History of South Africa podcast

• Episode 224 - El Niño’s and Al Nina’s and the Griqua Great Trek to Nomansland

  This is episode 224 — the sound in the background is the weather - the other sound is the creaking of wagons as another great trek begins. We’re going to trace the arc of Southern Africa’s climate, beginning in the early 19th century, before turning to the decade under review — the 1860s — and following the path of the Griqua Great Trek into Nomansland. First let’s get our heads around the cycles of drought and flood in southern Africa. The pernicious climate. As Professor Mike Meadows of UCT’s Environmental Sciences Department observed back in 2002, South Africa’s climate has long danced to an unpredictable rhythm — one marked by dramatic shifts in both rainfall and its timing. Precipitation follows a kind of cycle, yes, but one that keeps its own secrets. Some years bring bounty, others drought, and the line between the two is often sharp and sudden. The climate, in short, plays favourites with no one — and when it comes to rain, it can be maddeningly capricious. So while the calendar may promise a rainy season, it rarely tells us how generous the skies will be. The patterns are there — but the quantities? That’s anyone’s guess. South Africa, after all, is a land of dryness. Over 90 percent of its surface falls under what scientists call “affected drylands” — a polite term for places where water is scarce and the margins are thin. The rest? Even drier. Hyper-arid zones, where the land holds its breath and waits. And by the mid-19th century, much of this land was beginning to fray under the strain — overgrazed, overworked, slowly giving way to the long creep of degradation. South Africa’s landscape is anything but simple. It’s rugged, sculpted by time, with steep slopes and a dramatic stretch from the tropics to the temperate zone. But the story of our climate doesn’t end on land. It’s shaped by a swirling conversation between oceans and continents — a conversation held over centuries by systems with lyrical names: the Mozambique Channel Trough, the Mascarene High, the Southern Annular Mode, and the twin dipoles of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Then there’s the heavyweight — the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO — which has long held sway over our rainfall and drought cycles. The dry was one of the motivations for another Great Trek about to take place. The Griqua’s who’d been living in the transOrangia since the late 1700s began to question their position in the world. With the Boers now controlling the Free State, and Moshoeshoe powerful in Lesotho, it was time to assess their options. In 1861, the Griqua joined the list of mass migrations of the 19th Century. There had been the effect of the Mfecane, then the Voortrekkers, and now, the Griqua. Two thousand people left Philippolis to establish themselves in Nomansland, far to the east, past Moshoeshoe’s land over the Drakensberg. The reason why historians like Cambridge’s Robert Ross call it spectacular was the road that the Griqua cut for themselves across the high ridges of the mountains, a remarkable feat of engineering for the time.

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• Episode 223 - The Calliper and the Lens: Gustav Fritsch in the Southern Light (1863–1865)

  This is episode 223, the calliper and the lens Gustav Fritsch in the southern Light. A very quick thank you to Professor Johan Fourie at Stellenbosch Department of Economics who invited me to be part of a workshop about improving the visibility of economic history. What an amazing experience. This episode of our series is following on from 1863, into 1864, where the movement of people became as demographic phenomenon — driven by economics and innovations. Let’s swing our attention to Robben Island, it’s a warm morning in November 1863 and a bearded German arrived armed with various photographic apparatus and guns, he was on an expedition. German tourists can be found on Robben Island these days, but they don’t carry guns and their cameras are Canons. Gustav Fritsch had arrived with many other accoutrements - because he was on a scientific mission. He was an anthropologist, and part of a curious genre now largely forgotten — the “racial type” photographer — men who believed the camera could capture the science of human difference, stamping evolution’s hierarchy onto paper. In their lens, the body became data. A century and a half later, modern influencers use images to shape a kind of social order — their self-curated faces, botox-bright and algorithm-approved offer a new kind of taxonomy, no less performative, and perhaps no less pseudoscientific. So as our friend Gustav Fritsch set up his apparatus and guns, there on the windy but warm Robben Island of November 1863, he became part of what would be the field of criminology and .. eugenics. In this period, the use of photography was part of a privileged administrative practice, part of medical anatomy, anthropology, psychiatry, part of the professionalised emerging social sciences, tying in public health, urban planning, sanitation. It was at this point that the two divergencies in the science began to take shape, one was honorific, honouring the differences, noting the diversity, exciting the senses with these truly stunning pictures of South Africans in 1863, versus the other, the repressive, the oppressive. Stamping people with their racial characteristics. Unlike today, each picture took at least 20 seconds to complete. Imagine asking your contemporary subject to sit dead still for 20 seconds while you point your iPhone at their noggin. 20 seconds is longer than an entire TikTok video that explains the meaning of life. But there is not doubt, that the most remarkable thing about Fritsch’s photos were the diversity. He photographed many chiefs and their families, capturing African nobility at the time. His image of amaThemba chief Stokwe ka-Ndlela is slightly blurred, Stokwe refused to sit still. Other images of the incarcerated on Robben Island are historic, folkloric and well, just stunning. These include Xoxo on of Ngqika, brother of Sandile, Siyolo kaMdushane, one of the Gcaleka chiefs, Dilima, son of Phato of the Gqunukhwebe. This strange German was doing South African history a favour, recording the regal faces of amaXhosa royalty for posterity. After Robben Island, Gustav Fritsch and his apparatus rolled along in an oxwagon to Cathcart in the eastern Cape where he took more photos of Anta kaNgqika the 3rd paramount chief of the amaRharhabe, whereupon Fritsch continued to Stutterheim, where he set up his stool and massive tripod and took remarkable photos of Sandile kaNgqika.Not satisfied, this 19th century paparazzi, this collector of images set off northwards to Bechuanaland. He photographed Bakwena chief Sechele I a Motswasele or "Rra Mokonopi" as well as his son Sibelo. Bamagwatho chief Kama was next, grand old man of Botswana. The ancestor of the famous Khama family of the twentieth century. And while Gustav Fritsch wandered the veld with his camera and his paraphernalia, convinced he was capturing some scientific truth, the people he encountered were being absorbed into a global archive — not as individuals, but as specimens, artefacts.

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• Episode 222 - Global events 1863, Namaqualand Copper and Gunny Sack Shacks

  This is episode 222 - Zooming out to peer at 1863, and a bit of Namaqualand Copper and Gunny Bags. We’ve just entered the period of 1863 to 1865. It’s also time to take a quick tour of 1863 as is our usual way. While the Transvaal Civil War has ended, the American Civil War is still going gangbusters. In the last 12 months, momentous events have shaped world history. Abraham Lincoln signed the the Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863 making the abolition of slavery in the Confederate States a War goal. A speculative mania followed in 1853/4, alarming the Government of the Cape. In the 1850s, a wave of speculative mining booms swept across the globe, driven by dramatic gold and mineral discoveries in places like California, Australia, and South Africa. These were fuelled by exaggerated rumours, newspaper hype, and dubious prospecting claims. Tens of thousands of hopefuls chased fortunes, often to remote or inhospitable regions, believing the next strike was just over the ridge. This era gave rise to a kind of "treasure hysteria", where wildcat ventures and fraudulent schemes—what some dubbed “red herrings”—diverted investors and prospectors alike. King Moshoeshoe the first of the Basotho had taken a great deal of interest in the Transvaal Civil War. The Orange Free State had been instrumental — and in particular — it’s new president Johan Brandt, in ending the inter-Boer battles. He was also growing more concerned by the signs of increased mining activity which had been going on west of his territory. Ancient peoples who predated the Khoe in the northern Cape had taken advantage of these minerals, there is archaeological evidence they were using iron from the area dug from pits 6000 years Before Present, around 4000 BC. Remarkable really, the use of iron in Southern Africa predates European Iron Age use by 3800 years. There is an excellent short book published by John Smalberger in 1975 called A history of Copper Mining in Namaqualand published which I’ve used as one of the sources. A specialised company called Phillips and King began exporting the ore in 1852 — a small 11 tons loaded on board a steamer called the Bosphorus which sailed out of Hondeklip Bay. They built a 140 meter long wooden jetty to facilitate loading here. A speculative mania followed in 1853/4, alarming the Government of the Cape. In the 1850s, a wave of speculative mining booms swept across the globe, driven by dramatic gold and mineral discoveries in places like California, Australia, and South Africa. These were fuelled by exaggerated rumours, newspaper hype, and dubious prospecting claims. Tens of thousands of hopefuls chased fortunes, often to remote or inhospitable regions, believing the next strike was just over the ridge.

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• Episode 221 - Free State Judges, the Transvaal Civil War and the Architecture of Deliberation

  This is episode 221, 1863, the midst of the Transvaal Civil War. As you heard in episode 220, this was the making of a new president and one who’d take the Trekker Republics into the 20th Century, albeit in the midst of the Anglo-Boer War. There had been a rapid and real effect — as the farmers took up arms against each other, the Transvaal’s economy collapsed. This weakened the government’s ability to back up its stated authority. By now the tiny independent States of Lydenburg and Utrecht had joined the Transvaal accepting the authority of the Transvaal. They had been outliers since the trekkers first arrived in those regions, fifteen years earlier. To recap - In 1859, Transvaal President, Marthinus Wessel Pretorius, was invited to stand for President in the Orange Free State, many burghers there now wanted to unify with the Transvaal. They were mainly worried about how to deal with King Moshoeshoe of the Basotho. The Transvaal constitution that he had just enacted made it illegal to hold office abroad, still Pretorius won the Transvaal election, then Volksraad attempted to side-step the constitutional problems by granting Pretorius half-a-year of leave. They hoped some kind of solution would be found — Pretorius left for Bloemfontein and appointed Johannes Hermanus Grobler to be acting president in his absence. Up stepped Stephanus Schoeman from the Marico region who unsuccessfully attempted to use force to supplant Johannes Grobler as acting president. Schoeman believed that the presidency should have been granted to him as the new Transvaal constitution stipulated that in the case of the president's dismissal or death, the presidency should be granted to the oldest member of the Executive Council. Schoeman was three years older than Grobler. Forward fast to 1863, Kruger had defeated Schoeman at a skirmish outside Potchefstroom. He had also managed to convince some of the supporters of rebel in the Heidelberg district to switch sides, and had ridden back to Pretoria with a local farmer of high standing, Jan Marais. There a council of war determined that rebels like Schoeman were taking advantage of a disagreement between the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The two fledgling Boer Republics could not agree on where the boundary lay between them. Transvaal President Van Rensburg duly assigned Kruger the duty of riding to the Free State to settle the question of the border - and he left almost immediately, taking a group of burghers with him as security. Further West, the Marico district was a hotbed of rebel activity and the commandant there, Jan Viljoen, heard about Kruger’s mission and organised a commando. On the way to Potch, a spy warned Kruger about what awaited. He changed course, and set off with a small detachment to confront Viljoen while Kruger’s 2 IC, Veld kornet Sarel Eloff dashed forward to seize a nearby kopje - the all important high ground. Viljoen is so happened, was also on his way to the very same kopje. One of the aspects of this conflict which is interesting is how Kruger used his spies or messengers as he called them. They were feeding him information daily, information about what Schoeman and Viljoen were up to. The capacity to recon an enemy was one of the defining strengths of the Boer military system, and would be sharpened constantly over the coming century and a half. Folks, there are remarkable resonances in this apparently distant little civil war. When the Union of South Africa was achieved, Bloemfontein was nominated as the seat of the Supreme Court of the union. Cape Town and Pretoria shared power, parliament in Cape Town, Pretoria the seat of government. The Free State is slap bang in the middle — so they got the Supreme Court. These historical instances reflect a legal and political philosophy that, in the aftermath of internal conflict, prioritising national healing through amnesty can be more beneficial than widespread punitive actions.

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• Episode 220 - The Transvaal Civil War of 1862-1864 and Paul Kruger’s Dopping Doppers

  All manner of things are going on — thanks to those folks out there who’ve been sending me notes and support, much appreciated. Episode 220 deals with the start of the Transvaal Civil War, and quite a bit about Paul Kruger’s early life. The American civil war was raging in 1862, and there’s nothing like a war to trigger innovation — if you excuse the pun. Richard Jordan Gatling patented his terrifying Gatling gun featuring multiple rotating barrels driven by a hand crank, allowing operators to unleash a relentless hailstorm of bullets—up to several hundred rounds per minute. Its distinctive mechanical whirr echoed across battlefields, marking a chilling shift toward modern, industrialized warfare. While undoubtedly efficient, the Gatling gun also embodied a grim reality: the age when technology would reshape combat forever had arrived. Just in time to cause more chaos in the already bloody American Civil War. What is less known these days is that there was another Civil War involving descendants of Europeans, and this was going on in South Africa. The AmaZulu had just wrapped up their own recent Civil War as you’ve heard. All manner of brutal and uncivil conduct marked this period in South African history, as neighbour turned against neighbour and the bonds of society frayed. The Boer Republics had been riven by conflict since the days of the Voortrekkers, but in 1862 perhaps inspired in part by the American civil War, the Boer Republics went from squabbling to skirmishing. There’s no proof that the carnage of the United States directly influenced South Africa, but there is proof that the Boers knew about it. Later, during the apartheid period of National Party Rule, this Transvaal Civil War was deposited in historical file 13, almost expunged, because it contradicted the prevailing political ideology where it was all the whites against all the blacks. Anything that detracted from this nationalist agenda was taboo. The modern architects of African nationalism, too, often reshape the past to suit their narratives, discarding inconvenient histories into their own version of "file 13."Compared to the carnage in America, where an estimated 750 000 people died, the South African version was far less bloody. A few dozen dead and wounded. A handful of skirmishes was the real effect, which took place in what is now Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and the North West Province - but at the same time as the American Civil War which ran from 1861 to 1865. The Transvaal Civil War started in 1862 and ended in 1864. While less gory, it was emblematic of the frontier streak embedded in the first generation descendants of the Voortrekkers. According to the constitution of the Republic, the Hervormde Church was the state church. Its members alone were entitled to exercise any influence in public affairs. Whoever was not a member of the Hervormde Church was not a fully-qualified burgher. Paul Kruger belonged to the Christelljk-Gereformeerde Kerk founded recently, in 1859, by Dr. Postma, at Rustenburg. This church became known in South Africa as the Dopper, or partly Canting Church. The derivation of the word Dopper is not completely clear, but it was believed to have come from the word dop, a damper or extinguisher for putting out Candles.

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