History of South Africa podcast

• Episode 218 - Lifestyle Update 1861 and an Ode to Landscape Motion Intensity and Physiology

  We’re doing a little different thing today, having wondered our way through a few thousand years its time to reflect on a few things. How did people go about their day to day lives, and what was life really like by the mid-19th Century South Africa? This period was dominated by agriculture, it was before the discoveries of most of the valuable minerals that turned the region from a sleepy agrarian backwater into one of the most dynamic economies in the world. Cape Town had been the fulcrum around which all European expansion rotated, the southern tip of Africa had to be navigated by all the empires of Europe, first Portuguese, then Dutch, then English. So naturally Cape Town had developed quite a sense of self importance. Some vicious and malicious Joburgers claim it continues to suffer from a superiority complex today. All in good spirit of course. It was a distant port, and if a Voortrekker or AmaZulu king travelled to Cape Town overland, it was like setting sail into an insecure future. The slow wagons cruising overland from the Waterberg to Cape Town took about as long as the maritime trip from Liverpool to Cape Town — two to three months. Both routes - whether sea or land — were rife with danger. During this perilous chapter of history, seafaring was still a high risk venture. Meanwhile, those who braved the land faced their own litany of dangers — wagons toppled on treacherous trails, lions prowled the edges of camps, venomous snakes struck without warning, and bandits lurked in the shadows. The veld itself, like the capricious ocean, seemed to conspire against the traveller, offering up a relentless gauntlet of threats to navigate. This experience meant the journey men and women were hardy, a tough breed. Most actually walked the trip, sometimes riding their horse, but mostly leading the oxen as the wagon creaked and squeaked, rumbled and tinkled over rocky landscape. African migrants walked from the transOrangia and deeper, into what is now Botswana, all the way to Cape Town to work on farms. That took weeks, sometimes, months. AmaZulu kings like Shaka thought nothing of walking 300 kilometres to visit his distant homesteads, taking a fortnight to recon his land. Physiology was actually different — people had straighter spines at this time in world history — there were fewer eye problems, stronger limbs. But they lived shorter lives in general, medicine was a distant luxury for most. 19th-century Southern Africans, like many pre-industrial populations globally, generally had better postural alignment and physical conditioning compared to sedentary modern denizens of the ethernet. Ethnographic and missionary accounts from the era—such as those by Dr. David Livingstone and Thomas Baines—frequently remark on the exceptional physical endurance of local populations. Many African societies, particularly among pastoralist and hunter-gatherer communities like the San, Tswana, and Zulu, were noted for their upright posture and ease of movement over long distances. The strength needed to walk along the tracks and slopes of southern Africa is well known, the pursuit is replicated today with the wonderful trails around the countryside. But it wasn’t all milk and honey, of course. The fatality rate remained high until the end of the 19th Century, although in South Africa, people were generally living longer, particularly in the Cape.

  --------  

  18:49
• Episode 217 - Lovedale, amaXhosa Chiefs Languish on Robben Island and the American Civil War

  A quick thank you to all those who’ve been donating towards the upkeep of this series, particularly Chereen and Gerhard, your continued support is making a difference. And Adi the winemaker, dankie meneer, and Seyi who’s trying to get Paypal sorted, thanks! Not to mention Chris whose significant support means I can host the series long term on iono.fm - and also a shout out, very modern that, a shout out, to Francois at iono.fm who has patiently helped me out when technical blapses creep in.ventually on April 12 1861, the American Civil War began with the bombardment of Fort Sumner in South Carolina. In sunny South Africa, the American Civil War was going to reverberate in many ways. Firstly, the War created a Cotton Crisis and helped foster investments in Natal cotton farms. Before the war, most of Britain’s cotton came from the Southern U.S., the slave plantations of the south. But the civil war disrupted these supplies, leading to a massive shortage. British textile mills were scrambling by year-end, and south Africa was on the radar along with other regions. The Natal government encouraged cotton growing, and for a brief moment in time, it was seen as a cash crop to grow. But the reality was, the soils, climate and shortage of labour made it unsustainable long term. Importantly, the British reassessed their strategic imperial priorities, and realised that the American Civil War exposed their fragile imperial control in distant lands. Despite the fact that a liberal Government was in power in the Britain, the Cape Colony and Natal became more strategically important as London sought to secure shipping routes and resources. The Suez Canal was still being constructed, the only way to India was around the Cape. It was the influence of slavery and labour policy that had a profound ideological impact on southern Africans. It led to a future connection, and Confederate influence inside South Africa. This is prescient, but important. The Boer Republics in particular took a great deal of interest in the break-away American states. The mindset, the republicanism, and sympathies with the pro-slavery states of the Confederacy all resonated with the Republics, particularly the ZAR. By 1860 Sir George Grey had thrown virtually the entire amaXhosa leadership into prison — Robben Island to be precise. Maqoma, Mhala, Xayimpi who’d overrun the military villages in the Eighth Frontier War, Silo, Xoxo, Stokwe. There were many amaThembu amaGqunukhwebe, Ndlambe, Ngqika chiefs and councillors marooned on Robben Island, where the winter winds howled across the flat land, where there was little protection from the extreme weather.

  --------  

  19:43
• Episode 216 - Mpande and Cetshwayo’s Shakespearean Drama Continues, it’s all King Lear, Richard III and Macbeth

  It’s episode 216 and we are lurching back to the north east, to Zululand. The heat is building up, and the conflicted relationship between King Mpande kaSenzanghakhona and his son, Cetshwayo kaMpande, is growing more complex by the minute. But this being Zululand, that wasn’t the only competition in town. There was an older son of Mpande, called Hamu, who was his first-born son by Nozibhuku, who in turn was the daughter of the much respected chief Sothondose of the Nxumalo people. If we turn our thoughts to the succession process of the AmaZulu which has always been a tricky trail, this episode will serve to illuminate the razor-sharp line royal heirs must walk. Sothondose you see was Mbuyazi’s brother. And if you recall, Mbuyazi was the man who had been killed along with seven of his brothers and half brothers at the Battle of Nondokasuka by Cetshwayo. King Mpande had publicly referred to Mbuyazi as his heir apparent, and Cetshwayo thought he was a better candidate. The plot thickens. It more than thickens, it congeals like thick red blood, spattered many times this episode. There is a Shakespearian correlation between his epic tales and those of the AmaZulu, where both are interlaced with human truths. This week’s tale is a mist-mash of Macbeth, Richard the third, Henry the Sixth Part three. Perhaps you could include others, but let’s leave it at that for now. IN Zululand, Mpande was king and he was apt to change his mind about his heir apparent. Cetshwayo had worked himself into the position by dint of killing Mbuyazi, and had begun to refer to Mpande as ixegwana, little-old man. Or Oomie which is why calling some middle-aged men Oomie can get you into trouble. Hamu kaMpande was an insidious man, a persevering leader who wriggled about, an indulgent man according to oral tradition as well as the written descriptions we have of him. Flabby, with the immense thighs of the house of Senzangakhona. Hamu led the Ngenetsheni clan, and had supported Cetshwayo during the recent Civil War, where Mbuyazi had been defeated. That was the case even though his grandfather, Sothondose, was Mbuyazi’s brother. In other words Hamu fought against his Great Uncle. Blood, it seems, isn’t thicker than water—unless it’s pooling in a cauldron of treachery and Macbethian dread. Hamu also resented his bad luck, descended from Nzibe who ranked behind Mpande’s other sons. He liked to show off his bling so to speak, and gathered a massive isigodlo of women, 300 in all, and bragged about being quasi-independent of Mpande. Cetshwayo kept a beady eye on these two, and there were confrontations with them, one took place in 1857. But nothing was resolved. Initially, Mbuyazi’s remaining brothers turned out to be more of a threat than Hamu and Maphitha, and this is where the Shakespearian blood letting began in earnest. Cetshwayo wanted to kill Mbuyazi’s thirteen year old brother Mkhungo. Someone tipped off the teen that the death squad was on its way and he fled to safety in Natal across the Thukela River. Other members of his direct family were already seeling refuge there, his mom Monase and Sikhotha his half-brother. shake

  --------  

  22:49
• Episode 215 – Ostriches Trump Elephants in 1860 and John Dunn: Musket Trader Extraordinaire

  Episode 215 has a rather grandiose title but let us stop for a second and take stock. This southern land, swept by thunderstorms that appear as if by magic, and lash the landscape, rumble across the stubby veld, slinging lightning like a million volt silver sjambok, shaking rocks with their deep growls, bring everything back to life. The air before this denizens of the blue sky pass by is sullen, the horizon hazed over, after the rains everything is crisp, visibility can change in seconds from a few hundred metres to a few hundred kilometres. I was raised in Nkwalini valley in northern Zululand, where the mysterious Mhlathuze River flows powerfully after these storms, the valley is ringed by mountains that rise from 650 feet above sea level feet to over 3000 feet a few minutes drive up around Melmoth. And from these heights, you can see the Indian Ocean 40 kilometres away after one of these refreshing storms. Southern Africa had been drying out substantially throughout the first half of the 19th Century. Historian Charles Ballard notes that climatic research has pointed to opposite extremes of weather patterns in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The climatic regime in southern Africa of dry and warm conditionsin the early nineteenth century was the reverse of the Northern Hemisphere's colder and wetter weather at this time. Some animals, like humans, would not survive this —others like the ostrich were in their element. Turning to Natal, much of the interior was unstable, drought and famine led early white settlers to believe it had always been devoid of people whereas it had been abandoned. There is a difference between the two concepts — never settled or previously settled? Nguni speaking refugees, not always amaZulu, arrived back in their homes in Natal through this period only to find that the settler community considered them to be aliens and a race of "vagabonds." It became a conventional ideological tool for those who sought to justify the expropriation of land. The people were driven away by a long list of threats, military, environmental, meteorological. With that preamble, let’s focus initially on the strange saga of John Dunn who has appeared in all his curious glory in prevous episodes. Cetshwayo gave John Dunn ten oxen and a tract of land. By July, the former border agent had resigned his job and moved into Zululand permanently. He’d had it with the British. The tract of land given to Dunn was extensive, in the immediate coastal region of southern Zululand known as Ungoye, which extended from Ngoye forest all the way down to the lower Thukela. Shortly after he moved in, Dunn took many wives. By1860 he was regarded as one of the most influential chiefs in the Zulu kingdom, ruling over more than 50 square kilometers of land and thousands of subjects. By 1860 Dunn was the main source of fireams entering Zululand, and these items rapidly replaced cattle as the main payment for lobola.

  --------  

  25:26
• Episode 214 - Booming Port Elizabeth, Cunning Cape Town, Indentured Indians and Quarrelling Republics

  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.

  --------  

  24:43

More History podcasts

Trending History podcasts

About History of South Africa podcast

History of South Africa podcast: Podcasts in Family