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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 172 - The Republic of Potchefstroom, Potgieter treks into Bapedi country and Mswati faces rebellion

    Episode 172 - The Republic of Potchefstroom, Potgieter treks into Bapedi country and Mswati faces rebellion
    May 26 2024
    This is episode 172 and we’re galloping back to cover the effect of the Boers 33 Articles, approved by the Volksraad on April 9th 1844, and thus installing the little Republic of Potchefstroom.

    Some of the articles and the fledgling laws and rules were going to crop up throughout the history of South Africa, all the way through to the time of apartheid, and even to the present.

    If you recall, the Natal Boers and the Vaal Boers had been in dispute — largely because of the difference of opinion between their two leaders, Hendrick Potgieter on the highveld, and Andries Pretorius who had been based in Natal.

    With the British declaring sovereignty over Natal, many Voortrekkers upped and offed, trekking back over the Drakensberg back to the transOrangia region, and up along the Vaal, while some ended up further north.

    So we’re going to take a look at this period. In 1849 there was a temporary union between the communities north of the Vaal, who adopted what amounted to the basis of what was to become the Transvaal Constitution. This constitution continued until the foundation of the South African Republic — which was only repealed in 1901 when its provisions ceased to be applicable.

    That is except for the application of the Roman-Dutch system of law. The thing to keep in mind was that the 33 Articles cannot be regarded as a formal constitution. For a start, there was no definition of various authorities in the State, and most of the 33 Articles were concerned with the procedure in the Courts.

    When it came to matters of Government, even the most elementary kind, the Articles were silent. Each emergency that arose subsequent to it’s ratification in 1844 led to a rewriting of the Articles to cover for the gaps in how to manage the state. Even the Volksraad was referred to in the vaguest terms possible. Often when disputes arose, another constitution, that of the Winburg Boers, regulated the Articles.
    Another character we’ve met pops up again. Johan Arnold Smellekamp - a citizen of the Netherlands. If you remember a previous podcast, he’d popped up in Natal and told the Volksraad in Pietermaritzburg that the Dutch Royal family was taking an active interest in the Voortrekkers.

    He’d stretched the truth to say the least, and had many members of the Volksraad convinced that if they fought the English for Natal, the Dutch would come to their aid. Holland did not.
    King William II rejected the proposed connection between the Netherlands and the Voortrekkers of Natal and before the year was out he apologised to White Hall for the affray caused by Smellekamp and his activities. That didn’t stop the self-aggrindising Smellekamp, who returned to Natal in 1843 but was refused entry into Port Natal by the British.

    So he headed to Delagoa Bay instead, and after the creation of the 33 Articles in 1844 and the declaration of independence by the Potch Winburg republic by Hendrick Potgieter, Smellekamp popped up once again, riding into Potch that Winter.

    This is where things get really interesting.
    Partly owing to Smellekamp’s persuation, and partly driven by his own obsessions, Potgieter made the fateful decision to organise a new trek at the end of 1844, heading towards Delagoa Bay. After a few weeks they arrived at a site they called Blyde River. Happy River. Potgieter believed that this site was only three days ride from the sea. He was wrong. They setup a new settlement and promptly named it Andries-Ohrigstad. When Potgieter’s wagons rolled onto the hills of Ohrigstad of course, they were not empty of people — and this is again where the story gets more interesting — the plot thickens to a consistency of treacle. Because the people he met there were the baPedi, who’d been forced out of their ancestral land by the amaNdebele of Mzilikazi two decades earlier.
    Take a look at a map and the location of iSWatini. By now it was being ruled by a very young King Mswati the First.
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    20 mins
  • Episode 171 - Zwangendaba’s exodus from Pongola to Lake Tanganyika and the story of the Ngoni

    Episode 171 - Zwangendaba’s exodus from Pongola to Lake Tanganyika and the story of the Ngoni
    May 19 2024
    This is episode 171 and now its time to swing around southern Africa again, because as Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in Canterbury Tales in 1395, “Time and Tide wait for no man”.

    It’s from the Prologue to the first story called the Clerk’s Tale and the story is imbued with what modern academics call masculine authoritarianism. It’s about women’s power actually, and insubordination — the plot dealing with a woman called Griselda who rises the highest position of hegemonic power. She becomes the honoured wife of a wealthy lord through utter submissiveness and essential silence.

    To many modern folks, she represents a kind of prescriptive antifeminist propaganda — in other words — a very accurate description of the medieval period. Others say the strong and silent type is fundamentally insubordinate and deeply threatening to men and the concepts of power and male identity.
    What is this I hear you ask, why is Zwangendaba part of the History of South Africa? Well, as we all know, lines drawn on maps are cartographical magic codes, and the real world has no place for smoke and mirrors.

    Once again, we must go backwards to go forward. Zwangendaba was a King of a clan of the Nguni or Mungoni people who broke away from the Ndwandwe Kingdom alliance under King Zwide. After defeat of the Ndwandwe forces under his command by Shaka, Zwangendaba gathered his clan and fled their home near modern the town of Pongola. This dispersal was part of the movement of the people we call the Mfecane.

    Remarkably, Zwangendaba led his people, who took on the name the "Jele", on a wandering migration of thousands of kilometres lasting more than thirty years. Their journey took them through the areas of what is now northern South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi to Tanzania. The Ngoni, originally a small royal clan that left Kwa-Zulu Natal, extended their dominion even further through present-day Tanzania, Malawi, and Zambia when they fragmented into separate groups following Zwangendaba’s death.
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    21 mins
  • Episode 170 - Harry Smith returns as the conquering hero and humiliates Maqoma while translators muddle along

    Episode 170 - Harry Smith returns as the conquering hero and humiliates Maqoma while translators muddle along
    May 12 2024
    This is episode 170 and the sound you’re hearing is the cheering and the flaming hot emotion because Sir Harry Smith is back in town!

    The town is Cape Town — Sir Harry won’t hang around there for too long, he as you know from the previous episode, has returned to South Africa to take up his new position as Governor of the Cape.

    Sir Harry was the former civil commissioner of the de-annexed Province of Queen Adelaide in the Eastern Cape and in June 1840 he’d left Cape Town to take up a post as Adjutant-General in India. There is this incredibly long history of connection between India and South Africa, and people like Smith were part of that history.

    Others of course are people like Gandhi, but that’s a story for further down the road.

    Smith was courageous, whatever other faults he may have had, and was involved in a sensational victory at the Battle of Aliwal in India on 28 January 1846 during the first Anglo-Sikh War.

    That victory led to a promotion to Major General, and he was offered an accepted a baronetcy. The British parliament formally thanked Smith, and then returned to England where the extremely bloated ego he’d developed over the past few decades was further fluffed up.

    While in England he’d spent a lot of time with the Duke of Wellington who’d defeated Napoleon, and with the Duke’s support, he convinced the British government that the festering sore of the Eastern Cape of South Africa could be healed.

    This expensive disaster after disaster he said could be resolved quickly, and even more importantly, cheaply.
    When he returned to England in 1847, Harry Smith was treated like royalty, greeted at Southampton by artillery salutes, church bells rang, thousands of people cheered him, a special train was laid on to take him to London, where he received the freedom of the Guildhall.
    He dined with Queen Victoria, and was pretty much the first authentic military hero of the Victorian era. Waterloo was 30 years earlier, a long way off, and there’d been very little military glory since.

    Thus, Wellington whispered in the ears of the powerful, and that is how Harry Smith was appointed the new Governor of the Cape, strategically important but infuriatingly complex.
    All settlers agreed, the Queen had made a perfect appointment. As we’re going to hear, this was going to be possibly her worst appointment anywhere up to then. All the hero worship was going straight to this little man’s head. He was short, so by little I mean horizontally challenged.
    Doing the hard work of making sense of negotiations were the translators. These were men, black and white, who had a vast influence on our history. Smith said to Sandile that he should leave Grahamstown and go to his people, whereupon the translators claim Sandile said “No — I will stay today near you, my former and best friend…”

    Historians believe these exchanges were embroidered, altered, and added to the misunderstandings. Many of the translators were sons of missionaries, or settlers who’d grown up speaking amaXhosa fluently. But they fed Smith what he wanted to hear.

    The very same translators had been at work when Sandile was taken into Grahamstown to be placed under house arrest so you can see that their editorialising was having an effect on history.
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    25 mins
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