History of South Africa podcast

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  Episode 292 - Irish Nationalists, the Grobler Affair and Manifest Destiny 13.09.2026 21dk

  If you have access to Google Maps, or preferably, an original wall map of Africa, stand back for a moment to savour the grand vista which is southern Africa. Living on the tip looking upwards creates a culture of outwardness, a mental and psychological state of eternal expansion. Despite this grandiosity, for many, it is a place of entrapment, they express sentiments of being stuck at the end of Africa, peering outwards to the continents of Europe, or America, Australasia with a sense of longing. It is as though we are fenced in by our own preconceptions, endlessly scrolling through the timelines of the grand and glorious X Y or Z generation gallavanting through the safe woods of Croatia, swimming along the elegant isles of the Med, wondering at the delights of the Barrier Reef. Croatia, of course, is where European-based ethnic cleansing took place in 1995. Europe is where almost 50 million died 70 years ago in a world war. America has been transfixed by a form of national socialism, Australia faces Chinese hegemony. Still, humans are a strange bunch, history a distant ship smoke on the horizon. It is a pitiful state where middle-class South Africans appear to have become transfixed by the myth of greengrassism. Where the grass is always greener on the other side. Our ancestors made their way into south Africa with a very different set of personal codes. From the earliest San, the Khoekhoe, then the Bantu settlers, then the European settlers, all arrived in this territory with plans and dreams. The dream may have been purely survival, or seeking treasure, for some it was purely adventure, for others, a combination of the above. But all of our ancestors had a plan which involved movement, migration, heading out to the next vista with necessities of whatever sort packed away and taken along. They were stoked by imagination, courageous, expansive. Looking at that southern African map a few important facts leap out. There are three main corridors from the south to the centre. One lies to the East, which can be tricky as it harbours fevers, faster flowing rivers, and inhabitants stretching back millennia. The centre is cooler in places, it is higher ground, but it also suffers from a lack of water, slow flowing larger rivers, and as you move north, geology plays tricks on you. To the west, well, there’s a bloody great series of deserts, marching from the Karoo, Namaqualand, to the Kalahari, into the Namib, then into the Angolan plateau. Good luck using that route, even these days. Take a Land Cruiser with spare tanks, tyres and don’t forget the satellite phone. There are a few important characters in this episode. One is Lobengula kaKhumalo, the descendant of Mzilikazi who had led his followers away from Shaka. You know his story if you’ve followed this series. Lobengula was crowned king of Ndebele in 1868 after a short, sharp civil war, at the great place called Mhlanhlandlela. He had long been tolerant of the Boer and English hunters who showed up as his home in Matabeleland, and in 1870 had even granted Sir John Swinburne’s London and Limpopo Mining Company the right to search for gold along the Tati River — between the Shashe and Ramaquabane Rivers. N those days, the whole of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, but people like MacNeill were working towards Home Rule. In what can only be called a head scratcher, Rhodes fell in with the nationalists. He knew that they had 85 seats in the British parliament and were strategically important, many times when the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party were at loggerheads, it was the Irish Parliamentary Party that turned into King-makers, holding the balance of power in the House of Commons.
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  Episode 291 - The Miracle of South Africa’s Railways: Navvies, Gangers and Granny Mavis 06.09.2026 23dk

  Welcome back to the History of South Africa podcast with me your host, Des Latham. This is episode 291, The miracle of South Africa’s railway engineering and a little bit of commentary thrown into the mix. This episode is part history, party histrionic. Play sound - old steam train Yes, it’s the instantly recognizable sound of a steam train which I have traveled in around the world. First trip, pre-school from Nkwalini station to Empangeni where one of the main sugar mills of Zululand could be found. My grandmother Mavis Alport was the chaperon as young Desmond and brother Gary clambered aboard the snorting beast, a visceral experience. Exciting stuff, this steam-train business — except for the small matter of my eyes, which had been staring rapturously out of the window towards the engine, drinking in all that romance of steam trains. What everybody who has actually ridden behind a coal-fired boiler already knows, is that romance travels with shrapnel. Tiny incandescent shards of burnt coal, riding the slipstream like malevolent little embers with a grudge, aimed directly at my cornea. Granny Mavis warned me, of course. But I was a farm boy possessed of that particular strain of confidence found only in the terminally under-informed, and so I ignored her, leaned further out, and gave the shrapnel a bigger target. Moving goods around a country is not only about commerce, it is about strategy, and often, military strategy. The key to being able to get your soldiers and machines from A to B quickly is being able to exploit the railways. Even now, Russia and Ukraine rely on railways to move their tanks and arms. During the Second world War, when a track was blown up, often the engineers could repair the broken section within a day or two. Everything about locomotives is about speed, and always has been. In South Africa commerce relies on aviation and trucking companies to move things around, but that’s only because our railways are somewhat shoddy and have degenerated because keeping them going requires maintenance, and that’s not something that most contemporary politicians have as a skill set. And so the cycle turns, gloriously, predictably. Why replace a sleeper when you can convene a task team to explore the sleeper question, with international best-practice benchmarking, naturally, at a five-star conference venue? Maintenance is a thankless art. Nobody erects a plaque to the man who tightened a bolt in 1899 and thereby prevented a derailment in 2024. As you’ll hear later, the gangers and navvies are a distant memory on our dusty veld. The 19th century's rolling stock revolutionised South Africa, shrinking the country where trips of weeks and months turned into days and even hours. After the line reached Kimberley in1885, and the celebrations subsided, the Cape Government was under pressure by capitalists like Cecil John Rhodes to extend it beyond the Cape and into the Orange Free State, on to the Transvaal and from Natal inland. Once established a Southern African customs union could follow as a way to maximise free trade. However, some in the Cape were not entirely sold on that idea. The Afrikaner Bond for example was initially skittish. Bond members were mainly farmers who regarded a vast matrix of tracks across the territory as a possible increased risk as competitors from further afield could access Cape markets. Nevertheless, the surveyor's maps had been drawn up. One ambitious plan was to extend the Midland Line—which already connected Port Alfred and Port Elizabeth to Grahamstown—even deeper into the interior. That extension was duly completed when it met the Western Line at De Aar. And this is where there was a problem. It involved that old bugbear of trade - something called tariffs - and that other fetter of growth, nationalism. Each of these colonies and fledgling Republics collected customs duties at points of entry and if there was a free trade area, they’d lose that income.
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  Episode 290 - Africanders, Afrikaners and the Sprigg/Hofmeyr/Rhodes Voter Disenfranchisement of 1887-1892 30.08.2026 21dk

  In 1883 Joseph Moss, regarded as the wealthiest black man in Kimberley, stood before the newly formed Africander League in the diamond mining city. Africander spelled A F R I C A N D E R. It which was not what you’d imagine, the Africander League was made up of black and coloured men before whom Moss pronounced “We are Africans — we are not like Englishmen, who return to their own land. You are not here for a certain period to make money alone and then return to England to make yourselves great men…” Moss looked around the room at the faces of black and brown “…You are born here, your interest is here…” Because South Africa was not their place of birth, most Englishmen in Kimberley did not view it as their homeland. Within a generation, however, their descendants born on South African soil would be confronted with a historic question of identity: were they British, or were they South African? As Moss spoke he would have been aware of a similar sentiment amongst Dutch speaking South Africans, a rising Afrikaner nationalism. There were only two main differences between the Africanders and the Afrikaners One was a matter of spelling - the black League was spelled Africander and the Dutch Bond was spelt Afrikaner. Secondly, the black Africanders of Kimberley spoke English, while the white spoke Dutch as well the new taal of South Africa, Afrikaans. It is one of the overriding historical facts of the last 150 years that so much resonated between these people and yet, so much was going to end up segregating them. Both of these Afrikaners regarded Africa as their homeland, yet were feited to spend their days separated because of the perceived differences based on skin colour. IT was a surface difference and by the late 1880s, that difference was being reinforced by English politicians and millionaires in South Africa like Cecil John Rhodes. As the diamond and gold mines developed and the ownership crystalised around a handful of men, vast changes were taking place across southern Africa, the future was swiveling about on the fulcrum of politics. Farming interests dominated local settler politics, and in the Cape more scientific farming practices advanced rapidly with the establishment of the Department of Agriculture. There was another struggle on the go in the colony - between a progressive largely English-speaking modernising elite, and poorer, more conservative sheep farmers. From the mid-1880s onwards, Cape legislation was introduced making it compulsory to dip sheep in order to curb infection. This gave rise to the most wide-spread popular agitation among Dutch speaking Afrikaners — agitation which threatened to split the party representing their interests, the Afrikaner Bond. It further reinforced the ethnic solidarity between Afrikaners on isolated sheep farms of the northern Cape in particular. And living next door to these farmers were the mine owners of Kimberley, led by Cecil John Rhodes. Throughout the late 1880s, Cecil John Rhodes had maintained links with his British-based network of mine owners and financiers by sending storms of telegrams and letters, and maintained an excellent engagement with Cape politicians. By the time of gold discoveries, he had built a much closer working relationship with Afrikaners too, much to the surprise of most considering that he was an imperialist who loved Latin and Greek, and Afrikaans was not Greek to him. In February 1887 Cecil formed Goldfields of South Africa with Charles Rudd who is another to loom large in South African history. At first Goldfields spluttered along, with most of it’s slim profits being invested into De Beers, and his new venture, the British South Africa Company. Rhodes began to schmooze Transvaal politicians which was quite difficult seeing that he couldn’t speak Afrikaans, or Dutch, or in fact, any South African language.
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  Episode 289 - Black Velvet Opskop, De Beers’ Trojan Horse, an Historic Trick and a Multi-Racial Miner Protest 23.08.2026 21dk

  It could be said that Cecil Rhodes quest for hegemony over the diamond industry of South Africa was quickened by rumours of significant gold discoveries in the Transvaal. Others say not, because no-one was aware in these heady days of just how valuable the Motherlode of Main Reef was to become. First a quick note. The easiest way to picture Kimberley in 1886–87 is not as a collection of neatly separated modern mining companies, each with its own mine. It was more like a gigantic underground chessboard, where the four great diamond mines around Kimberley—De Beers, Kimberley, Dutoitspan and Bultfontein—had originally been divided into hundreds of individual claims. A claim was essentially a small piece of ground, and in the early days an individual digger or small partnership could own one or several of them. As the workings became deeper and more dangerous, those little claims were progressively bundled together into larger holdings and companies. By the mid-1880s, therefore, you had companies that owned groups of claims inside a particular mine, while the word "mine" referred to the entire diamond-bearing pipe or working area. So, if you were standing in Kimberley in 1886 and somebody said, "I'm working in the Kimberley Mine," that did not necessarily mean he worked for a company called Kimberley Mine. He might have worked for Kimberley Central, or the French Company, or Standard, or one of the smaller interests that still held claims there. The mine was the physical hole in the ground; the companies were the owners of pieces of that hole. In 1886–87 the whole industry was therefore in the middle of a gigantic transition from hundreds of little claim-holders hacking away independently at the diamond-bearing ground, toward a handful of enormous corporations controlling entire mines. Underground mining was replacing the enormous open pits because the old workings were becoming dangerously deep; companies were sinking shafts and driving tunnels down into the pipes. At the same time, Cecil John Rhodes and Barney Barnato were consolidating ownership above ground. By 1886 Rhodes wasn’t powerful enough to overcome other significant owners in Kimberley, although most of the other entrepreneurs believed amalgamation was good for diamonds — no-one wanted to be dominated by Rhodes — or each other. And Rhodes was seeking domination. While the majority of those in Kimberley scrabbled and scratched, the magnates were high on the hog. They frequented the Kimberley Club, launched by 74 well-heeled citizens who pledged 100 pounds each, a double storey structure that impressed as it rose from the flat Griqualand surrounds. Evenings were full of dinners and dances, black tie and evening dress abounded, awash in the blaze of the new electric lights, the first in South Africa, which twinkled inside the homes of the rich, and splashed along the streets. Men and women mingled, thronged and thrusted, the tuxedo dressed elites sat in their plush chairs in the Kimberly club, pressing the electric bells to call waiters who slid effortlessly across the plush velvet pile and Turkish carpets. Most evenings sitting side by side in the lounge were Cecil John Rhodes and his friend and co-shareholder Alfred Beit, sipping on their favourite tipple which was black velvet, a mixture of champaign and stout beer. Suitably fortified, they would dance, but let me hasten to add, not together, Rhodes with the plainest girl apparently while Beit, who was a short man, often sought out the tallest women. A weird vaudeville show and watched by a few sober enough to register irony. Alfred Beit was the key to what happened next because he had already drawn the attention of one of the most powerful capitalists in the world — Nathanial Natty Rothschild of Rothschild’s bank in London. Beit wrote a letter of introduction for Rhodes, who sailed off to England where he met Natty Rothschild. The first meeting didn’t start well. Rothschild was frosty.
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  Episode 288 - Squabbling Europeans Dissect Africa and the Sultan of Zanzibar gets Shafted 16.08.2026 20dk

  In the last few episodes we have tracked the miraculous discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand — the importance of which cannot really be overstated. While diamonds placed South Africa on the map, gold was going to convert the struggling region into a financial paradise for British financiers — and therein lies the imperial rub. However, it’s time to step back a tad to provide an historical overview for the late 1880s and it’s also time to zoom out of southern Africa to take a good hard look at global events. For centuries before European powers drew border lines across maps of the continent, the western Indian Ocean functioned as a single economic basin. Fleets of dhow’s linked Gujarat, the Persian Gulf, the South Arabian coast, and the Swahili littoral, their journey’s dictated by the predictable rhythm of the monsoon winds which blow southwest toward Africa from November to March and reverse northeast toward Arabia and India from April to September, This was a commercial matrix of city-states fueled by the exchange of African ivory, timber, gold, and slaves for Indian textiles, Chinese porcelain, and Middle Eastern metalwork. The Sultanate of Zanzibar was born directly out of this maritime deep history. In 1840, Sultan Seyyid Said of Oman moved his royal court from Muscat to Stone Town on the island of Zanzibar. By anchoring his authority off the East African coast, he consolidated control over the lucrative trade routes stretching deep into the African interior to the Great Lakes. The island served as a massive commercial emporium and agricultural power, built heavily on clove plantations operated by slaves while Indian merchant financiers—the banyans—backed the long-distance caravans into the mainland. Sultan Barghash bin Said was a proud son of the legendary Seyyid Said, inheriting the throne of Stone Town in 1870 while his brother Majid was bequethed Oman itself. Sharper and more ambitious than Majid, Barghash spent his eighteen-year reign modernizing Zanzibar—building piped water systems, telegraph links, and grand stone palaces. But his survival relied on a faustian bargain. Guided by Sir John Kirk—the British Consul-General who became his shadow advisor—Barghash aligned his dynasty entirely with London. Kirk was the single most influential British official in East Africa during the late 19th century. A Scottish physician, naturalist, and explorer, he first gained prominence as David Livingstone’s trusted second-in-command on the Zambezi Expedition between 1858 and 1864. In 1866, he was appointed to the British Agency in Zanzibar, eventually rising to become Consul-General and Political Agent. When German agent Carl Peters began seizing territory on the mainland, London chose European alliance-building with Berlin over its promises to Zanzibar. In 1873, under direct British gunboat pressure, Barghash signed the treaty that outlawed the maritime slave trade and shut down Stone Town's notorious public slave market. It was an act of political self-mutilation; it deeply alienated his own Omani elite and rich plantation owners, but Barghash traded his domestic standing for what he believed was an ironclad guarantee of British protection over his mainland empire. Unfortunately, that gamble proved fatal. The Foreign Office in London watched the global map with growing anxiety as rival flags sprouted across the continent. What infuriated British diplomats most was a sudden, unnatural alliance between their two greatest rivals: France and Germany. Furious over Britain’s unilateral grab of Egypt in 1882, the French teamed up with Otto von Bismarck to check British ambition. London had tried a sly maneuver in West Africa—signing a treaty with a weak Portugal to recognize Portuguese control over the mouth of the Congo, effectively using Lisbon as a buffer to keep other powers out. But Bismarck saw right through it.
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  Episode 287 - "Not Worth Hell Room" — JB Robinson, Widow Oosthuizen, and the Witwatersrand Gold Grab 09.08.2026 21dk

  Onwards! Or more accurately - downwards! Because we’re continuing the saga of early gold digging around the farm Langlaagte, and the other farms like Turfontein, it is 1886, hundreds of treasure hunters have descended on the empty veld just south of the Witwatersrand Ridge. First a quick note about Kimberley, where the mining magnates were locked in a struggle for supremacy trying to secure control over the lucrative industry. As you heard last episode, one of these, JB Robinson, had run into cash difficulties but was determined to travel to the Witwatersrand to assess for himself just how much gold could be mined in the Main Reef discovered by the two Georges. He’d borrowed 20 000 pounds from another Kimberley magnate Alfred Beit, and along with Beit’s partner Maurice Marcus, launched the Robinson Syndicate with a total capital of 30 000 pounds. Then he leapt aboard a stagecoach for the gruelling four day trip between Kimberley and Potchefstroom where he arrived on the 22 July 1886. When this archetype converged on the Witwatersrand in 1886, they encountered a landscape defined by absolute physical indifference. The main reef was not an easy vein of rich quartz waiting for a prospector’s spade as you’ve heard. It was a mysterious sloping and tilted sheet of ancient pyritic conglomerate, the banket, plunging deep into the earth’s crust. On the surface, the highveld in July is icy at night, sometimes sleet blows when the antartic fronts charge up from the south, sweeping the ridge with handfulls of pain. When Robinson pitched up and set about breaking the land to fit his intent, it was a virgin of veld, clean and wide open. Within a decade the land had been utterly transformed by thousands of men forcing their way along the sloping banket, intent on finding treasure. JB Robinson spent a few days crunching through the conglomerate and realised that this reef was like no-other. How deep it went was still unknown, but that it was extensive was obvious. Petronella Oosthuizen, the widow, owned Portion D of LAnglaagte Farm, and her fortunes were indeed improving by the day. Robinston made a b-line straight for her house, and secured mining and water rights from the widow on July 27th 1886, paying 450 pounds with an additional option to buy the farm outright for 6000 pounds. In September the canny investor did just that, and also negotiated mining and water rights from the owner of Langlaagte Portion B, Anna de Beer Mulder. That cost Robinson one thousand pounds. Robinson later faced criticisms and a whispering campaign, it was rumoured that he had used his charm to seduce Petronella Oosthuizen before negotiating her land away. Petronella was paid the equivalent of 7 million Rand for her land — not a little — but in comparison to it’s value, not a lot either. But he didn’t stop there. Remember Robinson had a war chest of 30 000 pounds and was determined to buy up as much land as he could. He purchased fifty percent of a portion of Vogelstruisfontein Farm, the other half was owned by prospector Jan Bantjies as well as 50 percent of the Turfontein Farm — next door to Langlaagte. By snapping up the 12 000 hectares, Robinson was the first of a wave of Kimberley’s rich who would make the journey north to the Witwatersrand. The second wave included Cecil John Rhodes. There is a bit of a myth about his involvement, that he was a late comer to the scene. That is inaccurate, if you cast your memory back to a far earlier episode, I explained how Rhodes had bought the farm Roodepoort near the gold bearing reefs more than ten years earlier — there it was a purchase based on a whim. A bit of luck you’d say. Rhodes had been present that day in April 1886 when Kimberley shop keeper Alexander had crushed conglomerate brought to Kimberley from the Witwatersrand, he had seen the public panning demonstration that revealed a gleaming line of wealth and was impressed as was JB Robinson.
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  Episode 286 - German Mercenary von Brandis formally Proclaims Johannesburg 02.08.2026 22dk

  Welcome back to the history of South Africa podcast with me your host, Des Latham. This is episode 286 - Johannesburg is proclaimed but the flow of water and cash provs challenging. We’ll start however, with the Orange Free State. Its president Johannes Brand was certainly carved from an original chunk of Boer marble — even the British empire recognized his magnificence, at least, Queen Victoria, who was knighted him. Brand was one of the main movers behind the first attempt at uniting the Boer Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State but the open hostility by Paul Kruger and the Burghers of the Transvaal scuttled his plans. President Brand had been voted into office in 1872 and for the next 20 years, the Free State was characterised by relative tranquility and modest prosperity. After Britain formally annexed Basutoland and Griqualand West, the Free State experienced a few ructions, but there was little friction between the Afrikaaners and their English compatriots. Brand was steadfast in his belief that the Republics should remain neutral when it came to Great Britain, while Paul Kruger’s Transvaal was openly hostile to London. The Free State leader was a warded the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George by Queen Victoria in 1882, turning Brand into Sir Johannes Brand. That rankled the still more. Kruger wanted utter independence, whereas Brand was willing to negotiate based on what was best for the Free State. A deeply religious man, Johannes Brand was extremely popular with the burghers of the Orange Free State, and his expression "alles zal recht komen als elkeen zijn plicht doet" (all will be well if everyone does his duty) is one of the most recognisable sayings of his presidency. Nor were there serious difficulties with black Free Staters, mainly because in the Free State, blacks had no rights and couldn’t own land and avoided the territory. It wasn’t like the Cape, where jobs abounded. In 1885, there were about an equal number of blacks and whites living in the Free State, with the independent Basutoland on the eastern border and territory around Thaba ‘Nchu prosperous under Basutho chief, Moroka the second. The Total population of the Free State in 1885 was 140 000 — smaller than most counties in England, which is amazing because the Free State was almost exactly the same size as the whole of England. Free State is 129 825 square kilometers, England is 130 279 square kilos. The Free State also lay directly between the Cape, which England controlled, and the Transvaal, which it thought of as a suzereignty. The reason for all this preamble is that railways were coming to South Africa, albeit slowly. In 1885, there were only 1 318 miles of track in operation and 1 213 of those were in the Cape, 115 miles in Natal. By contrast, 5 133 miles of track had been laid in Australia, and even New Zealand had longer lines - 1 486 miles. The new gold fields of the Witwatersrand were going to need railway lines urgently. By the end of July 1886 a crowd of 600 diggers had rushed to the district and had camped on two main farms, Turftontein and Doornfontein. Unlike the early rush to Kimberley, in this case there were no black diggers because of the discriminatory legislation prohibiting blacks from owning claims in the Transvaal. The South African Republic had passed a law in 1885 explicitly excluding blacks from buying or working their own claims or even dealing in precious stones and metals. They were practicing their race-based legislating for a much more refined version which would pop up in the 20th Century. But there was another reason which haunts Johannesburg to this day — there was very little water particularly during winter. Millions of litres were required to wash the ore and sieve the gold, no water, no mining. Providing water was going to cost a fortune, something beyond the cash flow of small operators.
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  Episode 285 - The Three Georges Gold Saga and a Bottle of Mampoer Vignette 26.07.2026 19dk

  Farming dominated the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek economy in the 1880s, even after gold was discovered in the eastern Transvaal but that was about to change. Last episode we heard about the early gold finds around Rustenburg which was part of the Witwatersrand Ward back in the late 1800s. Farms along the Ridge of White Waters had a fairly steady supply of water courtesy of the many springs that could be found along the ridge. Still, the freezing winters and the lack of wood meant the region was not in high demand despite water and fairly good soils. By 1886 dozens of diggers began arriving on the Witwatersrand, having heard reports of the earlier finds and growing tired of the limited options available in Pilgrims Rest. Others made their way from the south, from Kimberley or the coast, trekking on foot. Two of those were the George’s I mentioned in episode 284 .. George Harrison and George Walker, who walked from the Orange Free State who had decided to chance their luck in Barberton. If it were possible and we teleported ourselves back to this time, we would have come across hundreds of other fortune seekers tramping across the countryside, determined to strike it lucky. George Harrison is a bit of a mystery. He was Australian, or perhaps more accurately, an Englishman who’d live in Australia and joined the gold rush there, failed to find any treasure, then read about the Eastern Transvaal Barberton and Pilgrim’s Rest discoveries and made a B-line for South Africa. We don’t know much more about Harrison’s origin story. George Walker on the other hand had quite an extensive CV — born in Wigan in England in 1853, he made his way to Kimberley in 1879 but had little luck digging for diamonds. He joined a British cavalry contingent during the Anglo-Zulu war and fought in Zululand, after which he rode off to Pilgrim’s Rest and Kaapsehoop to dig for gold. Coal had been discovered in large quantities in the Free State, and he first took up a job at the Witrand Coal Mine near Kroonstad, where he met Elizabeth Johanna Catharina Pretorius and the couple married in 1883. It was there that George Harrison bumped into him on his great trek from Kimberley to the eastern Transvaal gold fields and the two decided to try their luck one more time at Barberton. George Walker left his wife Catharina and children in Potchefstroom, and joined Harrison for their trek to Barberton. They broke their journey on the Witwatersrand, deciding to earn more cash to set themselves up with a wagon, horses and other necessities before heading on to Barberton. It just so happened that the Struben brothers were looking for builders around their Confidence Mine, which as you heard last episode, was somewhat of a misnomer. When Hendrik Potgieter and other Voortrekker reconnaissance parties arrived along the Vaal and Witwatersrand in 1836, battles followed, eventually the Ndebele were pushed out the Transvaal completely and ended up in Zimbabwe. The two Georges would have been aware of the Potgieter saga, but blissfully unaware of the pre-history as they wondered through Langlaagte Farm. Originally 2 260 Morgan in size, It had been broken up into four portions. In common with other pastoral communities across Southern Africa, Boer custom stipulated that marriage entailed a land grant or farm subdivision for every son. The difference is most African communities relied on the King or Chief assigning land, whereas in the Boers case, it was the grandfather, or the father. Portion A was owned by Andries Breedt, Portion B by Anna Elizabeth de Beer Mulder - her maiden name was Oosthuizen - Portion C by Gerhardus Oosthuizen, and Portion D by the widow Petronella Oosthuizen and her son, Jan Hendrick Oosthuizen. Portion D was where Harrison was working, building the widow and her son their home. George Walker and George Harrison strolled onto Gerhardus’ Oosthuizen’s Portion C property, when they stumbled on a well weathered outcrop of rock.
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  Episode 284 - Australians and the Struben Brothers Hunt Gold on the Ridge of White Waters 19.07.2026 21dk

  Gold sends a shiver through the spine of the adventurer, the merest hint drives men to acts of extreme bravery, or stupidity. Moderate men and women throw off their cloaks of social anonymity and travel thousands of kilometers in arduous conditions just to lay their hands on a Gramm or two of the yellow treasure. Gold fever is a pandemic even in the modern world, although the price of gold fluctuates based on world geopolitics and economics. What is this allure? Callous investors of the modern era decry gold bugs and their passion, sneering at the pursuit of a commodity that appears to have very little going for it other than it’s scarcity. Despite these days of blockchain, ETFs, polymarket and AI investor hullabaloo, the physical value underpinning billions is bullion. By the 1880s, gold was more than something to lock away in a vault or fashion into a king's crown. It had become one of the world's essential industrial commodities, prized because it would not rust, tarnish or corrode, and because it could be beaten into sheets so thin they were almost transparent. Gold leaf adorned the domes of public buildings, church altars, picture frames and the spines of expensive books. Dentists relied on it for fillings, crowns and bridges because it was soft, durable and chemically inert. Watchmakers and instrument makers used it for precision components that had to resist corrosion, while jewellers transformed it into rings, brooches and chains for an expanding middle class. Gold salts found their way into photography and medicine, and artisans incorporated the metal into fine porcelain, glass and luxury decorative objects. Yet these practical uses consumed only a fraction of the world's output. The overwhelming demand for gold came from another purpose altogether: it was the metal that underpinned the global financial system. Nations minted it into sovereigns, eagles and francs, banks stored it in their vaults as the foundation of their currencies, and governments measured their economic strength by the weight of bullion they possessed. Every new reef discovered promised not merely ornaments or luxury goods, but the power to expand credit, finance empires and reshape the world economy. Geologically speaking the Witwatersrand gold basin is a unique phenomenon, it is the most immense gold resource with the poorest grade ever discovered. Witwatersrand makes up 1/3rd of all gold ever mined in the history of planet earth. Standing south of Johannesburg these days and looking at the high ground, the Witwatersrand, gives you very little idea about why early settlers called this the Ridge of White Waters. It’s all developed now, there the inevitable town house development complexes, shopping malls, industrialised and urbanised land has obfuscated the look and feel of the landscape. As the early trekkers made their way north from the Vaal River in the mid-1830s, they were struck by the beautiful vista of a broad ridge about 100 kilometers across, dotted with waterfalls in summer. To give you an idea about what this must have looked like, go visit the Walter Sisulu botanical gardens in Roodepoort to take a look at the stunning waterfall there. The entire ridge was covered with these waterfalls, particularly spectacular after heavy rains — places like Roodepoort, Melville, Parktown, Upper Houghton, Orange Grove, Bedfordview were covered in clear running falls, long since channeled and drained, the silver cascades long gone. The Australians have a lot to do with gold discoveries in South Africa - particularly Henry Lewis who had been lured to Southern Africa by reports of paydirt in the Eastern Transvaal - Pilgrims Rest etc. That was in 1874 and like many other diggers, he wondered about and eventually discovered alluvial gold on the farm Blaaubank near Rustenburg. Fred Struben was the son of a Dutch naval officer who arrived in South Africa in the 1850s, and he disembarked in Cape Town with a thirst for adventure.
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  Episode 283 - Warren’s Great North Road Balloon and Telegraph Escapade 12.07.2026 18dk

  Welcome back to the History of South Africa podcast with me your host, Des Latham. Episode 283 and it’s 1885. And boy! Do we have a plethora of happenings to report. This is a year before the discovery of gold in the Transvaal, and global events are full of war, innovation, ethnic carnage, economic ups and downs, world firsts, medicine, and a dose of snot and trauma. The year 1885 opened with a strange and ironic trial by fire across England, balancing state-sanctioned progress against lawless destruction. In January, Irish rebels shattered the peace by detonating dynamite inside Westminster Hall and the Tower of London, raining literal fire and brimstone upon the ancient symbols of British authority. Amidst this chaotic violence, a far more orderly kind of incineration took place. That same year, the widowed painter Jeanette Pickersgill of London, a lady "well known in literary and scientific circles," became the first person to be legally cremated in England by the Cremation Society at Woking, Surrey. It was a classic Victorian paradox: while the state scrambled to suppress the lawless Irish bombs threatening to burn the old order down, it was simultaneously finalizing the bureaucratic regulations on how its most respectable citizens could legally burn themselves to ashes. In Southern Africa, 1885 saw two major geopolitical moves - In March the United Kingdom Established the Bechuanaland Protectorate - modern day Botswana. The second event was the incorporation of the tiny Boer republic of Stellaland into Bechuanaland. It was all part of a grand plan partly initiated by Transvaal president Paul Kruger. He had sailed to London in 1884 and met Secretary of State of the Colonies Lord Derby where the two struck a deal. Derby would drop the British claim to suzerainty over the Transvaal and reduce the Transvaal’s debt, and reduce the powers of the British representative in Pretoria, in exchange Kruger agreed to decrease tariffs on imported goods and to drop claims to Stellaland and Goshen, thus opening up Cecil John Rhodes’ important North Road. The agreement promised a rare season of peace and stability for the fractured region. Yet, its true survival rested entirely on whether both sides would honor the principles they had so recently espoused. They did not. Or to be more accurate, Pro-Boer and Pro-Imperial activists did not. Transvaal commandos rode into Zululand and into Bechuanaland, cocking a snook at their own leadership. On the British side, all manner of colonials looked askance at the Kruger/Derby Deal. One was missionary and humanitarian, Reverend John Mackenzie, a prominent member of the London Missionary Society. He had spent most of his adult life proselytizing amongst the Tswana people at Kuruman and Shoshong. Mackenzie was the Boer’s arch enemy, denouncing incursions from the pulpit in South Africa, then back in the UK when he was on leave in 1882 and 1883. The Road to the North worried him because of how dominant the Transvaal Boers were in this region.As King Leopold of Belgium, the French, Bismarck of Germany and others met to finalise who got what in Africa, the British Foreign Office suddenly woke up. They were concerned about the Transvaal and German South West Africa. The British Government did a volte-farce, and sent a powerful army up the North Road. Four thousand regular troops, including the famous Inniskilling Dragoons cavalry regiment from Ulster in Northern Ireland, along with three observation balloons, all headed towards Stellaland from Kimberley.
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  Episode 282 - The Scramble for Africa Berlin Conference of 1884/5 and Lüderitz becomes German 05.07.2026 23dk

  There are many correlations and connections in this episode, so hang on tight as we toboggan down the slippery slopes of history bumping into all manner of bizarre and simultaneously heinous characters. Keeping in mind that we’re dealing with men and women of their age, nevertheless, the tale is one of intrigue, ego, treasure hunting, not to mention, madness. Belgium by 1882 was barely half a century old, becoming independent in 1830, ruled by King Leopold the Second, who sported a spade shaped beard and a giant colonial chip on his shoulder. Because he led a respectable European country, he was a king, but how he’d become a king was a sleight of hand. His father was a German prince, related to the British Royal family, Leopold the First. This trembling nation had been pasted together — an uneasy amalgam as Adam Hothschild writes — of French and Flemish, a version of Dutch spoken in northern Belgium. King Leopold the Second was fluent in French, German, like his father and later, English. He never bothered to learn Flemish, spoken by more than half his people. A snob, some said, bitterly, as bitter as the division created by language and class. French was the language of the bourgeois, the educated, Flemish was working class. Even the professionals of northern Belgium spoke French instead of Flemish, the perceived language of the farm labourer and factory worker. As a teen, Leopold the Second was a gangly youth, his head too big for his body, his clothes hanging off his spindly shoulders — a callow boy who’s mother tended to write him threatening letters about his lack of interest in studies rather than speak to him directly. He was useless in most subjects except for Geography. Leopold the Second was a Geography freak, and from the age of ten, his education was based in military lore. By fifteen he was a lieutenant of the Belgian army, 16 he was a captain, 18, a major, 19, a colonel, and a year later, at 20, a major general. This pencil thin spindle of a boy had to apply for an audience with his father - who spoke to his son through messengers. As this alienated boy aged, he surrounded himself with men who explained how government worked, and plied him with maps.When the elder Leopold died, Leopold exclaimed : “Petit pays, pettis gens”. — small country, ordinary people. Belgium, just for the record, is about the same geographic size as Lesotho and squeezed between France and Germany, the grand nations of Europe in the late 19th Century. Leopold was peeved by his puniness, something had to be done to rouge up the petit pays. Recognizing growing domestic pressure and the strategic need to split British and French alliances, Bismarck plunged Germany into the colonial race. In 1884, he hosted the Berlin Conference, with a hazy goal at formalizing something about the European partition of the African continent. The main aim of Berlin Conference was to deal with the growing pressure of European claims over West Africa, but it was much more than that. It began formally on Saturday 15th November 1884, as winter snow which had arrived early cloaked Berlin. The plenipotentiaries had their brief - but what was Bismarck planning? Was this a free trade conference to safeguard German business in the Congo and Niger? Or was Bismarck about to wield a hefty cake slicer, to carve up the whole African continent?
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  Episode 281 - The Boers anoint Dinizulu King of the Zulus 28.06.2026 25dk

  Cetshwayo had sought refuge in Nkandla as his arch enemy, Zibhebhu, turned his attention to the royalists living along the Zululand Coastal plain. Soon Somkhele of the Mphukunyoni and the emaNgweni people were hiding in the swamps and reed-beds of the sub-tropical bush along the Indian Ocean. Melmoth Osborne was the resident commissioner of Zululand and a committed foe of Cetshwayo’s royal line, a supporter of Zibhebhu. As Cetshwayo waited for the civil war to die down, he came to the conclusion that it was imperative to convince Melmoth of his right to rule. It was time to come out of hiding and to seek shelter from the commissioner — which he did under Henry Francis Fynn’s junior’s escort in October 1883. Cetshwayo was placed in a small house alongside his father’s old kwaGqikazi homestead where he could contemplate how far he’d fallen. There he remained until 8th February 1884. Had he lived longer, he would have heard that his old Nduna and councillor, Mnyamana, had escaped with his life after being poisoned. The Zulu king was another going to be so fortunate. Shortly after he ate, at 2.30 pm on 8th February, he was overtaken by convulsions, then he collapsed and died a short while later. His family members refused permission for a post-morten, surgeon Scott declared the death had been caused by heart disease. However, historians know the truth - Cetshwayo had most likely been poisoned - placed either in his beer, or his snuff. While it’s not known what poison was used, my research into the symptoms and passage of death points to Erythrophleum lasianthum, commonly known as the Swazi ordeal tree, is a medium to large leguminous tree native to southern Africa. It is notable for its exceptionally toxic bark and seeds, traditional cultural significance, and ecological value as a component of woodlands and forests across parts of South Africa, Eswatini and Mozambique. All parts of the tree—especially the bark, seeds, and roots—contain powerful alkaloids and cardiac toxins. Historically, extracts from the bark were used in ordeal poison practices in parts of southern Africa, giving rise to the common name "ordeal tree." The tree has also been used in traditional medicine, but these practices carry substantial risk because the difference between a toxic and potentially therapeutic dose is extremely small. Symptoms of poisoning can include vomiting, tremors, irregular heartbeat, seizures, respiratory failure, and death. The second option is Boophone disticha — a bulb known across southern Africa for centuries and Zulu herbalists were fully aware of its toxicity. Every part of the plant—especially the bulb—contains powerful Amaryllidaceae alkaloids and is highly poisonous to people, livestock, and pets. Traditional healers have employed carefully prepared doses for medicinal and ceremonial purposes but like the Swazi Ordeal Tree, there is a tight margin between a traditional dose and a dangerous one. Exposure to flowers in confined spaces alone causes eye irritation or headaches, giving rise to the common name sore-eye flower. Still, this bulb is highly sought after by modern collectors because of the bulb’s beauty. Just wash your hands after fiddling with it, folks. A third possibility is the Acokanthera which causes death through cerebral hypoxia, and a fourth, poison beans, the species of Abrus precatorius in particular — but those can take days to kill you and Cetshwayo perished in an hour or two. Zibhebhu was immediately blamed and he would pay eventually for his actions. But first, the king had to be buried. First he was placed in a sitting position and tied to his hut’s central post. The building was sealed with clay and mud so that no smell could emerge and Cetshwayo’s body was left there for a few weeks to putrefy. The royal attendants asked Melmoth Osborne for permission to take the body to the emaKhosini valley so he could be buried with his ancestors, but the commissioner refused.
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  Episode 280 - Zibhebhu’s Mandlakazi shatter Cetshwayo’s uSuthu setting off a Zulu Civil War 21.06.2026 32dk

  On the afternoon of 10th January 1883, King Cetshwayo kaMpande climbed off a skiff and onto the beach at Port Dunford, surviving the heavy and powerful surf. The British had been using this stretch of desolate sand as their transport hub into Zululand, which is south of the modern harbour of Richard’s Bay. King Cetshwayo then stepped out of the wet boat onto the sand of Port Durnford, where he was formally met by British official Sir Theophilus Shepstone to begin his return to Zululand. Cetshwayo looked around — there was no welcoming committee of his people. Shepstone has purposely kept the date of the King’s return a secret, this after 3 years in exile. It was just the sort of thing at which Theophilus excelled — a thoughtful deviousness. The British brought him back to lead a detachment of 6th Dragoons to greet the old Zulu king, and to escort Cetshwayo back to Mthonjaneni above the the emaKhosini valley. Which he did. Shortly after they arrived in early January, Mandlakazi leader Zibhebu came to Mthonjaneni, but not to pay respects to Cetshwayo, he made a grand point of greeting Shepstone, his patron, and ignoring the king. Zululand had been fractured, and Cetshwayo now led a broken people where the different regions were alienated from royal control. Cetshwayo had been restored, but their country was divided. The uSuthu regiment in particular were aghast they were forced to remain under Zibhebhu’s rule — he was a tyrant and hated. For the previous 12 months, a game of smoke and mirrors had confounded the king. When he returned from visiting Queen Victoria in England in September 1882, he had been told he was to return home almost immediately. The actual boundaries of his kingdom were undefined. Natal officials were terrified of Cetshwayo, sure that he would invoke the spirits of Dingana and Shaka, and the Zulu would rise up once more. They wanted to confine Cetshwayo to the central portion of his former kingdom, where he would be managed by a Resident supervisor Henry Francis Fynn Junior. In the north, Zibhebhu, Cetshwayo’s implacable enemy, would rule independently — the only independent chief out of the 13 selected by the British to rule over different territories in Zululand. Zibhebhu took control over the land north of the Black Mfolozi, land which was dominated by pro-Cetshwayo locals and Zibhebhu was distinctly anti-Cetshwayo. It was into this newly divvied up landscape that Cetshwayo returned in early 1883. Shepstone officiated over the handover of power, and once again, was forced to face a plethora of complaints delivered by the king’s men, including Mnyamana’s induna Hemulaana. The kings restoration, they said, was a disgrace. Ever the thin-skinned settler, Shepstone was outraged, he was merely a clerk, sent by the British to dot a few I’s and cross a few T’s, he had no power to alter any of the conditions. After the tongue lashing, he and the dragoons hurried back to the safety of Natal muttering about the insults they’d been forced to endure. With stuffy old Shepstone gone, the Zulu let their hair down == Let the party begin — but the reality of his situation was clear to Cetshwayo. While his homestead at oNdini had been reinstated east of the original town burned down by the British, it was smaller. Still, almost 1000 huts were built in the traditional stye of an ikhanda with the isigodlo at the top, all protocols observed. Well almost all. A large number of senior indunas and chiefs were absent. After Shepstone left, Zibhebhu left too. Hamu stayed aaway. Mfanawendlela did arrive, somewhat shamefaced, it was he who had committed a sacrilege of planting crops on King Mpande’s Grave on Mahlabathini plain. But things had changed, when he walked into the isigodlo, he did not prostrate himself before the Zulu king, but idled up to one of the chairs and sat down as if he was Cetshwayo’s equal.
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  Episode 279 - Dean Williams and Bishop Merriman compete for Anglican Souls as De Villiers Graaff Ponders 14.06.2026 20dk

  We’re up to the early 1880s where world events are intersecting in various ways with southern African events. The mere ratification of the Pretoria Convention in 1881 failed to bring peace and prosperity to South Africa. The frenzied speculation in diamond shares reached it’s height in 1881, and war expenditure had swelled the tide of fictitious prosperity which had flowed from Table Bay to Lydenburg. Now the troops and the glory departed, Natal after the pomp and ceremony of the Wolseley period, drifted into a political backwater — and yet clamoured for responsible government and an augmented imperial garrison. In the Cape, the overcapitalised diamond companies began to topple, and banks shortened credit and in 1882, the crash came. John Scanlen the Cape Prime Minister succumbed to what some called retrenchment mania and laid off judges amongst other members of the bureaucracy. Times were bad, and growing worse, with Phylloxera visiting the Western Cape vineyards, drought had smote the land and red-water fever the cattle. It was old testament level pestilence and suffering, at least if you read the journals of the time. Did I mention the outbreak of smallpox as well? How remiss. It scoured Cape Town first, this pestilence, from whence it followed the railway and wagon route to the diamond fields of Kimberley, and from there into the Orange Free State and Basotholand. Plagues of locusts chewed through what was left. For anyone who would return to an earlier epoch in South African history, believing these were golden years, perhaps the reality I’ve just outlined would make you recalibrate your Time Machine. SJ Du Toit launched his pro-Afrikaans campaign by the early 1880s, railing against die Engelse and the elites in the Cape who were determined to keep speaking high Dutch instead of this new form which was disparagingly called Kitchen Dutch. Emerging at this messy moment to influence South Africa forever was a lawyer who eventually became known as Lord De Villiers. It’s difficult to understand this these days — in the 1880s South Africa was still a mishmash of rebels, settlers, African chiefdoms, Khoesan raiders, dirt tracker miners and trekboers, wild Baltic and Nordic merchants, American and Australian frontiersmen. Every geographical locale was represented by a different language so folks like De Villiers who obsessed over federal ideas were outliers. Self-government meant they leaned towards the Union Jack, the English, for defence, but not the Union Jack as a cloak for interference in the internal affairs of the Cape. The quarrels divided the Anglican community particularly in Natal into adherents of the Church of England, and the Church of the Province of South Africa. The two main questions were these: Must Anglican Bishops in South Africa be appointed by Letters consecrated by the Archbishop of Centebury, and secondly, was the Church in South Africa bound by acts of an Imperial Parliament in England far far away or mainly independent? De Villiers was going to decide both questions — and in doing so — would set the scene for a future South African Republic while also setting in stone, some of our concepts in South Africa of the right to practice the religion we prefer.
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  Episode 278 - The South African Suez Canal, Stellaland and Goshen and James Honey's Murder Most Foul 07.06.2026 20dk

  In 1882, the German mathematician Ferdinand von Lindemann proved that π was transcendental: it cannot be reduced to a tidy equation, never captured inside the comfortable boundaries expected by mathematicians. For centuries mathematicians tried to “square the circle” — creating a perfect square with the same area as a circle using only classical tools. In 1882, they finally got their answer: impossible. π’s transcendence meant the problem itself can never be solved. π sits at the centre of order — wheels, planets, architecture, engineering — but does not obey the rules mathematicians thought would contain it. The more closely pi is examined, the more it slips beyond simple description. But pi also has beauty in it’s patterns. π — roughly 3.14 etc etc — is the hidden constant inside every circle: divide the distance around any circle by the distance across it, and written out as a decimal, it goes on forever without ever stopping and without ever falling into a repeating pattern. Southern Africa in the early 1880s had the appearance of something similar. The neat assumptions of empire borders that could be drawn, peoples classified, and territories administered into obedience — were beginning to collide with a far messier reality. The aftermath of the First Anglo-Boer War had humbled imperial confidence, African polities remained powerful actors, and the mineral revolution was creating forces no colonial administrator fully controlled. Like π, South Africa was proving resistant to simple formulas. Emerging at this time was the Afrikaner Bond, led by Jan Hendrick Hofmeyr, his Boeren Beschermings Vereeniging, Farmers Protection Society, had merged with the Bond. Hofmeyr’s main aim was to merge the diverse Afrikaner cultural movements from behind the scenes, thus his nickname, The Mole. Cape Prime Minister John Gordon Sprigg was sparring with political humanists, particularly Saul Solomon who owned the Cape Argus. As a liberal member of parliament, he was an articulate defender of African rights, called a friend of the natives and worse by some settlers. He was enticed to sell his paper to the editor at the time, what he didn’t know, was that Cecil John Rhodes was secretly backing the sale - no Rhodes owned the Argus. It was in that moment that the Cape lost its important outsider voice, and Rhodes gained a news outlet. The main story the paper was covering after the first Anglo-Boer war was the instability in Basotholand. The Argus and other liberals had taken up the Basotho cause against the land-hungry settlers of the Orange Free State. Shoring up his personal wealth and power, Rhodes was simultaneously using his growing influence in the Cape to protect its northern territories. This was a natural progression, north of Kimberley lay the Vaal River, and the Molopo River. Between the two lay not only the Boers of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, but the Tswana people. South of the Molopo there were the Thlaping, the Rolong, north of the Molopo the Ngwato chiefdom, ruled by Khama as well as the Kwena under chief Sechele, the Ngwaketse ruled by Gaseitsiwe and soon, his son, Bathoen. The Tswana were tussling with colonial expansion, and navigating the difficult politics of the frontier, keeping the Boer settlers at arm’s length. Along the edge of these chief’s territory there lay the Great North Road, on the eastern side of the Tswana lands. Transvaal President Paul Kruger was behind efforts to cut off the Road to the North, something the British authorities suspected but couldn’t prove. For Cecil Rhodes and British ambitions, these two micro-republics were a geopolitical nightmare. If the Transvaal annexed Stellaland and Goshen which was Paul Kruger's ultimate goal, the Boers would completely block Cape Colony access to the interior of Africa. Rhodes had taken to calling the Great north Road the Suez Canal of South Africa.
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  Episode 277 - Cetshwayo visits Queen Victoria and the Victorian link between Afghanistan and Zululand 31.05.2026 18dk

  When Cetshwayo kaMpande was captured after the Anglo-Zulu War, he was ferried to Cape Town and on to Robben Island. His countenance was one of dignity but that is difficult to maintain in the face of terrible sea-sickness. The Zulu king had made it be known that he was afraid of the sea, and his nervousness compounded the queasiness. He was also terribly sea-sick on the five day voyage from Port Durnford, modern day Richards’ Bay, and Simons Town. He and his five wives who’d joined him in captivity were ensconced in a hut that had been erected for him on the poop deck, from where he watched the activities on the shore for almost a week before he disembarked. As he observed all the ships, the developments on the coast, it became apparent that his attempt at fighting the powerful British empire had always been doomed. When he eventually stepped onto Cape turf, his appointed custodian Captain J Ruscombe Poole of the Royal Navy escorted the Zulu King from Simon’s Town. Like Nelson Mandela’s minders much later, Captain Ruscombe-Poole was a sympathetic jailer, so too the king’s interpreter, Henry Longcast. Henry was an Irish orphan who’d been brought up at the KwaMagwaza Mission station and had known Cetshwayo since he was a child. An odd relationship developed between these two men, Longcast was a straighforward honourable man, and became Cetshwayo’s advisor - never betraying the Zulu King’s trust. Joining Cetshwayo in exile was Mkhosana kaZangqana, formely one of Mpande’s counsillors. Three other attendants were at hand, including the royal hairdresser, four young women of royal standing, and a female servant. They were first to spend time in the Flagstaff Bastion of the 17th Century Castle in Cape Town, where they were alloted a suite of apartments and a parapet for daily walks. Throngs of what they called daytrippers in Victorian times, we would describe them as tourists, gathered to catch a glimpse of the Zulu King on the heights of the Castle. Back in Zululand, Sir Garnet Wolseley had been fashioning together a new Zulu system. Believe it or not, it resembled the system resembled what the British were trying to impose on Afrghanistan. There Lord Lytton was trying to secure the North West Frontier of India, what is now Pakistan, by breaking Afghanistan into a number of impotent principalities. There local princes who were sympathetic to British control would be handed the levers of power. Wolseley wanted to secure the safety of Natal and the Transvaal by fragmenting the Zulu kingdom. Sir Theophilus Shepstone was the go-to once more, along with ex-Cape Native Affairs Secretary Charles Brownlee and Natal commissioner, Sir Henry Bulwer. Shepstone’s main aim was to destroy the power of the Zulu royal family, and believed it was fragile anyway. This was a miscalculation on numerous fronts. Cetshwayo may have been in exile, but the concept of political power in Zululand was well and truly in the hands of the extended Royal Family. Thirteen chiefs should be nominated, said Shepstone, each independent of the other but utterly dependent on the British. Much much further north, in Afghanistan, Lord Lytton the British Viceroy of India, envisaged Kandahar province as the bulwark against the rebellious tribes of Afghanistan and the wild mountains of north western India. The British defeated Sher Ali Khan in the war between 1878 and 1880. Lytton’s vision involved separating key regions and strengthening frontier zones that could be more easily influenced from India. In this thinking, Kandahar mattered enormously. It sat astride the routes connecting southern Afghanistan to the approaches toward the Indian subcontinent, linking trade and military corridors running west toward Persia and north toward central Afghanistan. By now, Cetshwayo kaMpande was technically free to return from exile once these arrangements had been made, but he first requesting a meeting with Queen Victoria.
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  Episode 276 — Okavango Khwebe Wind and a Dorsland Trekker Angolan Odyssey 24.05.2026 18dk

  Die Dorsland — the Thirstland — is part of the Kalahari that has an interesting history when it comes to pastoralists. The San didn’t call it the Thirstland, for them it wasn’t a barrier but part of a network of seasonal resource nodes. They would navigate the dry spans using sip-wells, inserting long, hollow reeds deep into the damp sand, use grass filters, and literally suck water up to store in hollowed-out ostrich eggshells buried along transit routes for future journeys. Around 2,000 to 2,500 years ago, a massive economic shift occurred when groups in northern Botswana acquired livestock, sheep and later cattle, transitioning from hunter-gatherers to pastoralists—becoming the Khoekhoe. Archaeological evidence indicates the Khoekhoe moved out of the northern Botswana/Zambezi region and split. One major migration route skirted the western edge of the Kalahari desert, moving down through modern-day Namibia and into the Northern and Western Cape with the Kalahari was the geographic pivot around which this entire pastoralist expansion rotated. Moving large herds of sheep and cattle through a Thirstland required moving between reliable pans and riverbeds like the Nossob, Auob, and Molopo rivers. They transformed the Kalahari from a hunter-gatherer landscape into a series of strategic grazing corridors. The Dorsland Trekkers were going to reverse that course to some extent, using the north western Botswana region to reach Namibia, and eventually, Angola. The Khoekhoe like the Voortrekkers, appreciated their freedom, moving in small extended family groups, their mobility part of their world-view. Instead of heading north west like the trekkers, they had headed south west for hundreds of years, arriving in Southern Africa about 2400 years ago. That was about the time parts of south-central Africa experienced a shift in rainfall, forests and dense woodlands expanded or contracted, the tsetse belts moved. If you were an early pastoralist whose entire wealth, diet, and social structure depended on cattle and sheep, a shifting tsetse belt was an existential threat. The arid margins of the Kalahari, the Namib, and the Karoo environments further south were too dry for the tsetse fly. The Karoo was a safe haven for livestock, the Namib too dessicated. In high-rainfall, tropical areas, grass grows fast but loses its nutritional value in winter, it becomes sourveld. In more arid regions like the fringes of the Kalahari and the Karoo the grass grows slower but retains its high mineral and protein content year-round, even when dry - it is sweetveld. To a sheep or cow, the arid south was an open buffet of incredibly nutritious feed. The Khoekhoe migration pushed into the Western Cape, where they hit a completely different climate zone, the winter rainfall region, so just as the summer rainfall area dried out, the Cape valleys were greening up. But where the trekkers moved northwards taking a decade and arrived Angola in 1880, the Khoekhoe migrations took hundreds of years. A gradual seeping south if you like. After the Khoekhoe, and before the Boers, the people of the Ngami area near the Okavango Delta were known as the Khwebe - from the word Kwe which simply means “people”. They dwelled close to a geographical anomaly in Botswana - the Khwebe Hills — Botswana is one of the flattest countries on earth. The Khwebe hills are a windy place and Khwebe mythology speaks of the Gas Bird which lives in a certain baobab near the upper Okavango River valley. If you listen closely, you can hear his hissing voice inside the tree. The mythology is linked to earlier San cosmology, where the word !Khwe means wind — and where the wind is a supernatural being.
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  Episode 275 — Pilgrims Rest, French Bob’s Gold and Barberton’s Champagne Foot Baths 17.05.2026 26dk

  Thousands of miners were streaming into the Transvaal by the third quarter of the 19th Century, a horde of avuncular independent-minded treasure hunters. In volume Two of the Cambridge History of South Africa, Stanley Trapido calls them the ragbag of humanity - Stanley who sadly is no longer with us, had the right to call miners whatever he wanted — having worked in Krugersdorp gold mines in order to pay for his History Degree at Wits University. But I’m sure the so-called ragbags and their moms would have taken offence. It is true that anarchy of a legendary level prevailed in many of the diggings, as it had in Griqualand West, these mining pioneers however were far more complex than a mob. The Diamond Fields of Kimberley were in the hands of large corporations by the early 1880s, men like JB Robinson, Cecil John Rhodes, Barney Barnato dominated Kimberley as the hole descended towards Hades’ — huge piles of capital was required to buy equipment to pump out the water, for the steam driven mine heads, to pay the labour. A degree of cooperation was needed which the disparate groups of international diggers lacked. New economic organisations flourished, consolidation was taking place, financial collaboration secured sales usually to diamond buyers in the City of London. That needed connections, engineering skills at the pit, managerial and administrative nouse. The early diggers, hardened bearded men who’d scratched at surface rock, these Americans, Australians, Canadians, Russians, French, Germans, Swiss, Austrians, Norwegians, Swedes, Italians, Scots, these men and some women were imbued with the streaks of obsession of the age. They no longer fitted the economy of Kimberley, the big name financiers were in charge. Most of these expats were fearful of black labour, some such as the Americans, brought a fierce view of slavery into the mining fields, they were the most vocal when it came to demands to restrict black people from owning mineland — and enforcing a curfew around Kimberley. Their sentiment rubbed off on those around them. These mine compounds for blacks were going to be replicated in Johannesburg. The days of the small-scale scrabbler however, were gone. So it was with glee that many heard tales of a trove of gold that had been discovered far to the north east, in the eastern Transvaal, in the early years of the 1870s. The very word Gold sent shivers of anticipation through the bags of rags and the adventurers who had the guts to tramp off, or ride off, into the sunrise. Tom Maclachlan has been almost forgotten but it was he who set off the gold rush in South Africa. I had a Scots Aunt, and the more I read about Tom Maclachlan, the more like Aunt Betty McLennnon he sounded particularly when it came to energy, focus and pure guts. Possessed of an almost maniacallly steadfast faith that gold lay in the eastern Transvaal hills, Maclachlan prodded the rocks there for years — spurred on by faith and the prospect of a Five hundred pound reward for finding gold. That was being offered by the Landdrost of Lydenburg, AF Jansen. Maclachlan and his two partners, George Parsons and Sydney Valentine toiled throughout 1872, prospecting the entire country north, east and south of Mauchsberg Mountain — named after geologist Karl MAuch who predicted gold lay in that them thar hill. Their sweat and toil payed off in the first weeks of 1873, they discovered what appeared to be payable gold in a stream on the north side of Spitskop Hill — six hours ride east of Lydenburg. A two and a half ounce sample of gold was sent to Jansen along with a request for the five hundred pounds reward. Jansen was excited and galloped off to Spitskop Hill along with four labourers, to test the alluvial gravel. After a few days, they sifted out four ounces of pure gold, Jansen was convinced of its value, and he wrote a letter to the Volksraad Executive Council in Pretoria to report his findings. The Transvaal Volksraad broke it’s promise.
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  Episode 274 - The Pretoria Convention ends the First Anglo-Boer War, Suzerainty Unresolved 10.05.2026 28dk

  The hill of Doves — in isiZulu amaJuba means the place of many doves or pigeons. It became a place of violence and blood, and yet the catastrophic defeat of the British at Majuba was indeed to lead to peace. The doves would fly again albeit fleetingly. As you heard last episode, British commander General George Colley had been one of the casualties of the battle — Sir Evelyn Wood was now in charge of the empire’s army in the Transvaal. Or to be more accurate, in Natal attempting to enter the Transvaal. Colley was buried at Mount Prospect — the British base below Laings Nek in sight of Majuba — letters of condolence were sent to his wife Lady Colley by the Town councils of Pietermaritzburg and Durban .. and also by the Transvaal Boer Leaders. Colley had asked that his body should be allowed to remain where he fell on the battlefield, and so it was. His wife would have to travel to the Transvaal border to see where he lay. A state of war existed, the Boers continued to besiege all British garrisons in the Transvaal in early 1881. More about that in a moment. The Summer rains were falling, drenching the landscape like the blood of Majuba, and both sides sought peace. Boer emissaries had met with the Swazi king, but he was loathe to join the attack on the empires forces. On the 2nd March 1881 Evelyn Wood relayed a letter to the Boer leadership, the triumpherate as they were known from his base at Newcastle. “to President Brand, Bloemfontein, P Joubert (he means Commandant Piet Joubert, Boer commander in the Transvaal) requests me to send you the following telegram…” The British commander as postman — relaying one Boer message to another. Brand’s message back was reconciliatory in tone. “…We are willing to accept every offer made by your Honour …” and by your honour Joubert meant Wood … “that peace may be, as far as it is not in direct opposition to our liberty…” That was the minimum demand — the Boers demanded their liberty. ON the 5th, Wood and his staff met Piet Joubert and Boer leaders half way between Mount Prospect and Laing’s Nek in a hastily erected tent. The British hardliners were horrified - how could Wood, an English General who had now built up a force of 10 000 soldiers in Natal concede to an interview with the leaders of the enemy for the sake of gaining time to negotiate peace? Some said it was too absurd to be credited, others in the English camp were astonished. But he was also a general who represented an army that had been beaten four times in an open fight — Bronkhorspruit, Laings Nek, Schoonspruit, Majuba. Why continue the war? It was time to resolve things. While the English nationalists bayed for Boer blood, were calling for this upstart Transvaal Republic to be crushed as a warning to other rebels across the empire, cooler heads prevailed. Joining Wood were Major Frazer, Captain Maude and Mr Cropper the translator. On the Boer side, Piet Joubert, DC Uys, CJ Joubert and CHJ Fouchees, with AJ Foster interpreting. A tight group. The fewer involved the better. Wood opened with meeting with an explanation — he was there to call for an armistice so that Kruger and the Volksraad could reply to General Colley’s communication of the 21st February re: peace. The entire meeting was to last an astonishing 90 minutes. Joubert presented the Transvaal position most concisely, Complete amnesty for all leaders, freedom of the Transvaal from British government although they’d accept suzerainty, no interference in Transvaal’s internal affairs — they meant on matters pertaining to race and land. It was the word suzerainty that was the problem child here. To the British government, particularly officials in London, suzerainty implied that the restored Boer republic in the Transvaal would enjoy internal self-government but would remain subordinate to the British Crown in matters such as foreign relations as well as overall imperial authority. The Boer negotiators understood the term far more loosely.
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  Episode 273 - The Mountain of Destiny: Majuba and the Birth of a Nation 03.05.2026 19dk

  It is not a stretch to say that the defeat by the British at Majuba was also the political birth of the Afrikaner people. While the Great Trek provided the origin story, Majuba provided the validation—the sense that their culture was not only distinct but divinely protected and militarily capable of standing against the greatest empire of the age. Before the main event, there was the small matter of Schuinshoogte. It was February 1881, and General Sir George Pomeroy Colley was in a bind. Boer patrols under Commander J. D. Weilbach were constantly harassing his communications with Newcastle. Colley was determined to act. The recent defeat at Laing’s Nek had energized the Boers, and he needed to clear the road between Newcastle and Mount Prospect. His reinforcements were finally on the way, but first, he had to keep those vital British supply lines open. Deputy President Paul Kruger sent a letter to George Pomeroy Colley on the 12th February 1881, requesting negotiations. “We desire to seek no conflict with the Imperial Government but cannot do otherwise than give the last drop of blood for our lawful right, for which also each Englishmen would give his blood..” Colley wrote back on the 21st February. “Sir I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter…” “…I must inform you that as soon as the Boers, now in arms against her Majesty’s authority, discontinue their armed resistance, Her Majesty’s Government is prepared to appoint a Commission…” Both sides had agreed that some kind of Royal Commission would be responsible for investigating the causes of this war. That placated the Boer Triumpherate leadership. Kruger sent another letter on the 28th February 1881, “to this excellency, Sir G Pomeroy Colley… I have the satisfaction … to inform you that we are very thankful for the declaration…” He meant of a commission — Kruger and the Boers were sure they would be exonerated by a proper investigation “It appears to us…” he continued “…that now for the first time since the unhappy day of the annexation, an opportunity occurs of coming to a friendly settlement…” Kruger was calling for a speedy resolution. Colley never read the letter. He was already dead. His end was to come at Majuba on the 27th February. On Saturday night, February 26th, General Colley left his camp again on a secret expedition. With him was a compact force of 405 men, two companies of the 58th Regiment, two of the 3-60th, two of the 92nd highlands, the Naval Brigade, some Hussars, the cavalry. Two other companies of the 3-60th were to leave a little later with reserve ammunition and form a defensive position behind Colley’s advancing expedition. The troops had no idea where they were going, only after the march began did word spread they were on their way to a high hill called Majuba to the left of the British camp. From their they would have a commanding view of the Boer camps, and their line of defences on the escarpment flats beyond Laing’s Nek. The 3-60th were on the left, facing a difficult pass. They all stopped at a ridge below this imposing mountain, the horses, the Hussars, and the guns were sent back to the camp, there was no way they’d make it up this steep side. That alone should have been a warning to Colley. He knew he was outnumbered by the Boers, but decided to go ahead and climb to the summit of Majuba anyway despite leaving his vital artillery behind. It was a very difficult climb, and they reached the top just before daybreak on the 27th February. Sunday morning. Six hours of toil, but they’d made it, despite the dangerous climb. To his credit, General Colley was the second man to reach the top, behind his two IC Major Fraser. As the sun rose, subaltern’s pitched a tent for Colley, the soldiers ate their breakfast, while some began to dig wells for water. Crucially, they were not digging in for battle, presuming that no-one would be able to reach their position — they held the high ground after all.