History of South Africa podcast

Written by: Desmond Latham
Listen for free

  • 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
    Show more Show less
Social Sciences Travel Writing & Commentary World
Show more Show less
Episodes
  • Episode 208 - Believers vs Unbelievers, Ancestor Veneration and the Stupifying Logic of Global Millenarianism

    Episode 208 - Believers vs Unbelievers, Ancestor Veneration and the Stupifying Logic of Global Millenarianism
    Feb 2 2025
    Episode 208 it is .. where the steely grip of starvation takes hold of the amaXhosa nation by December 1856.

    Self-induced, a response to years of colonial expansion, incroaching land grabs, loss of power of the chiefs and ancient custom, the immediate terror of the 8th Frontier War and its effects, and a mingling of Christianity and traditional magic — an attempt at finding salvation.

    It was not the first, nor the last millenarian movement of South African history. It was also not the only one of its type at the time in the mid-19th Century, the Taiping Rebellion in China had been bludgeoning its way through the countryside, and there the number of dead would climb to more than 20 million in the decade of that country’s disastrous flirtation with sectarianism and mythology.

    40 000 Xhosa were going to die of starvation in British Kaffraria and what was known then as Xhosaland. When we left off last episode, King Sarhili of the Gcaleka line, the paramount chief of the Xhosa, had visited the Gxarha river to meet with Mkhazana and Nongqawuse the prophet early in 1857.

    A quick word about millenarian movements. Most have a particular structure, and are replicated the world over. There is usually the charismatic leader, a figure head. Behind this person are the administrators, the navigators who guide this mishapen ship on it’s voyage, almost always towards self-destruction.
    The causes of millenarianism are diverse, but the overriding similarities lie in all linked to Middle Eastern monotheistic religions intersecting with local ancient rites and cultural norms. They all are characterised by a prophetic leader, a charismatic figure claiming divine insight, all have end-times expectations. Elements of the Christian Nationalist right wing in America have a similar core belief - as the baby boomers approach their end of life, many are convinced its the end-Times for everyone. They have annointed their own charismatic figure who is known as POTUS.
    Nongqawuse’s startling revelations that these ancestors were on the cusp of returning led to the Cattle Killing frenzy. By December 1856 there had been two disappointments, the resurrection had been postponed twice.

    Still the believers believed. Two harvests had passed, and they did not til their land. Old people living near Peelton Mission station began dying of starvation. Many others were wearing hunger belts, special girdles fastened around the stomach.

    “Hunger…” wrote Brownlee “is fast closing upon its victims, and though there should be no war, their sufferings will far exceed anything which they have hitherto experienced…”
    Show more Show less
    26 mins
  • Episode 207 - A Moon of Wonders and Dangers, Supernatural Horsemen and HMS Geyser Turns Tail

    Episode 207 - A Moon of Wonders and Dangers, Supernatural Horsemen and HMS Geyser Turns Tail
    Jan 26 2025
    We’re in the midst of 1856. This is the year lung sickness took hold of the country, and it’s effect was to push some people of the land over the edge. Nongqawuse living in Gxarha had prophesized about salvation which was at hand. The former Anglican now born-again Xhosa Mhlakaza had thrown himself into the messianic messaging business.

    You heard last episode about the causes of the Xhosa Cattle Killing, now we’re going to deal with how it spread. The amaXhosa were not alone. Around the world, frontier battles had lit up the globe, the pressure of these new arrivals on indigenous people had burst into flames.

    In Seattle, U.S. Marines had been dispatched by ship in January 1856 to suppress a Native American uprising. The First People’s were resisting pressure to cede land - they were being herded into reservations and opposed the plan. Just to set the tone, a few days before the attack on Seattle, Washington Governor Isaac Stevens had declared a "war of extermination" upon the Native American Indians. Seattle was a small, four-year-old settlement in the Washington Territory that had recently named itself after Chief Seattle - a leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish peoples of central Puget Sound.

    In Utah, the Tintic war had broken out in the same month between the Mormons and Ute people - it ended when the Federal Government took the Ute’s land but intermittent clashes and tension continued. This went on all the way to the Second World War in the twentieth century, with the Ute’s demanding compensation.

    In India, the Nawab of Oudh, Wajid Ali Shah, was exiled to Metiabruz and his state was annexed by the British East India Company.

    Following our story about Surveyors in South Africa, it is interesting to note that in March 1856 The Great Trigonometrical Survey of India officially gave 'Peak XV' the height of 29 thousand and 2 feet. We know Peak XV now as Mount Everest and its actually 29 000 and 31 feet.

    Also in March 1856, the Great Powers signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the Crimean War. Soon thousands of British German Legion veterans of the Crimean war would arrive in South Africa.

    In May 1856, Queen Victoria handed Norfolk Island to the people of Pitcairn Island — famous for being descendents of the Mutiny on the Bounty. The Pitcairners land on Norfolk Island promptly extend their Pitcairn social revolution idea - to continue with women’s suffrage.

    David Livingstone arrived in Quelimane on the Indian Ocean having taken two years to travel from Luanda in Angola on the Atlantic Ocean across Africa.
    And in South Africa, since April, amaXhosa had been killing their cattle upon hearing of the Prophet Nongqwase of Gxarha, whose pronouncements were now being managed by Mhlakaza her uncle.

    King Sarhili had visited the mysterious River and pronounced his support for her visions which spoke of salvation through cleansing of goods and cattle. Killing cattle and throwing away goods, she warned of witchcraft destroying the Xhosa, she had been spoken to by two men in a bush. Nongqawuse and her little ally, Nombanda, were visited by Xhosa from far and wide to hear her story directly.

    The most privileged visitors were taken to the River and the Ocean, but most of these men and women heard nothing - no voices although Nongqawuse continued to relay the two stranger’s messages to those present. A minority began to claim they heard the voices.
    Rumours of the happenings spread like wild fire and the official sanction of King Sarhili Ka-Hintsa of the amaGcaleka removed the last doubts from many who desperately wanted this prophecy to have power. And yet most of the amaXhosa chiefs intitially opposed the prophecies, but were ground down mentally, dragged into the worse form of cattle killing by the commoners. The believers began the comprehensive work of destruction. This back and forth went on until what is known as the First Disappointment.
    Show more Show less
    25 mins
  • Episode 206 - Nongqawuse’s Bush of Ghosts, Mhlakaza’s Anglican Episode and Sarhili Goes to Gxarha

    Episode 206 - Nongqawuse’s Bush of Ghosts, Mhlakaza’s Anglican Episode and Sarhili Goes to Gxarha
    Jan 19 2025
    his is episode 206 - all fire and brimbstone, a horror show. The squeamish should gird their loins, prepare the poultices, polish your monocles and tighten your bootstraps, grab your smelling salts Roll up your sleeves and fetch the brandy, brace for impact.

    It’s an episode that will begin a series of episodes which are clouded by a fine bloody mist, and a fog of confusion. We’re going to look at the amaXhosa Cattle Killings of 1856-57 and then the Zulu’s most bloody civil war clash, the Battle of Ndondukasuka.

    One was a millenarian movement gone hopelessly wrong, the other was the old story of a young prince seizing power from the heir apparent.

    Both epics are an exploration of human consciousness and both changed South African history.

    Cetshway kaMpande of the amaZulu was amassing great power under the very nose of his dad, King Mpande.

    Hold on, Before we head off to Zululand in forthcoming episodes, we’re going to peruse southern Transkei.

    Alongside a magical river called the Gxarha. The little river is about 20 kilometers long, a tiny snakes’ tail, a meandering whispering essence, slithering through deep ravines and splashing in splended mini-waterfalls.

    This is a case of dynamite in small packages because the river harboured dark secrets. It was to bare witness to a catastrophe.

    The twists and turns of this saga are echoed in the twists and turns of the river, it’s a squiggle of a sprint for those tiny twenty kilometers. Cliffs and thick forest, more a jungle, make it impossible to walk along its bank for very far, and giant shadows are cast at dusk and dawn from the strelitzia and the reeds. A sand bar blocks its final sprint to the sea which bursts open in summer, a blend of bush, cliffs, forest and water.

    It was a day in April 1856, the exact day is lost in time, when two youngsters, Nongqawuse who was an orphan of 15 and Nombanda, who was about 8 or maybe 10, left their homestead on the Gxarha river. Nongqawuse’s uncle, Mhlakaza, asked them to chase birds away from cultivated fields.

    As they shooed the birds away in the early morning of that April day, Nongqawuse heard voices. She turned and standing inside a nearby bush were two men. They gave her a message which she was to relay to Mhlakaza when she and Nombanda returned.

    “Tell that the whole community will rise from the dead, and that all cattle now living must be slaughtered for they have been reared by contaminated hands because there are people about who deal in witchcraft…”

    The fusion of faiths and the belief in shades were intersecting in this youngsters’ mind. She had heard the stories about previous prophecies as she grew up, about Mlanjeni the Riverman and Nxele the wardoctor. The violence and upheavals of the Frontier Wars were paralleled by a huge spiritual upheaval which resulted in a clash of Xhosa and Christian religious ideas.
    During the next thirteen months of this cattle killing between April 1856 and May 1857, about 85 per cent of all Xhosa adult men killed their cattle and destroyed their corn in obedience to Nongqawuse's prophecies.

    It is estimated that 400,OOO cattle were slaughtered and 40,000 Xhosa died of starvation. At least another 40,000 left their homes in search of food. But it was to have another effect. After a dogged 80 years of resistance to colonial expansion, the amaXhosa struggle collapsed by their own actions - and almost all their remaining lands were given away to white settlers or black clients of the Cape government.
    Show more Show less
    21 mins

What listeners say about History of South Africa podcast

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.ca reviews

Amazon Reviews
No reviews are available