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History of South Africa podcast

By: Desmond Latham
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  • Summary

  • 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.
    Desmond Latham
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Episodes
  • Episode 169 - The Kat River Settlement seethes and the inglorious treachery of Sandile’s arrest

    Episode 169 - The Kat River Settlement seethes and the inglorious treachery of Sandile’s arrest
    May 4 2024
    First off, a big thank you to those listeners who’ve been sending me emails, a great deal of useful information emerges from our discussions which always improves the quality of this podcast, specifically thanks to John for sending me your book and to Doctor Nkosi for the contact in eSwatini.

    When we left off in episode 168, pressure was being exerted on the Kat River Settlement by the new Governor, Sir Henry Pottinger.

    A quick revisit. The Kat River Settlement came into being in I829 after a clash on the eastern border when the authorities of the Cape Colony expelled amaXhosa from land around the source of the Kat River.

    To prevent them from re-occupying the area when the soldiers withdrew, the colonial government decided to settle it with English settlers and Khoekhoe and bastaards. Andries Stockenstrom who was then the Commissioner General of the eastern districts, wanted to intersperse the two races and give them equal quantities of land. But his superiors insisted on placing the khoe in the most exposed military positions, then gave the Khoe smaller land-grants than the English settlers received.

    What is really fascinating is how many types of people lived in this small area — people who differentiated themselves based on their ancestry. The party at the confluence of the Kat and Mankanzana Rivers for example belonged to that class of mixed race South Africans known to the colonists as 'Bastaards', who had adopted Dutch clothing, religion, technology and language, and did not associate themselves with their Khoi heritage.

    In May 1847 Governor Sir Henry Pottinger appoint a bankrupt farmer and a man who was known as a great hater of the Khoekhoe to oversee the Kat River Settlement. Thomas Jarvis Biddulph was appointed magistrate and immediately there were issues. Andries Stockenstrom said Biddulph’s moral character “could not bear scrutiny” and the new magistrate launched into a series of verbal and physical attacks on the Khoekhoe living along the Kat River and Blinkwater.
    He called them “a lazy set of paupers” and said that they would be better served working as labourers for the English settlers and the Boers. Just to reinforce his view, Biddulph pulled a tax stunt — increasing their tax from eighteen pence to six shillings. From eighteen cents to sixty cents. How about that for a tax hike, that’s 43 percent. If you tried that these days, the scratching sound of matches would be heard across the land.
    This historic site didn’t have long to go before it would be eviscerated by colonial jealousy. Even the former supporters, the missionaries, appeared to lose faith. One of the most ardent was Henry Calderwood. His idealism had evaporated — living on the frontier had shattered his liberal attitudes, and now he seemed to swap one obsession for another.
    One of the things that had driven Pottinger up the wall was the fact that the amaNgqika had continued to insist that they were at peace without admitting that they had been defeated, and by Sandile’s refusal to resume negotiations. On the 7th August 1847 Sandile’ had been formally declared a rebel.

    Then the whole situation worsened, and fast. Pottinger resorted to proclaiming that the amaMfengu, the Boers and the Khoekhoe who fought with his regular soldiers could seize whatever they liked from the amaXhosa. The full-scale invasion of the Amathola’s began again on the 29th September 1847, and every grain pit was emptied, every single animal seized.
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    23 mins
  • Episode 168 - Earl Grey and the irascible Sir Henry Pottinger leave their mark on South Africa

    Episode 168 - Earl Grey and the irascible Sir Henry Pottinger leave their mark on South Africa
    Apr 28 2024
    This is episode 168 and the world by the middle of the 19th Century was shifting gear, changing rapidly. Southern Africa was caught in the currents of world history and within a few years with the discovery of Diamonds, was going to be very much in the current of world economics.

    Not that the Cape had not been crucial since the days of the Dutch East India Company, the VOR.

    As you heard last episode, the British government has fallen, Robert Peel had resigned on 19 June 1846, in the wake of political divisions that followed the repeal of the Corn Laws. The imposition of import duties on foreign corn had been attacked for making bread expensive. And yet, the Laws were more than a concession to farmers and landowners — they were also the symbol of a barrier against free trade.

    Ah yes, the logic and philosophy of lassaiz faire capitalism.

    The repeal of these laws and the change going on must not be underestimated. We forget these things, so long ago, at our peril. For we have similar debates going on today, globally.

    In 1846, the repeal of the laws took place in the midst of the great Irish Famine, which led to so many Irishmen and women fleeing their homeland for America — where they changed that country forever too.

    While the financiers muttered about all the advantages of free trade, they of course made sure to leave out one country in their calculations.

    India.

    This was always the exception.

    Still, the financiers were pontificating about how the empire itself was sort of redundant, and as everyone glanced around for the good and the bad, many found themselves wondering about southern Africa.

    This region assumed a pivotal role inside British politics, as it was going to do for the next 150 years. You see, the whole of South Africa was the embodiment of wasteful expenditure without a discernable return on commercial investment. It was a total liability except for the Cape of Good Hope with its strategically important naval base which allowed the British to cover the South Atlantic and the approaches to the Indian Ocean.

    Into the political breach strode a man who arrived with Lord John Russell’s administration, and he was the third Earl Grey, who took over from William Gladstone as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies.

    Grey was a free trader, imbued with the spirit of the elixhir of cash, the medicine of dosh, and imperial matters were the third Earl Grey’s passionate interest. He was a technocrat with a mission, and wrote a book where he pointed out that the great object of possessing colonies was to also possess a monopoly over the commerce.
    Grey turned his gaze to Sir Peregrine Maitland. The governor was 70, and the stress of the Seventh Frontier War had turned him into an octagenarian. A younger man was needed. Someone who could sign up young amaXhosa and turned them into Sepoys, and they’d police their own people.
    This is where another colonial springs into our view, a man who was called a violent-tempered martinet, greedy and ambitious. Sir Henry Pottinger. He’d spent most of his life in the East, and had just retired as the first Governor of Hong Kong.

    He’d secured Britain’s commerce with that vast country called China, and when he sailed home in 1846, he’d been received as a hero. He’d been given a handsome pension for life and was telling all and sundry he hoped to become the governor of Bombay, which we now call Mumbai.

    The last thing he wanted was to be sent to South Africa. So when Grey met with Sir Henry, the latter bluntly refused the Cape Governorship. Eventually, Grey was forced to cough up a vast salary of ten thousand pounds a year and promised that the Cape Town post was temporary.
    Pottinger was to last ten months in South Africa. It’s thought too that his governoship, which was often like a hurricane of unsparing ill-will and excoriation, was also the most significant of the first half of the 19th Century.
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    23 mins
  • Episode 167 - Maitland dithers, Stockenstrom sallies forth into the Transkei and biblical storms change everything

    Episode 167 - Maitland dithers, Stockenstrom sallies forth into the Transkei and biblical storms change everything
    Apr 21 2024
    This is episode 167 and the British army is clumping along towards the Amathola fastnesses, the deep ravines and steep riverine environment not the most ideal for an army that dragged everything around on wagons.

    Leading this army were officers steeped in the traditions of empire, and marching under their command were men from across Great Britain and beyond. They were poor, some with debts to pay back home, many were recruited from the haunts of dissipation and inebriation as historian Noel Mostert notes one officer saying in a somewhat sneering tone.

    But that’s a bit harsh, because when we read the journals of these soldiers, they’re full of character and intelligence, adventurers of their time whatever your political view. Half of these British soldiers were actually from Scotland and Ireland, they weren’t even English.

    It was the officers who’d neered at the colonials, openly, and it was the officers who symbolised the rotten core of this empire with it’s rampant class lunacy. It was only on rare occasions that rank and file soldiers made it to the heady ranks of the officer corps, and promotion was painfully slow. The officer class was notorious - it took the Crimean War before the British Army was dragged into the 19th Century. Up to the Seventh Frontier War it functioned as it had for hundreds of years — a place where the chinless wonders of the Empire could seek fame and fortune while retaining their artificial edifice of class.
    Then there was the South African bush which was a frightening experience for the British soldiers, it’s alien succulents a bizarre sight for the British. At night, as they soldiers lay in this bush, they could not light their pipes or a fire. At the first sign of a glimmer, the amaXhosa would open fire from several directions and while their aim was not good, the British didn’t take a chance and spent most of their time in their camp lying down out of sight.

    Sir Peregrine Maitland’s large army mobilised in June 1846, and lumbered into the Amathola’s looking for Rharhabe chief Sandile. They were also trying to corner Phato of the Gqunukhwebe closer to the ocean, along with Mhala of the Ndlambe — both were lurking somewhere between the Keiskamma and Kei Rivers. Colonel Henry Somerset swept the coastal regions, as Colonel Hare and Andries Stockenstrom scouted the Amatholas.
    On the 11th August 1846 Maitland made his decision.

    This was an exact copy of the decision made by Harry Smith in the previous Frontier War, who told then Governor Sir Benjamin D’Urban that a strike across the Kei River was required — a decisive strike.

    That’s because Harry Smith was a man of action, fully believing in the power of power.

    In the previous war, the Sixth Frontier War of 1834 to 1836, Smith wanted to strike Hintsa. That highly regarded amaXhosa chief had been killed by the very same Smith. Now here was Hintsa’s heir and his son, Sarhili, facing another British veteran of the war against Napoleon.
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    22 mins
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