History of South Africa podcast

By: Desmond Latham
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  • Summary

  • 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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Social Sciences Travel Writing & Commentary World
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Episodes
  • Episode 198 - 1853: The Crimean War, Historical Doppler Effects and Quitrent in Keiskamma Hoek

    Episode 198 - 1853: The Crimean War, Historical Doppler Effects and Quitrent in Keiskamma Hoek
    Nov 24 2024
    This is episode 198 — and good news!

    Apple has listed this podcast as one of South Africas five shows they liked in 2024 — and we are also the third most shared podcast in South Africa on all Apple Podcasts.

    Unvelievable, ongelooflijk, Ngiyamangala, Ke Makatsoa!

    I am delighted — and indebted to you the listener who has shared this show with friends and family. Thank you everyone!

    With that unadulterated self adulation out of the way, back to 1853.

    As you know, this series constantly shuffles between world events of the time, and incidents and events in southern Africa.

    In China the Taiping Rebellion rolled on— a civil war between the Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the Hakka-led Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The war had started in 1850 and would only end in 1864.

    It’s believed between 20 and 30 million Chinese died in this war, about the same number who died in World War One. By comparison, the 8th Frontier War which had just ended in the eastern Cape was trifling - unless of course you were one of the 16 000 amaXhosa or 1400 of the British soldiers and settlers who died.

    The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was dreamed up by a prophet just like the 8th Frontier War. In the southern African case, Mlanjeni had fused Christian and amaXhosa cosmology into a generated a cult-like following. In China it was Hong Xiuquan, an ethnic Hakka man who had proclaimed himself to be the brother of Jesus Christ and who led the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

    Also in 1853, the first passenger railway in India began running between Bombay or Mumbai as it’s now known, and Thana was inaugurated in 1853. In the same year, Manchester was granted city status in the UK, and the first public aquarium opened in London.

    Yellow Fever killed 8 000 Americans in New Orleans, that’s one reason why we get Yellow Fever shots — because yes folks — it kills you as quickly as a vaccine hesitant with spasmodic dysphonia.
    The Swiss watch company Tissot was founded in 1853 and soon the biggest market for Tisso watches, in those days was … Russia. Ironic, considering Russia and a host of countries had gone to war in the Crimea. A Time to die. The first potato chips, or chips as we call it, were prepared and sold by George Crum in New York.
    Christian Doppler the Austrian mathematician a physicist died in 1853, famous for his discovery that the observed frequency of a wave depends on the relative speed of the source and the observer.

    It’s called the doppler Effect.

    Some could argue that there is a doppler effect in historical views, just as the perceived pitch of a wave changes with movement, historical events are viewed differently depending on the distance in time from the event. To stretch this metaphor further, perception is influenced by position, shaped by cultural, geographical and ideological positions. The closer you are to the event, the more intense it is. Thus, the Historical Doppler Effect.
    The Crimean War kicked off in October 1853.
    Word of these events, of course, were rippling across the planet, sometimes taking months to reach the furtherest corners. The Boers in South Africa for example were acutely aware of the Crimean war, and that their enemy the English were involved.
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    21 mins
  • Episode 197 - The Show Trial of Andries Botha and the Forgotten Significance of the 8th Frontier War

    Episode 197 - The Show Trial of Andries Botha and the Forgotten Significance of the 8th Frontier War
    Nov 17 2024
    This is episode 197. Which is a prime number and therefore symbolic too because this episode we’re dealing with a unique event in Southern African history.

    The 8th Frontier war, which began on Christmas Day 1850, was going to end eventually although as with all conflicts that stretch into years, most of those involved despaired believing perhaps the guns would never fall silent.

    A British government under Russell had come a cropper partly because of the way in which this war dragged on, it led to Sir Harry Smith losing his job as Cape Governor, and Sir George Cathcart had arrived to escort the conflagration to its spluttering expiration.

    Lord Earl Grey had lost his job as Colonial Secretary, only a few weeks after he’d fired Harry Smith. Among the amaXhosa, things were actually not much better. The overall situation was different from the previous war, because there was no longer any attempt at a central command, or even unity of action.

    Chief Sandile of the amaNqgika had told his warriors to avoid gathering in large numbers, preferring quick and dirty small raids to anything large scale. Committing acts of mischief of all kinds as the British referred to it. For both the settlers and Xhosa people who were trying to get on with their lives, the unstable frontier was a torturous concoction of blood, sweat and tears.

    It was actually the Khoekhoe rebels under leaders like Willem Uithaalder who were determined to hold out whatever happened. This position was reinforced when the British conducted a show trial of a man who has been treated very badly by History, by the name of Andries Botha.

    A Khoe veteran — former of the Cape Mounted Rifles.

    He faced two treason trials, the first ended in 1851, but the settlers were baying for his blood as a former Cape Mounted Rifles commander who was accused of switching sides to fight with the amaXhosa. As you’ll hear, he hadn’t.

    In May 1852 he was re-arrested and marched into a court where Judge Sir John Wylde presided in what became known as South Africa’s first show trial — foreshadowing others such as the Rivonia Treason Trials where Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life on Robben Island. It as an unprecedented event this 1852 show trial, the first of its kind in the Supreme Court of the Cape Colony. Previously the trials had been dominated by the almost ritualised sentencing of rebellious slaves, but this one was the first politically charged trial taking aim at an indigenous person, a man of Southern Africa, not a rebellious slave from Madagascar or West Africa.

    Botha was defended by two of the Cape’s top lawyers, Frank Watermeyer and Johannes Brand. In what amounted to an unsightly rush, he was sentenced to death in spite of a strong defence, however the outrage that followed led to the death sentence commuted to life in prison.

    The amaXhosa were exhausted and in Febuary 1853, Sir George Cathcart, like his predecessors, had tired of greedy colonists making quite a bit of cash out of this war. They hiked up their prices for all goods, horses, oxen, feed, leather goods, food.

    After protracted negotiations, Sandile and Maqoma surrendered, along with their chiefs. They were pardoned by Cathcart, who had promised they would not be arrested like Siyolo, in exchange for an unconditional surrender.
    And so dear listener, the end of the eighth frontier war was inconclusive. At first glance, it appeared the British had prevailed, the amaXhosa had been vanquished. It had cost close to three million pounds, 16 000 Xhosa had died, 1400 British and colonials.

    It had given the world something called the Birkenhead Drill, women and children first. It had also revealed to planet earth, a modern war where a guerrilla-style army with experience in the bush had forced the conventional army into unconventional tactics.
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    22 mins
  • Episode 196 - An Irishman-penned Cape Qualified Franchise Constitution and Boots Cathcart on the Ground

    Episode 196 - An Irishman-penned Cape Qualified Franchise Constitution and Boots Cathcart on the Ground
    Nov 10 2024
    This is episode 196 and we’re covering the movement towards sef-government and the first Cape Constitution which included what’s known as a qualified Franchise.

    A trend had been sweeping British colonies by the mid-nineteenth century where the coming commonwealth was intent on running its own affairs on a country-by-country basis.

    The first self-governing colony of the British Empire you could say was Massachussett’s in 1630 showing how long the Americans had been tugging at the British leash before they began their war of independence. But to be strictly accurate it was really the Province of Canada in 1841, and all colonies of British North America became self governing between 1848 and 1855 — except Vancouver Island. Australia was a bit more complex, there were six settler colonies which each achieved self-governing status over quite a long period, between 1852 and 1901.

    Well Seven if you include New Zealand, sorry Kiwis, the English system kind of lumped Australasia together.

    There had been a tension growing between the mother-country with it’s erratic political system, and the colonies. The plethora of politics that blew back and forth on the headlands of the British voter was head spinning - but by 1850 the British bureaucracy began to gain prominance and in the halls of power, it was whispered that public jobs were going to be based on merit rather than patronage.

    As this liberalisation of the system back home began to shake the dusty and cobweb strewn hallways of ancient Britain, the philosophy drifted outwards, like an informed mist, towards the distant colonies.

    The problem for the colonists was the liberals wanted black people to have rights, the conservatives vacillated. Settlers almost to a man preferred indigenous people of the colonised territories to avail themselves as labour without recourse to the same rights as themselves.
    You’ll remember last episode we met new Cape Attorney General William Porter, an Irish democrat who wanted to extend the rights afforded white colonists to all who lived in the Cape.

    He arrived in Cape Town in 1839 and was acutely aware of the changing winds back home when it came to bureaucracy.

    Confounding a quick solution to the debate about who should be allowed to vote was the fact that officials in the Cape couldn’t get along. Chief Justice Wylde wanted to have a seat on the proposed lower house of a new Cape Legislature, even though he was a technocrat.

    Porter himself hankered after a seat in the House of Assembly proposed as Attorney General that officials should be allowed to stand for election without being held responsible to Parliament for their official acts.
    Everyone agreed however that the concept of a franchise system was important, and the franchise must be low enough so that everyone had a shot of being allowed to vote. Disallowing coloureds the vote had been the major reason at least two Colonial Secretaries had delayed self-government in South Africa. This was known as the Cape Qualified Franchise. What we must keep in mind is that the ideology of utilitarianism mixed with evangelicalism was characteristic of the new order. However, it was tempered by fear. There were two factions debating this in 1850 through to 1853. One faction sought a narrowly based electorate to be achieved by high property qualification, and the other a widely based electorate to be achieved by a low property qualification.
    Speaking of the war, it was about to come to an end. Burned itself out so to speak.

    When Lieutenant Colonel Cathcart had arrived in the Eastern Cape, his initial strategy of ending the war was to do what other British commanders had done, start building fortified posts.
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    23 mins

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Profile Image for 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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Profile Image for S. E.

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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Profile Image for Zoe Flower

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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Profile Image for Anonymous User

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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