More Than A Story

The British Empire put fifty thousand men, armoured trains, and a chain of blockhouses into catching one farmer on a horse. They never managed it. This episode follows Christiaan de Wet through the run of victories that made him the most wanted man in South Africa — Sanna's Post, Roodewal, the breakout from the Brandwater Basin — and the night he slipped a closing trap by climbing a bare-rock baboon track. A story about a man who could not lose, in a war that was already lost. Part 2 picks up the chase in a month.
A big thanks to SergePavkinMusic for providing the soundtrack. You can access his music library here:
https://www.youtube.com/@SergePavkinMusic/featured
To get in touch, see references and access additional media and content - visit:
https://www.morethanastory.co.za

Support the show

In 1972, a 22-year-old policeman from northern Uganda ran 47.82 seconds around a track in Munich and broke the world record in the 400 metre hurdles. His name was John Akii-Bua, and that race gave Uganda its first Olympic gold medal. But this isn't just a story about athletic greatness. It's about what happens when a regime needs a symbol, and an ordinary man becomes one. Akii-Bua trained under British coach Malcolm Arnold, refined his stride on dirt tracks and police compounds, and mastered one of the most technically demanding events in athletics. He did it with discipline and quiet precision, not spectacle. But he did it inside Idi Amin's Uganda. And the country that cheered him in 1972 would eventually force him into exile. This episode traces John Akii-Bua's life from the plains of Lango to a podium in Munich, and asks what it really means to win when the nation pinning its pride to your chest is already coming apart.
A big thanks to SergePavkinMusic for providing the soundtrack. You can access his music library here:
https://www.youtube.com/@SergePavkinMusic/featured
I also featured music from Ebo Krdum. Please check out his awesome library on the various streaming platforms. 
To get in touch, see references and access additional media and content - visit:
https://www.morethanastory.co.za

Support the show

For nearly two centuries after her death, Saartjie Baartman did not rest.
Taken from South Africa in 1810 and exhibited in Europe as a spectacle, she died in Paris at just twenty-five. But death did not end her captivity. Her body was dissected, preserved, displayed in a museum, and legally claimed by the French state. For 187 years, she remained far from home - not as a person, but as an object.
This episode traces the long and often uncomfortable journey to bring her back to South Africa. It explores the science that justified her dissection, the laws that kept her in Paris, the poetry that stirred political will, and the deeper question that lingers even after her burial: What does it really mean to bring someone home?
This is not just a story about colonial spectacle. It’s a story about memory, power, and the unfinished work of dignity.
A big thanks to SergePavkinMusic for providing the soundtrack. You can access his music library here:
https://www.youtube.com/@SergePavkinMusic/featured
To get in touch, see references and access additional media and content - visit:
https://www.morethanastory.co.za
Support the show

Kruger National Park didn’t begin as a sanctuary. It began as a warning. In the late 1800s, South Africa’s wildlife was collapsing under relentless hunting, war, and the belief that nature was limitless. From the first, fragile proclamation of the Sabi Game Reserve in 1898 to the lonely patrols of its first warden, James Stevenson-Hamilton, this story traces how a wounded landscape slowly began to recover. Elephants returned where none had walked for decades. Lions reclaimed silent valleys. And against poaching, politics, and deep public scepticism, the idea of protecting wilderness took hold.
But Kruger’s story is not one of simple triumph. It is shaped by contradiction, by communities removed in the name of preservation, by changing ideas about predators as “vermin,” by scientific control and hard lessons learned through fire, flood, and loss. From colonial conquest to apartheid, from poaching wars to land restitution and transfrontier conservation, Kruger reflects South Africa’s own turbulent history. This episode explores how the park was made, what it cost, and why its greatest legacy is not perfection, but resilience - the ongoing choice to protect something wild, complicated, and deeply human.
A big thanks to SergePavkinMusic for providing the soundtrack. You can access his music library here:
https://www.youtube.com/@SergePavkinMusic/featured
To get in touch, see references and access additional media and content - visit:
https://www.morethanastory.co.za
Support the show

In November 2025, Johannesburg will host the first G20 Summit ever held on African soil. This episode traces the remarkable story behind that moment. From South Africa’s long journey out of apartheid isolation to Africa’s decades-long struggle for global representation, we follow the arc that led the world’s most powerful economies to gather in the heart of Gauteng.
We explore how the G20 was born out of crisis, how it evolved into a central forum of global governance, and why its future now depends on the rising influence of the Global South. As global tensions reshape international politics, Johannesburg becomes more than a venue, it becomes a symbol of a world undergoing profound change.
This is the story of power, history, and the shifting balance of global influence. And it begins before the motorcades arrive.
Also a big thanks to SergePavkinMusic for providing the soundtrack. You can access his music library here:
https://www.youtube.com/@SergePavkinMusic/featured
To get in touch, see references and access additional media and content - visit:
https://www.morethanastory.co.za

Support the show