History of South Africa podcast Podcast Por Desmond Latham arte de portada

History of South Africa podcast

History of South Africa podcast

De: Desmond Latham
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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 Ciencias Sociales Escritos y Comentarios sobre Viajes Mundial
Episodios
  • Episode 243 - Guns, Germans and Steal: The Pedi War of 1876

    Episode 243 - Guns, Germans and Steal: The Pedi War of 1876
    Oct 5 2025
    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.
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    24 m
  • Episode 242 - Merchant Traders, Natal plantations, African farmers and the Harrismith Sour Veld Land Swindler

    Episode 242 - Merchant Traders, Natal plantations, African farmers and the Harrismith Sour Veld Land Swindler
    Sep 28 2025
    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.
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    22 m
  • Episode 241 - Yankee Babies, Monstrous Cobwebs, the Devil’s Cauldron and Rhodes’ Steam Engine

    Episode 241 - Yankee Babies, Monstrous Cobwebs, the Devil’s Cauldron and Rhodes’ Steam Engine
    Sep 21 2025
    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.
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    20 m
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I've never found anything close to this comprehensive in an audible format. Des is doing great work and has several fascinating podcasts with a similar format. If you like history, give this a go.

Longform history

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Thank you for this informative show. I will listen until the end. I am from South Africa and I can attest to the fact that we desperately need more people that are clued up with SA's wider history, not only the recent controversial happenings.

Fantastic and necessary!

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Highly recommend. An impressive and thorough deep dive by a scholarly native. Des Latham takes the listener on a journey through the geographical, cultural and political history of South Africa with just a touch of humor and philosophical thought. Latham makes it palatable for someone new to the subject and his wit breathes more life into an extensive history that might have otherwise been too dense and “text-book-ish.”

On a personal note — As an immigrant to South Africa, I really appreciate the availability of this material as well as listening to his pronunciation of people, places and things relevant to South Africa.

Impressive

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The true spirit of this program is summed up by a quote from episode 59.

"Don't shout at me folks. This is a series that is trying to deliver direct historical blows rather than quaint emotional propaganda. Your going to hear a lot more that may make you revise what you think of as part of our past."

Thank you Mr. Latham for your dedication to the truth and willingness to impart your extensive knowledge on others.

Fantastic Podcast

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