History of South Africa podcast

De: Desmond Latham
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  • Resumen

  • 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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Ciencias Sociales Escritos y Comentarios sobre Viajes Mundial
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Episodios
  • Episode 214 - Booming Port Elizabeth, Cunning Cape Town, Indentured Indians and Quarrelling Republics

    Episode 214 - Booming Port Elizabeth, Cunning Cape Town, Indentured Indians and Quarrelling Republics
    Mar 15 2025
    This is episode 214 and we’re going to probe the fascinating and these days, hidden history of Port Elizabeth or Gqeberha, a bit about indentured Indians arriving in South Africa, and a spot of Boer Republic rebellion.
    It’s hardly ever a quiet day in sunny South Africa.
    In the eyes of most folks of the south, the Windy City features as a minor point on the urban map and in popular consciousness. The people of the city however are fiercly patriotic, and fiercely independent.

    Always smaller than Cape Town in terms of population size, never the seat of government, it’s enormous importance as a premier centre of trade and finance in southern Africa has been readily overlooked.

    Yet from the 1850s all the way through to the 1880s, Port Elizabeth was called “The Liverpool of the Cape” and for some years in that period, was the centre of the Cape’s economy. Coming soon, however, was the discovery of Diamonds that would shift power to Kimberley, then later in the 1880s, to gold and power would shift again to Johannesburg.

    The period of the mid-19th Century, saw the financial heart shift from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth although the elites of Table Bay continued to hold sway. A commercial elite of merchants, accountants, lawyers and other professions controlled the economies of Cape Colonial towns. Cape Town was the seat of government, it’s population had grown to 25 000 people and was easily the largest urban centre in southern Africa.

    There were only 17 joint stock companies in 1859. Only five towns outside Cape Town, Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth had local banks. There was a cozy and close link between the merchants of Cape Town and the government. Similar links existed between local government officials and merchants in the smaller towns which enhanced the ability of local commercial heavyweights to control trade through their districts.

    There was a constant tussle between the local merchants and the businesses that controlled the ports. Port Merchants were closer to the maritime traffic, closer to the heart of the empire, London, and acted like a commercial filter between the periphery and the centre.
    In 1857 Merchant John Paterson gathered a few like-minded entrepreneurs around him and floated the Standard Bank of Port Elizabeth. It sank almost immediately, funds were hard to come by. These merchants however had direct links with London, they bypassed the Cape Towners — and by this time half the ships sailing between South Africa and Britain were leaving from Port Elizabeth.

    Paterson gathered his entrepreneur pals together again in March 1859 and sailed to England where he launched his prospectus the the Standard Bank of British South Africa in April 1860.
    A Group of Cape Town merchants were not to be outdone by this eastern Cape upstart and in July the London and South Africa Bank .. henceforth to be known as the L and SA Bank, came into being.

    Governor Sir George Grey was very interested in all of these moves, and is believed to have intervened to help the Cape Town group as they negotiated for a charter and necessary capital.
    Port Elizabeth traders regarded the L and SA bank in a negative light. Despite their reservations, they could not deny the power of the bankers of Cape Town — a branch of the L and SA bank was opened in Port Elizabeth in 1861, and eventually, The Standard Bank’s progenitor, Paterson, managed to scrounge together the funds and opened in 1862.
    South Africa was changing fast by 1860. In Natal, Grey believed the answer to the chronic labour shortage was the introduction of indentured Indians. These were to make their way to Natal over the next few decades, but Grey’s initial request was rejected by the Indian Government.

    Speaking of success, that is a not a word you’d probably have used to describe the Boer Republics of 1860. They were sinking deeper and deeper into confusion and outright impotence.
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    25 m
  • Episode 213 - Grey Mediates, Boshof Fulminates and Moshoeshoe Vacillates before the Treaty of Aliwal North

    Episode 213 - Grey Mediates, Boshof Fulminates and Moshoeshoe Vacillates before the Treaty of Aliwal North
    Mar 8 2025
    This is episode 213, and Sir George Grey, the Cape Governor was peering intensely at the Boer Republics to the north.

    The Free Staters under Boshof had failed in their mission to drive Moshoeshoe out of the disputed territory south of the Caledon River and many of the burghers changed their tune when it came to possible amalgamation with the Transvaal. They were now considering this a viable option.

    Marthinus Pretorius had made good progress north of the Vaal, despite the boers of Lydenburg opposing his overtures for a single large and powerful Boer state. The fragmentary nature of the Voortrekker’s states was hard to overcome. But it was heartening for those Boers who wanted unification to hear that the Zoutpansbergers were prepared to listen to arguments for cohesion.

    One of the most strident and convincing voices that emerged was that of Paul Kruger. He was acting on behalf of Pretorius and the Zoutpansbergers accepted the Grondwet of the Transvaal, the constitution, which the Rustenburgers had adopted.

    The northern republics were moving towards some sort of union, by 1858 the tiny Boer Republic of Utrecht in northern Natal had thrown in their lot with tye Lydenburgers. Grey regarded these moves as ominous. The British empire had experienced a serious jolt when the Indian Mutiny broke out in 1857, and now he’d heard the reports of the Boer expedition to Moshoeshoe’s Thaba Bosiu which had ended in defeat. He’d have to send reinforcements to India, and deal with instability on the frontier at the same time.

    The Bathlaping people had also taken advantage of the Boer assault on the south eastern edge of the free State into Basotho territory by doing some invading of their own - into the Free State from the West. The San and Korana had also broken loose and Boshof’s commandos were going to be very busy as they rode around the Free State, trying to subdue these raiders.

    The Boers had recognized that beneath the monarchial authority and prestige of Moshoeshoe lay a weakness in the political structure - chiefs were patriarchs in their own domain and bound to this hiearchy primarily as the guarantor of their local status.

    But that status was tied directly to access to land and the acquisition of wealth through cattle or other livestock. One of the strategic shifts in the Volksraad was to reach Moshoeshoe’s political supporters by offering them autonomous territories. These black statelets would then be part of a broader Boer state, supposedly free from settler and other Basotho raids and harassment.

    The mark of this land use was through a collective, a group living on the land in a specific geographic space who provided territorial power for any chief agreeing to join the Boers. AS you’re going to hear in future episodes — Moshoeshoe’s second son Molapo would seek an independent state aligned with the Boers. Mopeli Mokachane, Moshoeshoe’s half-brother, was another enticed away from the Basotho polity by the late 1860s.

    By late May 1858, the Transvaal sent a commando to assist the Free State in dealing with these raiders, defeating the Bathlaping and imposing crushing reparations on the people for having sheltered some of these rebels. The defeat by the Basotho, however, proved to most Free Staters that they could not survive alone, and they turned on their president, Boshof.

    He’d written to Sir George Grey and asked for help in dealing with the Basotho king, an act which stuck in most burgher’s craws — asking the very people who’d indirectly driven them out of the Cape for help. It was a stunning act of weakness they thought.
    Grey concluded once and for all that the division of the white South African communities into seperate polities had destroyed their capacity to deal with African chiefs. But he opposed the idea of Boer states leading this unification.

    Even more alarming was the news that the two main Boer Republics might unite. In his eyes, this would threaten the stability still further.
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    22 m
  • Episode 212 - The Basotho-Boer War of 1858 leads to a Burgher Backfire

    Episode 212 - The Basotho-Boer War of 1858 leads to a Burgher Backfire
    Mar 1 2025
    Episode 212 it is - we’re cruising into 1858 but wait!

    The sounds of gunfire!

    Yes, it’s that old South African tune, war, set to the music of the guns.

    Our society is steeped in action, movement, confrontation. This is not a place for the insipid, the weak, the fearful.

    Whatever our belief system or our personal politics, what cannot be disputed is that the country and our ways are those of the warrior. This is an uncomfortable truth for metropolitans who are more used to single latte’s than sling shots.

    Globally, 1858 is full of momentous events and incidents. It was the year in which Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace present their papers on evolution by natural selection in London. In India, a peace treaty ends the Indian Rebellion and later in the year the British parliament passes the Government of India Act. This transfers the territories of the British East India Company and their administration to the Direct Rule of the British Crown.

    The great stink in London led parliament to a bill to create modern sewerage system after the dreadful odours wafting about the British capital during the summer.

    Another young girl dreams up appiritions in the mode of Nongqawuse who dreamed up the cattle Killings - this time its Bernadette Soubirous who claims she saw several appritions appeared before her in the southern French town of Lourdes. Without going into too many gory details, around Ash Wednesday a woman appeared before her inside a grotto and after three appearances over time, began to talk. By October, the government had shut down the grotto there were so many people pitching up to take part in what was called a miracle.

    A miracle only she could see. Strange how these stories in this period repeated themselves.

    Back in Africa, David Livingstones six-year long second Zambezi expedition arrived on the Indian Ocean coast.

    Which is an important moment because inland, the tension between the Boers of the Free State and King Moshoeshoe of Basutoland had been exacerbated.
    A drought was reported in the region in 1858 which exacerbated everything.

    The Volksraad met in February 1858. They were faced with a request for help to deal with Posholi signed by a field-cornet and sixty five other burghers in the disputed area.Later in February 1858 Smithfield Landdrost Jacobus Sauer sent more news from the badlands - Posholi was, in his words, parading through Smithfield district with warriors and when accosted, said he was on a hunting expedition.
    When the Commando eventually gathered, there were one thousand armed and mounted Boers. Which was exactly ten percent the size of the Basotho force of ten thousand, all mounted with at least five hundred firearms.

    Back at the Thaba Bosiu ranch, Moshoeshoe was a sea of calm. It was now war and the king along with the territorial chiefs and councillors, put their plans into motion. They’d faced this kind of attack before, the British had raided them in 1852 if you recall. That had ended in disaster for the empire, so Moshoeshoe was not rattled by the latest assault on his independence.
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    23 m

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Imagen de perfil para Gerhard Maré

Fantastic and necessary!

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.

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Longform history

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.

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Impressive

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.

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Fantastic Podcast

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.

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