Podcast
History of South Africa podcast
Episodes
- Episode 289 - Black Velvet Opskop, De Beers’ Trojan Horse, an Historic Trick and a Multi-Racial Miner Protest
It could be said that Cecil Rhodes quest for hegemony over the diamond industry of South Africa was quickened by rumours of significant gold discoveries in the Transvaal. Others…
- Episode 288 - Squabbling Europeans Dissect Africa and the Sultan of Zanzibar gets Shafted
In the last few episodes we have tracked the miraculous discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand — the importance of which cannot really be overstated. While diamonds placed South Af…
- Episode 287 - "Not Worth Hell Room" — JB Robinson, Widow Oosthuizen, and the Witwatersrand Gold Grab
Onwards! Or more accurately - downwards! Because we’re continuing the saga of early gold digging around the farm Langlaagte, and the other farms like Turfontein, it is 1886, hun…
- Episode 286 - German Mercenary von Brandis formally Proclaims Johannesburg
Welcome back to the history of South Africa podcast with me your host, Des Latham. This is episode 286 - Johannesburg is proclaimed but the flow of water and cash provs challengi…
- Episode 285 - The Three Georges Gold Saga and a Bottle of Mampoer Vignette
Farming dominated the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek economy in the 1880s, even after gold was discovered in the eastern Transvaal but that was about to change. Last episode we heard ab…
- Episode 284 - Australians and the Struben Brothers Hunt Gold on the Ridge of White Waters
Gold sends a shiver through the spine of the adventurer, the merest hint drives men to acts of extreme bravery, or stupidity. Moderate men and women throw off their cloaks of socia…
- Episode 283 - Warren’s Great North Road Balloon and Telegraph Escapade
Welcome back to the History of South Africa podcast with me your host, Des Latham. Episode 283 and it’s 1885. And boy! Do we have a plethora of happenings to report. This i…
- Episode 282 - The Scramble for Africa Berlin Conference of 1884/5 and Lüderitz becomes German
There are many correlations and connections in this episode, so hang on tight as we toboggan down the slippery slopes of history bumping into all manner of bizarre and simultaneous…
- Episode 281 - The Boers anoint Dinizulu King of the Zulus
Cetshwayo had sought refuge in Nkandla as his arch enemy, Zibhebhu, turned his attention to the royalists living along the Zululand Coastal plain. Soon Somkhele of the Mphukunyoni…
- Episode 280 - Zibhebhu’s Mandlakazi shatter Cetshwayo’s uSuthu setting off a Zulu Civil War
On the afternoon of 10th January 1883, King Cetshwayo kaMpande climbed off a skiff and onto the beach at Port Dunford, surviving the heavy and powerful surf. The British had been u…
- Episode 279 - Dean Williams and Bishop Merriman compete for Anglican Souls as De Villiers Graaff Ponders
We’re up to the early 1880s where world events are intersecting in various ways with southern African events. The mere ratification of the Pretoria Convention in 1881 failed to…
- Episode 278 - The South African Suez Canal, Stellaland and Goshen and James Honey's Murder Most Foul
In 1882, the German mathematician Ferdinand von Lindemann proved that π was transcendental: it cannot be reduced to a tidy equation, never captured inside the comfortable boundarie…
- Episode 277 - Cetshwayo visits Queen Victoria and the Victorian link between Afghanistan and Zululand
When Cetshwayo kaMpande was captured after the Anglo-Zulu War, he was ferried to Cape Town and on to Robben Island. His countenance was one of dignity but that is difficult to main…
- Episode 276 — Okavango Khwebe Wind and a Dorsland Trekker Angolan Odyssey
Die Dorsland — the Thirstland — is part of the Kalahari that has an interesting history when it comes to pastoralists. The San didn’t call it the Thirstland, for them it wasn’t a b…
- Episode 275 — Pilgrims Rest, French Bob’s Gold and Barberton’s Champagne Foot Baths
Thousands of miners were streaming into the Transvaal by the third quarter of the 19th Century, a horde of avuncular independent-minded treasure hunters. In volume Two of the Cambr…
- Episode 274 - The Pretoria Convention ends the First Anglo-Boer War, Suzerainty Unresolved
The hill of Doves — in isiZulu amaJuba means the place of many doves or pigeons. It became a place of violence and blood, and yet the catastrophic defeat of the British at Majuba w…
- Episode 273 - The Mountain of Destiny: Majuba and the Birth of a Nation
It is not a stretch to say that the defeat by the British at Majuba was also the political birth of the Afrikaner people. While the Great Trek provided the origin story, Majuba pro…
- Episode 272 - The Boers wring Major General Colley’s Column at Laing’s Nek
Weather, some say, is fickle. Of course nature is just nature but when you’re on high ground, the mountains, and the weather moves in, the temperature drops in minutes and wind shi…
- Episode 271 - Basutoland Gun War, Gold Coast and Ottoman Empire
The British had instigated a war in the Transvaal which fired off in early 1881, but they had already ignited another flashpoint - in Basutoland. This was a fascinating conflict, a…
- Episode 270 - Kruger vs Black Michael and Courageous Women at the Battle of Bronkhorstspruit
The approach by the English political parties of the time to the young Boer Republics was confused, and even contradictory. William Gladstone, a liberal, had succeeded in ousting t…
