico with his name written on it in black ink, and told them to take it to Dingana. They should inform the king that the trekkers were approaching and that he should sue for peace, and to send messengers back to start negotiations and they should carry this cloth. Ndlela kaSompisi the general had ordered messengers on ahead of the Amabutho who were now force marching back to the east, to the Great Place. The izinceku advisors rushed back warning Dingana that he should evacuate his beloved emGungundlovu as the Voortrekkers were on their way — his army had suffered a terrible defeat. Msiyana kaMhlana who led the imVoko Amabutho regiment had told the izinceku that the king should make for the south side of the drift across the white Mfolozi, to a place called emVokweni. IT was one of his larger homesteads, and gave him the option to make a loop north if pursued. It was a day later that another messenger hurried up to Dingana and told him as he hunkered down at emVokweni that Pretorius and his WenKommando had arrived at the Mhlatuze River, and was about to cross. The Zulu king ordered that his beloved emGungundlovu be raised to the ground, along with two other large amaKhanda nearby. On the morning of the 20th they saw emGungundlovu in the distance, wreathed in smoke, much of it still burning. It was a vast complex, the fire would burn for days. About half an hours ride away, they stopped once more and formed a laager near the place of death, KwaMatiwane. At that point they were unaware that the bones of their comrades were lying in the open only a short distance away. The trekkers began to loot what they could from the smoky ruins of Dingana’s great place, and there was a great deal that had survived the fire. First however, they were determined to find out where the colleagues lay. One of the men found Retief’s leather briefcase and peered inside. This is where the story is disputed by some historians because the Boers pulled out a document, the treaty apparently ceding Natal to the trekkers. I have explained how this document is of historical interest, but utterly irrelevant in the debate about land in Natal. Dingana as you know by now, had signed it to pacify Retief, to lull him into his final meeting where the Zulu king had managed to convince the Boers to leave their guns outside, only to be murdered. It was a chance discovery on Christmas Day that almost brought calamity to this WenKommando. Pretorius was suffering from the wound he’d received at the Battle of Blood river, but was alert enough to interrogate a man who’d been discovered hiding close to their camp at emGungundlovu. This was no ordinary man however, he was a decoy. Bongoza kaMefu of the Ngongoma people had realised that the trekkers were after the king’s cattle, and their determination to seize the property booty of this entire campaign could be their undoing. Bongoza approached Dingana and suggested a plan to lure the Kommando onto the thornbush veld around the White Mfolozi, where they’d be susceptible to ambush. Nzobo kaSompithi who had rejoined the king’s main retinue agreed.

This is episode 145 - we’re joining the AmaZulu and the Voortrekkers at the apocalyptic clash on the River Ncome, which was soon renamed Blood River. This battle has seared its way into South African consciousness — it is so symbolic that its reference frames modern politics. Just when someone comes along and pooh poohs Blood River’s importance, events conspire against them. And so, to the matter at hand. We join the two forces preparing for battle on the evening of 15th December 1838, the amaButho arraigned in their units below the Mkhonjane Mountain east of the Ncome, and the 464 Voortrekker men waiting inside their 64 wagons. Joining them was Alexander Biggar the Port Natal trader and 60 black levies, Biggar wanted revenge for the death of his son Robert killed by the AmaZulu at the Battle of Thukela. Also at hand were Robert Joyce and Edward Parker, aiding Voortrekker commander Andries Pretorius as intelligence officers. Both were fluent in Zulu and had already passed on vital information to Pretorius about Prince Mpande who had to flee into exile. Dingane had tried to have his half-brother assassinated - the paranoid Zulu king thought Mpande was planning to oust him as he had done to his half-brother, Shaka. The scene was set folks for this seminal battle at a picturesque place. The laager had been drawn up in an oval shape on the western bank of the Ncome river, to its south was a deep donga about fifty meters away that had been scoured by rain, and this ran into the Ncome with banks that were over two meters high. While AmaZulu warriors could hide in this donga, it really worked in the trekkers favour because it broke up the ground - they could not charge the wagons but had to clamber over the trenchlike ledge and were then easy pickings for the Boer sharpshooters. The Eastern side of the laager faced the Ncome River - about 80 meters away and this was regarded as even more difficult to assault. The River bank was muddy, and covered in reeds, making the approach almost impossible to achieve with any speed. Almost half a kilometer upstream, this river broadened into a marsh dotted with deep pools and crossing at that point would be almost impossible. Downstream from the laager was a very deep hippo pool or seekoeigat as it was known, so deep that the Boers couldn’t feel its bottom with their long whipstocks. No AmaZulu warrior would be crossing there either. More than half a kilometer downstream was a well used drift, and south east of the Ncome was a broad open plain dotted with small marshes and pools, and further south east lies the Shogane ridge, more than a kilometer away. It was summer, and the rains had come. The river was flooding which was to further complicate the AmaZulu assault. On the other side of the River, near Mthonjane mountain, Zulu commander Ndlela kaSompisi and his two IC Nzobo were finalising their plans on the night of 15th December 1838. IT was well before dawn on the 16th December that Ndlela ordered his warriors to rise and prepare.

This is episode 144 and a momentous event is about to take place. One that will shape Boer Zulu relations for centuries to come. The Battle of Blood River - or Ncome River - is etched in the consciousness of South Africans. While the gory details are not contested, its historical significance has been seized on by different political factions since the 16th December 1838. The day itself is a public holiday which we now call the Day of Reconciliation. Before that it was known as Dingane’s Day or the Day of the Covenant, or the Day of the Vow. Anything thought of as a covenant or a vow comes with baggage. Gert Maritz had died at the age of 41 on 23 September - suffering from dropsy, heart disease and half of the Voortrekkers had setup a second laager across the Little Thukela River, fearful of leaving their fort in case another Zulu army bushwhacked them. They had sent a deputation to elicit support from other trekkers in the transOrangia region, and in the highveld along the Vaal River. Only Karel Landman remained as a senior leader in Natal, but help was on its way in the form of a man who was half dragoon, part brigand, mostly hero. And that was Andries Pretorius. He was born in Graaff-Reinet and his family had prospered, owning several farms around the frontier town. He was fifth generation southern African, his ancestors dated back all the way to the early Dutch settlement in Table Bay. His ancestor, Johannes Pretorius was the son of Reverend Wessel Schulte of the Netherlands. Schulte had been a theology student at the University of Leiden when he changed his name to the Latin form of Schulte and therefore became Wesselius Praetorius, with an ae, then later Pretorius. His deep connection with Africa leant weight to his other important characteristics, an imposing man, tall and imbued with a captivating personality to boot. He was a skilled commander of men, adept at the irregular nature of frontier warfare.There was a lot of movement at the end of 1838, because not only had the British soldiers arrived in Port Natal and Pretorius’ kommando had headed off to Dingane, but Prince Mpande was on the run from his half-brother Dingane as well. He wasn’t alone - Mpande was joined by an estimated 17 000 of his followers after Dingane had made moves to assassinate his half-brother he regarded as an increasing threat to his rule. Dingane’s actions followed the defeat of his army by the trekkers at Veglaer, weakening his power in the eyes of his subjects. On 6 December 1838, 10 days before the Battle of Blood River, Pretorius and his commando including Alexander Biggar as translator had a meeting with friendly Zulu chiefs at Danskraal, so named for the Zulu dancing that took place in the Zulu kraal that the Trekker commando visited. It was during this relatively friendly occasion that important information was passed along, and now Pretorius became aware of Prince Mpande’s new refugee status, an important character in the coming power play. It was immediately apparent to Pretorius that the Zulu king was in a more precarious position than he had been a few months earlier.

This is episode 143 and we’re back in Cape Town, it’s late 1838, our new British Governor Sir George Napier is in the hot seat and he’s already regretting taking up the position. He was trying to make Andries Stockenstrom’s eastern Cape Treaty System a success and this was not an easy task. Napier’s main pressure however was financial. Before he left Britain, the Colonial office had made it clear that they would not accept another war in the Eastern Cape. IT had cost the government dearly, 14 years after the English settlers landed the British were forced to defend their subjects during the the Sixth Frontier War. Hundreds of soldiers and their material had cost tens of thousands of pounds. The cost of the colonies was a major factor in the government's financial difficulties. The British Empire was vast and expensive to administer — someone had to pay for the upkeep of the colonial military, the infrastructure, and the salaries of colonial officials. In the period of 1834-1838, the British government spent an average of £12 million per year on the colonies. This represented a significant portion of the government's budget - in 1837 for example the government spent £12 million on the colonies plus £15 million on the army. According to the Hansard archive of the House of Commons, the British government's budget in 1838 was £51,524,110 with the largest categories of expenditure the army, navy, and interest on debt. These categories accounted for over 70% of the total budget. The cost of the colonies had a number of consequences for British politics. Lobby groups were — and remain — a powerful force in British politics, and they opposed any policies that would increase the cost of the colonies, while helping the maintain a system that was dominated by the aristocracy. Overall, the cost of the colonies was a major factor in the British government's financial difficulties and it also had a significant impact on British politics and the economy in the period of 1834-1838. The British national debt grew significantly in the period from the £796 million to £829 million or 4.2%. On the other hand, Britain was benefiting from the colonial access to raw materials, such as cotton, sugar, and timber. These were used to support British industries, particularly textiles manufacturing and shipbuilding. Of course, the colonies created new markets for manufactured goods which actually help boost the economy and create jobs as well. For investors, the entrepreneurs and connected royalty, it was an opportunity to earn large returns from these seized territories by building infrastructure, developing new industries, and starting new ventures. The strategic importance of its colonies also helped England maintain its global power and influence. For example, Gibraltar was a key naval base that helped England to control the Mediterranean Sea, India was also a key strategic asset, as it helped England to maintain its power and influence in Asia and Cape Town remained a strategic asset on its main supply routes to the far east. It’s time to cast our eyes further afield, as we do in this series just to understand how southern African events were often part of a much broader scope. This was the period of burgeoning colonial expansion globally and those who lived on the land before the arrival of European settlers were fighting for their survival. Early settlers could also begin to take advantage of iron based tools being manufactured in Britain - particularly ploughs. There were many examples. Cast iron ploughs for example which were inexpensive to produce although they were relatively brittle.

This is episode 142. It would be remiss of me not to say Congratulations Bokke on a gritty win over the All Blacks to become world champions for a record fourth time. With that said, picture the scene. We are standing on the western slopes of the Drakensberg, looking out across the Caledon Valley. The rivers we see here flow westward, into the Atlantic Ocean. Far to the south east lie the villages of the amaThembu on the slopes of the mountains that are now part of the Transkei. This is a follow up episode of a sort from episode 141, because last week we spoke about the Orange River, and the Caledon River is a tributary of the Orange. It rises in the Drakensberg, on the Lesotho–South Africa border, and flows generally southwest, forming most of the boundary between Lesotho and Free State province. The Caledon flows through southeastern Free State to join the Orange River near Bethulie after a course of 480 km. Its valley has one of the greatest temperature ranges in South Africa and is an excellent place to grow maize or other grains. But in April 1835 Moshoeshoe was eyeing the equally verdant land to his south, amaThembu land and led a powerful and large expedition of more than 700 men along with a hundred pack-oxen loaded with food south easterly over the Maloti mountains towards these people. At first his raid went according to plan, he seized a rich booty of cattle. The amaThembu were also facing raids from the other direction, the British who were conducting their Sixth Frontier War so they were in a rather invidious position. Moshoeshoe was blooding his sons Letsie and Molapo in battle. They had become restless back at his Morija headquarters and their frustration grew when Moshoeshoe denied them permission to attack the Kora who’d setup camp nearby. As the Basotho withdrew after the raid, they were ambushed by the amaThembu and lost most of their livestock. Worse, Moshoeshoe’s brother Makhabane was killed and he suffered heavy casualties. Moshoeshoe would never again send another full-scale expedition into amaXhosa or amaThembu territory. This change of strategy was fully supported by the missionaries who had begun living with Moshoeshoe’s people. What followed would be a remarkable partnership which is still hotly debated today and the interests of the missionaries would be further expanded or extended by the interests of the Basotho leader. Another interesting change was taking place for the people of this mountain territory, driven by missionaries both the French and the English. This is because the religion of the 19th-century Sotho speakers was defined chiefly by its outward manifestation, the signs on the land, the animals, things going on that you can hear, smell, touch, see. Religion, as the Sotho term ‘borapeli’ illustrates, was what people did and not what they believed. This is a fundamental foundational difference that stymied the first missionaries at first. The translation of molimo as God inaugurated a new era where there was a fixation on linear progression in an age of evolutionary thinking, where Protestantism was the theology. How did Molimo interlink with Tlatla-Mochilo? For the missionaries, this was an immense philosophical wrestling match. This is where Tsapi, a man described as Moshoeshoe’s advisor and diviner re-enters our story for a moment. Thanks to one of my listeners who is a descendent of Tsapi by the name of Seanaphoka for providing some more background. Tsapi was actually the first son of the Bafokeng Tribal Chief Seephephe. Tsapi had a sister called Mabela, who was Moshoeshoe’s first wife and as Queen Consort she took the name MmaMohato. Tsapi became Advisor and Senior Council member of Moshoeshoe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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