History of South Africa podcast

Welcome back to the History of South Africa podcast with me your host, Des Latham. This is episode 298 - Lights, Camera, Capital! How Scottish Lensmen Saved Joburg’s Gold. I was contacted recently by a listener who’s built an app - it’s called learnclash - a mini-quiz, where people duel each other on history questions — and science. Play real people in quick trivia duels on LearnClash, free on iPhone and Android. Code DESMOND gets you a month of Premium free: https://learnclash.com/sahistory. Back to the episode. The Cape Colony had succeeded the imperial government in administering the diamond fields around Kimberley starting in 1880. Over time, Cape rule was influenced to a great extent by Cecil Rhodes, then the rule was dominated by this colossus. He was the most visible of the new crop of mine owners who were to loom over South Africa’s economic and political history for the next fifty years — until the Nationalist party government came to power in 1948. By 1890, De Beers’s owner had played a significant role in the extension of British rule into Bechuanaland, and then beyond into Central Africa. All the while Rhodes developed an astonishing ideology of empire, creating what he saw as a unique role for what he called the English Race. What is not as well known, or remembered, was how Rhodes was above all a pragmatist and opportunist, an ideological shape-shifter, who transferred his allegiances from imperial to Cape Settler, and then back again. A little bit of modern tech bro mixed with starry eyed silicon valley. It was this shape-shifting that caused deep mistrust, particularly amongst the white working class of the period — and ironically from the view of South Africans in the 21st Century — it was these workers who would create some of the first major confrontations between mine owners, and mine workers. These days its presumed that the National Union of Mineworkers, allied as it was to the African National Congress, was the home of an anti-capitalist sentiment but radical white marxists threatened Johannesburg’s capitalists repeatedly — particularly in the early 20th Century. Starting in the diamond fields, then Barberton and Johannesburg, new identities were being forged by the discovery of valuable resources — new identities which transformed South Africa. In the early days, before gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand in 1886, the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek was regarded as the poor cousin — even of the Orange Free State. Endless poverty wracked the region, it could not collect any taxes of value, and it’s citizens, the people of the Transvaal, were rebels, frontiersmen, almost impossible to control. The Transvaal had been annexed by the British, then fought their first war against the empire, and won. Natal’s English residents had delighted in the annexation, and now delighted in the discovery of gold. Like Rhodes, these residents shifted allegiances from the empire, to settler logic, and back to empire. The mixture of people and politics was almost unending. In London, the dominant political view of South Africa was that it was better governed under a British dominated state - and be the paramount power. Meanwhile, Dutch Afrikaners had changed their identity partly due to the continuous and vexatious struggle against the British view and partly due to the encroaching reality of late Victorian innovations. Like Electricity, the steam trains, and new sciences, geology, chemistry. The coming of gold increased the ZARs capacity to become an economic actor. Paul Kruger’s government latched onto two main ideas. One was to turn the mines into cash through a dynamite monopoly owned by the Transvaal state, and the other was the railway franchise.

297 dear listener, is what’s known as a Kaprekar Number - if you square 297 the resulting digits can be split into two parts - right side and left side. If you add up those two parts you get the original number 297 squared is 88, 209. Left part is 88, right part is 209. Add these together and voila! 297, a Kaprekar Number. Maths is fascinating - so too, the story of Zulu king Dinuzulu necklace. IN the annals of historical facts, Dinuzulu’s necklace was claimed to have been found by Robert Baden-Powell, who started the scout movement. These beads are presented to Scout leaders following their Wood Badge leadership training. There’s a lot of conflicting evidence about this of course, did Baden-Powell find the beads, or take them? Were they Dinuzulu’s beads - or those of a Zulu woman, possibly one of Dinuzulu’s wives? Which was important, because In 1888 Baden-Powell was serving with the British Army in Africa. During this period Baden-Powell visited an abandoned camp where Chief Dinizulu, had been based. The beads were traditionally carved from South African yellowwood, or acacia wood, with a soft central pith that allowed them to be threaded on a rawhide lace. As you heard last episode, Dinuzulu had surrendered to the British, and was placed in a Pietermaritzburg jail — although jail is probably too strong a word. He was invited to spend time indoors with his retinue at the cost of the Natal taxpayer - arrested as the Zulu rebellion ebbed away in 1888. It was the three main ringleaders, Dinuzulu, Ndabuko and Shingana, who faced the much more serious charge of high treason and public violence. They had to wait until February 1889 for their trial to begin, and by 27th April it was over. Although energetically defended by one of the best advocates of the province, Harry Escombe, all three were found guilty and were sentenced - ten years for Dinuzulu, 15 for Ndabuko and 12 for Shingana. While the isolated rock in the Atlantic may seem a harsh sentence, it was not as cruel as it appeared at first glance. As a royal man, Dinuzulu would live in a house, not a cell. He would be joined by his attendants. Ndabuko and Shingana were married, each was allowed to bring one of their wives. But Dinuzulu was too young to have taken a wife, and was allotted two umndlunkulu, young women born of chiefly houses as his friends with benefits. One was Umkasilomo, the daughter of Ntuzwa of the Mdlalose, and Zihlazile, whose father was Qethuka of the Magwaza. An Inyanga, Paul Mthimkhulu, was also packed off along with the uncles, the nephew and their women companions to St Helena to mind their spiritual and physical health. Eventually, after a series of hearings and appeals, the party was taken by train from Eshowe to Durban amidst tight security, where in February 1890, they embarked on the mail steamer Anglican bound for St Helena. Back in Episode 290 I covered some of the details of the build up to this Charter being awarded by the British government — part of Cecil John Rhodes’ grand plan to colonise Africa on Great Britain’s behalf. By early June 1889 the Charter for the British South Africa Company had achieved the approval of enough influential people in London to move forward - it now needed government sign-off, and Queen Victoria’s stamp of approval. There were stumbling blocks, two of the senior staff at the Colonial Office, John Bramston and Edward Fairfield, opposed the idea. They were overruled by the secretary of state for the Colonies, Lord Knutsford, as well as the permanent undersecretary, Robert Herbert. Lobengula had written to the colonial office, repudiating the Rudd Concession which lay at the very heart of Rhodes’ claim to have convinced the Ndebele king to allow him into Matabeleland and surrounding regions to explore for gold. The three men who’d negotiated with Lobengula included James Maquire, who was in London.

Last episode we had joined Dinuzulu on his tour of the Boer New Republic as it was known in 1888, the area around modern day Utrecht. Piet Meyer the Republic leader thought it best to step back, wary of the fact that the Zulu chief had crossed the boundary line and was openly talking in treasonable terms at least from the British perspective. But the Qulusi branch of the Usuthu whom he led were impressed by the young chief, they had been cut off from the rest of Zululand, and began to muster on the large, imposing flat-topped Ceza Mountain. This bold geographical feature would become crucial in Zulu historiography - the site holds deep cultural and spiritual importance for the Zulu nation. An annual KwaCeza Mountain Prayer is held here, attended by Zulu Monarchs and provincial leaders who honour the resistance of King Dinuzulu. By March 1888 word spread in Zululand, and Natal, that the uSuthu had become a sanctuary for those defying the British, as well as their collaborator, Zibhebhu of the Mandlakazi. In April Dinuzulu rode to the Phongolo River, rallying support from the outlying villages — and as you heard last episode, it was during this period that local magistrate Addison tried to arrest the uSuthu leaders he’d left behind in the Ndwandwe district - modern day Nongoma. You’d remember that Zibhebhu used the chaos to mobilise his warriors, the Zululand police were on the move from Eshowe, backed up by a couple of hundred British troops. Dinuzulu realised he’d reached a point of no return, and in May he and his men withdrew to Ceza Mountain. The uSuthu Rebellion - as it became known - had begun. They began raiding from their hilltop refuge, attacking those they regarded as friends of the British - victims included Mnyamana and Ziwedu, who sought refuge at the British military camp as Nkonjeni just north of Ulundi. In early June, a force of African levies from Myamana’s Buthelezi joined the Zululand police force and British troops as they advanced on Ceza planning to arrest Dinuzulu and Ndabuko, along with the other rebel chiefs. This left Addison’s camp at Ndunu hill exposed, a small garrison remained, so he asked Zibhebhu and his Mandlakazi to encamp on the hill as insurance against a surprise attack. The British mobilised more of their troops, 515 infantry and 455 mounted men swelled the ranks along with 22 officers. Eshowe resident commissioner Melmoth Osborn managed to mobilise about four thousand black auxiliaries in southern Zululand - so the order of battle began to develop quickly.

On 27 April 1994, South Africa inaugurated a new constitutional democracy which embraced the freedom and equality of all sectors of the South African society. The Preamble of the Constitution states one of its aims was to “heal divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights”. This goal was to be realised by, among others, section 211 which recognised the institution, status and role of traditional leadership and entrenches indigenous African law as a source of South African law alongside the common law. Ironically, on the very same day, 27 April, in 1889, the British Administration rejected the time-honoured institution of traditional leadership in Africa and decided finally to remove the hereditary traditional leaders from Zulu society. This is generally regarded as the final act which caused irreparable harm to Zulu solidarity and has resonated down the ages. The British had tired of the constant warring, the tension amongst the descendants of Senzangakhona. But more importantly, they were seeking to shore up their northern marches against both the Boers and the increasingly aggressive European nations like Germany who were also seeking colonies in Africa. It has perhaps been forgotten just how active Germany was in Mozambique. German companies were buying up land in Lourenzo Marques by the late 1880s, in order to gain a foothold over south eastern Africa. Nine-tenths of the transit business along the Mozambique coast into Tanzania and even further north was in the hands of German companies, and the press in Germany were as jingoistic as any other European nation of the time. So as we consider what was going to happen from here on in, we must keep an eye on the global effect. When we last heard about Dinizulu was back in episode 281 where the Boers and induna’s had annointed him as King of the Zulu. Ever since the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879, the territory had been in turmoil and from the time that Dinizulu succeeded his father Cetshwayo he was caught up in a series of conflicts which eventually destroyed him. Dinizulu fought three major contests, against Usibebu the British government sponsored chief of the Amandhlakazi, against the Transvaal Boers who were eager to make use of the Zulu civil wars to appropriate land and cattle in Zululand - eventually claiming what they called the New Republic. Dinizulu fought a third battle against the Natal colonists and government which history has described in various ways, including as a rebellion.

The Ndebele chief said the Rudd concession document did not reflect his verbal agreements. His induna’s who’d negotiated the concession disputed the terms as well, along with missionary Charles Helms who’d translated for Lobengula. Nevertheless, chief negotiator Charles Rudd had returned to Kimberley clutching the concession, a single page document which purported to give Rhodes’ British South Africa company sole rights to mining gold throughout Matabeleland and Mashonaland, and other adjacent territories, in exchange for one thousand Martini Henry Rifles, 100 000 rounds of ammunition, one hundred pounds, and a gunboat on the Zambezi River. Lobengula said he’d only agreed to the rights for ten men to dig for gold at one spot rather than the general rights throughout the region to the north of the Limpopo river. Once they discovered what Rhodes was claiming, some Ndebele induna’s threatened to revolt. At least one, Gambo, approached the Boers of the Transvaal. To the East, there was also much trouble brewing in Manicaland. That lay between Delagoa Bay and the highlands of eastern Mashonaland, where the Portuguese lay claim. In a nutshell, like the headwaters of the Nile and the importance of the Suez Canal, the vast territories north of the Limpopo became the means through which southern Africa and the Cape could be controlled by the British Empire. The discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand gave the Transvaal the cash to expand northwards and towards the coast and the Boers could rival the existing British dominance in the region north of the Cape. The Portuguese had ancient claims to Mozambique, stretching back almost 500 years and they posed a threat to the sea route between England and India. Then in 1887 Portugal laid claim to the a swath of land stretching coast to coast from Mozambique to Angola through the region north of the Limpopo. In the British colonial office, Lord Salisbury of the conservative party was trying to stymie the Portuguese, and supported Cecil John Rhodes at least nominally, but only north of the Limpopo. The more grandiose all red-route touted by Rhodes of the Cape to Cairo was a pipedream, thought Salisbury. He brushed aside the Portuguese protests based on their pre-existing treaties signed by Mashonaland chiefs stretching back to 1629, but then was warned that a Portuguese expedition had set off from the coast led by Colonel Joaquim Carlos Pavia d’Andrada heading towards Mashonaland. Backed by the newly created Companhia de Mozambique he was joined by Manuel Antonio de Sousa - half Portuguese, half African, mixed race soldier feared by the British because he had mobilised 7000 black irregulars — local warriors. Before they arrived in upper Manicaland, Lobengula’s two emissaries would arrive in London. Babayane and Mshete were joined by Edward Maund, Rhodes’ adversary in the concession-making business, and Natal translator, John Colenbrander. As you heard last episode, the emissaries carried two bits of information. One was a letter for Queen Victoria, complaining of Portuguese threats to his east, the other was for the Queen’s ears only, and would be delivered verbally directly to her, face-to-face. Lobengula was going to formally renounce the Rudd concession. Eventually, on February 6 1889, Maund, Colenbrander, Babayane and Mshete boarded the the steamship Moor, and sailed to London. The next day, a telegram arrived at Robinson’s official residence, apparently the Queen wouldn’t have enough time to meet the envoys because she was preparing for a European trip. Robinson was relieved. Perhaps all the waylaying was going to work out and he wondered, were Babayane and Mshete on a doomed mission?

We’re in Bulawayo, just over the border from the Limpopo, and very much part of South Africa’s story — the Ndebele Chief Lobengula ruled what was known generally as Matabeleland, in a territory that the British colonial office called Zambesia, which we now call, Zimbabwe. Name changing is one of the constants of world history, let alone African or South African. Empires rise and fall, kingdoms change, political leaders come and go, languages are part of empire. The area around the Ndebele settlement in 1888 was in the rough shape of a circle, the radius extending about 120 kilometers around the capital, known by Ndebele speakers as Gubulawayo. The circumference of the circle extended from what became known as Plumtree through Gwai, Gwelo, Selukwe, Shabani down to the Shashi River, then back to Plumtree. With that circle, Mzilikazi and then Lobengula had established some dominance over the nearby Sotho and Tswana majority. The magnitude and frequency of Ndebele warfare reinforced their roots in a militarised Zululand - a monocratic form of government. The Ndebele immigrants into Zimbabwe could maintain their existence only if they remained obedient to their commander-in-chief. They incorporated alien captives in their midst gathered through rapid conquest rather than through the assimilation of an immigrant population. Mzilikazi had died in 1868 and his son Lobengula took power after a short sharp civil war. Among the Ndebele, Mzilikazi represented an epic hero, similar to Moses or Hannibal - the founding father, the umdabuli wa sizwe, symbolising nationhood, loyalty and patriotism. Subjects called themselves abantu be nkosi, people of the king. Lobengula was saluted by the call, Bayete wena Nkosi, hail his majesty, and visitors knelt respectfully before him as the regent. The kings ancestral spirits were the national deities and guardians of the society itself. All property of the state including the land, natural resources, cattle, tributes of whatever sort, and the people themselves were the property of the king. Contrary to the expanding colonial powers, Ndebele rule was through a non-monetary, pre-industrial bureaucratic administration - and this tension grew by the year in the 19th Century. Lobengula was the director and financier general, personally appointing all administrators, military officers, even regiments — as Mzilikazi had done. Ndebele weapons were manufactured in a small workshops scattered around Matabeleland, but only the king’s artisans could make shields and the all-important stabbing spears. When a warrior died, his shield and stabbing spear would usually be returned to the king - unlike the Vikings for example. It was into this militaristic and organised kingdom that European concession seekers into Matabeleland travelled, trying to gain the all important slip of paper allowing them to mine gold. The two main rivals, the Exploring Company of Edward Maund and the British South Africa Company - BSAC of Cecil John Rhodes, left Kimberley in August 1888 heading north. The BSAC team was comprised of Charles Rudd, Francis Robert Matabele Thompson and James Maguire sent who arrived in Bulawayo before Maund in late September. They discovered to the chagrin that Lobengula was a highly skilled negotiator who accepted their gift of one hundred gold sovereigns - worth around 100 000 dollars today then sent them back to their wagons. It had been a tiring journey no doubt, said the Ndebele king and they should rest. Three days passed before they met once more, and Lobengula spent most of the meeting firing questions, distracting from the main objective. The three repeatedly tried to steer the conversation back to the right to mine gold, Lobengula deflected their queries, pointing out it was his respected induna’s who would negotiate mining rights. He was clearly stalling for time. Lobengula eventually deigned to meet Rudd who begged for a mining commission.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Weather, some say, is fickle. Of course nature is just nature but when you’re on high ground, the mountains, and the weather moves in, the temperature drops in minutes and wind shifts. It is a dangerous place and that’s during mid-summer. Perhaps summer is the most dangerous time to be caught in a mountain storm, particularly in South Africa because there’s more moisture and freezing sleet and snow sweeps over the summit, overwhelming hikers in shorts and T-shirts. During January and February 1881, the weather along the Natal escarpment near Volksrust and Majuba was characterized by high rainfall, frequent thunderstorms, thick mist, and cold nights. This period was at the height of the summer rainy season, creating wet, muddy conditions that significantly impacted military operations during the First Boer War. The weather at times was bitter, just like the Boer sentiment. Laing’s Nek gravesite was desecrated in 1969 when Afrikaner Nationalists under cover of dark, blew up a large Cross that had been erected over the graves of Royal Navy sailors who’d perished during the Battle of Laing’s Nek in February 1881. Such was the depth of historical bitterness. Memories run deep. The last known Boer of the First Anglo-Boer war, Jacob "Jaap" Coetzer died in the same year as the exploding cross — 1969 - showing just how long veterans of war can live amongst a population that has no clue about their past. A vet of the first Anglo-Boer War had lived to hear Beatles music. Coetzer was 15 year’s old when he joined Commandant Piet Joubert’s commandos in the area of Laings Nek, and was a survivor of the next major clash, Majuba. Not that Jaap Coetzer was in any way linked to the desecration. Laing’s Nek lies on the N11, a quick 20 minute drive through this pass and you ascend from the rolling hills of KZN into the highground of Mpumalanga — or the Transvaal as it was in 1881. In January 1881, the British force under Major General Sir George Pomeroy Colley moved off from Newcastle after his ultimatum to the Boers had been ignored. Despite his intelligence and administrative competence, his battlefield record would reveal a critical weakness: a tendency to apply textbook European tactics in environments where they were increasingly obsolete. The Boers, by contrast, were armed with modern Westley Richards breech-loading rifles and other similar breech-loading firearms, which allowed for faster and more accurate fire than the older muzzle-loading weapons that had shaped earlier British tactics. Many Boers were also skilled marksmen, accustomed to hunting and irregular warfare, and they fought from concealed positions—rocks, ridges, and scrub—rather than in formal lines. This combination of mobility, cover, and firepower was going to be devastating. Colley led 1216 officers and men including five companies of the 58th Regiment, 5 companies of the 3rd Battalion of the 60th Rifles, 150 cavalrymen, a party of Royal Navy sailors with two 7 pound guns, and a mounted unit of Royal Artillery with four 9 pound guns. Major General Colley was determined to revenge the previous month’s debacle at Bronkhorstpruit. The Boers setup four main laagers on the escarpment north east of Majuba. Their main camp was based at a point south of the Standerton Road, about 10 kilometers from Wakkerstroom. From here, flanking the two roads which approached from Newcastle, their patrols could ride out to watch the Buffalo River fords, as well as Laing’s Nek. Colley had moved off from Newcastle on the 24th January, after two days of heavy rain held up his wagons. On the 25th they struggled across the Imbazane River, and on the 26th, crossed the Ingogo River. British patrols saw Boers moving on the pass, and on the evening of the 27th, noted that Laings Nek was occupied in force. More heavy rain fell that day, and a thick mist drifted across the landscape. On the morning of the 28th, Colley led his force out of the laager.

The British had instigated a war in the Transvaal which fired off in early 1881, but they had already ignited another flashpoint - in Basutoland. This was a fascinating conflict, and it has modern overtones. For the new British government of Sir William Gladstone, the fact they had stimulated a simultaneous slew of conflicts in South Africa was more than irksome, it was expensive and ill-timed. While Britain was dealing with a humiliating setback against the Boers, it was struggling to enforce authority in Basutoland—highlighting how imperial control was both stretched and inconsistent in southern Africa. Following Basutoland's transformation into a British dominion on 12 March 1868, it became the target of rapid westernization efforts by the Cape Colony administration. By 1879, the Cape Parliament had extended the Peace Preservation Act to Basutoland, with the aim of disarming the people of the territory. This did not go down well. Guns, like horses, were of immense significance in Basotho society. Most Basotho who worked on the Kimberley Diamond fields bought both muskets, and later rifles, as well as Boer ponies and other horses before making their way home. What was going on in the minds of the Cape Colony, and those in the imperial colonial office? It is important for our story to understand global events of the time. For decades all of the European governments concerned with the coast of Africa, both east and west, had tacitly agreed not to allow the quarrels of their respective traders and officials to become occasions for empire. That was the theory. The ministries in Paris and London wanted nothing more than to continue their gentleman’s agreement, although each suspected the other of wanting to break it. Napoleon the third had nourished a few sporadic projects for African expansion, but the catastrophe of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 had slowed them down. The French Third Republic pulled out of the Ivory Coast and was considering renouncing all options in Dahomey. It wanted to leave Gabon as well as the Congo. But Senegal was another matter. The French colonial government in Daka had developed a local expansive programme derived mainly from the French army’s influence rather than pure economics. There were plans to build a major railway line to the upper Niger River which would link Senegal to Niger. The French rulers of Senegal were expanding eastwards as well as southwards, and had begun to encircle Gambia. All of these moves in Africa must be recognized as part of our story here in South Africa. Globally speaking, the main British nightmare was the Russian advance towards the Dardanelles, Turkey, Persia, India and China. So the British maintained a navy allied with Turkish armies in the near east to protect the Indian route through the Suez against the Russians. London allied with the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II who ruled greater Turkey and his subordinate Khedive Ismail of Egypt. They were being schmoozed as reliable vassals who served Britain’s financial and imperial interests. Britain could avoid seizing territory directly which would be expensive and politically ruinous. No boots on the ground, just deploy the one-step away approach via their the navy it was thought. The Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid ii however had been borrowing heavily from the English and even more from the French, while his revenues fell short of expenditure, and debt mounted so he raised land tax. Christians in Bosnia and Herzogovina revolted against Turkish rule, more loans defaulted, and the Sultan, and therefore the Turkish Ottomans, went bankrupt. With that as the backdrop, let’s return to the Basutoland Gun War. Tension had been growing for many years between the Basuto and the British. The southern corner of Basutoland was settled by the Baphuthi led by chief Moorosi who had been a tributary ruler of Moshoeshoe. In 1869 he had agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to merge his territory with British Basutoland.

The approach by the English political parties of the time to the young Boer Republics was confused, and even contradictory. William Gladstone, a liberal, had succeeded in ousting the Tory’s under Benjamin Disraeli in his famous Midlothian Campaign of 1879 and 1880. In 1880 Gladstone formed his second ministry and almost immediately, the promises he’d made about foreswearing foreign wars were broken. There is a direct link between what was going on in South Africa and in Ireland. These two territories, so far apart geographically, featured as joint threats in the English mind of the time. The most direct link is Gladstone himself. He had criticized the annexation of the Transvaal during his Midlothian Campaign, but once in power, he hesitated to reverse British policy, fearing a domino effect where weakness in Pretoria would lead to revolution in Dublin. By 1880, the Irish Nationalists began to see the Boers not just as fellow farmers, but as fellow victims of British coercion. This Irish link flourished throughout the 19th and part of the 20th Century with Irish Nationalists fighting both for the Boers during the Second Anglo-Boer War. The shift in Irish nationalist alignment was driven by a move from anti-imperial solidarity to human rights internationalism. Initially, the Irish supported the Boers as fellow "peasant-republicans" fighting the British Empire, but as the 20th century progressed, the Irish Republican movement increasingly identified with the ANC, viewing the struggle against Apartheid as a mirror to their own fight against institutionalized discrimination in Northern Ireland. By the height of the Cold War, the Irish Republican Army’s Marxist-leaning leadership saw the Afrikaner government as a pro-Western, colonialist proxy, leading them to provide tactical advice and training to Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) to help dismantle the very state they had once ideologically championed. But at first, they were close allies in both spirit and in their political expression. The South African crisis which led to the first Boer War of 1880 and 1881, occurred because the British government claimed to be the paramount authority and trustee of South Africa, and the Boers rejected this claim. Earlier, in 1878, Paul Kruger and Piet Joubert had sailed to London with a petition signed by over 6,500 Boers demanding the reversal of the Transvaal annexation. Sir Michael Hicks Beach had just taken over as Colonial Secretary from the more diplomatic and polite Lord Carnarvon. Hicks-Beach was nicknamed Black Michael, referring to his famously long, dark beard, his tall, thin, imposing frame, and his legendary dark temper. He was known for being abrasive, combative, and having very little patience for those who didn't respect British authority. To the English, it seemed that South Africa was on the verge of becoming another Ireland, the inveterate hostility of whose people might only be held down at tremendous cost by main force. Gladstone and his cabinet grappled with one main question. In both territories, Transvaal and Ireland, should a nationalist reaction be met with coercion, or concession?

The Bapedi have a rich and textured history, as with most of South Africa’s past, where religion and tradition are entwined to create a consciousness of life that is attractive to the naturally curious. Today, part of Limpopo Province bushveld contains private game parks with Bapedi and other African names — including Moya which has three meanings. It is used for wind, or breath, or the soul, roughly translated. It is something they say which cannot be seen, but can be heard. When a sick person wheezes, you know they’re alive, because you can hear their soul, it has not departed. At night, when there is stillness, and you pick up the faint sounds of someone speaking, and upon investigation you find noone, then you know it is the soul of a dead person. Parts of your body are Moya, the lungs, blood, heart, liver, kidneys, and sex organs, your head and your hair. It is also these parts which are mostly associated with or susceptible to, disease. Your Moya is like your iris, or your fingerprint, there is noone else who has a copy of your Moya. While humans cannot live without Moya, sometimes it can live without their seriti, your shadow and reflection but this is the supernatural representation. The Bapedi word for shadow and a reflection in water or a mirror is Moriti. Your Seriti is created at birth, when you cast your first shadow. For extremely traditional Bapedi, it is bad manners to step on anothers shadow, or allow your shadow to fall on someone else. Traditional healers therefore won’t work at midday when the sun is directly overhead, because it is said, the spirits of the dead are sleeping. Chief Sekhukhune of the Bapedi knew this when he built his fortress in a steep sided narrow valley south of the Olifants River at what was called his Stat. While the British were focusing on the Zulu’s in 1879, Sekhukhune was sparring with other English authorities along the Olifants, and the towns of Lydenburg and Middelburg were reinforced. The Bapedi Chief wanted to expand his territory across the Steelpoort River and his raiding parties were bothering the Boers there. His position was further strengthened by a drought which meant British and Boer commandos could not take to the field, there wasn’t enough grass and water for their oxen and horses. The dreaded horse sickness had also broken out, further complicating the Transvaal Government’s plans.According to the blueprint for the Transvaal that had been devised by administrator Theophilos Shepstone and Cape Governor Sir Bartle Frere, the defeat of the Bapedi would be proof to the Boers of the British good faith. It would demonstrate that British rule was a blessing. To their considerable astonishment, this act actually put the final nail in the coffin of confederation as the Cambridge History of South Africa puts it. Since the British took control of the Cape in 1805, their policy had been grounded in the belief that once the won allegiance of the Dutch and Huguenot settler population, peace and prosperity would be guaranteed.

There is something magical about mountain passes, weaving through majesty, each corner beckoning a driver like a formidable and compelling saga, muffled in mist or bright in the sunshine. Imaginations are fired and children go quiet as the ravines plunge beside the vehicle, timeless in their elegance, conquered only by the blast of dynamite or the steady chipping of picks. There is an old Chinese saying, Yào xiàng fù, xiān xiū lù” If you want to get rich, first build a road.” British engineers in the second half of the 19th Century recognized that they possessed an expertise that was in short supply elsewhere, and were prepared to travel abroard in large numbers in order to provide it. So it is with great fanfare and the blasting of many a bugle to announce that South Africa’s greatest road engineer was born in Graaff-Reinet. The dramatic saga of how roads were built in South Africa is a forgotten story of plunging horses, wagons somersaulting, with dreamers armed with theodolites or sometimes, only their amazing capacity to estimate lines across tilted Cape Sandstones with their naked eyes. Thomas Charles John Bain was one, who bequeathed the country with an impressive list of mountain passes and roads — and he made the single biggest contribution to these arteries which wind their way across the landscape. Son of Andrew Geddes Bain, another born builder of roads, Thomas only took one month’s leave during 46 years of service at the Public Works Department. He married Johanna Hermina de Smidt in 1854. They had 13 children and enjoyed a long and happy marriage - apparently absence does make the heart grow fonderl. Just for the record, Johanna was the ninth child of Willem de Smidt, who was the Secretary of the Central Road Board. Keeping it in the family so to speak. Hidden beneath Thomas’ stout hat and moustache, was an excellent judge of character, selecting foremen and overseers, to manage the mainly convict labour, motivating all to toil away for years inching along the side of cliffs and ledges. Bain owned a Cape cart, a two-wheeled local invention, and he travelled between road, pass, bridge and drift construction sites that were hundreds of kilometers apart. Somehow, despite the time he spent away, he was a family man who’s favourite trick to stop a flood of youthful tears was by cutting a slice of watermelon. Thomas and his father Andrew built 30 mountain passes and roads between them and perhaps the place where imagination leaps most is down through the tangled forest of Bloukrans Pass south of Plettenberg Bay. You can stand on the old Bain causeway, and look up at the vast marvel which is the Bloukrans Bridge famous these days for being the site of the world's highest commercial bridge bungee jump at 216 meters. Some say Thomas Bain was a traveller who painted all those pictures, but that is a different Thomas Bain who was a gifted artist. Just to further confuse matters, Thomas Bain the road builder was also a prodigious artist. Perhaps that confusion is one reason why the engineer who was known by colleagues as the man with the theodolite eye, was to be almost forgotten for half a century. While his father Andrew was the giant of early infrastructure, Thomas went on to build 24 mountain passes, three major roads, and dozens of smaller routes. He did all of this without modern explosives, he had no crushing or screening plants, no power drills, front-end loaders, bulldozers, graders, water tankers or cement mixes, no quarrying equipment, pile drivers and streamlined tarmac procedures. Then of course, neither did the men who did the real work. What he had were the straining arms and muscles of convict and black labour — the other forgotten heroes of roadbuilding in the 19th Century. They have been pushed to the back of the heroes of history queue. The convict labour system formalized by John Montagu in 1844.

Cornelius Vijn had made a few bad decisions in his life as we all do at some point. Born in Holland in 1856, he made his way to Natal in 1874 where he rapidly learned both English and isiZulu. That wasn’t necessarily a bad decision. During his childhood, however, he’d suffered an accident, he was run over by a wagon — the wheel shattered his leg, it healed badly and from then on he walked with a limp. He had lived in Natal for over 4 years before setting out from New Guelderland with six Zulu drivers and assistants, sixteen oxen, and a wagon loaded with woollen, baize and cotton blankets, picks, knives, saddles bridles and beads. Just to put his location into perspective, New Guelderland is a few kilometers north of KwaDukuza aka Stanger. Cornelius Vijn’s destination — Zululand. This was a miscalculation because his journey began October 1879 on the eve of the Anglo-Zulu war. Tension had been rising for months, and most whites had fled the territory. Vijn was determined to go the other way. He sensed he could make some extra money without any competition from the other Natal Traders. Vijn was 23 years and six months old. After being held up by rainy weather and a border check to make sure he wasn’t carrying guns, he crossed the Thukela on November 1st. We know all of this because Cornelius’ journal was published by Bishop Colenso in 1880 — and you can find a copy online at the University of Cape Town archives. It’s called Cetshwayo’s Dutchman, and what a fascinating read it is. His plan was to travel to meet King Cetshwayo kaMpande and sell him all the goods in the wagon in exchange for cattle. The king had good reason to treat Vijn well, he needed someone who could function as a translator and letter writer because Cetshwayo would spend most of the coming months repeatedly sending emissaries to Lord Chelmsford, asking for negotiations. In May, word arrived that the Boers were at Cetshwayo’s home, they were working together to defeat the English. Later Cetshwayo was to tell Cornelius that “No doubt the Boers are better than the English, for Mpande was setup as king by the Boers and died as King, whereas I, Cetshwayo, was crowned by the English and now my country is taken from me…” Following the British disaster at Isandlwana and the agonizingly slow progress of the second invasion of Zululand, the British government lost confidence in Lord Chelmsford’s strategic capabilities. In May 1879, Sir Garnet Wolseley was appointed as Supreme Commander in South Africa, effectively superseding Chelmsford.When word reached him deep in Zululand his reaction was one of desperate urgency rather than resignation. Knowing his reputation was on the line, Chelmsford took several decisive actions including what you may call a race for Ondini.

As the British tried to wrap up their war against the Zulu in South Africa, further afield the happy sound of a baby being born could be heard in Germany. Not just any baby. Albert Einstein was born at 11.30 in the morning on March 14, 1879 in Ulm. His birth was not without drama; his family initially worried about his development because the back of his head was unusually large, and his grandmother feared he would have delayed development based on the sound of his cry.  His mother Pauline was deeply concerned when Albert didn't start talking until he was three. Then when he started speaking, he had a habit of repeating sentences to himself, which led the family maid to nickname him "Der Depperte" (the dopey one). When Albert was five and sick in bed, his father Hermann gave him a magnetic compass. This invisible force fascinated Albert and is often cited as the spark for his lifelong obsession with physics. A compass is what the British surveyors carried, so too did some Boers of the Wakkerstroom District. The area wasn’t as stable as British Army Lieutenant Colonel Evelyn Wood had supposed. Sure, the hyena of Phongola chief Mbilini — had been killed but the abaQulusi still lurked about their mountains undefeated. While the British had gone about their war against the Zulu with some zeal in 1879, the Boers of the Transvaal were seething about their territory being summarily annexed by the Empire only two years earlier. The Boers of Wakkerstroom, east of Volksrus, lived on a frontier and a ledge. The escarpment along this north eastern line intersects with places like Luneburg, Paulpietersburg, Bilanyoni with Swazi territory further towards the rising sun. June mornings are cold — as cold as the relations between the Boers of Wakkerstroom and local Englishmen. Luneburg was a Lutheran mission station and on the 4th June, the pastor’s son Heinrich Filter was killed there along with six black border policemen. Large groups of Qulisi warriors swept back into the northern Zululand region, scooping up hundreds of cattle and other livestock. So it was with fury that commander Chelmsford and Wood heard what was going on between the Boers and the Zulu along the Mkhondo River. The two nations were in league against their common imperial enemy. Zulu deputations had visited the bughers and some Boers had even travelled to go and see king Cetshwayo kaMpande. By June reports circulated the there were even more Boers than usual wintering along the border, below the icy escarpment amongst the Zulu imizi of the Phongola. The fact that they were safe confirmed all suspicions that there was Zulu-Boer collusion. Suspicions were further confirmed when the British found out that the Boers were even acting as guides leading the Zulu impis in their June raids that had been so destructive. Chelmsford had been putting together a potent column for his return to Zululand after he had relieved Eshowe, and in May he began a slow moving march to Ondini. Ranging in front of his force as it gathered close to Rorke’s Drift for the second major invasion, were his reconnaissance units, scouts and observers. And one of these observers was the enthusiastic but reckless twenty three year-old Prince Imperial of France, Louis Napoleon. The last hope of the Bonapartist dynasty, serving on Chelmsford’s staff. He was the only son of Emperor Napoleon the Third, great-nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. In his first 14 years he had lived the pampered life of a monarch-in-waiting, but that changed in 1870 when his father was deposed after a string of defeats in the Franco-Prussian war. Louis fled to England with his mother Empress Eugenie. Queen Victoria gave them a warm welcome — in 1871 his father was released by the Prussians and joined Eugenie and Louis at a rented mansion in Chislehurst in Kent. A failed attempt to remove a gallstone killed the Emperor n 1873, and Louis ended up in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich.

The last quarter of the 19th Century was in some ways, like the first quarter of the 21st Century - full of tone-deaf business barons gambling building vast riches — financing politicians and in accelerating the planet towards world wars. There are ripples in the timeverse, all the way to now, because the latest empire has started a war that it cannot end. The infinite rule of war is do not start a war you cannot finish — British back in 1879 set off a whole host of pain for itself by invading Zululand because the Boers of the Transvaal were flexing. First, however, was the small matter of trying to Crush the Zulu empire. Not only had the British suffered sharp reverses at Hlobane and, most dramatically, at Isandlwana, but Lieutenant-Colonel Pearson’s column had now been shut up in Eshowe for nearly two months. At first the invasion had been greeted in Britain with confidence and patriotic support, yet that mood began to shift as the scale of the setbacks became clear and questions were asked about Lord Chelmsford’s conduct of the campaign. Confidence gave way to unease as news filtered home that the war was proving far more difficult than anyone had expected. So it is to Eshowe we go. At the end of March 1879 Zulu warriors were spotted hiking down the hills near the Eshowe garrison, heading towards Nyezane near Gingindlovu on the coastal flats. They were led by Somopho of the emaNgweni ikhanda, Cetshwayo’s chief armourer — and the army he led towards the Thukela was an interesting bunch. They included 3000 Tsonga from St Lucia Bay, along with 1500 from the kwaGingindlovu ikhanda, joined by Dabulamanzi, Cetshwayo’s headstrong son who lived at eNtumeni near Eshowe and who commandedd 1000 men. There were 3000 men of the iNgobamakhosi, uNokhenke, the uMbonambi and uMcijo, joined by 1500 of the iNdluyengwe. Chief Sigcwelegcwele led these amabutho, along with Phalane kaMdinwa of the Mphukunyoni — Phalane was of royal blood and set an imposing figure amongst his troops. He wore brass ornaments on his ankles and neck, and had grown his fingernails five centimeters long, they were apparently as white as ivory and gave him a dangerous cat-like appearance, he was tall, a Marvel Superhero of the Zulu. This force of about 11 000 was in Lord Chelmsford’s way, and he was about to cross the Thukela River to relieve Pearson in Eshowe. Cetshwayo’s was aware that the English Zulu chief, had turned his coat, John Dunn who had initially fled Zululand, then tried to remain neutral, had now openly thrown in his lot with Chelmsford’s relief column. He had observed the British response to the defeat at Isandhlwana and realised that the Zulu could not win this war, nor even draw it. Chelmsford’s response was to turn to John Dunn, and with him came something the British had lacked until then — a practical understanding of African warfare. Dunn encouraged constant forward reconnaissance, understood the rhythms and tactics of Zulu fighting, and insisted on the discipline of laagering, measures that addressed many of the army’s earlier weaknesses. He was placed in charge of 244 men and effectively made chief of intelligence — a somewhat unusual appointment. Until then such responsibilities had normally fallen to regular British officers. Dunn, however, was no officer of the Crown. What he brought instead were deep personal ties within the Zulu kingdom, along with a network of scouts and informants. In Chelmsford’s camp he would operate not only as an intelligence gatherer, but also as a crucial intermediary between the British command and the African world beyond their lines.

The twenty thousand strong Zulu army was camped near Nseka Mountain south of the British camp at Khambula hill — north west of modern day Vryheid. After defeating Lieutenant Colonel Evelyn Wood’s Number 4 column at Hlobane, Zulu commanders Ntshingwayo and Mnyamana stopped to rest their men on the banks of the White Mfolozi. about twenty kilometers from the British camp. Wood’s column had retreated to the base at Khambula Garrison — along with the cavalry led by Redverse Buller after the thrashing they’d received at the Battle of Hlobane. You heard about that in episode 262. Perhaps it made sense to wait, the British had already been reinforcing Kambula for weeks and the position that Evelyn held was strong. They had spent weeks digging elongated earthworks, a redoubt on a narrow ridge of tableland on the summit of Khambula. There were two guns here, and it was connected to the main wagon-laager which lay 20 meters below and 280 metres away by the four other guns placed at regular intervals. These were significant weapons. The wheels of the wagons were lashed together, and each wagon-pole or tied tightly to the wagon ahead, sods of earth had been thrown up under the wagons to form ramparts, and bags of provisions run along the outside of the buckrails of the wagons with firing slits every few yards. Below this defensive structure was another smaller laager of wagons, connected by a palisade — into which 2000 cattle were crammed. On the right side of both laagers lay a rocky ravine, no-one would be climbing up this access point and through which the stream of Selandlovu rushed. To the left, the ground sloped away more gently, and provided an excellent field of fire. Wood had 2 086 officers and men, including eight companies of the 90th Light Infantry — and seven companies of the 1/13th Light infantry totaling 1240 troops. The mounted squadron included 99 from the Mounted Infantry, four troops of the Frontier light horse of 165 men, two troops of Raaff’s Transvaal Rangers, almost a hundred of Baker’s Horse, 40 more from the Kaffrarian Rifles, bolstered by a Mounted Basotho group of 74, they’d come all the way from Basotholand, from further south, joined by 16 men of the Border Horse, along with 41 Boers from a local northern Zululand commando. 58 black support troops were also camped at Kambula, along with 11 Royal Engineers, and 110 men of the number 11 Battery, Royal Artillery and their six 7 pounders. This was a well balanced column, but still about ten percent the size of the nearby Zulu army. The British had a major advantage, they were defending a well constructed and armed with the latest weapons of war. Unlike the other battles, the British had measured out range markers and setup stone cairns painted white. The Zulu would not be able to easily charge Khambula over the open ground, nor climb quickly enough in numbers to attack over the steep eastern edge. Dawn broke on the 29th March 1879 and the Zulu commanders gathered their men. The youngsters demanded the army launch a straightforward charge up the slope to smash the English once and for all, but Chiefs Mnyamana and Ntshingwayo were smarter than that. Both had strict orders from Cetshwayo about tactics, and he’d made it clear there would be no more direct full frontal attack on well dug-in British camps. Mnyamana was more of a diplomat than soldier, if you remember it had been Ntshingwayo who led the men in their victory at Isandhlwana, but Mnyamana was technically the senior commander - so it was he who formed the amabutho into their traditional circle. As the sun lifted over the hills, mist coiled along the White Mfolozi, and thousands of Zulu warriors formed in their regiments on the riverbank. They stood shoulder to shoulder while their commanders strode before them, voices rising, calling them to courage and endurance.

The battles are coming thick and fast because this is the end of the seventh decade of the 19th Century - the British have just been defeated at the Battle of Hlobane mountain on the 28th March. There’s been so much skop skiet and Donner it’s time to reflect on matters further south west Before we buzz back to Zululand next episode. n the Transvaal, resistance to British rule was slowly setting, like mortar hardening between stones, the scattered grievances of the Boers beginning to cohere into something firmer, more deliberate. Far to the west, Kimberley glittered with a different intensity - fortunes were rising from the dust, deals were struck in the heat and noise, and the great hole in the earth swallowed men and money alike. Yet beneath the clangour of picks and the shimmer of diamonds, another current was moving. For even as the town prospered, a sequence of personal tragedies was about to cast a longer shadow over Kimberley shaping not only its mood but the hardening temper of one of its most ambitious young men. Cecil John Rhodes would endure a series of personal blows in the years ahead. These losses did not soften him. If anything, they seemed to harden an already melancholic temperament. One by one, the setbacks accumulated, and the young speculator who often appeared distant in manner would, in time, come to embody the ruthless vanity and moral ambiguity that marked the diamond fields and the empire they fed. The string of tragedies began with his brother Herbert. It was he who had come to South Africa first and started the Cotton farm at Richmond near Pietermaritzburg. And It was he who had impulsively upped and off to Kimberley to look for diamonds. Once these had been unearthed and he’d convinced young Cecil to join him — he upped and off once more to the eastern Transvaal, where gold had been discovered. After a while he tired of that life and began gun running from Delagoa Bay to amaPedi people, then roved about into northern Mozambique and what is Malawi today. He hunted the next gold find everywhere he went, a mad Victorian searching for his personal treasure. Cecil John Rhodes watched and took his own notes. He was already thirsting for power, and now he realised there were two routes. From Barney Barnato he learned the value of politics, and from JB Robinson he came to understand the uses of Journalism. Rhodes wanted something much bigger, and that was a seat in the Cape Parliament. He ran for representative of a rural territory, Barklay West which was a mistake. When he appeared at a meeting one of the local boers told him off “In the first place, you are too young, in the second, you look so damnably like an Englishman…” Rhodes, unlike certain modern politicians, listened. First stage of campaign complete, time for second stage. And here it may surprise many listeners, but he turned to black South Africans because at this time in our history, blacks could vote in the Cape. All they had to do was show they had enough cash, the Cape qualified franchise. Every voter had to show either 25 pounds of land or more in value or prove they received at least 50 pounds a year in income. After disbursing black workers with an unknown sum of money, 250 turned up to vote for Rhodes on election day and largely because of this support, he won. It is truly amazing that Cecil John Rhodes won his seat in the Cape Parliament because of black voters, and would go on to hold that seat in periods of triumph, disgrace and depression, until the day he died.

By mid-March 1879, Cetshwayo kaMpande made another attempt to open talks with Chelmsford, sending his indunas to negotiate for peace — but the British had no appetite for compromise. On the 22nd March two emissaries arrived at Middle Drift, a central crossing between Natal and Zululand, but Chelmsford had already laid out rules that any Zulu representatives should communicate directly with him. Captain Frank Cherry who was He commanding officer of the 3rd Regiment, Natal Native Contingent (NNC), was stationed at Middle Drift. His job was primarily defensive—guarding that specific crossing point against a potential Zulu counter-invasion of Natal. Alongside him, F.B. Fynney - the Border Agent for the Lower Tugela. Fynney was a crucial figure because he was one of the few British officials who was fluent in Zulu and understood the nuances of Zulu diplomacy. The two messengers used their Christian names, Johannes and Klaas. They brought a message from King Cetshwayo that essentially said: "What have I done? I want peace. Let the fighting stop.” They were frigidly received and sent back with a reminder about the terms of the ultimatum before war began. The British were also fully aware that Cetshwayo had called a general muster of his army at oNdini, and believed the two messengers were actually spies. A day later, on the 23rd March, two other messengers arrived in Eshowe but Lieutenant Colonel Pearson ordered them to be clapped into irons — they were spies he said and could not be accorded the traditional sanctity they enjoyed at royal emissaries. Not to be denied, Cetshwayo, who by now had been joined by his main army and he was pondering where to send them. Unfortunately for Colonel Evelyn Wood, the Zulu King decided they should attack his column. After the largely inconsequential but shocking massacre at the Ntombe River we covered last episode, Colonel Wood was in a bit of a bind. He’d lost over 70 men on the 12th March. Still, he had something positive to report to Lord Chelmsford, Cetshwayo’s eldest brother prince Hamu had decided to switch sides and support the British. Many of the men of his amaButho had fought the British at Isandlwana, and Wood promptly recruited these very same men into his column as irregular troops, despite the fact that their spears had been so recently washed by imperial British blood. It is hard to explain how the military works to most people, but battles are not carried out with the hot headedness of hate. So when a soldier wants to swap sides, usually they are debriefed, given a quick training update, checked to ensure they’re not lunatics, and then given their new uniforms and weapons and signed on. They are very useful when it comes to intelligence gathering. Chelmsford was over the moon about Hamu’s move, and believed what he called the “important event” would ‘spread doubt and distrust in Zululand’. Partly to alleviate the pressure on Pearson in Eshowe, and partly because he hoped to capitalise on Hamu’s arrival, Chelmsford gave Wood carte blanche to make an attack on the Zulu. “If you are in a position to make any forward movement about the 27th March, so that the news may reach the neighbourhood of Eshowe about the 29th, I think it might have a good effect…” A relief column was on it’s way from Natal and would soon cross the lower Thukela on its way to Eshowe. Perhaps some kind of victory to the north where Wood was operating would draw Zulu amabutho away. Wood was nothing if not a quick operator. A few days after receiving the order, on the 28th March, he launched a two-pronged attack on the abaQulusi stronghold of Hlobane Mountain. It was risky, not only did he have no idea of how many Zulu warriors faced him, he also had no idea about what lay in store on the summit.

Colonel Rowland’s number five column had been sent to guard the roads and garrison the Boer towns in the north eastern Transvaal — part to police the Zulu across the border, but also to overawe the more volatile Boers who wanted to take advantage of the war in Zululand by rebelling against British rule. The German village of Luneberg was vulnerable, within striking distance of Mbilini, who was Cetshwayo’s loose canon along the Phongola River, and Manyanyoba who hailed from the Ntombe Valley. Although Manyonyoba had seemed prepared to open negotiations with the British, he was overborne by his chief induna who wanted to intensify the raiding. Once convinced he should support king Cetshwayo’s call for war, Manyonyoba led a powerful force to join Mbilini and Qulusi induna Tola kaDilikana who had made his way east from Hlobane. Their target was the 1500 or so Christianised black workers, the amakholwa of the Ntombe Valley. They killed 41 amakholwa, burned their homes down and drove off hundreds of cattle. In retaliation, British troops were sent to garrison Luneberg and four companies of the 80th Regiment were dispatched there under Major Charles Tucker. Redverse Buller joined them from Khambula further west, leading a force of 54 mounted men and 517 black auxiliaries against Manyonyoba’s caves. 34 Zulu were killed, five imizi were burned down and 375 head of cattle, 254 goats and 8 sheep captured for the loss of two black auxiliaries - but Manyonyoba remained at large, his main force unaffected. Late in February a convoy of 18 wagons loaded with ammunition, flour and mealies left Lydenburg to resupply the garrison. At first things went well, but when they arrived at the border with Transvaal, their route was less secure — particularly as they approached the Ntombe River because Mbilini was operating close by. Tucker sent a company of the 80th to escort the wagon train from Derby — but heavy rainfall swelled the rivers and softened the ground. By March 8th the convoy was still 16 kilometres out from Luneberg. Fearing an attack, Tucker sent a message to the company commander to get into Luneberg that night ‘at any cost’ — but the officer took the message literally and abandoned his wagons. The British were riding their luck, and that lady was about to run out. The Zulu were monitoring all this movement and Mbilini realised his relatively large amabutho was powerful enough to smash this small company of British soldiers. Cetshwayo knew that important rule - keep your friends close but your enemies closer — at the outbreak of war he had ordered Hamu to oNdini where he could be kept under close scrutiny. But Hamu communicated with his chief izinduna Ngwegwana and Nymubana back in his district who exchanged secret messages with Colonel Wood in turn.

We’re touring the sub-continent today, choose your mode of transport — Cape Cart, ox-wagon, horse, mule, on foot? Before the arrival of steam locomotion, roads in South Africa were little more than rutted tracks created by repeated passage of wagons and animal teams rather than purpose-built carriageways. There was no formal road network in the early 19th century: routes developed organically where ox-wagons, horse-drawn carts, and pack animals repeatedly traversed the landscape, linking farms, military posts, and markets. These tracks followed natural contours and river fords, often taking months to traverse over rugged terrain. The primary transport machines on land before railways were ox-wagons and horse-drawn vehicles. The ox-wagon was the backbone of overland transport. It carried heavy goods — from wool bales and foodstuffs to mining equipment — over long distances and difficult terrain. Transport riders, both European and African, led these wagons into the interior, resting at outspans before continuing. Their significance was such that even towns and trails were defined by their routes. Before the age of railways, South African towns grew up along the overland routes forged by ox-wagons, horses and people on foot, and the rhythms of travel on those routes had a profound influence on where settlements were established and how they were spaced. In an era when roads were not engineered highways but repeated trails across the veld, the limits of what an ox-wagon team or a horse-mounted traveller could cover in a day shaped the practical distances between reliable stopping places, watering spots and supply points — and ultimately played a role in the birth and growth of towns. Drawn by spans of oxen, often 8–18 animals harnessed in long teams — these wagons carried goods, families and traders across great distances. Their average pace was slow by modern standards, typically around twenty kilometres per day under good conditions, depending on terrain, weather and the condition of the animals. This daily range was often the practical maximum that wagon drivers would plan for, and that distance became a natural unit for planning journeys, locating inns or out-span grazing grounds, and later for settlements that would service trafficked routes. Because of these constraints, towns tended to appear at intervals that corresponded roughly with a day’s travel by ox-wagon or horse — places where travellers could rest, water animals, resupply or trade. These stopping points, sometimes initially little more than a watering hole or crossing on a drift, acquired markets, services and sometimes a church or administrative function as traffic increased and the surrounding countryside was settled. Over time, these logical halting-places evolved into permanent towns serving an increasingly local and itinerant population. The first public railway service in South Africa marked a dramatic shift in land transport. The Natal Railway Companyopened a small line in June 1860, linking Point (Durban) to Market Square using steam traction — this was the earliest operational stretch of railway in the country. Its first locomotive, “The Natal,” carried goods and passengers, representing a novel machine in the South African transport system and signaling a move away from animal-powered haulage. Almost simultaneously, railway construction began in the Cape Colony. In 1858–1862, the Cape Town Railway and Dock Company built the line from Cape Town to Wellington, opening sections to Eerste River and then Stellenbosch by the early 1860s. These early lines employed steam locomotives and rudimentary rolling stock (passenger coaches and goods wagons) — the “iron horse” replacing oxen and horses over these corridors. In 1931, South African entrepreneur Max Sonnenberg opened his first store in Cape Town chosing the name "Woolworths" specifically because the American F.W. Woolworth brand was already a global symbol of retail success.

We’re touring the sub-continent today, choose your mode of transport — Cape Cart, ox-wagon, horse, mule, on foot? Before the arrival of steam locomotion, roads in South Africa were little more than rutted tracks created by repeated passage of wagons and animal teams rather than purpose-built carriageways. There was no formal road network in the early 19th century: routes developed organically where ox-wagons, horse-drawn carts, and pack animals repeatedly traversed the landscape, linking farms, military posts, and markets. These tracks followed natural contours and river fords, often taking months to traverse over rugged terrain. The primary transport machines on land before railways were ox-wagons and horse-drawn vehicles. The ox-wagon was the backbone of overland transport. It carried heavy goods — from wool bales and foodstuffs to mining equipment — over long distances and difficult terrain. Transport riders, both European and African, led these wagons into the interior, resting at outspans before continuing. Their significance was such that even towns and trails were defined by their routes. Before the age of railways, South African towns grew up along the overland routes forged by ox-wagons, horses and people on foot, and the rhythms of travel on those routes had a profound influence on where settlements were established and how they were spaced. In an era when roads were not engineered highways but repeated trails across the veld, the limits of what an ox-wagon team or a horse-mounted traveller could cover in a day shaped the practical distances between reliable stopping places, watering spots and supply points — and ultimately played a role in the birth and growth of towns. The first public railway service in South Africa marked a dramatic shift in land transport. The Natal Railway Companyopened a small line in June 1860, linking Point (Durban) to Market Square using steam traction — this was the earliest operational stretch of railway in the country. Its first locomotive, “The Natal,” carried goods and passengers, representing a novel machine in the South African transport system and signaling a move away from animal-powered haulage. So after that sojourn through the wonderful world of 1879, we return to Zululand. Lord Chelmsford was in a pickle. He had initially blamed the disaster at Isandlwana on his 2 IC Pulleine, and Durnford but by February, a few weeks after the battle, the general inclination of the Horse Guards back home was to point the finger at Chelmsford instead. In the British parliament, conservative prime minister Disraeli was struggling to spin a way out after the terrible news from South Africa, “It is a military disaster,” he said in the House of Lords on 13th February “…a terrible military disaster, but I think we may say it is no more…”

It’s the 23rd January 1879, one of the most momentous days in South African history has passed, and the ripple effect will be felt across the world. For missionary Otto Witt it was a time of particular terror. He had fled his mission station, Rorke’s Drift, and now it was smashed to bits, the house which had doubled up as a hospital burned to the ground, the main warehouse which had been his church, broken, bloody. Witt had fled the day before and sought out his wife and children who he’d sent on to Msinga once it became apparent the British were going to invade Zululand. Witt had lost his way up the Biggarsberg escarpment on the terrifying night of the 22nd January, and staggered into the Gordon Memorial Mission at Msinga the next morning - but his wife Elin and their 3 young children had already left. He didn’t know this — merely that she wasn’t there. Elin had been told by refugees streaming away from Isandlwana that Otto had been killed at Rorke’s Drift. So both believed the other dead. The family spent five days believing they were widows and orphans. The confusion was only cleared up when Witt finally tracked Erin’s wagon trail to Pietermaritzburg where the family was reunited, exhausted and traumatized, but physically unharmed. In Newcastle, Maud Bradstreet had just assisted her friend, Mrs. Hitchcock, in delivering a baby girl named Georgina. Their joy was short-lived, however, as news arrived that the Newcastle Mounted Rifles had been decimated at Isandlwana—both of their husbands were among the dead. The two women set out for the Orange Free State, a grueling week-long journey by horse and cart, surviving on very little including water strained through a mealie bag. This was the raw reality for the survivors - later in the episode we’ll hear from the Zulu. On the morning of January 23rd, a messenger reached Helpmekaar with a brief note from Lieutenant Chard Rorke’s Drift commander Defying the grim expectations of the men at the camp, they had miraculously held their ground through the night. Back at Isandlwana, Chelmsford had awoken his men and rode away from the scene of carnage before dawn, one of the men had found the mangled body of Lieutenant Colonel Pulleine, Isandlwana’s commanding officer, then the column passed down Manzimyama Valley. They moved past homesteads that had been abandoned only a day prior, but now the inhabitants were creeping back. Through the doorway of a single hut, they saw an Inyanga tending to amaQungebeni warriors who had likely fought at Isandlwana. The tension snapped; soldiers of the Natal Native Contingent opened fire and killed a man before order could be restored. A seething anger swirled through the British column, Trooper Fred Jones, one of the survivors of the Newcastle Mounted Rifles was not in a forgiving mood. “We saw red…” he admitted “ Exhausted and broken, the warriors shuffled forward, dragging their shields in the dust. The uThulwana were stunned—they thought no British soldiers were left alive after Isandlwana. For a long, tense moment, the two forces stared at one another across a distance easily covered by a bullet. Yet, neither side pulled a trigger. It was, as historian Ian Knight notes, a surreal conclusion to an extraordinary 48 hours: two armies, both feeling the weight of defeat, watching each other move silently into the distance. King Cetshwayo kaMpande did not get an accurate version of events at Rorke’s Drift at first. Back at oNdini, Dabulamanzi reported that he had stormed and successfully taken the house… attacked again then retired…but admitted that he had suffered heavily …” It was to take another ten days before the warriors returned to oNdini and had been ritually cleansed .. only then did Cetshwayo address them in his huge cattle kraal. “If you think you have finished with all the white men you are wrong, because they are still coming…” he warned.

Episode 258 Rorke’s Drift part two. It’s important to listen to Episode 257 because that sets everything up for this episode - there’s too much to repeat particularly in the layout of the buildings which were fully described in Episode 257. There were around 330 British and Natal Native Contingement troops marooned at Rorke’s Drift, about to be attacked by 4000 Zulu warriors. Approaching rapidly, the reserve amabutho of the Zulu army, led by Prince Dabulamanzi - a man who was driven by pride and personal valor — loyal to his king and brave, yet impulsive compared with Cetshwayo kaMpande’s politics of restraint. Dabulamanzi’s name means the one who conquers waters, and most apt because he had decided to lead the warriors across the Mzinyathi River into Natal. A literal crossing and a metaphorical defiance. Zulu oral tradition refers to this battle as Shiyane by the way, or kwaJimu, Jims land after Jim Rorke who build the trading store. It was 4pm, January 22nd 1879. The barricades were still going up the drift, the sacks of mielies, the boxes of bully beef and biscuits, when Lieutenant Henderson and Hlubi Molife of the baTlokoa Native contingent rode up with 80 of their men. Lieutenant John Chard of the Royal Engineers who commanded the post realised they’d managed to make their own way across the Mzinyathi pontoon, and he asked the horsemen to reccie up the river beyond Shiyane mountain. If you remember, that was the high point immediately behind Rorke’s Drifts two buildings, the house slash hospital, and the trading store, slash church, slash commissariat. Henderson offered to help defend the supply depot - a hollow offer as you’ll hear shortly. Chard had been operating blindly since his observers had scurried back down the Shiyane after they realised three groups of Zulu regiments were approaching. Henderson took his mounted unit around the southern flank of the Shiyane where they could observe the territory from higher ground. Moments later scattered shots were heard, and Henderson and his unit galloped up and he shouted “Here they come, as black as hell and as thick as grass…” Henderson and another rider, Bob Hall, lingered for some moments beyond the orchard in front of Rorke’s Drift, firing a few shots to the north, then turned and galloped away. They had survived Isandlwana and could not stomach further action. Chard was going to bump into these two later during the Anglo-Zulu war and they would apologize for fleeing and leaving the small group of defenders to fend for themselves. Watching from within the wall of boxes and bags were the Natal Native Contingent, and their commanders. Stevenson’s men flung down the sacks they were using to construct the walls, and bolted through the barricades, following Henderson. Their white officers ran away as well, along with their NCOs, including Corporal Anderson. He was a Scandinavian who spoke very little English, and the sight of the men of the NNC he commanded running away, along with their supposed officers, panicked him and he ran off. Soldiers of Bravo Company left behind were enraged, several opened fire on the cowards fleeing the scene. Corporal Anderson was shot through the back of the head - killed instantly. It was another irony of South African history right there. The first man on the British side to die at Rorke’s Drift was shot by his own side.

Rorke’s Drift was a battle that Cetshwayo kaMpande did not want, because it took place on the western bank of the Mzinyathi or Buffalo River — inside Natal. The British had been routed at Isandlwana by the main Zulu army, regiments who’s names are still venerated by oral historians today, the uKhandempemvu, uNokhenke, uDududu, iMbube, iSanqu, the uMbonambi, iNgobamakhosi. The men of the uThulwana, iNdlondlo, iNluyengwe, uDloko amabitho had headed northwest during the battle to cut off Chelmsford’s escape route while the main army went to work evicerating Durnford’s men. The commanders of the main army, Ntswingwayo kaMahole and Mavumengwana kaNdlela turned back to oNdini - realising that they had both good and bad news. The good news - Chelmsford’s central column had been crushed at Isandlwana, the bad news - it had cost the Zulu main army dearly perhaps as many as 2000 warriors - along with number of his most venerated indunas and isinkhosi. But things were not over in this corner of the British empire, because the reserve amabutho were itching to wash their spears. They had chased Isandlwana fugitives to the Mzinyathi, spearing them and shooting them down, and now the uTHulwana, iNdlondlo, iNdluyengwe and uDloko were going to ignore Cetshwayo’s orders and cross the river into Natal. The Zulu king had spelled out his orders and stipulated in no uncertain terms that his men were to stay on the Zululand side of the border. He believed that when it came to negotiate peace, the fact that his men had not crossed the border would be in the Zulu’s favour. The Natal settlers and British bureaucrats had instigated this war out of fear of Zulu power. Cetshwayo understood that if he could demonstrate the Zulu Empire posed no real threat to British interests or colonial settlements, he might yet avoid total destruction. He grasped what many generals forget: war is fundamentally a political instrument. By confining all combat to Zulu territory—never crossing into British-held land—he could preserve the moral high ground. When the inevitable negotiations came, this restraint would be his strongest card, proof that the Zulus sought only to defend their sovereignty, not to conquer. It was this reserve force of between 3000 and 4000 men who were to throw a spanner in the works. They were on the move in three separate contingents, with the younger men from the iNdluyengwe in the lead, marching in open order in advance of the others. They pursued the fugitives across Sothondose’s Drift, now renamed Fugitive’s drift. The other two contingents began a few pre-battle moves, first dividing, then wheeling about, then reforming, an impressive display of commander control.Cetshwayo’s aggressive half-brother Prince Dabulamanzi was in command of these reserve units. This was a break from decorum, because Dabulamanzi was not actually a general in Cetshwayo’s army appointed by the king, but his royal status meant he dominated proceedings. The other offices of the reserve deferred decision-making to him, despite their disquiet which would grow to alarm later in our story today. Dabulamanzi was another of our interesting characters of South African history. He was notoriously unscrupulous, but quick of mind and flashing of eye, always taking great care in grooming his moustache and pointy beard. Settlers who knew him called him sophisticated, he dressed in fine European clothes, loved a gin and tonic, and was an extremely good shot with a rifle. Had he not been Zulu, you would have called him an excellent example of a well-rounded English rogue of the Victorian era. Prince Dabulamanzi wanted to give the men a victory - they could hardly return home and become the laughing stock of the nation. Zibhebhu’s incapacitation provided him with a perfect moment. Later it was spun that this smallish group of reserve amabutho were actually on their way to Pietermarizburg and it was only the plucky Rorke’s Drift defenders who stood in their way.

Lord Chelmsford who had scurried off to the east in support of Major Dartnell only made it back to the slopes of Isandlwana at dusk on the day of 22nd January 1879. As the nervous British soldiers advanced, they could see dense masses of the Zulus retiring with herds of cattle and their wagons up on the skyline to their right. About 800 metres from the Isandlwana battle site, they stopped and formed into a line. The guns were in the centre on the road, with three companies of British infantry, a Natal Native Contingent battalion and a portion of cavalry on each flank. The mounted police were in reserve. Chelmsford ordered the guns to fire on the nek of Isandlwana, while Major Wilsone Black advanced up the right to seize a koppie overlooking the battlefield that the British named Black’s Koppie. IT was about 7pm. Black signalled the main force to advance, and Captain Harford who marched up with the 2/3rd NNC noticed the grass had been trampled flat and smooth by the size of the Zulu army. Soon they began to stumble as they tripped over bodies and Harford admitted later “… nothing on earth could make those who were armed with rifles to keep their place in the front rank, and all the curses showered on them by their offices could not prevent them from closing in and making up in clumps…” The darkness spared the soldiers the magnitude of the disaster but not the details … Captain Penn Symons reported later that they constantly stumbled over the “Naked, gashed and ghastly bodies of our late comrades….” The Zulu opened up the bowels of the dead to allow the soul to depart, but to the English eye, this was an act of desecration of a body. “After killing them,” said Kumpega Qwabe, one of the warriors later “we used to split them up the stomach so that their bodies would not swell.” Zulu traditional belief recognized the frustration of gases produced by a decomposing body as a spirit of the man unable to leave its earthly form. If the killer did not open the stomach, the spirit’s wrath would attach to him and he would suffer all manner of misfortunes, his own body might swell like a corpse, and he would be driven mad. Chelmsford visited Harford and his NNC during the night, and asked if they thought the Zulus would attack again. Harford said yes, he could not know that the Main Zulu army was exhausted, they had also taken terrible casualties and were in no mood to continue battling the British. As I mentioned last episode, some warriors left immediately, most remained in the area for three days waiting for as many of their wounded as possible to recover sufficiently for the march over 100 kilometers back to their homes. Chelmsford had made up his mind to abandon the camp before dawn the next morning and later he would be condemned for not staying long enough to buy the dead and salvage what he could from the wrecked camp. What critics would gloss over was the fact that his army was in a terrible shape. They had no spare ammunition, all had been seized by the Zulu, the main depot was Rorke’s Drift. They had no food, only a few biscuits. Some of his men had not eaten for 48 hours, all had marched more than 40 kilometers in 24 hours, none were in any state for any sort of exertion. The smell’s of war are always the most visceral, and the most telling. The sights, the sounds are tough to bear, but it’s the smell’s that get you. That night, as his column of 1700 24th Battalion survivors, Natal Native Contingent and colonial mounted troops bivouacked, the odour of death and destruction seeped into their consciousness. During the night, British and Zulu warriors had come across each other, bumped into each other — some drunken Zulu on one of the wagons had been bayoneted, too motherless to escape. The soldiers from both sides exchanged words — cursing each other in a language neither could understand but the meaning was inescapable.

When we ended last episode a mounted patrol had stumbled on the main Zulu army of twenty thousand men which had which had hunkered down in the Ngwebeni Valley north east of Isandlwana. The British had been conducting patrols both north and south of the sphinx shaped mountain, and had been following a group of Zulu who were foraging mielies and cattle for the huge army. Looking down on this huge force, the shocked British patrol had opened fire on the warriors from their vantage point and galloped away to warn Lieutenant Colonel Pulleine back at Isandlwana about the impending threat. The effect of the fusillade on the Zulu warriors was instantaneous. Their discipline, shattered. Huddled in silence for hours they had been informed that the day of the attack would come on Thursday 23rd January, because the 22nd was the first day of the new moon - the day of the dead moon — the unmyuama or blackness when dark spiritual forces lurked close to the fragile membrane which separated the living and the dead. None of the warriors had been prepared for battle through the customary rituals, they had not been drawn up on a circle and sprinkled with medicines to ward off the unmyama, nor had they been addressed by their commanders. Thus no orders were given to attack on the 22nd — and despite the fear of unmyama, Ntshingwayo kaMahole Khoza’s men responded to a perfect moment. The uMcijo regiment broke ranks, joined by the uNokhenke, uDududu, iSanqu and imbibe who stood up and moved off at a rapid pace towards the Nyoni Heights, along with the umBonambi, iNgobamakosi and uVe. Their commanders, Ntshingwayo and Mavumengwana kaNdlela Ntuli tried to intercept these warriors, but they failed. Other regiments like the uTHulwana, iNdluyengwe, iNdlondlo and uDloko which had bivouacked further downstream in the Ngwebeni valley on the Zulu left remained seated. But the moment was too much for one of the more fiery induna’s of the uThulwana, Qethuka kaManqondo — the son of the Magwaza chief — he also broke away, sprinting after the uMcijo. The Zulu commanders worked quickly to settle the rest of the army - and pulled the remaining warriors into battle order, then marched off well behind those who had broken ranks. They used a depression behind the Nyoni heights to obscure their movements from the British down at Isandlwana. Remarkably, the Zulu left had now become the Zulu right, the Right were now in the centre, and the centre had been pushed to the left. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Durnford’s mounted reconnaissance patrol were beating a hasty retreat to Isandlwana. His sortie had always been ill-considered. If you recall last episode, Lord Chelmsford had ordered him to shore up the Isandlwana defenses, instead, he’d arrived on the morning of the 22nd and taken off in pursuit of some glory determined to throw himself and his men into the thick of fighting. Back at the British camp, Lieutenant Colonel Pulleine was informed just after midday that the Zulu army was on it’s way, Theophilus Shepstone junior relayed the information. Even today, there are acoustic peculiarities of the countryside around iSandlwana which can possibly be explained by the sharp hills and the rolling broken countryside. Sounds appear to bounce off the hills, echoing oddly, seemingly arriving in unexpected directions. During many re-enactments of the battle there, rifle volleys snap back and forth, providing almost no clue about the direction of fire. The sounds of these initial skirmishes merely confused those at Isandlwana. Reports were being fed back from the vedettes, the mounted scouts on the hills, including those high up on Isandlwana itself. “The enemy are in three columns” was one … another “The enemy are in force behind the hills on the left..” And then “the enemy are retiring in every direction…” It was one just before midday that was spot on .. but by then the flood of half accurate reports drowned it out.

The morning of January 22, 1879, dawned with a deceptive, stillness across Zululand masking the fact that over 45,000 men were in motion across a 200 kilometer front, each group operating in a vacuum of information that would, by sunset, shatter the British Victorian ego. At the coast, Colonel Charles Pearson’s Column No. 1 represented the textbook invasion. His force was a heavy, industrial machine led by the 3rd Foot regiment, the Buffs, along with the 99th Regiment, and the Naval Brigade dragging their heavy Gatling guns and artillery. By 5:00 AM, the 5000 strong column was already a dusty serpent stretching more than 8 kilometers back toward the Tugela River. Pearson’s scouts were a mix of the Natal Native Contingent and European volunteers who pushed through the tall grass toward the Nyezane River. They were being observed on Wombane mountain by the uDududu, iMbube, and isigQu regiments - 6,000 warriors under the command of Godide kaNdlela. Wombande mountain lay on the wagon trail between Gingingdlovu on the coastal flats, and Eshowe where Pearson was hoping to setup a main base at the abandoned Norwegian mission station before pushing on to ONdini and Cetshwayo’s HQ. The Zulu plan was traditional, await in complete stillness on the high-ground then sweep in for a surprise ambush. Pearson’s advance guard crossed the Nyezane River and crossed over at 7.30am. Thick bush grew all around, the cavalry was reconnoitering and saw nothing. Vedettes, or mounted guards, were placed to keep an eye out for the Zulu army. Pearson’s main party reached the knoll selected for the first stop at around 8am, and the men began to outspan their oxen for a late breakfast. As the laager was being formed up, a party of the Natal Native Contingent who scouted ahead attracted fire from Zulu snipers. The latest Zulu tactic which would also be repeated at Isandlwana, Rorke’s Drift, and as Evelyn Wood would report later from Hlobane mountain - a combination of heavy fire from high ground in support of a surging attack by warriors on foot. The road was a now completely commanded by Godide, along with the all important high ground and as his snipers fired non-stop, the Zulu horns swept towards the exposed British column. Naval officer Midshipman Lewis Coker had the honor of commanding the first Gatling gun to be used in combat by British troops. Pearson recognized the value of this machine gun and he ordered Coker to take up a position opposite the advancing Zulu. Coker fired off 300 rounds, and the Zulu attack shuddered and halted — then the sound of the rockets fiendishly shrieking led to a general withdrawal. Hart continued advancing on the retreating Zulu when one of the older warriors, his oiled head ring glistening in the morning sun, stopped and turned, fell to one knee in a classic rifleman’s position, took careful aim and fired — but missed. Then he bolted away. Hart noted the conventional approach this older warrior had taken. He’d been trained in the finer arts of fire and movement. 200 kilometers to the north of Pearson near the modern town of Vryheid, Colonel Evelyn Wood who led the left column of the British triple column invasion, was preparing for his morning assault atop the Zungwini Mountain. Wood was by far the most experienced and therefore pragmatic of the British commanders. He had the good fortune of commanding "Flying Column," the vast majority of his men were mounted. The force was centered on the 13th and 90th Light Infantry and the formidable Frontier Light Horse under Redvers Buller. It was in the centre of the three pronged British attack where the day of skop, skiet and donner would change history. This was at the foot of the Sphinx-like crag of Isandlwana where Chelmsford’s Second Column hunkered down.

Episode 253 - The order of Battle for Isandlwana and Nyezane as ‘ukuni’ Wood Heads North Three separate British columns are inside Zululand and things are hotting up — and not just because of the steamy summer temperatures. In the last few episodes I’ve concentrated on General Chelmsford’ and Colonel Glynn’s operations in the centre, second Column, as they made their way over the Mzinyathi River across from Rorke’s Drift - the centre of the British Invasion of Zululand. This episode we’ll wrap up what was going on in other sectors, further south near the coast, and further north near the Ncome - Blood River, and along the high ground there towards the Phongola River. The First column under Colonel Charles Pearson had entered Zululand across the lower Thukela on the 12th January and was lumbering towards Eshowe, en route to meet up with Chelmsford’s Column Two near Ondini prior to the final assault on King Cetshwayo kaMpande’s headquarters. When the main Zulu army had set off from the ritual jumping off point of kwaNodwengu near Ondini on the afternoon of Friday 17th January 1879 destination, Rorkes Drift, a smaller Zulu force marched off simultaneously. They went in the opposite direction, south west — heading to intercept Colonel Pearson. The uMxhapho ibutho, who were young and motivated, along with the older men of the uDlambedlu and izinGulubu regiments. During the march south towards the Thukela they would meet up with reinforcements. These were small local groups, the iNsukamngeni, the iQwa, uDududu, iNdabkawombe and few other even smaller entities mustered along the coast. The total size of this force was about 6000 led by seventy year-old isikhulu Godide, chief of the Ntuli —and commander of the uDlambedlu regiment. He was also the elder brother of Mavumengwana who as you know, was second in command of the main Zulu army marching towards Chelmsford. Alongside Godide were high ranking coastal chiefs Mantshiya kaMshandu of the Nzuzu, and the older Mbilwane kaMhlanganiso who was induna of the kwaGingingdlovu ikhanda. Other important commanders who joined were Masegwane kaSopigwasi — who happened to be an inceku or counsellor of the king. Phalane, a royal induna, was monitoring events in this second army. Colonel Charles Pearson’s Number one column included 4 750 men 384 wagons and 24 carts. Pearson not been in action since the Crimean War ended in 1856, spending time in St George Grenada, then various other postings until he was selected as one of the special service officers in South Africa. Despite his lack of recent combat experience, Pearson had the difficult task of leading the largest column over the greatest distance. He was ordered to cross the lower drift of the Thukela, then establish a base at the evacuated Norwegian mission station in Eshowe 60 kilometers further on. We’ll come back to what happened to Pearson’s column and the battle of Nyezane in Episode 254 because first we need to swing further north, past Chelmsford and Dartnell and Glynn, and Durnford, and to the Ncome River where the British left column had been very busy. Colonel Evelyn Wood was tasked with an attack on the Zulu in a wide arc from the Ncome or Blood River, all the way along the escarpment to the Phongola River. Wood was stationed at Utrecht and had dispatched a garrison of two companies of infantry to Luneberg, a German mission and farming community further East, closer to the disputed border with the Zulu Kingdom. It was positioned strategically near the eNtombe River, a key crossing point for supplies. There the British established Fort Clery first to guard the settlers then to protect the vulnerable line of communication for Colonel Wood's column as it advanced into Zululand. The amaQulusi lived here, and the action provoked the amaQulusini regiment to mobilize and march up to the enormous flat topped Hlobane Mountain.Unlike some of the other commanders, Wood was a veteran of multiple conflicts.

This is episode 252, it is January 19th 1879, and we’re standing alongside Lord Chelmsford at the British camp based at Rorke’s Drift — and nearby is Henry Francis Fynn Junior. Chelmsford had grown frustrated by the rain which had slowed the crossing of the Mzinyathi at Rorke’s Drift. He had also been frustrated by Henry Francis Fynn Junior who had been negotiating with Zulu chiefs without his permission. Fynn’s father, Henry Francis senior was the first English trader in Natal, and had spent time with King Shaka. The Fynn’s were all fluent in Zulu, and extremely informed when it came to Zulu matters and Fynn junior was working as the magistrate of Msinga region in Natal. Chelmsford was determined to have Fynn permanently attached to his staff, partly to keep and eye on him, and partly to consult with the experienced colonial seeking to test. his tactics. On the 16th January, Chelmsford had written to Fynn’s boss, Natal’s Lieutenant Governor Sir Henry Bulwer asking that he be reassigned. On reflection, Chelmsford decided he wasn’t going to wait for Bulwer and summarily ordered Fynn to Rorke’s Drift anyway. Lord Chelmsford was instituting his new plan of action which he’d outlined to Governor Sir Bartle Frere. Instead of leading his column - or to be completely accurate - Lieutenant Colonel Glynn’s column eastwards in a direct route to Isipesi and Cetshwayo kaMpande’s home of ONdini, he was going to concentrate his attention towards the Malakatha and Hlazakazi hills. These rise between Isandhlwana plain and the Mangeni Valley to the south East. It made sense, because Fynn junior had told him that the Zulu plan was to descend the Mangeni heights and attack Number three column in the rear so he needed to secure his invading columns right, or southern flank. At 9am on the 20th January, and with Fynn at his side, Chelmsford rode east from Rorke’s Drift and paused at ISandhlwana for breakfast. A civilized affair, cold meats, strong hot tea. He wanted to confront Mantshana kaMondisa, a amaQungebeni chief who had told Fynn he was considering joining the British. Which was strange, because prior to this, Mantshana was one of the chiefs believed to have been strongly in favor of a war against British. By the time Chelmsford’s men moved forward on the 20th, the Zulu population had largely abandoned the Mzinyathi River valley opposite Rorke’s Drift. So a great swathe of the country around Isandhlwana lay empty, the homesteads of the amaQungebeni deserted and forlorn, with a few bands of Zulu warriors hiding out in the hills, watching and waiting. Behind the Isipesi Mountain, 24 000 Zulu troops camped on the evening of the 20th January 1879. The warriors had marched at a fairly leisurely pace westwards towards the British, saving up their energy for the actual day of battle, whatever day that was. They did not march alone. Some of the women remained and would be with the column on the day of battle. For every three warriors, there was an udibi boy, a lad in his early teens, loaded down with as much paraphernalia as the haughty warriors could expect him to stagger along with — a cooking pot, sleeping mats, dismantled spare shield, and sometimes, if he was given the honor, carrying the warriors spears. Usually these boys carried a smaller spear of their own and those who did so were going to have an unexpected opportunity to wash their blades in the blood of the soldiers dressed in red. And in the blood of their kin serving with the British — the Natal Native Contingent.

Episode 251 and the British Invasion of Zululand is into it’s first week. King Cetshwayo kaMpande had prepared his people for war, and here it was, courtesy of Governor Sir Bartle Frere and led by Lord Chelmsford. After overrunning kwaSogetle the home of Sihayo he was on the move. It was therefore a sort of rough justice then that Cetshwayo had decided to send the bulk of his army to operate in Sihayo’s district. The Zulu army had been ritually prepared for war, marching off towards Chelmsfords invading column on Friday 17th January 1879. The uNokhenke regiment in the front, the army marched ten kilometers in a great single column to bivouac in the emaKhosini Valley after crossing the white Mfolozi River. If you recall last episode, I explained how Lieutenant Colonel Glynn had led the central British column until Lord Chelmsford arrived at their jump off point at Helmekaar - help each other. Lord Chelmsford just couldn’t help himself — he began to micro-manage the invasion and sidelined Glyn and his officers. On the other side, the Zulu column also had two commanders, managing the regiments jointly — Chief Ntshingwayo kaMahole Khoza of the kwaGqikazi, and Chief Mavumengwana kaNdlela Ntuli of the uThulwana. Ntshingwayo was almost 70 years-old and being older, his voice would usually sway any decision. He may have been aged, but he was extremely powerful, short and thickset, like a modern rugby prop, with the great thighs of most of the male descendants of Senzangakhona. Not only was he a great warrior, he was also a wonderful orator, his speeches melifluous and motivational, he had the gift of the gab. Chief Mavumengwana was the brother of isikhulu Godide of the Ntuli who was going to lead a separate column of Zulu warriors heading off to face the British Right Column crossing the Thukela. Mavumengwana and Godide’s father was Ndlela, Dingana’s chief induna, the family having a long relationship with Zulu royalty. Furthermore, Cetshwayo regarded Mavumengwana as a close friend — even though he was one of the chiefs who had preferred a policy of appeasement with the British than outright war. He had changed his mind by now, but it must be said that Zulu leadership was prepared to debate strategy — unlike the British. The officers in the English military establishment were supposed to seek points of view but as you’re going to hear, often the bewhiskered ego-riddled Victorian general failed to think logically and reacted like an outraged teen on Tiktok when their decisions were questioned. The king had been meeting daily with his councillors and trusted advisors, gathering in the early morning cold. The chiefs wrapped themselves in grey trade blankets against the chill, and ordinary Zulu called these men amanqe—vultures—for the way they huddled together, their grey wings folded close, as if sheltering something precious or contemplating something grave. The story about kwaSogekle had rippled down the length of the border and high up on the hills above the Middle Drift. Lieutenant Durnford’s men picked up a change in the mood of Zulu communities there, scanning the landscape through their field glasses from the other side of the Thukela. The countryside suddenly emptied ominously. The elders, along with women and children, left their homesteads and retreated into the mountains or deep into the thick Zululand bush. On the morning of 13th January Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Durnford received an ominous report a day after Chelmsford attack on kwaSogekle in the Batshe valley. Durnford was leading number two column in the vicinity of Middle Drift along the Thukela Border near Kranskop, a force of mounted men, a rocket battery and three battalions of the Natal Native Contingent.

First a quick note which the marketing weasel ordered me to announce. This week I received an email from Apple which read: "We’re thrilled to share some incredible news: History of South Africa podcast has been selected by our editors as one of Apple Podcasts' Best Shows of 2025! Congratulations on this fantastic achievement and for creating one of the most compelling shows of the year. We’re so excited to spotlight your work.” So to all the listeners and my supporters, for all your wonderful comments and suggestions, may we continue to survive the present in order to understand the past. 250 is what is known in maths as a 5-smooth number - none of its prime factors are greater than five. Factor 250 that is 250 ÷ 2 = 125 and 125 = 5 × 5 × 5. So the Prime Factors are all less than five. Strange but true. Culturally 250 is fascinating too - in Mandarin slang, Chinese, the number 250 pronounced er bai wu is an insult meaning idiot or simpleton. Which is apt, because a certain American president number 47 who is referred to as er bai wu is going to preside over his country’s 250th birthday celebrations in 2026. When we left off last episode, a British column of the 1/24 and 2/24, a host of irregular mounted men of the Natal Carbineers, the Natal Native Contingent and the Native Pioneers and their commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Glyn had entered Zululand by way of Rorke’s Drift and approached the kwaSogetle home of amaQungebeni inkosi Sihayo. 4700 British troops and support personnel, 220 wagons, 2000 oxen, 82 carts, 67 mules. It took over an hour for the column to pass a point it was so large. And as you heard, Cetshwayo kaMpande had decided that because this column was the largest, it was going to get special amabutho treatment. Lord Chelmsford had arrived at Helpmekaar on the eve of the invasion, and had taken over as commander of the column, which was to increase tension amongst the officers. Chelmsford tended to micromanage, and Glyn was highly experienced. Later, when a catastrophe unfolded, controversy would rage about who in fact was in charge. Glyn was already resentful that his role had been usurped. If you recall last episode, I explained how he’d put together the regiment in England, paid for his colonelcy, then led the regiment through the end of the 9th Frontier War and here was Chelmsford and his retinue, taking over. Here we are, Shepstone leading the central column, or Number 3 Column as it was known, with Glyn glowering. Column 1 was on the right flank, down the coast, crossing the lower Thukela with 5000 men under Colonel Charles Pearson comprised of the Naval Brigade, 2/3rd 60th Rifles, the 99th Regiment, Natal Native Contingent and artillery. Column two was Durnfords although technically it was closely attached to Glyn’s Column 3 - and both 2 and 3 were set to operate more closely than the Pearsons’ first column which was to head to the lower Thukela, cross the mighty river opposite the Zulu kraal at Gingingdlovu, advance to Eshowe and push on to Ondini. However, Pearson had been told to advance cautiously, and consolidate his men in Eshowe before continuing. He would end up besieged in Eshowe he had moved so slowly. Thus the arrival at Sihayo’s homestead kwaSogetle less than a day’s march across Rorke’s Drift. Sogetle was a natural flat-topped fortress which rose over 1000 feet from the valley floor, its approaches were strewn with boulders, it was steep and seemingly impregnable. The British faced a tough assignment. Had Cetshwayo kaMpande or chief Sihayo decided to rather defend this citadel, the battle would have no doubt been far more bloody. But the fortress was defended by only a small group of Sihayo’s men including one of his youngest sons Mkhumbikazulu. Most warriors including Siyaho himself and all his other sons had marched off to oNdini 116 kilometers away to join the main Zulu army.

The invasion of Zululand did not arrive suddenly. It had been constructed brick by brick over the preceding months, through decisions made in distant offices and on dusty border farms. By early January 1879 the machinery of British imperial confidence was fully wound, and the commanders in Natal believed they were about to conduct a short, sharp campaign to correct what they regarded as a troublesome frontier problem. For the people living along that frontier, the mood was more complex. Rumour travelled faste, and the Zulu intelligence network was already humming with accurate reports of British movements. Settlers and colonial units in Natal, meanwhile, watched the gathering storm with a mix of unease and bravado. The Boers, who had faced Zulu power before, offered advice the British would soon wish they had followed. And so, as the new year opened, both sides prepared for a conflict neither truly understood. The British approached with modern rifles, rockets and the calm assurance of empire. The Zulu prepared with discipline, speed and an intelligence system that outperformed anything Chelmsford could muster. All that remained was for the first column to step across the river January 11 1879 — the rainy season in Zululand lasts from January to March so the going would be muddy and the rivers flooding, but most importantly, there would be lots of sweet green grass for the thousands of oxen and horses. The fuel tank of mother nature was full. The British were keen to exploit their power, and were going to cross the border using ox-drawn wagons. On the eve of the invasion, Lord Chelmsford had declared martial law along the borders with Zululand. The Boers and the settlers who fought alongside this army met with Chelmsford and advised him to adopt the standard laager once inside enemy territory, a proven technique of holding out against vast numbers of warriors. Chelmsford ignored this advice from people who regarded as lower on the imperial ladder, but also because it took a great deal of time and effort to wheel the wagons into a circle, then outspan the oxen and even longer to reverse this procedure and inspan. He was going to learn a dreadful lesson in a few days and would begin laagering his troops as advised but too late for 1500 of his men. He had initially planned to break his 17 000 strong army in to five columns and to invade Zululand from different points, all joining up to converge at Cetshwayo kaMpande’s Great Place, oNdini — modern day Ulundi. By breaking up the columns, Chelmsford was hoping they would move faster across wet Zululand. He was forced to trim the number of columns down to 3 - the same number of columns in a Zulu attack with their two horns and a central chest tactic. These two combative nations were deploying similar ideas, the centre crashing into the foe as the two wings fold around them from the sides like the thumbs pressed together and hands throttling an enemy. It was in the area of intelligence however that Cetshwayo was ahead of Chelmsford. Whereas the British had no idea about where the Zulu army was, once the British entered Zululand, Cetshwayo was provided daily updates about the movement of his enemy. Even the smaller reconnaissance patrols were under scrutiny. He had a network of spies throughout the region, from beyond southern Natal all the way to Delagoa Bay, and into the Transvaal. If you’ve listened to this series you’ll remember how the Zulu and other military societies like the Basotho and amaNdebele valued accurate information at a time of war. Zulu spies were extremely detailed gatherers of data, an oral society after all prides itself on being able to memorize long lists of facts and figures. The number of troops, horses, guns, the direction of movement, the names of the commanders, even their character type all flowed into the Zulu heartland and Cetshwayo and his counsellors hungrily consumed the data.

Sir Bartle Frere’s ultimatum to Cetshwayo kaMpande of 11 January 1879 was about to expire. Last episode I explained the reasons behind Frere’s fevered decision, egged on as he was by Sir Theophilus Shepstone whose shadow looms large over the history of Natal - and South Africa. Cetshwayo’s diplomacy had relied on the British supporting him against the claims of the Boers to his territory to the north west, already volatile by Mpande’s reign, now it was going to set off one of the most unique wars of the colonial period. The Boers, Swazi and the Zulu all claimed this zone, rich as it was in reddish deep soil, around Phongola, Ntombe, Mkhondo. Beautiful territory too, it must be said, the deep riverine bush, open plains between, flat topped high mountains. In summer its warm, in winter, waterless, cold. The Zulu relied on seasonally moving their cattle up to these highlands in spring, and down to lower reaches of the hills in autumn. The Swazi would do the same if they could, and conflict over this land extended way back before the Boers rolled onto the landscape. Because the Disputed Territory was so far north, Natal authorities found it impossible to control any movement here, and as you heard last episode, their Border Commission report ruled that the land belonged to the Zulu and that the Boers had no legal status there. But Shepstone who was now Administrator of the annexed Transvaal, wanted to curry favor with the Boers and Frere wanted the various colonies and republics of South Africa to form a confederation. Cetshwayo was standing in his way, along with Pedi chief, Sekhukhuni. The last Eastern Cape Frontier War had ended, the amaXhosa were thought of as a defeated nation, while by now the British also regarded the Basotho as benign, so the industrialised military might of the British empire swiveled increasingly towards Zululand. Cetshwayo was walking a delicate line through the 1870s, frustrated internally by having no glorious campaign to prove he’d bloodied his men in a fantastic war, although defeating the Swazi, sort of, seizing a few mountain fortresses in the Lubombo range. These were on the margins of the Boer and Swazi, it was where Zibhebhu of the Nyawo lived. It was where Dingane had died if you recall — so the capture of the territory was a feather in Cetshwayo’s cap. While Cetshwayo brooded about his northern reaches, it was the murder of two Zulu women I mentioned last episode that was seized upon by the Natal Authorities as a part of the many pretexts to go to war. Cetshwayo was well aware of the value of firearms and horses. By 1878 there were 20 000 muskets in Zululand, but these were used like a throwing spear, and the stabbing spear was still the preferred method of dispatching your opponent. The stabbing was the principle of washing the spear, soaking it in your enemies blood, thus entering the hallowed portal of manhood. If your regiment did enough washing, then the King would announce that the amabutho had permission to marry and the man could don a hearing. So in a sense, successfully wielding a spear led directly to a sanctioned marriage, and the ability to create sons and daughters. The spear was a symbol of procreation if you like. Such a system had global resonances. In the homesteads of Zululand in 1878 as the build up to war took place, the senior commanders and chiefs were aware of the tide of colonialism washing up against their military system. It was in terms of tactics that the coming war that would be the greatest undoing of the Zulu system. All of these were overtaken by a more modern state or the machinery of empire and the pressure of time. The Spartans lost their supremacy after Leuctra (LOO-ktruh) in 371 BCE, their military culture fading under Macedonian and then Roman rule. The Aztec Empire was obliterated by the Spanish conquest in 1521. The Mongol empire fractured within a century of Genghis Khan’s death, its unity dissolved into regional khanates.

Episode 247 launches us into an intense period. We’re going to travel to the border between the Zulu kingdom and the Transvaal because there’s trouble brewing. When you hear what shenanigans were planned by British Governor Sir Bartle Frere, you probably won’t believe it. His partner in crime was Sir Theophilus Shepstone who in 1877, had just completed thirty years service as Secretary for Native Affairs in Natal. For the Zulu, the transformation of the Native Affairs Secretary into the Administrator of the newly annexed Transvaal was a serious development. As historian Jeff Guy points out, it destroyed the diplomatic link forged between Cetshwayo kaMpande and Shepstone at a particularly sensitive moment in history. Previously, Shepstone had been sympathetic to the Zulu in their border dispute with the Boers, but once the Natal official took office in the Transvaal, that sentiment shifted. The pressure of trying to reconcile the Boers to their newly annexed state was too much for Shepstone — he did not have the emotional courage nor the courage of his convictions to balance the needs and wants of both the Boers and the Zulu. “He turned his coat in the most shameless manner…” one Colonial Office official by the name of Fairfield is quoted as writing in a minute to Edward Stanley the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs after the War. Sir Bartle Frere the British High Commissioner in Cape Town, was determined to eradicate what he thought of as the Zulu threat. He was still busy sorting out the Ninth Frontier War against the Xhosa, and watching the Pedi battle the Boers in the north Eastern Transvaal. While that irritating side-show .. at least in Frere’s mind .. continued, here was Cetshwayo openly defying his Native Affairs man in Natal. Cetshwayo approached Natal’s lieutenant Governor Sir Henry Bulwer — after whom the town of Bulwer is named. By now it was clear the Zulu relationship with Shepstone was done. Bulwer had monitored what was going on and he was deeply disturbed by developments. It was ironic that the Zulu chief was turning to a British official as a mediator of sorts. Bulwer appointed a boundary commission to probe the dispute between the Boers and the Zulu.To Frere’s surprise, the commission found that the Boers of the Transvaal had no right to be in Zululand. Bulwer’s next dispatches concluded that Natal could maintain a peaceful policy towards the Zulu nation because it hadn’t violated any agreements with Natal and the Transvaal. Frere was dumbstruck, and so dumbstruck, he was struck dumb. He kept the report a secret for five months.

The year is1878 - and Cape Governor Sir Sir Bartle Frere is throwing the empire’s weight around South Africa. Let’s put ourselves in his shoes because some historians say he had a formidable Machiavellian personality, full of fatal overconfidence, too used to having his own way and to ignoring the magnitude of obstacles confronting him. One of those perceived obstacles was Zulu king, Cetshwayo kaMpande. Crowned in 1873 after the death of his father, Mpande kaSenzangakhona, Cetshwayo presided over a squabbling nation. His great place, Ondini, is close to where Ulundi is today. It was vast, elliptical in shape, stretching from 650 metres in one axis, to 507 in another. The outer circumference of his ikhanda, the royal residence, was over two kilometers long. The second part of his great place was a smaller group of ikhanda, and called emaNgweni. The unusual point about emaNgweni is that the principal hut was actually a western style house. The Norwegian missionaries at Empangeni had helped build this, consisting of three rooms with glass windows, along with wooden doors and whitewashed walls, under a thatched roof. Cetshwayo went a step further at Ondini, where his special residence was build out of sun dried bricks burned black. These materials were given to Cetshwayo by Norwegian Mission Society’s Reverend Ommund Oftebro. Ommund sounds like the uMondi, the Zulu word for a sweet, aromatic herb. This is a herb used to treat flatulance, ie farting, so there’s some irony in the fact that Reverend Ommund Oftebro’s mission station was acalled uMondi. It’s on the outskirts of Eshowe. This black bricked building at Ondini was larger than his other retreat, four wallpapered rooms, glazed windows and verandahs at the back and the front. It also had two outside doors with locks. The rooms contained European furniture, a washstand and a large mirror. King Cetshwayo would hold court in this house, tending to the affairs of state, consulting his councillors. At night, the doors would be locked and guarded by two women, armed with guns. Yes folks, women with guns. Cetshwayo’s chief gun-runner and a chief himself, John Dunne the English trader, personally trained Zulu VIP guards in how to shoot. The bodyguards would be instructed in musketry and were armed with short carbines, ideal for close quarter bodyguarding. Dunn took the women into the veld every day in the late afternoon, and target practice would follow which included peppering the local aloes. This echelon of women bodyguards accompanied Cetshwayo when he visited his chiefs ikhanda around Zululand with the intention of protecting him when the male amabutho were away. One of his maids in waiting, Nomguqo Dlamini, told of her life in the ikhanda in a rare book called Servant of Two Kings by Paulina Dlamini - she became a Christian and changed her name. The book is full of information about day to day life in the late 1870s, how the gatekeeper at onDini woke everyone by calling out the king’s praises, Cetshwayo would emerge after the women of the isigodlo had swept up the yard, then he often went off his sporting guns to hunt birds. Later, the king would head off to a small enclosure in the Royal Kraal where he would stand on a stone and be washed with water from the Mbilane stream, and rubbed down. The young men who attended the king were trusted sons of senior chiefs of the Xulu line, as well as other sons of Mnyamana. At the meeting of amabutho warriors in 1875, Cetshwayo had granted permission for the INdlondlo ibutho to put on their headrings and marry. These were men in the 40s, the iNdlondlo regiment had been formed way back in 1857, and these men had waited patiently for their turn to take wives. The problem was, he gave them permission to seek brides from the iNgcugce ibutho, where the girls there had been born between 1850 and 1853. They were far younger than the grizzled warriors seeking their hands in marriage.

Sir Bartle Frere had sailed into South Africa in March 1877 - lauded as a great British administrator in India. He arrived just in time to witness Sir Theophilus Shepstone seize, sorry, annex the Transvaal under the noses of the incredulous and in equal amounts, contemptuous Boers. Frere was another of Carnarvon’s boys, determined to enforce confederation onto south Africa. He was regarded as one of the most effective English civil servants in India, keeping the vital province of Sind quiet during the recent Indian Mutiny, and as Governor of Bombay, now Mumbai, he had been instrumental in upgrading the vast city’s infrastructure. He was by accounts, a man of integrity and quiet, diffident even as Frank Walsh puts it. The British Royal Family were friends, he was a member of the Privy Council and was showered with honours. India was compared to South Africa, it was diverse, more populous yes, but in India he dealt with sophisticated Indian Rulers and merchants. Carnarvon regarded Sir Bartle Frere as the ideal man to settle the quarrelsome and individualistic South African communities. But he was Indian in his experience, and not African. By contrast to the sophisticated Indian Rulers, South Africans were and are uncomplicated and pugnacious. All its people were the same then as we are now. Whatever our backgrounds, we remain pugnacious Africans, English, Afrikaners, Blacks, Coloureds, Indians and tick whatever box suits you on form XYZ. It would take only a few years trying to govern the ungovernable before he disintegrated in delusion, self-deception, irrationality and apparent senility. Frere had barely settled into his governor’s armchair to read Shepstone’s report into the latest challenges in the Transvaal — when the Ninth Frontier War burst into flame in the Eastern Cape.The amaMfengu had taken rapidly to the opportunities afforded by being part of the Cape Colony, and were also taking to urban trade in a revolutionary way. The Gcaleka resented the success of the amaMfengu, as well as their relationship with settlers. The Gcaleka were suffering the effects of the last war, the longest Frontier War and also the most vicious. Across the Kei, alcoholism was spreading, and poverty seeped through every household — made far worse by the actions of Nongqawuse’s cattle killing episode. What pushed everyone over the edge was mother nature, a series of devastating droughts across the Transkei destabilised the situation further. As Historian De Kiewiet says, in South Africa the heat of drought easily becomes the fever of war. What was supposed to be a wedding celebration in September 1877 turned into a bar fight when the tensions emerged after Gcaleka harassed the amMfengu in attendance. Things got a lot worse later that day when some Gcaleka men attacked a Cape Colony police outpost manned by amaMfengu in the main. Just a bit of trival violence said local officials, moving along, let the local police handle the matter. But back in Cape Town, Sir Bartle Frere sensed his moment partly because of his belief that Great Britain was spreading civilisation and eradicating barbarians, extending black rule over blacks, you know old chap, guiding them up the ladder of evolution and improving their standards of living through good administration and economic prosperity. Chief Mgolombane Sarhili kaHintsa of the amaGcaleka royal line was summoned by Frere but he had seen his ancestors summoned only to be thrown onto Robin Island. He ignored the summons so Sir Bartle promptly declared war on the amaXhosa. This was totally against the advice of the locals. All that Frere’s warning did is prompt the warriors among his people to gather and mobilise. Cape Prime Minister, John Molteno refused to sanction any invasion of the Transkei when he heard that Frere had declared war on Sarhili. At a meeting between Molteno and Frere, the British Governor promised that imperial troops would stay put and not cross into Gcalekaland.

Episode 244 and Victorian popular fiction author H Rider Haggard features as one of the main characters of this tale. Rider Haggards’ creation called Allan Quartermain appeared in 18 novels - the first in what has become known as is the Lost World genre. George Lucas and Philip Kaufman copied the Allan Quartermain template for Indiana Jones character - as well as the basic storylines for movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark. While King Solomon’s Mines is Rider Haggard’s most popular work, Allan Quartermain has since reappeared in movies in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which gave his books a bit of a push. His novels, which blended exploration, myth, and early ideas of evolution, also influenced the subconscious of his generation, resonating with spiritual and psychological themes that were explored by figures like Jung and Freud. Furthermore, his work reflects and grapples with late Victorian anxieties, including imperial politics, the changing role of religion, and burgeoning notions of race and empire. Right now, we’re saddling up with Theophilus Shepstone in Pietermaritzburg - it’s 1877. If you recall last episode, Transvaal President Burgers had gone to war against baPedi chief Sekhukhuni, which ended in a stalemate and reports of atrocities committed by German lead mercenaries. Burgers had already complained in England about their treatment of the Boer claims to the diamond fields - and the Colonial office had coughed up 90 000 pounds as compensation. You could call it a bribe, because that’s what it was. The boers accepted the compensation, but did not back down on their claims to land in the vicinity of the Transvaal, including baPedi land. As long as the Transvaal remained receptive to the confederation idea at least in Carnarvon’s mind, there was no real conflict to deal with amongst the local officials. But there was growing tension between an historian JJ Froude and Garnet Wolseley for example. Froude had been sent on a fact-finding mission to the colonies by Carnarvon and he became a surprising advocate for the Boers and the Free State and Transvaal Republics. His advice to Carnarvon was to let the states handle their own problems, as they resented interference from Downing Street. Cape Governor Sir Henry Barkly had been sending Carnarvon reports drawn largely from pro-annexationist newspapers in the Transvaal and the Cape Colony. These implied that the Transvaal was nearing a state of anarchy as a result of its war with the Sekukuni's baPedi. Eagerly lapping all this up was Sir Garnet Wolseley who was the very epitome of the Stiff upper lip Brit, a military officer and administrator, represented the opposite, more interventionist imperial view. In late December 1876, Sir Theophilus Shepstone departed from Pietermaritzburg in Natal with a small, almost symbolic, escort of just 25 Natal Mounted Police and a handful of officials including the young H Rider Haggard. Just as an aside, Haggard was not being paid for his duties as Shepstone’s secretary. Work experience I guess you’d call it. However, Shepstone's secret instructions were far more decisive: if he deemed it necessary and opportune, he was to annex the territory to the British Crown. The Transvaal had no easy revenue base, and Shepstone introduced new taxes on both black and white Transvalers, while his administrative reforms chafed the Boers. Most resented they now had no elected representation under British rule and resistance started almost immediately.

By 1876 the Sotho, Tswana, Venda, Pedi, the amaXhosa had all managed to secure for themselves a fairly easy access to firearms. The Griqualand Diamond fields ignited what could be called a small arms race on the veld. There was supposedly an arms embargo on blacks instituted by the British government two decades before, but this was frequently broken. In the Cape colony and Griqualand west diamond fields, the trade in firearms depended on two technicalities. Importers of these weapons had to deposit a bond which indicated to whom they were going to sell the guns. Because the colonies used these bonds or tariffs which is probably a more accurate description, as a source of revenue, the procedure was applied creatively. The second technicality was that Africans needed a magistrates permit to buy guns. Because the demand for labour was so extreme particularly in the diamond fields, this permit system was ignored by most of the miners. The winter of 1876 settled hard across the Transvaal. At night, the frost lay white along the banks of the Steelpoort River, the cattle breath rising like smoke in the early dawn. By mid-morning the sun was sharp, the air brittle, and the mountains to the east seemed to shimmer in their haze. Shimmering today are the minerals mined here, chrome, platinum, vanadium. These are the Leolo mountains, bastion of the Pedi under King Sekhukhune I. Across the valleys his people had built stone-walled settlements, ringed with thorn stockades, their cattle kraals protected by rifle pits dug into the hillsides. To the south, in Pretoria, President Thomas François Burgers prepared his republic for war. He was no soldier—trained instead in theology, prone to long speeches, dressed in sombre black. But he was determined to show that the Transvaal could still assert itself after years of debt, political squabbling, and military vascillation. On 16 May 1876, the Volksraad declared war on Sekhukhune. The long-simmering contest between the Pedi and the Boer republic was about to reach a climax.The Pedi kingdom was no stranger to conflict. Under Sekwati, Sekhukhune’s father, they had fought off repeated attacks during the mid-nineteenth century. Their stone fortresses had turned back Boer commandos in the 1840s and 1850s. Sekwati had once been besieged in Thaba Mosega, surviving by ingenuity, patience, and the determination of his people. Just a few weeks later came the episode that etched itself into Pedi memory. Johannes Dinkwanyane, half-brother of Sekhukhune led his people at the settlement of Mafolofolo. They were Christians, linked to missionary networks, yet fiercely loyal to Pedi sovereignty. In mid-July, Swazi forces allied to the Boers descended on Mafolofolo. The defenders fought desperately. After two days of fighting, Johannes was gravely wounded on 13 July and died three days later.By late August the war had collapsed into stalemate. President Burgers’ grand promise of quick victory had evaporated among the ridges of the Leolo mountains. The commando had withdrawn, Fort Krugerpos was thrown up in haste, and burghers grumbled about lost time and wasted cattle. The republic was broke, its men unwilling, its president mocked. It was into this void that Conrad von Schlickmann arrived.

Episode 242 is about putting ploughs into the ground, how the rural areas of much of the country was experiencing something of an agricultural revolution. It’s rather a fascinating tale, because there are tremendous contradictions in what we’re going to talk about this episode. As usual, there we will need to combine a global story with our local story —without doing so would be to stunt our awareness of the strands and tendrils that spread and connect. By the 1850s, Great Britain was manipulating trade and military as well as political power as reciprocating elements. This is a technique adopted by pretty much every empire since before Carthage. Political influence was used so as to extend and secure free exchange, in Britain’s case commerce and anglicisation, spread political influence and welded alliances. As Lord Palmerston so aptly pointed out “…It is the business of Government to open and secure the roads for the Merchant…” Antiquated regimes were its enemy and foreign tariffs were its enemy, as anyone knows, the greatest enemy of free trade are tariffs. Empires were broken, the gouty and outdated Chinese, the religion-strangled Turkey, innumerable sheikdoms, sultanates and chieftancies were drawn into the invisible British empire of informal sway. When merchants manage affairs instead of men with guns, it’s harder to pin down the essence of power — and also the dangers. The results of this grand vision were not encouraging by the 1870s and the Victorians were less sure of their panacea for both Asia and Africa. Among the ancient and invincibly conservative Confucian and Islamic rulers, no effective westernising collaborators had been found. The Tai’ping rebellion in China and the growing chaos in Muslim states appeared never ending. It was the United States that was gobbling up immigrants — most of Britain’s emigrants went there, and the Victorians bought and sold more there than in any other single country. It had dawned on the British political elite that their commerical experience impressed a single portentous fact — that their most successful trading associations with the exception of the Indian Empire, were with Europeans transplanted abroad. They accounted for around 70 percent of all her investment overseas. The white communities in the temperate zones had the outlook and the institutions favourable to progress which the Asiatics and Africans seemed to lack. They offered customers with European tastes and money to spend. Mutual self-interest with whites of their empire meant private business of Great Britain commingled freely with that of Greater Britain and the once-colonial societies of the New World — the Americans and many in South America too. At the same time, the colonists were growing more bitter about Downing Street control and self-government appeared one solution. The aim was to avert the loss of more colonies and more American Wars of independence. So by the 1870s, confederated Canada, responsibly governed Australia and the Cape were regarded as constitutional embodiments of collaboration between British and colonial interests — all working at their best. The number of trading stores in the Transkei quadrupled to a few hundred, and all of this meant that there was a major qualitative shift in the cumsumption patterns of Africans. New permanent wants replaced needs, metal was now preferred to traditionally crafted pots and baskets, the cow-hide kaross was replaced by the Witney blanket, ploughs and all manner of tools flooded into these developing farms. Around South Africa, energy seemed to be surging. Take the highveld for example. The sour veld of the Harrismith district to be precise. Largely used for summer grazing, the farmers here often moved their herds into Natal every autumn. Below the Berg as they put, OnderBerg. Underberg.

Episode 241 and we’re back with the diamond miners and their Kaias and Cocopans. More about this in a minute. A big thank you to Donald Paterson who’s great-great-great grandfather founded Standard Bank, he’s sent a couple of pictures I’m going to use in my next newsletter. And to Rob Bernstein who’s producing a photo-book and who’s asked me to write an epilogue, thanks for the coffee chat and the opportunity. Last we heard about plans for South African Confederation, this episode ties up with the momentum building towards the invasion of Zululand by the British, and almost simultaneously, the first Anglo-Boer War. We’ve entered the mid-1870s where all manner of momentums are also building up globally as the European powers jostled for African land in order to feed their industrial centres, and their geopolitical ambitions. The panic on the Vienna Stock exchange in May 1873 caused shares to decline worldwide and ushered in the 1873-1879 Great Depression. The Suez Canal was also close to bankcruptcy because there weren’t enough steam ships in the world and the canal was better adapted to steam. The Khedive of Egypt was forced to sell his shares in the Suez Canal Company to the British Government with help from bankers and the Rothschild family. In Britain the downturn was going to last until much later - the late 1890s, and diamond prices were also falling. Despite this, South Africa was in a bit of a boom period. In the diamond fields, the diggers were facing a problem and it was about geology. They had been digging in what they called yellow ground which was kimberlite rock. Over millions of years, the kimberlite in the top part of the volcanic pipe was exposed to the surface and weathered by the elements, including water and air. This process oxidized the iron-rich minerals in the rock, giving it a soft, friable, yellowish-brown color. Because it was so soft, it was easy for the early diggers to excavate with simple picks and shovels and to sieve for diamonds. But as they dug deeper by 1873 they passed through the weathered yellow ground and hit the un-oxidized, fresh kimberlite rock below. This rock, which they called "blue ground" due to its hard, bluish-gray color, was much more compact and difficult to mine. Its hardness led many early prospectors to abandon their claims, mistakenly believing they had reached the end of the diamond-bearing ground. The discovery that the blue ground contained even richer deposits of diamonds was a pivotal moment that led to the development of the large-scale industrial mining operations at Kimberley. And Cecil John Rhodes returned from his failed attempt at obtaining a law degree in England to rejoin his brother on the diamond fields to take advantage of all these changes. Jerome Babe wrote in his journal how he rose at the break of day, then dug until 9am. Breakfast was taken until 10am, when the diggers reconvened. Most diggings had two white men and five black men who could get through fifteen cart loads a day. The black workers would wash enough gravel in four hours for the mainly white diggers to sort through in ten hours. At 1pm they all knocked off for lunch until two pm, then washing would end at four pm. That wasn’t the end of the day. The washers, the black labourers, would head back to the mining area to gather material for the next day’s washes and many miners continued working when there was moon, carrying the gravel to the river for the next day’s washing. The diggers committees which had managed these mines was now an unsustainable way to administrate claims. Claim-jumping which took place when a mine was unworked for more than three days had increased instability and litigation was accelerating. It looked chaotic because the rights to small-claim ownership was being circumented by monopolies using fronts, straw men as they were known. Another very old South African tradition. Griqualand West Lieutenant Governor Richard Southey wanted state regulation.

This is episode 240 and our swivels to the north - a Great Apostle for Confederation and the pre-Scramble for Africa Geopolitical Omlette. Part of this story is a continuation of the Langalibalele Affair in Natal which had created the perception that the authorities there were unable to cope. This provided an opportunity for Colonial office back in England to consider radical moves like forcing through a Confederation of South African colonies. Throughout the 1870s, Lord Carnarvon the British Secretary of State for the Colonies attempted to unite both the colonies and the Boer Republics into a self-governing — settler self-governing — dominion under the British flag. This was a somewhat grandiose scheme and there’s a heady debate amongst historians about why Carnarvon tried to do this. We’re going to take a closer look at what was going on internationally and how South Africa factored into this global picture because its part of the story. The concept of a confederated South Africa was obviously opposed by the Boer Republics. More significantly, it was also opposed by the Molteno Administration of the Cape Colony which was the biggest and the richest South African state by far. Liberal humanist historians believe Carnarvon wanted confederation to protect blacks from the colonials - but that’s a shallow version of events. It was in Natal where the largest portion of the white population favoured confederation but even there lieutenant Governor Chilly Pine described an ‘apathy and indifference’ to the policy by some. John X Merriman who was a member of Molteno’s cabinet said “The fact is that the cry for Confederation is purely an extraneous one, born in the brain of Lord Carnarvon, local prejudice and local jealousy tending the other way…” Molteno and his Merriman were focused on infrastructure, work had begun on the Cape Parliamentary buildings in 1874, government funding of education was legislated, and the Molteno Government also established the South African public library system.  Nevertheless, in other circles in South Africa the call for Federation was growing — take the merchants of Port Elizabeth and a large section of English-speaking Natalians for example. With regard to the Port Elizabethans, the easterners as they were known, it was as matter of being dominated by western based politicians — western as in Western Cape just for clarification. Natal had yet to receive responsible government, unlike the Cape. Given the various political currents surging about the region, why did Carnarvon pursue the idea of Conferederation so aggressively? Theophilus Shepstone could be one reason. The Veteran of Natal’s Native Affairs had met Carnarvon and converted him to what historian RL Cope calls an instrument of the sub-imperialist forces emanating from Natal. There was as paradox here. The tiny white minority of Natal was fearful of the black majority and therefore harboured impulses to bring further tracts of African territory under British Control. It was this demographic imbalance that drove the colonials voice, but it was a contradictory position for any imperial government to take. Why support a tiny group — unlike in the Cape which had a vibrant economy and was dominated by settler interests both financially and demographically. For Natalians, the perpetual labour shortage seemed insurmountable, maybe a forced union of some sort would open up other colonies where labour could be exploited. With both Carnarvon and Shepstone believing in Confederation, trifling over black labour appeared to be the least of their challenges. Furthermore, in Port Elizabeth, a powerful voice supporting their position was also developing rapidly. And he had cash to burn. That was founder of the Standard Bank, John Paterson. As a leading Port Elizabeth merchant, the Cape Argus described him as “A great apostle of confederation..”

When we left off last episode amaHlubi chief Langalibalele and a few hundred warriors had sought shelter inside Basotholand, crossing the Drakensberg Mountains through Bushmans Pass in November 1873. When the British tried to send columns to corner him, one of the columns had been stopped by amaHlubi at the pass where five of the British troops had been killed, three young Natal Carbineers, a Basotho tracker and a translator. This event had shocked the settlers of Natal, and in response by Lieutenant Governor Chilly Pine began a campaign to destroy the amaHlubi and amaNgwe in their two locations, west of the town of where Mooi River is today. Pine declared Martial Law. Most of the amaNgwe and amaHlubi men fled, and the British rounded up women and children and the elderly. The women and children were placed in the charge of friendly chiefs in the up-country districts, while the old men were sent to Pietermarizburg to be kept under surveillance by other friendly black chiefs. On the 17th December, as a kind of afterthought, Pine followed this up with a declaration that all amaNgwe were now officially dispossessed of their land. The arbitrary killings of both clans continued mostly by the African levies, under the watchful eyes of colonial officers who appeared to be egging them on. Major Anthony Durnford, a professional soldier and engineer who’d been wounded by the amaHlubi during the battle of Bushman’s Pass earlier in November was one of the few who spoke up against the bloodletting. “There have been sad sights …” he reported “…women and children butchered by our black allies too often unhappily by the permission and encouragement of the white leaders… old men too … the burnt villages — dead women … it was horrible.” Two columns of volunteers and African levies were now searching for Langalibalele. One headed to East Griqualand, while the other rode back to Bushman’s Pass following the spoor left by the amaHlubi cattle. The amaHlubi warriors had taken all their cattle into Basotholand to join their chief. Natal authorities were offering a one pound reward per warrior captured, and 100 cattle for Langalibalele, dead or alive. The amaHlubi chief was deep in Basotholand, close to the Senqu river, the Orange, about fifty kilometres west of the Bushman River Pass. By early January several hundred men and about 7 000 cattle assembled under his command. He had no clear plan about what to do, his original idea was to escape from the British then ponder next steps. But now he was in Sotho territory, very much out of his depth. Boers in the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek and the Free State formed commandos and sent them to the borders in case Langalibalele showed up — or in case any of the chiefs that surrounded their territories decided to join in. Eastern Cape and Natal English farmers sent their women and children into towns, battening down their farm hatches. Their fears were heightened by the role that Basotholand was appearing to play. In the minds of the colonists, this mountain kingdom was thought of as the Central South African powder Magazine — a place no-one could control, full of guns now bought by workers on the diamond mines and farms. It was in the heartland of south Africa, annexed by the British in 1868, ruled by a new king Letsie who had succeeded Moshoeshoe. Although annexed to the Cape in 1871, it remained a highly unstable land in the minds of colonials. Langalibalele had no idea of all of this as he considered his next steps inside Basotholand. The British had also mobilised hundreds of troops who boarded the HMS Rattlesnake in Cape Town and were en route to bolster Natal while a large police force rode into Basotholand from the Cape’s eastern Frontier region. IN East Griqualand, Adam Kok’s Griqua also mobilised in support of the British. The amaHlubi chief eventually handed himself over to the Basotholand chief Molapo and was taken back to Pietermaritzburg for his trial.

This is episode 238 and it’s going to be full of legal back and forth, all about the Langalibalele Rebellion, another little war as the London times called it — it’s action at Bushman’s River Pass after which British engineers will be sent to blow up bits of the Drakensberg. In 1873 Benjamin Chilly Campbell Pine was reappointed as Lieutenant-Governor of Natal. Pine was a career officer in the British Colonial Services, and this was the second time he was taking up the post of Lieutenant Governor in Natal. His first stint was logged between April 1850 to March 1855 and Pinetown on the hills above Durban is named after him. Then he spent time in the Gold Coast in Ghana, then the West Indies, as Governor of the Leeward Islands and Antigua. His second stint was cut short largely because of how he was going to deal with the Langalibalele affair. Two other colonials will feature through our story this episode, one being Theophilus Shepstone the Secretary of Native Affairs in Natal, and the other was Bishop John Colenso who was a liberal humanist and the implacable enemy of most British settlers. Pine's administration had to contend with the "Shepstone System," a policy of indirect rule developed by Theophilus Shepstone. This controversially separated African and European populations and was a dominant force in Natal's governance during Pine's tenure. While Pine and Shepstone collaborated, their administrations also faced criticism from white settlers over issues of land, labor, and the financing of native policy. The other main character of our tale today was Langalibalele, the hereditary chief of the Hlubi tribe from around 1836. After fleeing Zululand in 1849, he and his fellow refugees were granted land by the colonial authorities in the Escourt District, west of the town along the Msuluzi and Mtshezi Rivers. The town was laid out by Colonel Estcourt In 1847 and named after the British officer. The land the amaHlubi were handed was technically not for free, their obligations included protecting the colony from the San Raiders some galloping in from as far away as the Maluti Mountains. Langalibalele and his people were part of the Shepstone System, granted their own territory seperated from white farms. Ten years after arriving in their fertile rolling hills, Langalibalele headed off to Iswatini, Swaziland, where he’d fetched his head wife, uMzamose in 1857. There was some confusion about what the amaHlubi were expected to do. Essentially, their role was to form a buffer zone in the region and were even presented with some guns for that purpose, and once jobs opened up on the diamond mines, hundreds of amaHlubi men headed off to labour in Griqualand West, returning with valuable goods like horses, and more guns. The people flourished through the 1860s and into the early 1870s and were at peace with the colonial farmers, growing from 7 000 to 10 000 souls, with 15 000 head of cattle. The original 364 square kilometres of their land extended to more than 700 square kilometres. But the relationship with the British was riven by confusion and distrust. Natal was isolated from the hinterland by the formidabble Drakensberg Mountains, and was surrounded by black nations, thus increasing the paranoia of the settlers. The amaThembu and Xhosa to the south were respected, not to mention the amaZulu to the north East. Communication with the Cape was slow along the few roads and by sea, there were also few transport corridors in Natal itself which engendering a feeling of insecurity among the colonists.In Early March 1873 John Macfarlane singled Langalibalele and the amaHlubi out and demanded the registration of their guns in terms of Law 5. Langalibalele said he was too busy and suffering from an illness, and could not be expected to head off across such as vast area looking for his 2000 men and counting their guns. A war was brewing.

Although responsible government had come comparatively late for the Cape Colony, the transition in many ways was still too early. It had come twenty years after New Zealand and the state of Victoria in what was to become Australia. The easterners were only partly reconciled to the rule by a Cape Town elite, widely differing personalities made cooperation difficult. The staunchly liberal William Porter was opposed by the stiff proto-racist Robert Godlonton, there were rising stars like Francis William Reitz junior, the legislative leader of Beaufort West at the age of 28 — and the six foot four giant John X Merriman who was erratic, but his instinct for decency and his broad human empathy made him attractive to most who met him - Boer and Brit. He was of his time of course, intellectually convinced of the brotherhood of man as long at it meant white brotherhood. Like many colonists of the period, he found it impossible to deal with black south Africans on a sympathetic basis. There was the less attractive Gordon Sprigg, conceited and small in stature, big in ambition, but capable of folly and deception as historian Frank Welsh explains. There was the impressive Lion of Beaufort - John Molteno, who I have mentioned before, the first leader of the Cape when it achieved responsible government. Molteno owned one hundred thousand acres of well-tended land, and ran a thriving business. John Henry De Villiers was also in this first group of Cape leaders, already distinguishing himself also well off, the future Lord De Villiers, or De Villiers Graaf. Born in 1842, his public life was to fall in the most complicated and controversial period of South Africa’s history. I have his biography written by Eric Walker, and it is a running commentary from his point of view on South African history. Two interests dominated his life - law and federation. By the time he died his influence on South African law would be arguably greater than any other person, presiding over the senior court for more than forty years. He also took a keen interest in politics, mostly directed towards the idea of federating South African states and colonies. De Villiers had what was called a balanced affection for both Britain and South Africa. Speak of an affection for Britain but not necessarily balanced with an affection for Africa, were the English colonists of Natal. Blacks who owned land in Natal were technically allowed to vote, as in the Cape, but every statagem was employed to weaklen this right. There was a high property qualification in Natal, but other restrictions had been added through the 1860s, when black Natalians were not allowed even to petition for admission to the electoral roll until they’d cleared a series of hurdles. Seven years of exemption from customary law being the first hurdle, then three white men had to sign approval of the black Natalian gaining the vote, which was a complete negation of the colour-blind principle which was supposed to be driving this political right. Once the black Natalian had managed to clear those hurdles, believe it or not, there was one more. He had to seek permission from the Lieutenant Governor. The list of black voters in Natal for this period was an A4 Page long. So it was deeply ironic then that one of Zulu King Cetshwayo kaMpande’s most trusted chiefs - and one of his most important, was Englishman John Dunn. He was the antithesis of everything that the urbanised English settler espoused - living and marrying into the Zulu people, his descendents fiercely proud members of a large clan today. He elicited from those around him the phrase “going native” which is one of the most insidious relics of colonial thought.

The sound of mining — And the sound of money — All across Griqualand West, tent towns mushroomed overnight, teeming with fortune seekers from around the world. Tens of thousands by 1873, all descending on a patch of dusty ground that was soon to become a beacon of development on the landscape. Kimberley. In the modern world, industrial diamonds have hammered the industry business model, China overwhelmingly dominates global production of synthetic industrial diamonds accounting for about 90% of the total total. But in the 19th century, diamonds were still as rare as as teetotaler in a Kimberley tavern. This episode we’ll hear about the entrepreneurs both black and white, and the future Robber Baron and colonial Dreamer, Cecil John Rhodes. It was in May 1871 after the harvest at the Rhodes brothers cotton farm in Richmond in Natal had come in, that Rhodes began his long career of harvesting the right connections. Brother Herbert sailed to Natal two years earlier, and now Cecil was helping manage the 250 acre farm, helped by 30 black labourers. Herbert however had heard about the riches discovered in Griqualand West and headed off to the Diamond Fields in early 1871, leaving Cecil to run the show in Natal. Young Cecil attended the annual meeting of the colonies agricultural society where he exhibited samples of their cotton, in attendance were Natal’s colonial elite. There were long after-dinner political speeches, all ending with a toast. IN the haze of cigar and tobacco smoke, and a haze of multiple shots of whiskey, one settler called for a man to offer the traditional toast to the Ladies. So it was ironic that Cecil Rhodes rose in response, and thus delivered his first ever public speech according to his friend and biographer, Lewis Mitchell. Ironic because Rhodes would never form a initimate relationship with a woman as far as we know . As he grew more powerful, he would always surround himself with young male private secretaries and later would make one - Neville Pickering, the sole beneficiary of his will. In the Victorian era, being openly homosexual was socially unacceptable and illegal, so any such relationships would have been kept private. We are hampered by a lack of personal diaries or revealing letters from Rhodes himself, making it difficult to reach a firm, irrefutable conclusion about his private life. The scale claim-owners did much of their own manual labour, but for the most part the work was done by black labourers, picking at the ground, smashing the bumps of earth and rock, sieving the lime dust through a coarse wire sieve, rubble thrown aside, what remained placed on a sorting table. A small scraper would be used to spread the rock on the tables, scooping after picking the diamonds out, repeat repeat. In early 1872 Herbert went back to their farm in Richmond to welcome yet another brother, Frank, to South Africa. Cecil was left in charge and suffered under the stress, hard labour in a harsh climate, supervising his business, and a sudden death of his friend John Thompson. He was smoking and drinking too much, breathing in too much dust, dehydrated — and collapsed — to be nursed back to health by John Blades Currey’s wife, Mary. He was still only 18 years old and almost died. In his miasmic state, he wrote his will which is prescient, and somewhat theatrical, leaving all his possessions to Britain’s Secretary of State for the colonies, Lord Kimberly instead of his family. New promulgations were thus passed by the miners themselves, black people could not stay in the mining camps for longer than two days without a master, they also had to observe a curfew after 9pm. Punishment for failing to observe these rules, 25 lashes or 10 shillings fine. All this at a time when most of the English-speaking world was repealing lashing.

This is episode 235, and it’s back to high drama circa 1873. Before that just some news .. unbelievable as it may appear, Apple Podcasts has named The History of South Africa pod as one of their top ten Best so Far podcasts of 2025. They have asked me to say so, so this is saying so. An irregular musket salute is in order!! Thanks to my fantastic listeners for helping make this podcast resonate, I am truly grateful. And thus to our story this episode Cetshwayo Glamped and Crowned, Shepstone Stalled, Masiphula Poisoned, it’s early 1873, and King Mpande kaSenzangakhona of the amaZulu has been buried and the process of selecting a new king has begun Cetshwayo kaMpande, his son is to be the new regent. Or is he? This wasn’t a simple matter. Succession disputes had riven the Zulu nation from since Senzangakhona died, the last internal ruction had led to the Zulu Civil War and the shattering battle of Ndondakusuka near the Thukela River in 1856. I dealt with this significant moment in episode 209. Mpande was still king at the time, but Cetshwayo and Mbuyazi, his two eldest sons, were vying to be formally nominated as the king in waiting. Mbuyazi was defeated in the battle, vanquished and killed, leaving Cetshwayo in de facto control of the kingdom, though his father remained king. Mbuyazi's followers, including five other sons of King Mpande, were massacred in the aftermath of the battle. But some escaped. Succession had been murky ever since 1816 when Shaka had supplanted his half-brother and presumptive heir Sigujana. Cetshwayo may have been the eldest son of the King Mpande kaSenzangakhona and many of the izikhulu supported Cetshwayo, but Mpande favoured his next-eldest son Mbuyazi. One of the central characters of our story was John Dunn who had supported Mbuyazi, but switched sides afterwards and was helping Cetshwayo collect firearms by the early 1870s. When Mpande died, Cetshwayo would turn to the British in Natal for recognition, because he faced two major threats. One was the Boers to his north who had taken control over the disputed territory around northern Vryheid, Utrecht, and the foothills of the mountains below Volksrus, and the other threat was internal. Cetshwayo was beholden to some powerful Zulu chiefs in the north, who’d helped him defeat Mbuyazi, and most of these opposed Cetshwayo doing deals with the British. They were traditionalists. The British would disturb the indigenous rituals they said. Cetshwayo saw things differently. He was playing a bigger diplomatic game, aware of the wider powers at play. If he could convince Natal’s commissioner of Native Affairs, Theophilus Shepstone, to ride into his territory and formally crown him king, this would keep the boers at bay, and simultaneously undermine those northern izikhulu who were conducting a whispering campaign against him. In this geopolitical tango, Shepstone understood this power game only too well — he’d been installed in 1846 as Native Commissioner and virtually ruled the black population in Natal — as well as trying to rule the amaZulu north of the Thukela.The once and future king Cetshwayo began to move in July 1873, just before sending word to Shepstone, the period of mourning Mpande’s death now over. After gathering his amabutho regiments, he set off in full chief attire, having packed up his entire oNtini great place. Dozens of his isigodlo girls, his harem carried his goods and chattels. They travelled up the Mhlathuze River, into the thickets which held a vast array of wild game. Cetshwayo ensured that all protocols were followed, including the purification rituals of a Great Hunt, an iHlambo, where the King would be indirectly washed clean by the amaButho washing their spears in blood. All evil influences that had gathered force during the mourning period after Mpande’s death in October 1872 would be dispatched.

I have to say a big thank you to Adi and Janice who hosted me at their farm Kalmoesfontein this week as part of the Swartland Revolution events they’re running— I was invited to give a little talk about Jan Smuts of the Swartland and relished the opportunity to delve deeply into a Great South African’s early life. And to the folks that came to ask questions and be part of the event, thank you too for such a warn reception. We’re going to deal with two main topics in the years 1871 leading into 1872 - One was the installation of Sir John Molteno as the First Prime Minister of the Cape of Good Hope which marked the start of responsible government in the territory. But the other really big event of 1872 was the death of Zulu king Mpande kaSenzangakhona, leaving the way open for Cetshwayo kaMpande to seize the reins of power. It wasn’t going to be that simple of course. Let’s have a quick squizz at what was going on globally in 1871. The Franco-Prussian war ended, leading to the Proclamation the German Empire in January. The North German federation and South German States were united in a single nation state and the King of Prussia was declared as the German Emperor Wilhem the first. Germany officially came into being for the first time. Otto von Bismarck would soon become the First Chancellor of the German Empire. In French Algeria, the Mokrani Rebellion against colonial rule broke out in March 71, in March the Paris Commune was formally established in France. The Commune governed Paris for two months, promoting an anti-religious system, an eclectic mix of many 19th-century schools of thought. Policies included the separation of church and state, the reduction of rent and the abolition of child labor. The Commune closed all Catholic churches and schools in Paris and a mix of reformism and revolutionism took hold — a hodge podge of folks who pushed back against the French establishment. By late May 71 the commune had been crushed in the semaine sanglante, the Bloody Week, where at least 15 000 communards were executed by loyalist troops. More than 43 000 communards were imprisoned. The Paris Commune left an indelible mark on Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels — two men who, in turn, would go on to cast a long, indirect shadow over the course of world history. In June 1871, the United States launched an assault on the Han River forts in Korea, hoping to pry open Korean markets for American trade. Washington wasn’t bothering with tariffs that year — gunboats were quicker. Charles Babbage died on boxing Day, 26 December 1871. A man of many labels—mathematician, philosopher, inventor, mechanical engineer—but one overriding legacy: he imagined the computer before electricity even entered the equation. Babbage’s difference engine was the first mechanical attempt to automate calculation - it was his analytical engine that quietly cracked open the future. It carried, in brass and gears, the essential ideas of the modern digital computer—logic, memory, and even programmability. His inspiration? The Jacquard loom, which used punched cards to weave patterns into silk. Babbage observed this and thought: if a loom could follow instructions to weave flowers, why not numbers? Hidden in that question was the dawn of the information age—and even the first glimmer of a printer. The popular movement towards responsible government had arisen in the early 1860s, led by John Molteno - and in a future podcast I will spend more time on his life - a fascinating character who was the first South Africa to attempt to export fruit. He married a coloured woman called Maria in 1841 but catastrophe struck when she and their young son died in childbirth and stricken by grief, he joined a Boer Commando fighting in one of the early Frontier Wars. So it was then that on 22nd October 1872 Cetshwayo summoned all the indunas and izikhulu to kwaNondwengu to announce that King Mpande had died.

This is an episode packed with odd resonances, echoes, large whiskers, many presidents and the origin of a modern bank. Now that the diamond fields were being exploited, this being1870, a plethora of politicians lined up to claim ownership — the ever-ambitious and unrealistic President Pretorius of the Transvaal among these, who as you heard last episode, had been chased away by the diggers. These were an international lot, not prone to being intimidated by old bearded men from the Transvaal. His attempt at unilaterally granting drights to the diamond fields to messers Webb, Posno and Munnich had gone done like a lead balloon. As you heard, too, Nicholas Waterboer also claimed these fields, so too the Free State government under President Steyn. Waterboer was persuaded by his Cape educated lawyer the vigorous pen-and-ink warfare expert David Arnot, to ask the British Government to honour his claim on behalf of the Griqua. Waterboer didn’t need much convincing. Author and Journalist Frederick Boyle who wrote “To the Cape For Diamonds” published in 1873 respected Arnot, meeting him in 1871 and describing him as very short, very thick, with a large face clean shaven and a dark skin burnt darker by South African suns. “Mr David Arnot is one of those gentlemen who, in a larger or smaller sphere, make history…” He’d conducted Waterboer’s business for 17 years, and as Boyle said, had made “..not one mistake..” Which is a miracle considering the forces at work in the transOrangia. A diplomats diplomat they said. Tenacious, unfailing, undaunted. He was President Pretorius and President Brands nemesis in some ways, a highly educated coloured man who was connected to the levers of power. He was also relatively wealthy, working as an attorney in Colesberg earning 2000 pounds a year. A man of his time, like other educated men and women of the Victorian era, he collected plants and wrote letters to famous scientists in his spare time. Devout imperialist and friend, Richard Southey agreed. But the incoming high Commissioner, Sir Henry Barkly, needed to be pursuaded. He’d just arrived, sporting enormous black whiskers, a large commanding figure, an authoritarian, gruff, former member of the English parliament, he didn’t want to be dragged into some territorial dispute so early in his governorship. He’d replaced Sir Philip Wodehouse as High Commissioner — Wodehouse congratulated himself when he left in May 1870 claiming not a shot had been fired by a British soldier during his stint — which was a stunning turnaround from the preceding 70 years, particularly the turbulent 1840s. In the interregnum between the discovery of diamonds and annexation of the diamondiferous land by Great Britain, a short-lived but highly entertaining Free Diamond Republic sprang into being. Self-appointed, proudly chaotic, and run by the diggers for the diggers. The Diggers Republic had all the trappings — including a flag which a ccording to historical accounts, featured the Union Jack in the top corner, similar to other colonial flags of the era. And its President? Stafford Parker was his name, and he was to rule over the territory for the grand total of twelve months. One reporter from London said that he “behaved modestly and does honour to his position … the order of the day — is solid civility —- listen to, but say nothing, and dig away….” Golden rule amongst treasure hunters. Stay shtum as you grind away. President Stafford Parker—ever the showman with a wink and a waistcoat—launched his corrugated iron canteen at Klipdrift on the banks of the Vaal with all the flair of a Mar-a-Lago meets muddy boots affair. Not content with presiding over a ragtag republic of diggers and dreamers, Parker decided he’d double as chief entertainer and purveyor of refreshments, slinging drinks and good cheer beneath a roof of rippling iron. Why not? If you're going to rule, you might as well pour the pints too.

This is episode 232 - Diamond Geology as an Art, Dinosaur Veldskoene and Waterboer’s claim Just a quick note about that amazing podcaster Nicole Engelbrecht —She is the host & creator of True Crime South Africa and the author of Samurai Sword Murder, Sizzlers, and co-author of Killer Stories. Well now there’s another book in her growing body of work called Bare Bones, Cold Cases from True Crime South Africa as part of the Jonathan Ball stable. I’ve been given view of an advanced copy and its chilling — perfect to read on a frozen winter’s night in front of a fire. Right. 1870. By the start of the year there were about 1000 diggers near the Vaal River, hunting diamonds, at the end of that year the number had risen ten to 10 000. They made their way to the area from around the world, once landing in Cape Town or Algoa Bay, and some in Durban, they’d travel up to the river diggings taking two months, or six weeks if they were lucky. Once there, they’d set up camp, pitching tents, building little shanties, or living in their wagons. These global prospectors first headed for the largest of these camps - a place called Klipdrift, which eventually became the town of Barkley West, about 35 kilometers north west of Kimberley. The new Eldorado as it was being called saw men dressed in what was called a proper digger’s outfit. This consisted of a broad-brimmed hat, a corduroy suit, a stout waste belt with pockets all around, extra strong boots, a bowie knife, a revolver, and spare rounds of ammunition. They’d have to secure their seat from the ports to the dry uplands, preferably in a Bullock-wagon or some in the Cape Scotchcart, drawn by horses. They were riding shotgun or at the back along with around three tonnes of goods consigned to the camps because everything had to be transported in. There was virtually no local food available, even water had to be carted from higher up the Vaal. It took forty days to trek to the diggings, with many holdups including a fairly lengthy delay at Bethulie in order to cross the mighty Orange River. The River diggings stretched about 40 kilometres west and northwest towards Delportspoort. The rush to gather alluvial diamonds along the rivers had begun along both banks of the Vaal River. The rise and fall of this important waterway had washed thousands of these gems onto the surface in channels — both current and ancient. So who owned that land? Griqualand West Captain Nicholas Waterboer believed it was his. The Griquas here were uneasily exposed in a salient of territory, a kind of peninsular on a map, projecting into the Orange Free State, across the Vaal River, and to the west, abutting the Tswana Territories of the Kalahari. The diamond discoveries sent shockwaves through every corner of South African life, with the sciences feeling the first jolt. Geology and mineralogy suddenly mattered in a way they hadn’t before, as men sought to read the land for clues to its hidden riches. But at the root of it all lay something deeply human — an eternal hunger for instant treasure. It’s the same impulse that drives a gambler to scratch a card or chase a lottery win, that rush of endorphins when chance seems to offer everything. Or when a pan yields a diamond worth thousands.

Moshoeshoe, the Basotho king who’d outwitted, outfought and outlived most of his enemies, was nearing his end. He had managed to ensure his chiefdom survived in signing the Treaty of Aliwal North with the British, who then annexed his territory. Or at least were about to but there were some loose ends to tie up before the Colonial Office signed off on the deal. One of the loose ends was the opposition from some French missionaries who took exception to the Treaty believing it was a cosy deal agreed between the British and the Boers of the Orange Free State which left Moshoeshoe’s people with far less territory than they had originally claimed. The most pressing matter was food. Could the Basotho feed themselves with less arable land following the ceding of much of the Caledon valley to the Boers. David Dale Buchanan was the editor of the Witness Newspaper based in Pietermaritzburg who championed Moshoeshoe's claim for expanded sovereignty during boundary talks. Paris Evangelical Missionary Society’s Francois Daumas joined Buchanana in actively lobbied the British government in London to reverse or soften the settlement terms that had been unfavorable to Moshoeshoe. Buchanan used his platform in Natal’s colonial press to rally public and political support for Moshoeshoe, portraying the Basuto as deserving more just boundaries—and influenced the colonial secretary to consider Moshoeshoe's case more sympathetically. Meanwhile, Daumas took the issue straight to the corridors of British power in London, sailing to Britain in 1869. He pressed the Foreign Office and Colonial Office to reconsider the treaty’s terms, hoping to secure territory that the Conventions had removed from Basotho ambit. Their joint efforts helped shape the High Commissioner's Notice of May 13, 1870, with an amendment in November 1871. This modification adjusted the Aliwal North boundary by Extending Basutoland eastward along the Caledon River to its true headwaters, and Restoring territory around Chief Molapo that the Orange Free State had claimed. These revisions returned critical grazing land and strategic highlands to Basutoland. Unfortunately, as you’re going to hear, Moshoeshoe wasn’t around to experience the fruits of their diplomacy. So it was on a January morning in 1870 that Moshoeshoe roused himself, like a candle flickering before it went out. He was about to perform a remarkable act, almost unheard of in southern Africa tradition. In his last official duty, Moshoeshoe convened a meeting of chiefs and headmen at Thaba Bosiu, and announced he was abdicating in favour of his eldest son, Letsie. It was almost a hospital pass, because Letsie would now take over a land compressed on all sides by pressure groups, African and Colonial. It was still unclear if Basotholand would survive — having barely scraped through the previous few years, the Free State Basotho war of 1865 to 1868 had drained the country of food, and crushed much of its spirit. But it was not defeated, and emerged under Letsie, balanced on a knife-edge, now protected by the British Empire. Moshoeshoe followed up his announcement at the meeting with more orders, that when Letsie died, he should be succeeded by Motsoane who was the only child of Letsie’s first wife, Senate — and Senate’s father was Josepha who was the eldest son of Molapo’s first wife. This was an attempt by Moshoeshoe to create cohesion but it was doomed to fail because he was unilaterally changing Basotho laws of succession. Let us turn to the final weeks of Moshoeshoe’s life, marked by an unseemly rivalry between French Protestants and Catholics. It is striking how the distant quarrels of European theology left their mark on South African history.The old Basotho fox had toyed with Christianity for years. Sometimes he wore it like a borrowed coat; sometimes he tossed it aside. The French missionaries were his pawns in a diplomatic game, sometimes they attempted to make him in their own image.

This is episode 230, From Knysna’s Burning Forests to Tolstoy’s War and Peace: The World in 1869. Globally, the end of the sixth decade of the 19th Century was full of fire and brimbstone, and some technology, social change, significant moments. The construction of the the Port Nolloth-O'okiep railway line is one notable tech development, but on the down side, the Southern Cape experienced a devastating fire that began in early February in the Meiringspoort area of the Swartberg Mountains, destroying numerous homesteads and ancient yellowoods. More about this in a few minutes. IN the United States, Elizabeth Cady Stanton testified before the U.S. Congress, thus becoming the first woman to do so, and later in 1869, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association. Sainsbury’s opened in Drury Lane in London in May, Boston University was founded in the same month. A month later, John Hyatt patented celluloid in Albany New York, a product created by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor — thus creating the basis for the coming film revolution. Like all good ideas, Hyatt had actually bought the original patent from Englishman Alexander Parkes who couldn’t figure out how to make money from his invention. It’s amazing how many inventions were co-opted by entrepreneurs after the inventor struggled to make a buck out of a good idea. Take the common computer mouse, invented by Stanford Research Unit student Douglas Engelbart in the early 1960s. In the late 1970s, almost two decades after the mouse’s invention, Apple’s Steve Jobs saw a mouse being demonstrated along with what was called graphical user interface, GUI, at Xerox labs in Palo Alto California. November the 17 however, was probably one of the most significant dates in the calendar when it came to the Cape, because that was the date that the Suez Canal was completed. For the first time in history, ships could now sail through the canal, linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, shortening the voyages between Europe and the far east by months. In Cape Town, there was fear and loathing about the Canal. And so, to South Africa, let’s retrace our steps to February 1869. It began, as such stories often do, with a wisp of smoke on the horizon. According to the local newspapers, the fire that would become known ominously as the Great Fire of 1869 was first spotted on the 8th February. The conditions were perfect for a catastrophe. Southern Cape berg winds, searing, north-westerly to north-easterly gusts, swept down from the heights. Born of a low-pressure system sliding from west to east, they could reach gale-force strength, tearing through valleys like invisible predators. By the time the flames were first seen near Knysna, the air shimmered with heat, the humidity was almost non-existent, and the vegetation which was parched after years of relentless drought, stood waiting, tinder-dry.But in February 1869, the fire dominated every horizon. From its first sparks, it began a horrifying march: sweeping west towards Swellendam, east to Uitenhage, and threading through the Langkloof valley north of the Outeniqua Mountains. Then, inexorably, it spilled down towards the coast, devouring all in its path, Great Brak River, Victoria Bay, Knysna, Plettenberg Bay.

Episode 229 - Moshoeshoe and the Red Dust, How War and famine led to British rule in Lesotho - we’re speeding up on the trek along history’s trail. First, a word about the Boer Basotho War of 1865-1868. The 1850s and 1860s marked a period of profound demographic disruption for the Basotho as the borders of Moshoeshoe the First’s kingdom shifted repeatedly under pressure from colonial conflict and Boer expansion, waves of refugees poured both in and out of the territory. By 1865, the population of what is now Lesotho was estimated at 180,000 which was a sharp increase from five years earlier. Then drought and a three year war against the Boers of the Free State had induced famine by 1868, and Moshoeshoe the First was running out of options as some of his people left the region. The war had created an immediate famine condition, exacerbated by the drought, and this had a knock-on effect when it came to politics and human migration. After the territorial competition between the BaSotho and their African neighbours subsided to some extent as the Basotho emerged as a nation, the struggle against the Boers of the Free State gained momentum. Growth in the economies of both the Free State and Basotho had produced an ongoing competition for land and when drought struck, it stimulated violence. It’s important to stress how the Free State economy had shifted from herding cattle to sheep — mainly as a result of Great Britain’s demand for wool. The Boers regarded the English as an oppressive occupying force, but that didn’t stop farmers of the Free State making a buck off the empire when they could. This is reflected in trade data - in 1852 exports from the Orange River Sovereignty to Natal, the Cape and England totalled 256 000 pounds, with wool making up 230 000 pounds of that trade. In a census of 1856, Boers had 1.2 million sheep and goats, and only 137 000 head of cattle. But the golden years of wool exports were over by the mid-1860s. The terrible droughts of 1860 and 1861 were known as the Red Dust when the Caledon River dried up for the only time in anyone’s memory. If you want the full background, I covered the outbreak of the Boer Basotho war of 1865 in an earlier episode, along with the causes. The drought, and the scorched earth policy adopted by Free State president Johannes Brand, left Moshoeshoe with little choice. He could either surrender and be known as the Basotho King who gave away his people to the Boers, or he could ask the British to declare Basotholand a British Protectorate. Some have said cynically that the British were entertaining this anyway, hungry for more land and even more so after the discovery of diamonds — but that’s tautological when it comes to Basotholand. The diamond discovery took place after Basotholand was folded into the British empire. Still, we need to burrow into how this all worked out, the diplomacy and wheeler-dealing was extraordinary. By the end of 1867 the successes of the Boer commandos in their raids into Basotholand had put an end to the prospect that the Free State burghers would voluntarily submit to the reimposition of British control. Eugene Casalis, the French missionary who had spent so much time in Basotholand, sailed to England from France to urge the British Government to intervene. This was not a lightweight ecclesiastical mission, Casalis had established a mission station at Morija at the foot of Moshoeshoe’s royal mountain Thaba Bosiu in 1833. He translated the gospel of Mark into isiSotho, and was revered for his political advice to Moshoeshoe. The Duke of Buckingham who had succeeded Lord Carnarvon as Colonial Secretary in March 1867, was all ears. They say timing matters, and it so happened that CB Adderley who was parliamentary Under-Secretary was in favour of intervention provided it could be managed without expense. IE, without sending an army to fight the Boers. On the 9th December, Buckingham instructed Wodehouse to treat with Moshoeshoe.

A quick shout out, this being the modern equivalent of a tip of the hat to Richard, who has made a significant donation to help me host this series. I was flabbergasted when receiving the Paypal payment. We have communicated over the years so this is just to say, thank you from the bottom of my heart Richard. When I’m next in Ireland, I promise to buy you a couple of rounds of St James’ Blessing. What’s this? A cacophony of digging? Must be significant. The date is somewhere in March 1867. A month after young Erasmus Jacobs had found an interesting stone near Hopetown near the Free State Border, but also near the newly formed Transvaal and Griqualand. The world of diamonds swirls with myth and legend, fiction, fact. Diamonds glitter with dangerous promise — alluring but transient in their fortunes, hard as truth, and just as capable of cutting those who reach for them unprepared. The rock that was found at Hopetown was placed on the table of the Cape Assembly shortly thereafter by Sir Richard Southey, the Colonial Secretary with the words “Gentlemen, this is the rock on which the future success of South Africa will be built…” Before Southey’s dramatic flourish, the initial response from officialdom was disbelief. For as long as anyone could remember, and this went all the way back to the VOC in 1660s, there had been rumours of great mineral treasure in the north. A kind of disinformation campaign was launched by Jan van Riebeeck because from the time of his arrival he expressed belief in the possibility of a successful search for the traditional golden realm of Monomotapa. It was imperative to drum up more cash for the new tavern of the seas, and he was trying to convince the VOC of the exaggerated value of their new outpost. And women in South Africa were taking notice, which probably from a 21st Century point of view appears somewhat unlikely. Mary Elizabeth Barber had an important role to play in South Africa's geological science. The year 1867 was characterised by drought, and a severe depression made worse by reports that the completion of the Suez Canal would ruin all trade with the Cape. So it wasn’t a moment too soon, so to speak, that Diamonds were discovered. Nearly two hundred years had passed since van Der Stel’s memorable expedition across what he called de Groote Rivier, the Gariep, the Orange. IT was on the Orange River, sixty kilometres above its junction with the Vaal River, that a village sprang up. Hopetown. By all reports a thriving little settlement, with a number of farms dotted along the river banks nearby. The Koranna and the Griqua lived nearby, at the towns of Pniel and Hebron. Switch to 1867. Picture the scene, sheep and goats, Erasmus Jacobs were doing what Boer boys did, he was roaming the veld, playing on the edge of the river. Here were garnets with their rich carmine flush, the fainter rose of the carnelian, the bronze of jasper, the thick cream of chalcedony, agates of motley hues, rock crystals shining in the light like beckoning stars. Lesser stones, not diamonds, nor valuable gems. From one of these multi-coloured beds Erasmus and his siblings filled their pockets with stones thinking they could play a game of ducks and drakes. For the uninitiated town based gaslight grazer, ducks and drakes is the game of skimming stones. Whomever skims the stone the furthest or with the most hops, wins. Simple game, but when you have no toys, stones are your friends. Luckily for the future of South Africa, Erasmus decided against skimming the diamond, and took it home. There it joined a pile of other shining stones he’d collected like a magpie. It was odd, this stone, and his widowed mother Mrs Jacobs mentioned it to a neighbour, the farmer Meneer Schalk van Niekerk.

Episode 227 — a turning point not just in our nation’s past, but in the arc of 19th-century global history. For soon, the earth will yield its glittering secret — the diamond — and with it, fortunes will rise, empires will stir, and the southern tip of Africa will be irrevocably transformed. But before we reach that seismic revelation, we journey first into the twilight of a king’s life — to the basalt crown of Thaba Bosiu, where Moshoeshoe, the great architect of Basotho unity, faced the gravest challenge yet to his people’s survival. The year is 1864, and a new figure steps onto the veldt’s political stage — Johannes Brand, recently elected President of the Orange Free State. With his arrival came the end of internecine Boer squabbles. Now, unity of purpose would drive their ambitions — and that purpose turned toward Lesotho’s land. Brand lost little time invoking Article 2 of the Treaty of Aliwal North — a clause etched into colonial parchment, defining the boundary between Free State territory and Moshoeshoe’s realm. He wanted it honoured, and in the Boers’ favour. The British High Commissioner, Philip Wodehouse — successor to Sir George Grey — responded, dispatching Aliwal North’s Civil Commissioner, John Burnet, to parley with Moshoeshoe. There, among the towering ramparts of Thaba Bosiu, Burnet argued the line was law — the Warden Line, drawn in 1858, marked Moshoeshoe’s northern limit. Yet Basotho families still tilled and dwelt across it. Not out of defiance, but memory — for those lands were ancestral, soaked in history and spirit. To demand a retreat across the Caledon River would have meant inciting his own chiefs, rupturing the very fabric of the Basotho world. Brand, determined to halt the Basotho’s slow advance toward Harrismith and Winburg, convened the Volksraad. A special session summoned Governor Wodehouse, pleading for intervention to preserve peace — or impose it. By October 1864, Wodehouse had the contested boundary beaconed. But in a private memorandum — shaped by voices like Burnet’s — he concluded what Moshoeshoe already knew in his bones: no treaty or beacon could reconcile the irreconcilable. For the Free State clung to the ink of 1858 — a document where Moshoeshoe had affixed his name to the Warden Line. But treaties are made on paper — and people live on land. On the 14th of November, Moshoeshoe called a *pitso* — a major assembly of his chiefs. It was a moment to speak freely, to vent frustration, and to wrestle with the reality of what lay ahead. In the end, they publicly committed to accepting Wodehouse’s ruling. Molapo and Mopeli, though reluctant, began evacuating their villages. In the days that followed, a steady stream of men, women, and children made their way south — driving cattle, carrying bundles of corn, and taking with them whatever possessions they could manage. When Moshoeshoe appealed to President Brand for time to let Molapo’s people finish harvesting, Brand agreed. They stayed through the summer, gathering the last of their crops, and left again in February 1865. By then, the land was quiet. According to British reports — and Moshoeshoe’s own understanding — the disputed territory now stood empty of Basotho. But what neither he nor the British authorities knew was that the Boers were not content to leave it at that. A commando had already been mustered — eager to erase the memory of their defeat in 1858, and ready to strike. South Africa’s history is marked by sudden turns — moments of violence, moments of discovery. Buried treasure, both literal and political, lies hidden until, almost by accident, it surfaces. Often, it’s not strategy or foresight, but chance — a misstep, a stray decision — that reveals the vast wealth beneath. While the Boers and the Basotho were locked in brutal conflict, fighting for control of fertile valleys and mountain strongholds, something altogether different was unfolding a short distance away. A diamond would be discovered.

The years between 1865 and 1870 would bring a tangle of new challenges for the people of the south. Drought gripped the land with merciless fingers in 1865 and 1866, only to return with cruel insistence between 1868 and 1869. Livelihoods withered, landscapes turned brittle. And yet, amid the dust and desolation, there was a glint of promise on the horizon, a hint of glitter in the forecast. British Kaffraria — that volatile strip of land east of the Kei — had been the stage for repeated wars between the British Empire and the amaXhosa. By 1866, the inevitable had come to pass: the territory was formally annexed to the Cape. This was not a popular move in the Cape Parliament. Most members balked at the idea, not out of principle, but pocket — British Kaffraria was a drain on the Treasury, propped up entirely by funds from London. The Cape, in its self-conscious autonomy, wanted no part in the bill. But Attorney General William Porter reminded his fellow parliamentarians that their indignation was selective. The Cape itself, he said, could not “talk big and look big” when its own house was being kept warm with British money. Independence in name meant little, he warned, if the machinery of government still ticked by the grace of Empire coin. But before the ink was dry on the annexation, another, more immediate matter took precedence — the fate of the amaMfengu, along with the amaNgqika and amaGqunukhwebe. The structures of amaXhosa political authority had already been dismantled within British Kaffraria. Now, as the imperial tide rolled further inland, it was the amaMfengu who found themselves repositioned — this time as subjects to be moved, their loyalty rewarded not with land, but with a fresh dislocation. Soon, the area around Butterworth became an amaMfengu stronghold. Many local amaXhosa were absorbed into their ambit — politically subdued or socially assimilated. For the British, this migration had a twofold effect. It removed thousands of Black residents from British Kaffraria, freeing up land under Crown control. And it advanced a broader goal: clearing the way for the Cape Parliament to annex the territory, albeit reluctantly and under pressure from Westminster. Just to flick the future switch for a moment — Back to the Future, in 2003, a constellation of dignitaries descended on Phokeng for the coronation of Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi of the Bafokeng. That’s near Rustenberg just for clarity. Among them were Nelson Mandela, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, First Lady Zanele Mbeki, and the Queen Mother of Lesotho. A drought pressed down on the land in 2003, dry and unforgiving, but the dusty heat did little to mute the occasion’s quiet grandeur. For a small nation to command such presence — to draw the gaze of the region’s most prominent figures — spoke to something more than mere ceremonial gravity. It hinted at a deeper, long-cultivated influence. This is the story of how the Bafokeng came to be recognised as one of South Africa’s most quietly successful peoples — not by avoiding the tides of history, but by learning, early on, how to navigate them. From their dealings with the Boers and Paul Kruger, to their survival under apartheid’s grip, the Bafokeng carved a path few expected — and fewer still understood. There’s an almost whispered history here, a counterpoint to the dominant narrative of dispossession and defeat. The Bafokeng lived on land of consequence long before that significance was measured in ounces of platinum. It wasn’t until the metal was prised from the earth beneath their feet that the rest of the country — and eventually, the world — began to pay attention. But the roots of their agency run deeper, older. They reach back to a time when Paul Kruger was still cobbling together unity among the Voortrekkers, long before his epic confrontations with the British had begun.

This is episode 225, and the Griqua have trekked from Philippolis near modern day Kimberley, to the Maluti Mountains, a place called Nomansland. In March 1861 Faku Ka-Ngqungqushe of the amaMpondo had ceded the territory to the British, ostensibly so that Theopholis Shepstone could plant the refugees of the Zulu Civil War there, but that idea was scotched, and the Cape Governor gave the territory over to the Griqua. By the time the great Griqua migration reached what would become Griqualand East, others had already begun trickling into this remote and mesmerising landscape — a highland plateau that straddles the transition between KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, hemmed in by the southern Drakensberg. At over 1,600 metres above sea level, winters bite hard here when the frost laces the sandstone ridges, and the mornings arrive cloaked in icy mist. But come spring, the veld stirs with startling vigour: the ground blushes green, and indigenous flora such as Watsonia pillansii or Pillans watsonia, Dierama reynoldsii fairy bell or hairbell, and the fiery Kniphofia caulescens — the Drakensberg red-hot poker, thrust their blooms skyward. Aloes cling to rocky outcrops, and if you're lucky, you might glimpse the iridescent flash of a malachite sunbird, the Nectarinia famosa, feeding on nectar, or hear the distinct call of the ground woodpecker aka Geocolaptes olivaceus echoing from a sandstone cliff. After an arduous few weeks from their farms near Philippolis, Kok’s people arrived at Ongeluk’s Nek and you know if you’ve listened to the previous podcast why it was given this name. ON the way they had passed passed through part of land claimed by Basotho king Moshoehoe, around the Hangklip area — that’s just south east of Zastron today. Then began the arduous process of clearing a road down the mountain starting at Ongeluks Nek. It was no child’s play. Every morning, according to the annals, men set about with pick and crowbar, hammer and drills, powder and fuse to dig out a track down the mountainside. It took weeks for the track to be hacked from the rock, and the 2000 men, women and children, their dogs and livestock, managed to slide and roll down the side heading towards a small settlement about six kilometers north of where the town of Kokstad is today. The Griqua had finally, in their minds, arrived at their promised land. Here were rolling hills, the lower Maloti, sweet tasting river water, springs, green grass. In the ravines there were forests and the Griqua began to cut down these trees to build houses.The fledgling Griqualand state began to emerge, murderers were executed, criminals were tried and convicted and the Volksraad gathered every six months to discuss laws. This elementary form of democracy featured lengthy discussions and very little note-taking. A chief officer was elected, called a Kaptyn like the Khoekhoe leaders of old, and a privy council or executive council as it was also known was setup.

This is episode 224 — the sound in the background is the weather - the other sound is the creaking of wagons as another great trek begins. We’re going to trace the arc of Southern Africa’s climate, beginning in the early 19th century, before turning to the decade under review — the 1860s — and following the path of the Griqua Great Trek into Nomansland. First let’s get our heads around the cycles of drought and flood in southern Africa. The pernicious climate. As Professor Mike Meadows of UCT’s Environmental Sciences Department observed back in 2002, South Africa’s climate has long danced to an unpredictable rhythm — one marked by dramatic shifts in both rainfall and its timing. Precipitation follows a kind of cycle, yes, but one that keeps its own secrets. Some years bring bounty, others drought, and the line between the two is often sharp and sudden. The climate, in short, plays favourites with no one — and when it comes to rain, it can be maddeningly capricious. So while the calendar may promise a rainy season, it rarely tells us how generous the skies will be. The patterns are there — but the quantities? That’s anyone’s guess. South Africa, after all, is a land of dryness. Over 90 percent of its surface falls under what scientists call “affected drylands” — a polite term for places where water is scarce and the margins are thin. The rest? Even drier. Hyper-arid zones, where the land holds its breath and waits. And by the mid-19th century, much of this land was beginning to fray under the strain — overgrazed, overworked, slowly giving way to the long creep of degradation. South Africa’s landscape is anything but simple. It’s rugged, sculpted by time, with steep slopes and a dramatic stretch from the tropics to the temperate zone. But the story of our climate doesn’t end on land. It’s shaped by a swirling conversation between oceans and continents — a conversation held over centuries by systems with lyrical names: the Mozambique Channel Trough, the Mascarene High, the Southern Annular Mode, and the twin dipoles of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Then there’s the heavyweight — the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO — which has long held sway over our rainfall and drought cycles. The dry was one of the motivations for another Great Trek about to take place. The Griqua’s who’d been living in the transOrangia since the late 1700s began to question their position in the world. With the Boers now controlling the Free State, and Moshoeshoe powerful in Lesotho, it was time to assess their options. In 1861, the Griqua joined the list of mass migrations of the 19th Century. There had been the effect of the Mfecane, then the Voortrekkers, and now, the Griqua. Two thousand people left Philippolis to establish themselves in Nomansland, far to the east, past Moshoeshoe’s land over the Drakensberg. The reason why historians like Cambridge’s Robert Ross call it spectacular was the road that the Griqua cut for themselves across the high ridges of the mountains, a remarkable feat of engineering for the time.

This is episode 223, the calliper and the lens Gustav Fritsch in the southern Light. A very quick thank you to Professor Johan Fourie at Stellenbosch Department of Economics who invited me to be part of a workshop about improving the visibility of economic history. What an amazing experience. This episode of our series is following on from 1863, into 1864, where the movement of people became as demographic phenomenon — driven by economics and innovations. Let’s swing our attention to Robben Island, it’s a warm morning in November 1863 and a bearded German arrived armed with various photographic apparatus and guns, he was on an expedition. German tourists can be found on Robben Island these days, but they don’t carry guns and their cameras are Canons. Gustav Fritsch had arrived with many other accoutrements - because he was on a scientific mission. He was an anthropologist, and part of a curious genre now largely forgotten — the “racial type” photographer — men who believed the camera could capture the science of human difference, stamping evolution’s hierarchy onto paper. In their lens, the body became data. A century and a half later, modern influencers use images to shape a kind of social order — their self-curated faces, botox-bright and algorithm-approved offer a new kind of taxonomy, no less performative, and perhaps no less pseudoscientific. So as our friend Gustav Fritsch set up his apparatus and guns, there on the windy but warm Robben Island of November 1863, he became part of what would be the field of criminology and .. eugenics. In this period, the use of photography was part of a privileged administrative practice, part of medical anatomy, anthropology, psychiatry, part of the professionalised emerging social sciences, tying in public health, urban planning, sanitation. It was at this point that the two divergencies in the science began to take shape, one was honorific, honouring the differences, noting the diversity, exciting the senses with these truly stunning pictures of South Africans in 1863, versus the other, the repressive, the oppressive. Stamping people with their racial characteristics. Unlike today, each picture took at least 20 seconds to complete. Imagine asking your contemporary subject to sit dead still for 20 seconds while you point your iPhone at their noggin. 20 seconds is longer than an entire TikTok video that explains the meaning of life. But there is not doubt, that the most remarkable thing about Fritsch’s photos were the diversity. He photographed many chiefs and their families, capturing African nobility at the time. His image of amaThemba chief Stokwe ka-Ndlela is slightly blurred, Stokwe refused to sit still. Other images of the incarcerated on Robben Island are historic, folkloric and well, just stunning. These include Xoxo on of Ngqika, brother of Sandile, Siyolo kaMdushane, one of the Gcaleka chiefs, Dilima, son of Phato of the Gqunukhwebe. This strange German was doing South African history a favour, recording the regal faces of amaXhosa royalty for posterity. After Robben Island, Gustav Fritsch and his apparatus rolled along in an oxwagon to Cathcart in the eastern Cape where he took more photos of Anta kaNgqika the 3rd paramount chief of the amaRharhabe, whereupon Fritsch continued to Stutterheim, where he set up his stool and massive tripod and took remarkable photos of Sandile kaNgqika.Not satisfied, this 19th century paparazzi, this collector of images set off northwards to Bechuanaland. He photographed Bakwena chief Sechele I a Motswasele or "Rra Mokonopi" as well as his son Sibelo. Bamagwatho chief Kama was next, grand old man of Botswana. The ancestor of the famous Khama family of the twentieth century. And while Gustav Fritsch wandered the veld with his camera and his paraphernalia, convinced he was capturing some scientific truth, the people he encountered were being absorbed into a global archive — not as individuals, but as specimens, artefacts.

This is episode 222 - Zooming out to peer at 1863, and a bit of Namaqualand Copper and Gunny Bags. We’ve just entered the period of 1863 to 1865. It’s also time to take a quick tour of 1863 as is our usual way. While the Transvaal Civil War has ended, the American Civil War is still going gangbusters. In the last 12 months, momentous events have shaped world history. Abraham Lincoln signed the the Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863 making the abolition of slavery in the Confederate States a War goal. A speculative mania followed in 1853/4, alarming the Government of the Cape. In the 1850s, a wave of speculative mining booms swept across the globe, driven by dramatic gold and mineral discoveries in places like California, Australia, and South Africa. These were fuelled by exaggerated rumours, newspaper hype, and dubious prospecting claims. Tens of thousands of hopefuls chased fortunes, often to remote or inhospitable regions, believing the next strike was just over the ridge. This era gave rise to a kind of "treasure hysteria", where wildcat ventures and fraudulent schemes—what some dubbed “red herrings”—diverted investors and prospectors alike. King Moshoeshoe the first of the Basotho had taken a great deal of interest in the Transvaal Civil War. The Orange Free State had been instrumental — and in particular — it’s new president Johan Brandt, in ending the inter-Boer battles. He was also growing more concerned by the signs of increased mining activity which had been going on west of his territory. Ancient peoples who predated the Khoe in the northern Cape had taken advantage of these minerals, there is archaeological evidence they were using iron from the area dug from pits 6000 years Before Present, around 4000 BC. Remarkable really, the use of iron in Southern Africa predates European Iron Age use by 3800 years. There is an excellent short book published by John Smalberger in 1975 called A history of Copper Mining in Namaqualand published which I’ve used as one of the sources. A specialised company called Phillips and King began exporting the ore in 1852 — a small 11 tons loaded on board a steamer called the Bosphorus which sailed out of Hondeklip Bay. They built a 140 meter long wooden jetty to facilitate loading here. A speculative mania followed in 1853/4, alarming the Government of the Cape. In the 1850s, a wave of speculative mining booms swept across the globe, driven by dramatic gold and mineral discoveries in places like California, Australia, and South Africa. These were fuelled by exaggerated rumours, newspaper hype, and dubious prospecting claims. Tens of thousands of hopefuls chased fortunes, often to remote or inhospitable regions, believing the next strike was just over the ridge.

This is episode 221, 1863, the midst of the Transvaal Civil War. As you heard in episode 220, this was the making of a new president and one who’d take the Trekker Republics into the 20th Century, albeit in the midst of the Anglo-Boer War. There had been a rapid and real effect — as the farmers took up arms against each other, the Transvaal’s economy collapsed. This weakened the government’s ability to back up its stated authority. By now the tiny independent States of Lydenburg and Utrecht had joined the Transvaal accepting the authority of the Transvaal. They had been outliers since the trekkers first arrived in those regions, fifteen years earlier. To recap - In 1859, Transvaal President, Marthinus Wessel Pretorius, was invited to stand for President in the Orange Free State, many burghers there now wanted to unify with the Transvaal. They were mainly worried about how to deal with King Moshoeshoe of the Basotho. The Transvaal constitution that he had just enacted made it illegal to hold office abroad, still Pretorius won the Transvaal election, then Volksraad attempted to side-step the constitutional problems by granting Pretorius half-a-year of leave. They hoped some kind of solution would be found — Pretorius left for Bloemfontein and appointed Johannes Hermanus Grobler to be acting president in his absence. Up stepped Stephanus Schoeman from the Marico region who unsuccessfully attempted to use force to supplant Johannes Grobler as acting president. Schoeman believed that the presidency should have been granted to him as the new Transvaal constitution stipulated that in the case of the president's dismissal or death, the presidency should be granted to the oldest member of the Executive Council. Schoeman was three years older than Grobler. Forward fast to 1863, Kruger had defeated Schoeman at a skirmish outside Potchefstroom. He had also managed to convince some of the supporters of rebel in the Heidelberg district to switch sides, and had ridden back to Pretoria with a local farmer of high standing, Jan Marais. There a council of war determined that rebels like Schoeman were taking advantage of a disagreement between the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The two fledgling Boer Republics could not agree on where the boundary lay between them. Transvaal President Van Rensburg duly assigned Kruger the duty of riding to the Free State to settle the question of the border - and he left almost immediately, taking a group of burghers with him as security. Further West, the Marico district was a hotbed of rebel activity and the commandant there, Jan Viljoen, heard about Kruger’s mission and organised a commando. On the way to Potch, a spy warned Kruger about what awaited. He changed course, and set off with a small detachment to confront Viljoen while Kruger’s 2 IC, Veld kornet Sarel Eloff dashed forward to seize a nearby kopje - the all important high ground. Viljoen is so happened, was also on his way to the very same kopje. One of the aspects of this conflict which is interesting is how Kruger used his spies or messengers as he called them. They were feeding him information daily, information about what Schoeman and Viljoen were up to. The capacity to recon an enemy was one of the defining strengths of the Boer military system, and would be sharpened constantly over the coming century and a half. Folks, there are remarkable resonances in this apparently distant little civil war. When the Union of South Africa was achieved, Bloemfontein was nominated as the seat of the Supreme Court of the union. Cape Town and Pretoria shared power, parliament in Cape Town, Pretoria the seat of government. The Free State is slap bang in the middle — so they got the Supreme Court. These historical instances reflect a legal and political philosophy that, in the aftermath of internal conflict, prioritising national healing through amnesty can be more beneficial than widespread punitive actions.

All manner of things are going on — thanks to those folks out there who’ve been sending me notes and support, much appreciated. Episode 220 deals with the start of the Transvaal Civil War, and quite a bit about Paul Kruger’s early life. The American civil war was raging in 1862, and there’s nothing like a war to trigger innovation — if you excuse the pun. Richard Jordan Gatling patented his terrifying Gatling gun featuring multiple rotating barrels driven by a hand crank, allowing operators to unleash a relentless hailstorm of bullets—up to several hundred rounds per minute. Its distinctive mechanical whirr echoed across battlefields, marking a chilling shift toward modern, industrialized warfare. While undoubtedly efficient, the Gatling gun also embodied a grim reality: the age when technology would reshape combat forever had arrived. Just in time to cause more chaos in the already bloody American Civil War. What is less known these days is that there was another Civil War involving descendants of Europeans, and this was going on in South Africa. The AmaZulu had just wrapped up their own recent Civil War as you’ve heard. All manner of brutal and uncivil conduct marked this period in South African history, as neighbour turned against neighbour and the bonds of society frayed. The Boer Republics had been riven by conflict since the days of the Voortrekkers, but in 1862 perhaps inspired in part by the American civil War, the Boer Republics went from squabbling to skirmishing. There’s no proof that the carnage of the United States directly influenced South Africa, but there is proof that the Boers knew about it. Later, during the apartheid period of National Party Rule, this Transvaal Civil War was deposited in historical file 13, almost expunged, because it contradicted the prevailing political ideology where it was all the whites against all the blacks. Anything that detracted from this nationalist agenda was taboo. The modern architects of African nationalism, too, often reshape the past to suit their narratives, discarding inconvenient histories into their own version of "file 13."Compared to the carnage in America, where an estimated 750 000 people died, the South African version was far less bloody. A few dozen dead and wounded. A handful of skirmishes was the real effect, which took place in what is now Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and the North West Province - but at the same time as the American Civil War which ran from 1861 to 1865. The Transvaal Civil War started in 1862 and ended in 1864. While less gory, it was emblematic of the frontier streak embedded in the first generation descendants of the Voortrekkers. According to the constitution of the Republic, the Hervormde Church was the state church. Its members alone were entitled to exercise any influence in public affairs. Whoever was not a member of the Hervormde Church was not a fully-qualified burgher. Paul Kruger belonged to the Christelljk-Gereformeerde Kerk founded recently, in 1859, by Dr. Postma, at Rustenburg. This church became known in South Africa as the Dopper, or partly Canting Church. The derivation of the word Dopper is not completely clear, but it was believed to have come from the word dop, a damper or extinguisher for putting out Candles.

This is episode 219 — a new Governor has sailed into Table Bay. Sir Philip Edmond Wodehouse, born in 1811, eldest child of Edmond Wodehouse who married his first cousin Lucy, daughter of Philip Wodehouse, uncle Philip to Sir Philip Edmond. How very Victorian. Queen Victoria herself, who married her first cousin Prince Albert—did allow and even encourage cousin marriage, particularly among royalty and the upper classes to consolidate power, property, and lineage. But it also increased the risk of birth defects by 2 percent, and if both parents carry a recessive gene mutation, their child has a 25 percent chance of expressing the disorder. Scientists have a well-worn phrase for this — its called inbreeding. Wodehouse junior entered the Ceylon Civil Service in 1828, and was installed as superintendent of British Honduras between 1851 to 1854. From there he sailed to British Guiana where he served as Governor between 1854 to 1861 — before heading to the Cape in 1862. It’s illuminating to touch on Sir Philip Wodehouse’s disastrous time in British Guiana. Two years after he took office in the South American country, the Angel Gabriel riots broke out. His implacable opponent was John Sayers Orr, whose nom de guerre was the Angel Gabriel, was half Scottish, half African. Edinburgh’s Caledonian Newspaper of the time reported that his mother Mary Ann Orr was a respectable coloured woman and married to a respectable Scot — John Orr senior. Young John Sayer Orr was rabidly anti-papal, hated the Pope and had an anti-Catholic obsession. He took to the Guianese streets with bullhorn in hand, whereupon the distant Glasgow Herald noted he spoke “rampant anti-papist froth and lies..” Between 1850 and 1851 he popped up in Boston, then New York, Bath in Maine, and Manchester in New Hampshire. In 1854 he was hustled off by police in Boston. Apart from the usual racial insults levelled at him, the Boston police report says he had more impudence than brains .. “…who with a three cornered hat and a cockade on his head, and old brass horn .. took advantage of the political excitement .. travelled around the city …tooting his horn … collecting crowds in the streets, delivering what he called his political lectures and passing around the hat for contributions…” Sounds like a modern political influencer, the bullhorn, the disinformation, the extreme rhetoric, not to mention his hat which is literally crowd sourcing. He was arrested at least 20 times for what was called his international harangues tour — where he’d shout confusing messages like “Scorn be those who rob us of our rights — purgatory for popery and the Pope — Freedom to man be he black or white — Rule Britannia…!!” Bizarrely, the resonances to today’s crazy politics continued, Orr was associated with the fantastically named Know Nothing Party in America. Wait to hear about this bunch, you’ll recognise bits of modern USA. Members of the movement were required to say "I know nothing" whenever they were asked about its specifics by outsiders, and that providing the group with its colloquial name. Before you wonder aloud what relevance all this has, let me quickly point out that the so-called Know Nothing Party had 43 representatives in Congress at the height of its power in the late 1850s. In 1855 this strange 19th Century character pitched up in British Guiana, and Sir Philip Wodehouse had his work cut out. Soon Orr was up to his old tricks, walking about with his bull horn, carrying a flag and a British imperial badge, followed by a group of …. Well .. followers. They were not repeating they Knew Nothing, but attacking the British establishment. We'll also hear about the Angel Gabriel riots. By 1862 Wodehouse who survived a public stoning in Guiana, had arrived in the Cape as Governor. Here he was to face the implacable enemies - the Westerners and the Easterners. Two parts of the Cape that did not get along.

We’re doing a little different thing today, having wondered our way through a few thousand years its time to reflect on a few things. How did people go about their day to day lives, and what was life really like by the mid-19th Century South Africa? This period was dominated by agriculture, it was before the discoveries of most of the valuable minerals that turned the region from a sleepy agrarian backwater into one of the most dynamic economies in the world. Cape Town had been the fulcrum around which all European expansion rotated, the southern tip of Africa had to be navigated by all the empires of Europe, first Portuguese, then Dutch, then English. So naturally Cape Town had developed quite a sense of self importance. Some vicious and malicious Joburgers claim it continues to suffer from a superiority complex today. All in good spirit of course. It was a distant port, and if a Voortrekker or AmaZulu king travelled to Cape Town overland, it was like setting sail into an insecure future. The slow wagons cruising overland from the Waterberg to Cape Town took about as long as the maritime trip from Liverpool to Cape Town — two to three months. Both routes - whether sea or land — were rife with danger. During this perilous chapter of history, seafaring was still a high risk venture. Meanwhile, those who braved the land faced their own litany of dangers — wagons toppled on treacherous trails, lions prowled the edges of camps, venomous snakes struck without warning, and bandits lurked in the shadows. The veld itself, like the capricious ocean, seemed to conspire against the traveller, offering up a relentless gauntlet of threats to navigate. This experience meant the journey men and women were hardy, a tough breed. Most actually walked the trip, sometimes riding their horse, but mostly leading the oxen as the wagon creaked and squeaked, rumbled and tinkled over rocky landscape. African migrants walked from the transOrangia and deeper, into what is now Botswana, all the way to Cape Town to work on farms. That took weeks, sometimes, months. AmaZulu kings like Shaka thought nothing of walking 300 kilometres to visit his distant homesteads, taking a fortnight to recon his land. Physiology was actually different — people had straighter spines at this time in world history — there were fewer eye problems, stronger limbs. But they lived shorter lives in general, medicine was a distant luxury for most. 19th-century Southern Africans, like many pre-industrial populations globally, generally had better postural alignment and physical conditioning compared to sedentary modern denizens of the ethernet. Ethnographic and missionary accounts from the era—such as those by Dr. David Livingstone and Thomas Baines—frequently remark on the exceptional physical endurance of local populations. Many African societies, particularly among pastoralist and hunter-gatherer communities like the San, Tswana, and Zulu, were noted for their upright posture and ease of movement over long distances. The strength needed to walk along the tracks and slopes of southern Africa is well known, the pursuit is replicated today with the wonderful trails around the countryside. But it wasn’t all milk and honey, of course. The fatality rate remained high until the end of the 19th Century, although in South Africa, people were generally living longer, particularly in the Cape.

A quick thank you to all those who’ve been donating towards the upkeep of this series, particularly Chereen and Gerhard, your continued support is making a difference. And Adi the winemaker, dankie meneer, and Seyi who’s trying to get Paypal sorted, thanks! Not to mention Chris whose significant support means I can host the series long term on iono.fm - and also a shout out, very modern that, a shout out, to Francois at iono.fm who has patiently helped me out when technical blapses creep in.ventually on April 12 1861, the American Civil War began with the bombardment of Fort Sumner in South Carolina. In sunny South Africa, the American Civil War was going to reverberate in many ways. Firstly, the War created a Cotton Crisis and helped foster investments in Natal cotton farms. Before the war, most of Britain’s cotton came from the Southern U.S., the slave plantations of the south. But the civil war disrupted these supplies, leading to a massive shortage. British textile mills were scrambling by year-end, and south Africa was on the radar along with other regions. The Natal government encouraged cotton growing, and for a brief moment in time, it was seen as a cash crop to grow. But the reality was, the soils, climate and shortage of labour made it unsustainable long term. Importantly, the British reassessed their strategic imperial priorities, and realised that the American Civil War exposed their fragile imperial control in distant lands. Despite the fact that a liberal Government was in power in the Britain, the Cape Colony and Natal became more strategically important as London sought to secure shipping routes and resources. The Suez Canal was still being constructed, the only way to India was around the Cape. It was the influence of slavery and labour policy that had a profound ideological impact on southern Africans. It led to a future connection, and Confederate influence inside South Africa. This is prescient, but important. The Boer Republics in particular took a great deal of interest in the break-away American states. The mindset, the republicanism, and sympathies with the pro-slavery states of the Confederacy all resonated with the Republics, particularly the ZAR. By 1860 Sir George Grey had thrown virtually the entire amaXhosa leadership into prison — Robben Island to be precise. Maqoma, Mhala, Xayimpi who’d overrun the military villages in the Eighth Frontier War, Silo, Xoxo, Stokwe. There were many amaThembu amaGqunukhwebe, Ndlambe, Ngqika chiefs and councillors marooned on Robben Island, where the winter winds howled across the flat land, where there was little protection from the extreme weather.

It’s episode 216 and we are lurching back to the north east, to Zululand. The heat is building up, and the conflicted relationship between King Mpande kaSenzanghakhona and his son, Cetshwayo kaMpande, is growing more complex by the minute. But this being Zululand, that wasn’t the only competition in town. There was an older son of Mpande, called Hamu, who was his first-born son by Nozibhuku, who in turn was the daughter of the much respected chief Sothondose of the Nxumalo people. If we turn our thoughts to the succession process of the AmaZulu which has always been a tricky trail, this episode will serve to illuminate the razor-sharp line royal heirs must walk. Sothondose you see was Mbuyazi’s brother. And if you recall, Mbuyazi was the man who had been killed along with seven of his brothers and half brothers at the Battle of Nondokasuka by Cetshwayo. King Mpande had publicly referred to Mbuyazi as his heir apparent, and Cetshwayo thought he was a better candidate. The plot thickens. It more than thickens, it congeals like thick red blood, spattered many times this episode. There is a Shakespearian correlation between his epic tales and those of the AmaZulu, where both are interlaced with human truths. This week’s tale is a mist-mash of Macbeth, Richard the third, Henry the Sixth Part three. Perhaps you could include others, but let’s leave it at that for now. IN Zululand, Mpande was king and he was apt to change his mind about his heir apparent. Cetshwayo had worked himself into the position by dint of killing Mbuyazi, and had begun to refer to Mpande as ixegwana, little-old man. Or Oomie which is why calling some middle-aged men Oomie can get you into trouble. Hamu kaMpande was an insidious man, a persevering leader who wriggled about, an indulgent man according to oral tradition as well as the written descriptions we have of him. Flabby, with the immense thighs of the house of Senzangakhona. Hamu led the Ngenetsheni clan, and had supported Cetshwayo during the recent Civil War, where Mbuyazi had been defeated. That was the case even though his grandfather, Sothondose, was Mbuyazi’s brother. In other words Hamu fought against his Great Uncle. Blood, it seems, isn’t thicker than water—unless it’s pooling in a cauldron of treachery and Macbethian dread. Hamu also resented his bad luck, descended from Nzibe who ranked behind Mpande’s other sons. He liked to show off his bling so to speak, and gathered a massive isigodlo of women, 300 in all, and bragged about being quasi-independent of Mpande. Cetshwayo kept a beady eye on these two, and there were confrontations with them, one took place in 1857. But nothing was resolved. Initially, Mbuyazi’s remaining brothers turned out to be more of a threat than Hamu and Maphitha, and this is where the Shakespearian blood letting began in earnest. Cetshwayo wanted to kill Mbuyazi’s thirteen year old brother Mkhungo. Someone tipped off the teen that the death squad was on its way and he fled to safety in Natal across the Thukela River. Other members of his direct family were already seeling refuge there, his mom Monase and Sikhotha his half-brother. shake

Episode 215 has a rather grandiose title but let us stop for a second and take stock. This southern land, swept by thunderstorms that appear as if by magic, and lash the landscape, rumble across the stubby veld, slinging lightning like a million volt silver sjambok, shaking rocks with their deep growls, bring everything back to life. The air before this denizens of the blue sky pass by is sullen, the horizon hazed over, after the rains everything is crisp, visibility can change in seconds from a few hundred metres to a few hundred kilometres. I was raised in Nkwalini valley in northern Zululand, where the mysterious Mhlathuze River flows powerfully after these storms, the valley is ringed by mountains that rise from 650 feet above sea level feet to over 3000 feet a few minutes drive up around Melmoth. And from these heights, you can see the Indian Ocean 40 kilometres away after one of these refreshing storms. Southern Africa had been drying out substantially throughout the first half of the 19th Century. Historian Charles Ballard notes that climatic research has pointed to opposite extremes of weather patterns in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The climatic regime in southern Africa of dry and warm conditionsin the early nineteenth century was the reverse of the Northern Hemisphere's colder and wetter weather at this time. Some animals, like humans, would not survive this —others like the ostrich were in their element. Turning to Natal, much of the interior was unstable, drought and famine led early white settlers to believe it had always been devoid of people whereas it had been abandoned. There is a difference between the two concepts — never settled or previously settled? Nguni speaking refugees, not always amaZulu, arrived back in their homes in Natal through this period only to find that the settler community considered them to be aliens and a race of "vagabonds." It became a conventional ideological tool for those who sought to justify the expropriation of land. The people were driven away by a long list of threats, military, environmental, meteorological. With that preamble, let’s focus initially on the strange saga of John Dunn who has appeared in all his curious glory in prevous episodes. Cetshwayo gave John Dunn ten oxen and a tract of land. By July, the former border agent had resigned his job and moved into Zululand permanently. He’d had it with the British. The tract of land given to Dunn was extensive, in the immediate coastal region of southern Zululand known as Ungoye, which extended from Ngoye forest all the way down to the lower Thukela. Shortly after he moved in, Dunn took many wives. By1860 he was regarded as one of the most influential chiefs in the Zulu kingdom, ruling over more than 50 square kilometers of land and thousands of subjects. By 1860 Dunn was the main source of fireams entering Zululand, and these items rapidly replaced cattle as the main payment for lobola.

This is episode 214 and we’re going to probe the fascinating and these days, hidden history of Port Elizabeth or Gqeberha, a bit about indentured Indians arriving in South Africa, and a spot of Boer Republic rebellion. It’s hardly ever a quiet day in sunny South Africa. In the eyes of most folks of the south, the Windy City features as a minor point on the urban map and in popular consciousness. The people of the city however are fiercly patriotic, and fiercely independent. Always smaller than Cape Town in terms of population size, never the seat of government, it’s enormous importance as a premier centre of trade and finance in southern Africa has been readily overlooked. Yet from the 1850s all the way through to the 1880s, Port Elizabeth was called “The Liverpool of the Cape” and for some years in that period, was the centre of the Cape’s economy. Coming soon, however, was the discovery of Diamonds that would shift power to Kimberley, then later in the 1880s, to gold and power would shift again to Johannesburg. The period of the mid-19th Century, saw the financial heart shift from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth although the elites of Table Bay continued to hold sway. A commercial elite of merchants, accountants, lawyers and other professions controlled the economies of Cape Colonial towns. Cape Town was the seat of government, it’s population had grown to 25 000 people and was easily the largest urban centre in southern Africa. There were only 17 joint stock companies in 1859. Only five towns outside Cape Town, Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth had local banks. There was a cozy and close link between the merchants of Cape Town and the government. Similar links existed between local government officials and merchants in the smaller towns which enhanced the ability of local commercial heavyweights to control trade through their districts. There was a constant tussle between the local merchants and the businesses that controlled the ports. Port Merchants were closer to the maritime traffic, closer to the heart of the empire, London, and acted like a commercial filter between the periphery and the centre. In 1857 Merchant John Paterson gathered a few like-minded entrepreneurs around him and floated the Standard Bank of Port Elizabeth. It sank almost immediately, funds were hard to come by. These merchants however had direct links with London, they bypassed the Cape Towners — and by this time half the ships sailing between South Africa and Britain were leaving from Port Elizabeth. Paterson gathered his entrepreneur pals together again in March 1859 and sailed to England where he launched his prospectus the the Standard Bank of British South Africa in April 1860. A Group of Cape Town merchants were not to be outdone by this eastern Cape upstart and in July the London and South Africa Bank .. henceforth to be known as the L and SA Bank, came into being. Governor Sir George Grey was very interested in all of these moves, and is believed to have intervened to help the Cape Town group as they negotiated for a charter and necessary capital. Port Elizabeth traders regarded the L and SA bank in a negative light. Despite their reservations, they could not deny the power of the bankers of Cape Town — a branch of the L and SA bank was opened in Port Elizabeth in 1861, and eventually, The Standard Bank’s progenitor, Paterson, managed to scrounge together the funds and opened in 1862. South Africa was changing fast by 1860. In Natal, Grey believed the answer to the chronic labour shortage was the introduction of indentured Indians. These were to make their way to Natal over the next few decades, but Grey’s initial request was rejected by the Indian Government. Speaking of success, that is a not a word you’d probably have used to describe the Boer Republics of 1860. They were sinking deeper and deeper into confusion and outright impotence.

This is episode 213, and Sir George Grey, the Cape Governor was peering intensely at the Boer Republics to the north. The Free Staters under Boshof had failed in their mission to drive Moshoeshoe out of the disputed territory south of the Caledon River and many of the burghers changed their tune when it came to possible amalgamation with the Transvaal. They were now considering this a viable option. Marthinus Pretorius had made good progress north of the Vaal, despite the boers of Lydenburg opposing his overtures for a single large and powerful Boer state. The fragmentary nature of the Voortrekker’s states was hard to overcome. But it was heartening for those Boers who wanted unification to hear that the Zoutpansbergers were prepared to listen to arguments for cohesion. One of the most strident and convincing voices that emerged was that of Paul Kruger. He was acting on behalf of Pretorius and the Zoutpansbergers accepted the Grondwet of the Transvaal, the constitution, which the Rustenburgers had adopted. The northern republics were moving towards some sort of union, by 1858 the tiny Boer Republic of Utrecht in northern Natal had thrown in their lot with tye Lydenburgers. Grey regarded these moves as ominous. The British empire had experienced a serious jolt when the Indian Mutiny broke out in 1857, and now he’d heard the reports of the Boer expedition to Moshoeshoe’s Thaba Bosiu which had ended in defeat. He’d have to send reinforcements to India, and deal with instability on the frontier at the same time. The Bathlaping people had also taken advantage of the Boer assault on the south eastern edge of the free State into Basotho territory by doing some invading of their own - into the Free State from the West. The San and Korana had also broken loose and Boshof’s commandos were going to be very busy as they rode around the Free State, trying to subdue these raiders. The Boers had recognized that beneath the monarchial authority and prestige of Moshoeshoe lay a weakness in the political structure - chiefs were patriarchs in their own domain and bound to this hiearchy primarily as the guarantor of their local status. But that status was tied directly to access to land and the acquisition of wealth through cattle or other livestock. One of the strategic shifts in the Volksraad was to reach Moshoeshoe’s political supporters by offering them autonomous territories. These black statelets would then be part of a broader Boer state, supposedly free from settler and other Basotho raids and harassment. The mark of this land use was through a collective, a group living on the land in a specific geographic space who provided territorial power for any chief agreeing to join the Boers. AS you’re going to hear in future episodes — Moshoeshoe’s second son Molapo would seek an independent state aligned with the Boers. Mopeli Mokachane, Moshoeshoe’s half-brother, was another enticed away from the Basotho polity by the late 1860s. By late May 1858, the Transvaal sent a commando to assist the Free State in dealing with these raiders, defeating the Bathlaping and imposing crushing reparations on the people for having sheltered some of these rebels. The defeat by the Basotho, however, proved to most Free Staters that they could not survive alone, and they turned on their president, Boshof. He’d written to Sir George Grey and asked for help in dealing with the Basotho king, an act which stuck in most burgher’s craws — asking the very people who’d indirectly driven them out of the Cape for help. It was a stunning act of weakness they thought. Grey concluded once and for all that the division of the white South African communities into seperate polities had destroyed their capacity to deal with African chiefs. But he opposed the idea of Boer states leading this unification. Even more alarming was the news that the two main Boer Republics might unite. In his eyes, this would threaten the stability still further.

Episode 212 it is - we’re cruising into 1858 but wait! The sounds of gunfire! Yes, it’s that old South African tune, war, set to the music of the guns. Our society is steeped in action, movement, confrontation. This is not a place for the insipid, the weak, the fearful. Whatever our belief system or our personal politics, what cannot be disputed is that the country and our ways are those of the warrior. This is an uncomfortable truth for metropolitans who are more used to single latte’s than sling shots. Globally, 1858 is full of momentous events and incidents. It was the year in which Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace present their papers on evolution by natural selection in London. In India, a peace treaty ends the Indian Rebellion and later in the year the British parliament passes the Government of India Act. This transfers the territories of the British East India Company and their administration to the Direct Rule of the British Crown. The great stink in London led parliament to a bill to create modern sewerage system after the dreadful odours wafting about the British capital during the summer. Another young girl dreams up appiritions in the mode of Nongqawuse who dreamed up the cattle Killings - this time its Bernadette Soubirous who claims she saw several appritions appeared before her in the southern French town of Lourdes. Without going into too many gory details, around Ash Wednesday a woman appeared before her inside a grotto and after three appearances over time, began to talk. By October, the government had shut down the grotto there were so many people pitching up to take part in what was called a miracle. A miracle only she could see. Strange how these stories in this period repeated themselves. Back in Africa, David Livingstones six-year long second Zambezi expedition arrived on the Indian Ocean coast. Which is an important moment because inland, the tension between the Boers of the Free State and King Moshoeshoe of Basutoland had been exacerbated. A drought was reported in the region in 1858 which exacerbated everything. The Volksraad met in February 1858. They were faced with a request for help to deal with Posholi signed by a field-cornet and sixty five other burghers in the disputed area.Later in February 1858 Smithfield Landdrost Jacobus Sauer sent more news from the badlands - Posholi was, in his words, parading through Smithfield district with warriors and when accosted, said he was on a hunting expedition. When the Commando eventually gathered, there were one thousand armed and mounted Boers. Which was exactly ten percent the size of the Basotho force of ten thousand, all mounted with at least five hundred firearms. Back at the Thaba Bosiu ranch, Moshoeshoe was a sea of calm. It was now war and the king along with the territorial chiefs and councillors, put their plans into motion. They’d faced this kind of attack before, the British had raided them in 1852 if you recall. That had ended in disaster for the empire, so Moshoeshoe was not rattled by the latest assault on his independence.

Episode 211 - the year is 1857 heading into 1858. Lots the talk about! The original frontier republics and wildlands were being transformed - turning into governed territtories. In 1856 Natal was created a Crown Colony by Royal Charter, Legislation there was entrusted to a council of four officials and 12 members elected every four years by ballot. By the way, this was not only a first for South Africa, but for Great Britain itself. An experiment in election power, although the Crown retained considerable powers of veto. A civil list of those who could vote was more than modest, although the low franchise meant most were eligible to vote. Most English and Dutch, that is. What really angered the elected members was that five thousand pounds for administration was earmarked by the Crown for the benefit of black Natalians. Still, the New and unique Natal Legislative Council sat for the first time in March 1857 and its first job was to authorise the new Crown colonies stamps. By 1857 there were eight, three colonial and five republican, that is of the Cape Colony, British Kaffraria and Natal, on the other hand, the Orange Free State, Utrecht Republiek, Lydenburg, the Zoutpansberg and Pretorius’ South African Republic. This was what really clever historians call Balkanisation. Little entrepots, squabbling states, spread out across the southern African landscape, sometimes working together, often competing. Natal was a kind of detached district of the Cape until it was declared a Crown Colony, an inconvenient way to run a territory. IN Natal, most of the Boers had gone, except for the northern parts. IN their place came other Europeans, like the Germans. A few had taken to market gardening around Durban, while Joseph Byrne and other speculators had launched various schemes for British Immigrants. As you know by now if you’ve listened to the series, quite of few of the new arrivals left almost immediately. Living in Natal is not for the squeamish, even today. Still, the villages of Pinetown, Verulam and Richmond owe their existence to these English immigrants, and so too those of Ladysmith. By 1857 there were only 8000 whites in Natal, 150 000 blacks and what they lacked in size, they made up for by being vigorous, a plethora of religious sects existed, each had its own education system, associations sprang up, and the Natal Bank opens its doors. Soon there were six newspapers in Natal including the Witness in Pietermaritzburg and the Mercury in Durban. There was almost zero industry — and both coffee and cotton had failed. The first sugar cane was imported from Mauritius and seemed to offer more, but the problem was labour. But for many years hence, the main export from Natal was ivory. And as we know, they were being shot out of existence at break kneck speed. If we glance at Southern Africa as a whole in 1857 we would notice that government had become more elaborate and less subordinated to the Cape Authorities. Local Justice was in the hands of local magistrates. Lieutenant Governors changed with bewildering rapidity, but their powers were growing as these little states began to emerge, blinking like undersized infants, into the African sunshine. Federation instead of Balkanisation was in the air at least in the mind of Cape Governor Sir George Grey. The boers were of course not thinking of anything of the sort, let alone Federation. After the wars, the settlers in the Cape were dead set against reserves, the Theopolus Shepstone plan, these drained off labour, and said the nervous English immigrants, it was dangerous to mass blacks in the heart of the Colony. The effect of the Battle of Ndondokusuka didn’t help Shepstone. Thousands of amaZulu refugees of the Civil War across the Thukela led to Natal’s Immigrant rules. Further inland, the policy of the Republiks was even more blunt.

IT was only in 1610 that the Dutch discovered the advantages of sailing east from the Cape before swinging north to reach the hub of their trading network in Java. As a result, contacts between the Khoekhoe and the Europeans steadily increased particularly around Table Bay. In the first half of the 17th Century a regular system of trade developed between the Khoekhoe of the southwestern Cape and the visiting sailors. It boiled down, if you excuse the pun, to sheep and cattle exchanged for metals initially iron, but then brass and copper. The Khoekhoe as we heard last episode were not interested in the baubels and trinkets dished up by would-be traders earlier and the Europeans learned very swiftly to trade valuable goods for valuable foods. Unlike the farmers of eastern southern Africa, the Khoekhoe could not manufacture iron themselves but knew how to smelt metal. The Tswana/Sotho and Nguni were already mining and smelting iron but in essence the KhoeKhoe remained what is known as stone age people. This is not an insult, its how historians refer to the use of technology. The Khoekhoe knew full well how valuable iron was an were using iron hoes, weapons and other metals extensively. They didn’t need to figure out how to mine iron and other metals because there was so much trade in the product already that existed with iron goods flowing into Khoekhoe society before Europeans arrived from the farmers who knew how to grind and crush rock, extract the metals, then using bellows and charcoal to generate the heat required to melt the ore. The Dutch meanwhile begin controlling Indian Ocean trade through their VOC company. They were also importing a new product called Coffee from the Dutch factory at Mocha on the tip of the Arabian peninsular and tea from Formosa or Taiwan as we know it today.

So by the early 1500s Portugal controlled the major ports along northern Mozambique and into modern day Kenya all the way up to Mombasa. However, they did not seek to take over the land so to speak – at least at first. The idea was to build fortified ports so that they could enhance trade with those inland without resorting to boots on the ground. At the same time, Great Zimbabwe had passed into history and the western parts of Zimbabwe were now controlling the trade routes between Southern Africa and the Indian ocean ports. Meanwhile to the south, Sotho and Tswana speakers had pushed into the mixed Bushveld habitats that lie against the grasslands of the Highveld. At this time, dry stone walling starts to be used to mark essential settlement boundaries, reaching the southern shores of the Vaal river and the Free State by the early 1600s. Oral history has helped us a great deal as the Sotho and Tswana storytelling means we know that the people who moved here came from Botswana of today, and founded a core Tswana identity in the areas of present-day Rustenburg and Marico by the late 1400s. There is an elaborate Tswana creation myth involving a leader called Matsieng who is said to have emerged from holes in the earth. This is now believed to be related to the origin of the Tswana northeast of capital of Botswana Gaborone where there are rock cavities and sumps in the riverbeds. Once again Geology and landscape plays its part in our history. Meanwhile, the last year of the fifteenth and through the sixteenth century, South Africa’s contacts with the outside world took on new forms.

We heard last episode how Portuguese explorer Bartolemeu Dias had rounded the Cape and landed at Mossel Bay in November 1488. He was the first person to sail around the continent to the South and his journey revolutionized commerce in Europe – and southern Africa. Dias dropped anchor in Mossell bay and as his men filled their water barrels, they were approached by Khoe herders who were nearby. There appears to have been some sort of confrontation, stones were thrown, and when the Portuguese fired back with a cross bow, one of the Khoe herders had been killed. This was an ominous sign for future relationships. The first contact between Europeans and traditional Khoe herders ended in violence. It is not clear exactly what set this off but neither group could speak the other’s language which didn’t help. Dias sailed onwards to Algoa Bay, then satisfied he’d rounded the tip of Africa, sailed home again passing Cape point and the future location of Cape Town on the way back. As he journed home and just beyond the southern tip of Africa, Dias’ ships were hit by gale force winds and a major storm – so naturally he gave the Cape the name “Cabo de Todos los Tormentos” or Cape of Storms. When he returned to Portugal King Joåo was delighted to hear about the route, but not exactly pleased with the name - but he had a good eye for public relations and ordered it changed to “Cabo de Båo Esperanza” or Cape of Good Hope – a name which remains in use to this day. I ended last episode by explaining how name changes are a natural human compulsion and King Joao was no different.

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 210 - Barbarians on the Borderlands - the 1857 Basotho Free State conundrum Last episode we plumbed the depths of the amaZulu civil War battle of Ndondakusuka, this episode we’re skirting Moshoeshoe’s Basotho mountains with the BaPhuthi people. Before we kick off, just a quick note about terminology and the fact that South African History is a terminological nightmare. Not my words, those of historian Clifton Crais. As we all know, living on this mercurial landscape, with our mercurial brothers and sisters, shape-shifting appears to be our national sport. Names and places are changed at the drop of a politicians ribbon. As Crais noted, its called Historical Ethnonyms. Historical ethnonyms are names that different groups of people have been called over time, often by outsiders. These names can change due to politics, cultural shifts, or language evolution, and some may become outdated or offensive. So its with that carefully crafted bit of age-restriction warning that we’ll plunge into the fizzy waters of what Barbarians mean. In a nutshell, Barbarian means ” the “raw,” the “primitive.” On closer inspection those terms mean ungoverned, not-yet-incorporatedoughtful folks, there’s no understanding that people can voluntarily go over to the barbarians. I mean, think about the Vikings for a start. And one persons Barbarian is another person’s Warrior tribe. So why the explanation? Today’s episode deals with the Baphuthi, about whom many smart thinkers have deployed historical ethnonyms. Post enlightenment bigwigs, those Johnny coke-bottles geniuses, liked to define things. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, bless his powdered nut, case in point. His stages of man starts with the savage, who is a hunter, moves towards barbarian, who is a herdsman to the civilised man, a tiller of the soil. A farmer. By the mid-19th Century classifying colonial subjects by these criteria determined how they’d be treated. IT is important for our story to understand that there was a geographical element to the ethnic classification. When authorities summed up the situation at any time, representations of the type of environment were crucial. Historian Laura Mitchell has written about this phenomenon, its a rejection of the simplification of settler meets native or coloniser meets subject narrative. More about how the social bandits seize the day on the bad lands, the border lands. The BaPhuthi people are part of our story about social bandits - particularly by the mid-19th Century. They gathered in the eastern part of the Eastern Cape, on the border with what was to become Basotholand, Moshoeshoe’s land. They were diverse in origin, these BaPhuthi, comprised of Basotho who did not support Moshoeshoe, San, and a hodge-podge of Nguni speaking societies. The ancient ways of the San mingled through this group, based along the Maloti-Drakensberg and they did not regard the landscape as marginal.