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PODCAST

History of South Africa podcast

A series that seeks to tell the story of the South Africa in some depth. Presented by experienced broadcaster/podcaster Des Latham and updated weekly, the episodes will take a listener through the various epochs that have made up the story of South Africa.

history places & travel

All Episodes

27:12

Episode 123 - The Voortrekkers as Israelites and...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/06/17

Just a quick thank you to the folks at East coast Radio, Diane and DW, for promoting this podcast with listeners to that station, I’m honoured to have cracked the nod and been selected to be part of their ECR podcast platform. Also a big thank you to all the listeners who’ve reviewed this podcast on iTunes and elsewhere, it’s pushed the series into the top 20 or so at least according to Apple, and there’ve been close to 800 000 listens. With that slightly self-serving service announcement, back

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21:24

Episode 122 - Lord Glenelg moulds a troublous history

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/06/11

Let’s take another look at the push factors driving the Voortrekkers away from their frontier farms. Most had lived on the margins of society for generations, part of the first group of Dutch who began spreading out from the Peninsular in the 17th Century, developing an ethos of independence and a culture of self-reliance. They were naturally anti-establishment if you like, while being presented as ultra conservative in their religion. In modern terms this implies certain characteristics which I

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20:09

Episode 121 - Lang Hans Janse Van Rensburg’s fatal...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/06/04

Moshoeshoe’s elder sons were now at a site that was to be named Moriah, 24 miles south of Maseru, chosen by the two French missionaries Arbousset and Casalis for its beauty - and the fact that it was uninhabited. But before we return to what was going on there, we need to swing around southern Africa for a little update about what else was happening circa 1835 and 1836. The Voortrekkers were coming. Dingane was marauding - or more accurately - impis representing Dingane were marauding. Port

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22:09

Episode 120 - Ploughs in the Platberg, the BaSotho,...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/05/28

We join Moshoeshoe just before the arrival of the trekkers, as he sought to build his political power once the Ngwane and other roving bands had been defeated. Mzilikazi was attacking the area which would become known as Lesotho, from his headquarters on the Apies River north of modern Pretoria. His regiments were praying on the Shona people across the Limpopo and all the way down to the southern Basotho throughout the mid 1820s into the 1830s. Moshoeshoe was at great pains to avoid fighting the

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20:09

Episode 119 - The saga of Moshoeshoe, how his...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/05/21

The story of south Africa is incomplete without scrutinising the kingdom of Lesotho, not only because geographic location means the mountains are part of our tale, but also because the entire region is intertwined like lovers, or wrestlers, or snakes that are hell bent on eating each other. Sorry about the graphic description there, but by the time you’ve finished listening to this episode, I’m sure you’ll agree with the somewhat over the top analogy. We must step back in time, from where we

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25:01

Episode 118 - Voortrekkers cross the Orange River...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/05/14

Hark! What sound breaks the inscrutable silence of the immense African veld? Dozens of wagons, which would become hundreds. Trundling along at about 5 miles a day, the Voortrekkers were leaving the Cape for their promised lands - albeit yet unidentified. This was a case of being pushed out at least in their minds - culturally, ideologically, fundamentally, they felt they did not belong in the Cape and the Karoo, they had been alienated in the land of their birth by the dreaded English. These

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21:15

Episode 117 - The Sixth Frontier War ends in a draw...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/05/07

There was a great exodus of some people, the movement of the people into the interior of South Africa - a moment that was going to reverberate all the way to the present. The Great Trek as its known had begun by mid-1835, and to be honest, was a medium sized Trek already. It had been a steady flow across the Orange River for decades, led by the trekboers, traders and hunters steadily rolling their wagons inland. They were following the trailblazers, the Kora, Bastaards, Oorlam, Kora. Some of

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25:11

Episode 116 - A murder most foul and the British wilt...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/04/30

April 1835 is passing swiftly, and still no sign of the 75 000 head of cattle demanded by the British of the amaXhosa - Hintsa remains a hostage of Benjamin D’Urban, although it was Colonel Harry Smith who was looking after the king, as well as his son Sarhili and the king’s brother Bhuru. D’Urban had summarily annexed the troublesome region around the Stormberg mountains and all the way to the Kraai River in the north where 150 Boer families lived - they were now automatically members of the

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23:42

Episode 115 - Hintsa becomes a hostage and the Mfengu...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/04/23

It's early 1835 and Cape Governor Benjamin D’urban an his 2000 men were winding their way through the AMatola mountains, searching for Maqoma and Thyali’s warriors. The going was tough albeit the scenery sublime. These glorious mountains were going to lead to one of the more inglorious moments in British military history. By early April 1835 the Boer commandos, Scots 72 highlanders, English settler corps, and the Cape Khoe regiment were trying to dislodge the amaXhosa from their mountain fastness

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25:14

Episode 114 - The British clamber up the slopes of...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/04/16

We’re going to hear about a man called John Ayliff - a man who has gone down in the annals of South African history about as mixed as a box of smarties. His mission station at Butterworth across the Kei River had been a place of refuge for the Mfengu people - a mysterious group of refugees who had left northern Zululand during the times of Zwide - and over the next twenty years had been buffeted from place to place like the chosen people of Israel, finally arriving in the green rolling hills

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21:35

Episode 113 - Guerrilla warfare throws up a challenge...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/04/09

It’s early 1835 and globally, quite a few fascinating things are going on. For one, America’s National Debt was Zero dollars - for the first and last time in it’s history. It’s president Andrew Jackson survived an assassination attempt in January of that year, also the first but not the last. Mauritius had banned slavery on the 1st February 1835 as South Africa had done in December 1834. The British began their counter attacks on the Xhosa chiefs who’d invaded across the ceded territories, into

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21:22

Episode 112 - Hand-to-hand fighting along the Great...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/04/02

The Sixth frontier war was ablaze and now Harry Smith was in Grahamstown rearranging the military furniture. He wasn’t there for long. As a man of action he was determined to chase down the amaXhosa who had begun to retire back east across the Fish River by the end of the first week of January 1835, driving thousands of cattle, sheep and horses before them. The dithering Colonel Somerset was busy trying to secure the road between Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth, and by the end of the first week of

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23:33

Episode 111 - Harry Smith arrives in panic-stricken...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/03/26

ON December 21st 1834 at least ten thousand warriors under Maqoma and Thyali swept all before them as they raided deep into the Cape colony, across a wide front. Fort Beaufort and Fort Willshire were the main centre of British operations to the north of Grahamstown as the war began. Fort Beaufort was particularly strategic because of its proximity to the Kat River Settlement. The amaXhosa avoided attacking this Settlement but that was going to change. They were hoping that the Khoekhoe would rise

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22:07

Episode 110 - Sir Harry Smith, his petite guerriere...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/03/19

The Sixth Frontier war had started on 21st December 1834 and this would be a dirty affair - a calamity for the amaXhosa. When it began Hintsa the Xhosa regent did not join in, but something that was first called Maqoma’s war was eventually to be known as Hintsa’s war because of what happened to him. The amaxhosa were assaulting the frontier across a wide region from the Winterberg down to Algoa Bay. The English settlers fled to the towns of Bathurst, Grahamstown, Fort Beaufort, Salem. The Boers

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22:44

Episode 109 - Maqoma’s war begins as the amaXhosa...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/03/11

It’s December 1834 - the Second of December to be more precise. The British had just emancipated the slaves at the Cape, although real freedom was still some months off as the colonial office decreed that all should first work as apprentices to improve skills before they were set free. On the frontier, a sequence of unfortunate events were to take place which provided the spark that ignited a war. Albany Civil Commissioner in Grahamstown Captain Campbell was a man of the colonies, a settler with

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26:09

Episode 108 - Mzilikazi empties the lower Vaal, Sir...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/03/04

A new Governor was in town, the Cape Sheriff, and he was another Peninsular Campaign Veteran called Sir Benjamin D’Urban. In July 1832 Frontier military commander Colonel Henry Somerset went on leave - his father the former governor Lord Charles had died in 1831 and Henry had to head back to the old country to sort out the extensive estate. Andries Stockenstrom, his nemesis, was also going to leave the frontier in 1833, first to London where he tried to lobby the government to give him more

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24:23

Episode 107 - Dr Andrew Smith, his mysterious Dingane...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/02/25

The small settlement of Port Natal had hardly grown by 1830. Dingane had moved his ikhanda which he named uMgungundlovu to the eMakhosini valley, close to Singonyama or Lion hill, just south of the White Umfolozi River. The traders around Port Natal by now had mostly married Khoekhoe or AmaZulu women and were part of the Zulu landscape, but by 1834, colonial authorities were going to become far more interested in this part of southern Africa. By now Charles Maclean aka John Ross was in his late

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22:35

Episode 106 - Rustling along the Amatolas in 1830 and...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/02/19

So here we are - 1830. Maqoma had been ejected from his beloved region below the Amatola mountains of the Eastern Cape, to be replaced by the new Khoekhoe dominated Kat River Settlement - a buffer zone for a buffer zone. It was a time of punitive patrols sent forth by the British to search for rustled cattle, across the Fish River, into amaXhosa territory. Known as the Patrol System, or the Reprisal System, based on the Spoor Law these all described a process where patrols would follow the

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24:40

Episode 105 - The Kat River Settlement of 1829 and...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/02/12

Last we heard about the attack on the Ngwane at Mbholompo west of Umtata, and the destruction of Matiwane’s raiders - sending him home back to Zululand where he was killed by Dingane. After the 1828 battle, Hintsa of the Gcaleka line of the amaXhosa and Nqubencuka who was his rival, fell out spectacularly over the division of the spoils. They had gathered a booty of women, children and cattle. The British took about 70 children back to the Colony, but appeared to be disgusted when the amaThembu

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20:32

Episode 104 - Matiwane’s Ngwane massacred at...

History of South Africa podcast ·

2023/02/04

South Africa’s history is peppered with chaos and warfare, perhaps more so than is apparent in the modern period. It is fairly difficult to explain how our past intermeshes with the present without focusing on moments of extreme violence, these incidents are part of our psychological make-up without most of us being aware of just how we were forged out of the sound of gunfire and the smell of blood. With that slightly theatrical introduction, let’s delve into one of these moments during the

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