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 239 - The Central South African Powder Magazine and How Chief Langalibalele Ended up on Robben Island

    Episode 239 - The Central South African Powder Magazine and How Chief Langalibalele Ended up on Robben Island
    Sep 7 2025
    When we left off last episode amaHlubi chief Langalibalele and a few hundred warriors had sought shelter inside Basotholand, crossing the Drakensberg Mountains through Bushmans Pass in November 1873. When the British tried to send columns to corner him, one of the columns had been stopped by amaHlubi at the pass where five of the British troops had been killed, three young Natal Carbineers, a Basotho tracker and a translator.

    This event had shocked the settlers of Natal, and in response by Lieutenant Governor Chilly Pine began a campaign to destroy the amaHlubi and amaNgwe in their two locations, west of the town of where Mooi River is today.
    Pine declared Martial Law. Most of the amaNgwe and amaHlubi men fled, and the British rounded up women and children and the elderly. The women and children were placed in the charge of friendly chiefs in the up-country districts, while the old men were sent to Pietermarizburg to be kept under surveillance by other friendly black chiefs.
    On the 17th December, as a kind of afterthought, Pine followed this up with a declaration that all amaNgwe were now officially dispossessed of their land. The arbitrary killings of both clans continued mostly by the African levies, under the watchful eyes of colonial officers who appeared to be egging them on.

    Major Anthony Durnford, a professional soldier and engineer who’d been wounded by the amaHlubi during the battle of Bushman’s Pass earlier in November was one of the few who spoke up against the bloodletting.

    “There have been sad sights …” he reported
    “…women and children butchered by our black allies too often unhappily by the permission and encouragement of the white leaders… old men too … the burnt villages — dead women … it was horrible.”
    Two columns of volunteers and African levies were now searching for Langalibalele. One headed to East Griqualand, while the other rode back to Bushman’s Pass following the spoor left by the amaHlubi cattle. The amaHlubi warriors had taken all their cattle into Basotholand to join their chief.

    Natal authorities were offering a one pound reward per warrior captured, and 100 cattle for Langalibalele, dead or alive. The amaHlubi chief was deep in Basotholand, close to the Senqu river, the Orange, about fifty kilometres west of the Bushman River Pass. By early January several hundred men and about 7 000 cattle assembled under his command. He had no clear plan about what to do, his original idea was to escape from the British then ponder next steps. But now he was in Sotho territory, very much out of his depth.
    Boers in the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek and the Free State formed commandos and sent them to the borders in case Langalibalele showed up — or in case any of the chiefs that surrounded their territories decided to join in. Eastern Cape and Natal English farmers sent their women and children into towns, battening down their farm hatches.
    Their fears were heightened by the role that Basotholand was appearing to play. In the minds of the colonists, this mountain kingdom was thought of as the Central South African powder Magazine — a place no-one could control, full of guns now bought by workers on the diamond mines and farms. It was in the heartland of south Africa, annexed by the British in 1868, ruled by a new king Letsie who had succeeded Moshoeshoe. Although annexed to the Cape in 1871, it remained a highly unstable land in the minds of colonials.
    Langalibalele had no idea of all of this as he considered his next steps inside Basotholand. The British had also mobilised hundreds of troops who boarded the HMS Rattlesnake in Cape Town and were en route to bolster Natal while a large police force rode into Basotholand from the Cape’s eastern Frontier region. IN East Griqualand, Adam Kok’s Griqua also mobilised in support of the British.
    The amaHlubi chief eventually handed himself over to the Basotholand chief Molapo and was taken back to Pietermaritzburg for his trial.
    Más Menos
    21 m
  • Episode 238 - ‘Another Little War’ at Bushman’s River Pass and the British Blow up Bits of the Drakensberg

    Episode 238 - ‘Another Little War’ at Bushman’s River Pass and the British Blow up Bits of the Drakensberg
    Aug 31 2025
    This is episode 238 and it’s going to be full of legal back and forth, all about the Langalibalele Rebellion, another little war as the London times called it — it’s action at Bushman’s River Pass after which British engineers will be sent to blow up bits of the Drakensberg.

    In 1873 Benjamin Chilly Campbell Pine was reappointed as Lieutenant-Governor of Natal. Pine was a career officer in the British Colonial Services, and this was the second time he was taking up the post of Lieutenant Governor in Natal. His first stint was logged between April 1850 to March 1855 and Pinetown on the hills above Durban is named after him. Then he spent time in the Gold Coast in Ghana, then the West Indies, as Governor of the Leeward Islands and Antigua.

    His second stint was cut short largely because of how he was going to deal with the Langalibalele affair. Two other colonials will feature through our story this episode, one being Theophilus Shepstone the Secretary of Native Affairs in Natal, and the other was Bishop John Colenso who was a liberal humanist and the implacable enemy of most British settlers. Pine's administration had to contend with the "Shepstone System," a policy of indirect rule developed by Theophilus Shepstone. This controversially separated African and European populations and was a dominant force in Natal's governance during Pine's tenure. While Pine and Shepstone collaborated, their administrations also faced criticism from white settlers over issues of land, labor, and the financing of native policy.
    The other main character of our tale today was Langalibalele, the hereditary chief of the Hlubi tribe from around 1836. After fleeing Zululand in 1849, he and his fellow refugees were granted land by the colonial authorities in the Escourt District, west of the town along the Msuluzi and Mtshezi Rivers. The town was laid out by Colonel Estcourt In 1847 and named after the British officer. The land the amaHlubi were handed was technically not for free, their obligations included protecting the colony from the San Raiders some galloping in from as far away as the Maluti Mountains. Langalibalele and his people were part of the Shepstone System, granted their own territory seperated from white farms. Ten years after arriving in their fertile rolling hills, Langalibalele headed off to Iswatini, Swaziland, where he’d fetched his head wife, uMzamose in 1857.

    There was some confusion about what the amaHlubi were expected to do. Essentially, their role was to form a buffer zone in the region and were even presented with some guns for that purpose, and once jobs opened up on the diamond mines, hundreds of amaHlubi men headed off to labour in Griqualand West, returning with valuable goods like horses, and more guns. The people flourished through the 1860s and into the early 1870s and were at peace with the colonial farmers, growing from 7 000 to 10 000 souls, with 15 000 head of cattle. The original 364 square kilometres of their land extended to more than 700 square kilometres. But the relationship with the British was riven by confusion and distrust.
    Natal was isolated from the hinterland by the formidabble Drakensberg Mountains, and was surrounded by black nations, thus increasing the paranoia of the settlers. The amaThembu and Xhosa to the south were respected, not to mention the amaZulu to the north East. Communication with the Cape was slow along the few roads and by sea, there were also few transport corridors in Natal itself which engendering a feeling of insecurity among the colonists.In Early March 1873 John Macfarlane singled Langalibalele and the amaHlubi out and demanded the registration of their guns in terms of Law 5. Langalibalele said he was too busy and suffering from an illness, and could not be expected to head off across such as vast area looking for his 2000 men and counting their guns.
    A war was brewing.
    Más Menos
    23 m
  • Episode 237 - Going Native, Coconuts, Hindu immigrants and Church and State in Natal

    Episode 237 - Going Native, Coconuts, Hindu immigrants and Church and State in Natal
    Aug 24 2025
    Although responsible government had come comparatively late for the Cape Colony, the transition in many ways was still too early. It had come twenty years after New Zealand and the state of Victoria in what was to become Australia.

    The easterners were only partly reconciled to the rule by a Cape Town elite, widely differing personalities made cooperation difficult. The staunchly liberal William Porter was opposed by the stiff proto-racist Robert Godlonton, there were rising stars like Francis William Reitz junior, the legislative leader of Beaufort West at the age of 28 — and the six foot four giant John X Merriman who was erratic, but his instinct for decency and his broad human empathy made him attractive to most who met him - Boer and Brit. He was of his time of course, intellectually convinced of the brotherhood of man as long at it meant white brotherhood. Like many colonists of the period, he found it impossible to deal with black south Africans on a sympathetic basis.

    There was the less attractive Gordon Sprigg, conceited and small in stature, big in ambition, but capable of folly and deception as historian Frank Welsh explains. There was the impressive Lion of Beaufort - John Molteno, who I have mentioned before, the first leader of the Cape when it achieved responsible government. Molteno owned one hundred thousand acres of well-tended land, and ran a thriving business. John Henry De Villiers was also in this first group of Cape leaders, already distinguishing himself also well off, the future Lord De Villiers, or De Villiers Graaf.

    Born in 1842, his public life was to fall in the most complicated and controversial period of South Africa’s history. I have his biography written by Eric Walker, and it is a running commentary from his point of view on South African history. Two interests dominated his life - law and federation.

    By the time he died his influence on South African law would be arguably greater than any other person, presiding over the senior court for more than forty years. He also took a keen interest in politics, mostly directed towards the idea of federating South African states and colonies. De Villiers had what was called a balanced affection for both Britain and South Africa. Speak of an affection for Britain but not necessarily balanced with an affection for Africa, were the English colonists of Natal.
    Blacks who owned land in Natal were technically allowed to vote, as in the Cape, but every statagem was employed to weaklen this right. There was a high property qualification in Natal, but other restrictions had been added through the 1860s, when black Natalians were not allowed even to petition for admission to the electoral roll until they’d cleared a series of hurdles.

    Seven years of exemption from customary law being the first hurdle, then three white men had to sign approval of the black Natalian gaining the vote, which was a complete negation of the colour-blind principle which was supposed to be driving this political right. Once the black Natalian had managed to clear those hurdles, believe it or not, there was one more. He had to seek permission from the Lieutenant Governor. The list of black voters in Natal for this period was an A4 Page long.
    So it was deeply ironic then that one of Zulu King Cetshwayo kaMpande’s most trusted chiefs - and one of his most important, was Englishman John Dunn. He was the antithesis of everything that the urbanised English settler espoused - living and marrying into the Zulu people, his descendents fiercely proud members of a large clan today.

    He elicited from those around him the phrase “going native” which is one of the most insidious relics of colonial thought.
    Más Menos
    18 m
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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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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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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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