History of South Africa podcast

We’re picking up speed from here on, the fulcrum that was the mid-19th Century is passed and our story is developing quickly - this is episode 203 the Siege of Makapansgat and Reconstituting history. It is 1854, almost mid-way through the sixth decade of this momentous century and the region that’s under our gaze is the northern Limpopo territory, the Waterberg. Those who live there today will know of its grandeur, and its extensive mountain ranges, riverine bush, delightful geology. Thaba Meetse is the northern Sotho name for the Waterberg, where the average height of the peaks here are 600 meters, rising to 2 000 meters above sea level. The vegetation is officially known as dry deciduous forest, or just the Bushveld to you and me. The original people here date back thousands of years, early evolutionary stages of hominid development can be traced here, so in some ways, it’s part of the story of human existence on the planet. Its all about the type of rocks here, and the soils. Clamber amongst the red koppies and ravines and you can look out over the bush veld, with it’s minerals such as vanadium and platinum, part of the Bushveld Igneous complex I spoke about in episodes one and two. Tectonic forces forced the rocks upwards, creating the famous Waterberg, the Thaba Meetse ranges, rivers deposited sediment and in these sandstone layers, you’ll find the famous caves surrounded by cliffs hundreds of feet high, rising from the plains. Scientists and palaeontologists tracked our very first human ancestors who lived at Waterberg as early as three million years ago, and inside the cave we’re going to hear about, Makapansgat, skeletons of Australopithecus Africanus have been found. Homo Erectus remains have also been found in the cave. This site has yielded many thousands of fossil bones, and what is known as The Cave of Hearths preserves a remarkably complete record of human occupation from Early Stone Age “Acheulian” times in the oldest sediments through the Middle Stone Age, the Later Stone Age and up to the Iron Age. It also is where one of the earliest Homo sapiens remains were found, a jaw found in the cave layers by archaeologists. The lime enriched deposits and dry conditions within the cave have allowed for the exceptional preservation of plant, animal and human remains as Amanda Beth Esterhuysen points out in her 2007 Wits University PhD. So its really metaphorical — an iconic cave because this is where the Boers and the Kekana people were going to go to war. Part of our story this episode is about a track, a wagon trail, that passed between the ivory hunting centre of Schoemansdal, Soutpansberg and the newly established Boer town of Pretoria and which cut straight through the middle of Kekana chief Mokopane’s territory. And inside this territory is Makapansgat. Since the first trekkers had arrived in 1837, the Langa and Kekana people who lived in the Waterberg had watched in some disquiet as the numbers of Boers increased over the years. It was almost two decades after Louis Trichardt had wheeled his wagons through the Waterberg, and by the mid-19th Century there wasn’t a week that went past without hunters or prospectors wandering through. It’s a double irony then to relate that both the Langa and Kekana had origins further south, they were part of the amaNdebele who had fled from Northern Zululand during Shaka’s reign, related to the amaHlubi, and had been involved in some land seizing themselves. Don’t simplify history, its more radical than a buffet hall of red berets. King Mghombane Gheghana of the Kekana, and Mankopane of the Langa, were not prepared to accept Trekker overlordship like they had fought against Mzilikazi’s overlordship. They rejected the trekker system of labour where every black adult male was supposed to work for the Boers for nothing. Mokopane by the way is a northern Sotho form of Mghombane Gheghana, and he was known throughout the territory as Mokopane.

This is episode 202, the sounds you hear are the sounds made by wagons rolling across the veld — because we’re going to join the trekkers who’ve mostly stopped trekking. For the trekkers, the promised land was at hand. The high veld, parts of Marico, the northern Limpopo region, the Waterberg, the slopes of the Witwatersrand into the lowveld, the Free State with its rocky outcrops and vastness, the dusty transOrangia. In the Caledon Valley, Moshoeshoe was monitoring the Dutch speakers who were now speaking a combination of languages, morphing the taal into Afrikaans. Further east, King Mpande kaSenzangakona of the Zulu had been keeping an eye on the colonial developments while indulging in expansion policies of his own. This period, 1854 and 1855, is like a fulcrum between epochs. The previous lifestyle of southern Africa, pastoral and rural, was running its final course, the final decade before precious mineral discoveries were going to change everything. Let’s just stand back for a moment to observe the world, before we plunge back into the going’s on in the Boer Republics. Momentous events had shaken Europe, a succession of revolutions which had somehow swept around Britain but never swept Britain away. This is more prescient than it appears. These revolutions are forgotten now, they’re an echo but in the echo we hear the future. The 1848-1855 revolutions were precipitated by problems of imperial overload in Europe. Liberal nationalism was also sweeping the world, and the American constitution was on everyone’s lips. Copies of the American Constitution were cropping up in the oddest places. Like the back of Boer ox wagons and inside the churches, alongside the Bibles. American missionary Daniel Lindley who you heard about in our earlier episodes, the man from Ohio who had started out life in south Africa as a missionary based near Mzilikazi of the amaNdebele’s great place near Marico. He had copies distributed to the Boers. This is important. There is a direct link between the American constitution, South African concepts of what democratic rights were, which you could then track all the way to the 1994 New Constitution after apartheid. Schoemansdal, to the north, and the basis of ivory trade, was much bigger and richer than Potch. The Schoemansdalers looked down their noses at the Potchefstroomers — it was an ancient Biblical pose — it was hunters and shepherds versus farmers, Cain versus Abel. The clash between settled and nomadic societies. One of the dirty little secrets of South African life in the mid-19th Century was how successfully these new arrivals in the north, the trekkers, had decimated the elephant, rhino, lion, leopard, crocodile, and hippo populations. Schoemansdal was living on borrowed time. The story begins with a hunting party seeking white gold — ivory. An elephant hunt. It also begins with a massacre, and ends with a siege of a cave. The Nyl Rivier was always disputed territory, particularly since chief Makapan and Mankopane, otherwise known as Mapela - Nyl means Nile and the Boers had renamed this river for all sorts of important resonant reasons. This river is a tributary of the Limpopo and it is located in the northern part of the Springbok flats.There are two main versions of what happened, and I’m going to relate both, then we shall try to extricate fact from fiction. This episode will deal with the initial events, and next episode we shall conclude the saga with it’s terrifying cave fighting and ultimate South African symbolism. The Langa and Kekana people first experienced trekkers in 1837 when Louis Trichardt entered their territory — from then on a steady trickle of trekkers could be found inside Langa and Kekana territory. The area we’re focusing on is close to where the town of Potgietersrus would be founded, the modern day town of Mokopane. We can begin to connect our histories here. Makapan, Mokopane, Mankopane, Potgieter.

This is episode 201. The sounds you’re hearing are those of roadworks, because South Africa is upgrading. Quickly. The arrival of governor sir George Grey in 1854 heralded a new epoch. Previous governors had been Peninsular war Veterans, they’d fought against Napoleon. This one was the first who was the child of a veteran of the war against Napoleon, and a person who was schooled in liberal humanism. He was also a Victorian, steeped in the consciousness of evolution, principled and simultaneously, flaunting truth. A fibber who was in a delirium of post-renaissance spirituality, combining dialect and salvation. You heard about George Grey’s time in New Zealand last episode, and here he was, the new Cape Governor. So without further ado, let’s dive into episode 201. He was free from prejudice against black and coloured people, and all indigenes as such, firmly believing from his own insight into the Polynesians cultures, the Maori, that there was nothing to distinguish them in aptitude and intelligence from anyone else in mankind. The same applied to Aborigines and black South Africans he believed. At the same time, Grey wanted indigenous people to wean themselves from what he called barbarism and heathenism. By suppressing tribal laws and customs, and incorporating indigenes into the economic system through labour and industry. During his short stint in Australia, he had set the Aborigines to work building roads, and those who worked hardest, earned the most. At the same time, he ruthlessly suppressed any sort of push back from the Aborigines, then the Maoris, and now he brought this brand of colonialism to South Africa. Dangling the carrot of labour, then applying the stick of punishment. The Cape colony was his laboratory in the Victorian age of discovery. An intellectual exercise. There was quite a bit in it for him of course. An ideologue and highly learned, he had written the New Zealand articles of Representative Government, an act that led to him being knighted. Sir George. Utopia beckons those who are imbued with internal fire — it’s only now and then that history provides a crack into which people with this sort of vision can plunge. A man or woman appears at a particular point in time, restructuring entire territories and societies by dint of their character, and their timing, their epoch. During this time, a powerful figure with a vision for change could restructure an entire land before his minders back in England could do anything about it. Correspondence with the antipodes, New Zealand and Australia, took nearly a year for an exchange of letters to take place. Six months one way, six months return. In the meantime, an industrious social engineer could get very busy indeed. South Africa was closer to the centres of power, the new steam driven ships could do the return journey in four months, but that was more than a financial quarter in modern jargon. A person with initiative could launch quite a few initiatives before the folks back in London put a stop to their initiating. The biggest problem at this moment for Grey was not the amaXhosa or AmaZulu or Basotho, nor the Khoe, or the Boers. IT was the British colonial office. They were in the throes of recession not expansion. Retrenchment and withdrawal. Grey pondered the solution. Five thousand white European immigrants should be brought in he wrote, the occupy British Kaffraria. There was a certain problem, and that was the amaNqika Xhosa lived there at a pretty squashed density of 83 people per square mile. To give you an idea of how squashed this was, the Cape colony population density of 1854 was 1.15 per square mile at the same time. The second conundrum was accessing cash to construct all these new schools and public buildings. Grey sent a letter to the Colonial office outlining his needs — this new plan would require 45 000 pounds a year.

This is episode 200 - we have reached the double century milestone on our winding journey through the past. When I began the series in 2021 after some years of planning, I had no idea what would happen. Diving into the shark tank that is history podcasting took a great deal of forethought. One person’s history is another persons’ propaganda after all, social engineers rewrite the past to suit their own agenda’s and this series has been based on our people’s stories first. Endeavouring to let the folks of the south talk for themselves, which of course, can threaten folks’ world view about their origins, or their personal narrative. It is rife with risk. So it’s with some relief to report that the response has been overwhelmingly positive. This series is now the third most shared podcast in South Africa — a stunning revelation given that I am doing this solo. There is no marketing team, no financier, no patron, just me and you the listener. Thanks to Francois at iono.fm for the growth in advertising, nothing for mahala I guess. Speaking of filthy lucre, I have a PayPal account for donations which can be found on desmondlatham.blog. The funds go towards the series audio hosting fees. The third video episode is about to land on YouTube, so things are happening. With that craven bit of begging, let us continue for we are going to spend this episode meeting Cape Governor, Sir George Grey. He is probably the most influential Englishman in both New Zealand and South Africa’s history, playing a key role in the annexation of Maori land, he spent time as a Governor of Australia. Very much an administrator of his time, he believed in educating the masses, and put his money where his mouth was, founding Grey’s College in Bloemfontein in 1855, then Grey’s High School in Gbeberha a year later. In between, all manner of shenanigans were recorded. But wait. As we hear about Sir George, I’ll introduce his amaxhosa alter ego, Manhlakaza, aka Wilhelm Goliath, who was the first amaXhosa Anglican in South Africa. Manhlakaza’s relationship with the Archdeacon of Grahamstown, Nathanial James Merriman, was going to change the whole course of South Africa’s history. Don’t take my word for it, this is the view of many who know much more than me about these things, particularly the fantastic historian Jeff Peires. Here were two people, opposites. Grey and Goliath. Their tale is tantamount to the gears of history turning like a great, soot-streaked clockwork, steam-punk cogs groaning under the weight of human ambition and magical ether, while the past, a fog of coal-smoke and brass, hisses and sputters, propelling the unwieldy engine unsteadily into the unknown. The allegorical story this episode contains metaphors and illustrations of an era. Grey believed white and black people were essentially the same, it was only culture and backward rituals that separated the races. Grey wrote regularly about how aborigines and later amaXhosa “…are as apt and intelligent as any other race of men I am acquainted with…” “They are subject to the same affections, appetites and passions as other men…” Simply put, he thought that the Aborigines, the Maoris, the First People’s of Canada, the Khoekhoe, the Nguni and Tswana speaking south Africans, all wanted to become Englishmen but couldn’t because they were trapped by the barbarous customs and rituals enforced by their older generation. At the same time, the colonial in him believed that no Aborigine, or Maori or African culture, was worth the grand heights of English culture. Still, that didn’t stop him personally conducting a major contribution study of the Maori language and folklore. That study is regarded one of the most important research into early Maori ways — a contradiction considering that he didn’t hold the Maori ways in high regard. What a strange character.