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History of South Africa podcast

History of South Africa podcast

By: Desmond Latham
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 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 Social Sciences Travel Writing & Commentary World
Episodes
  • Episode 228 - From Skepticism to Stampede: The Diamond Rush Awakens

    Episode 228 - From Skepticism to Stampede: The Diamond Rush Awakens
    Jun 22 2025
    A quick shout out, this being the modern equivalent of a tip of the hat to Richard, who has made a significant donation to help me host this series.
    I was flabbergasted when receiving the Paypal payment. We have communicated over the years so this is just to say, thank you from the bottom of my heart Richard. When I’m next in Ireland, I promise to buy you a couple of rounds of St James’ Blessing.
    What’s this? A cacophony of digging? Must be significant.
    The date is somewhere in March 1867. A month after young Erasmus Jacobs had found an interesting stone near Hopetown near the Free State Border, but also near the newly formed Transvaal and Griqualand.
    The world of diamonds swirls with myth and legend, fiction, fact. Diamonds glitter with dangerous promise — alluring but transient in their fortunes, hard as truth, and just as capable of cutting those who reach for them unprepared.

    The rock that was found at Hopetown was placed on the table of the Cape Assembly shortly thereafter by Sir Richard Southey, the Colonial Secretary with the words

    “Gentlemen, this is the rock on which the future success of South Africa will be built…”
    Before Southey’s dramatic flourish, the initial response from officialdom was disbelief. For as long as anyone could remember, and this went all the way back to the VOC in 1660s, there had been rumours of great mineral treasure in the north.

    A kind of disinformation campaign was launched by Jan van Riebeeck because from the time of his arrival he expressed belief in the possibility of a successful search for the traditional golden realm of Monomotapa. It was imperative to drum up more cash for the new tavern of the seas, and he was trying to convince the VOC of the exaggerated value of their new outpost.
    And women in South Africa were taking notice, which probably from a 21st Century point of view appears somewhat unlikely. Mary Elizabeth Barber had an important role to play in South Africa's geological science.

    The year 1867 was characterised by drought, and a severe depression made worse by reports that the completion of the Suez Canal would ruin all trade with the Cape.

    So it wasn’t a moment too soon, so to speak, that Diamonds were discovered. Nearly two hundred years had passed since van Der Stel’s memorable expedition across what he called de Groote Rivier, the Gariep, the Orange. IT was on the Orange River, sixty kilometres above its junction with the Vaal River, that a village sprang up.

    Hopetown. By all reports a thriving little settlement, with a number of farms dotted along the river banks nearby. The Koranna and the Griqua lived nearby, at the towns of Pniel and Hebron.
    Switch to 1867. Picture the scene, sheep and goats, Erasmus Jacobs were doing what Boer boys did, he was roaming the veld, playing on the edge of the river. Here were garnets with their rich carmine flush, the fainter rose of the carnelian, the bronze of jasper, the thick cream of chalcedony, agates of motley hues, rock crystals shining in the light like beckoning stars. Lesser stones, not diamonds, nor valuable gems.

    From one of these multi-coloured beds Erasmus and his siblings filled their pockets with stones thinking they could play a game of ducks and drakes. For the uninitiated town based gaslight grazer, ducks and drakes is the game of skimming stones.
    Whomever skims the stone the furthest or with the most hops, wins. Simple game, but when you have no toys, stones are your friends. Luckily for the future of South Africa, Erasmus decided against skimming the diamond, and took it home. There it joined a pile of other shining stones he’d collected like a magpie. It was odd, this stone, and his widowed mother Mrs Jacobs mentioned it to a neighbour, the farmer Meneer Schalk van Niekerk.
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    25 mins
  • Episode 227 - Diamonds, War, and Destiny: Moshoeshoe, the Boers, and the Stone That Changed South Africa

    Episode 227 - Diamonds, War, and Destiny: Moshoeshoe, the Boers, and the Stone That Changed South Africa
    Jun 15 2025
    Episode 227 — a turning point not just in our nation’s past, but in the arc of 19th-century global history.

    For soon, the earth will yield its glittering secret — the diamond — and with it, fortunes will rise, empires will stir, and the southern tip of Africa will be irrevocably transformed.

    But before we reach that seismic revelation, we journey first into the twilight of a king’s life — to the basalt crown of Thaba Bosiu, where Moshoeshoe, the great architect of Basotho unity, faced the gravest challenge yet to his people’s survival.

    The year is 1864, and a new figure steps onto the veldt’s political stage — Johannes Brand, recently elected President of the Orange Free State. With his arrival came the end of internecine Boer squabbles. Now, unity of purpose would drive their ambitions — and that purpose turned toward Lesotho’s land.

    Brand lost little time invoking Article 2 of the Treaty of Aliwal North — a clause etched into colonial parchment, defining the boundary between Free State territory and Moshoeshoe’s realm. He wanted it honoured, and in the Boers’ favour.

    The British High Commissioner, Philip Wodehouse — successor to Sir George Grey — responded, dispatching Aliwal North’s Civil Commissioner, John Burnet, to parley with Moshoeshoe.

    There, among the towering ramparts of Thaba Bosiu, Burnet argued the line was law — the Warden Line, drawn in 1858, marked Moshoeshoe’s northern limit. Yet Basotho families still tilled and dwelt across it.

    Not out of defiance, but memory — for those lands were ancestral, soaked in history and spirit. To demand a retreat across the Caledon River would have meant inciting his own chiefs, rupturing the very fabric of the Basotho world.

    Brand, determined to halt the Basotho’s slow advance toward Harrismith and Winburg, convened the Volksraad. A special session summoned Governor Wodehouse, pleading for intervention to preserve peace — or impose it.

    By October 1864, Wodehouse had the contested boundary beaconed. But in a private memorandum — shaped by voices like Burnet’s — he concluded what Moshoeshoe already knew in his bones: no treaty or beacon could reconcile the irreconcilable.

    For the Free State clung to the ink of 1858 — a document where Moshoeshoe had affixed his name to the Warden Line. But treaties are made on paper — and people live on land.
    On the 14th of November, Moshoeshoe called a *pitso* — a major assembly of his chiefs. It was a moment to speak freely, to vent frustration, and to wrestle with the reality of what lay ahead. In the end, they publicly committed to accepting Wodehouse’s ruling.

    Molapo and Mopeli, though reluctant, began evacuating their villages. In the days that followed, a steady stream of men, women, and children made their way south — driving cattle, carrying bundles of corn, and taking with them whatever possessions they could manage.

    When Moshoeshoe appealed to President Brand for time to let Molapo’s people finish harvesting, Brand agreed. They stayed through the summer, gathering the last of their crops, and left again in February 1865.

    By then, the land was quiet. According to British reports — and Moshoeshoe’s own understanding — the disputed territory now stood empty of Basotho.

    But what neither he nor the British authorities knew was that the Boers were not content to leave it at that. A commando had already been mustered — eager to erase the memory of their defeat in 1858, and ready to strike.
    South Africa’s history is marked by sudden turns — moments of violence, moments of discovery. Buried treasure, both literal and political, lies hidden until, almost by accident, it surfaces. Often, it’s not strategy or foresight, but chance — a misstep, a stray decision — that reveals the vast wealth beneath.
    While the Boers and the Basotho were locked in brutal conflict, fighting for control of fertile valleys and mountain strongholds, something altogether different was unfolding a short distance away.
    A diamond would be discovered.
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    27 mins
  • Episode 226 – The Estate Agent of the Transvaal: Paul Kruger, Mokgatle, the amaMfengu Crossing, and the Battle for Land

    Episode 226 – The Estate Agent of the Transvaal: Paul Kruger, Mokgatle, the amaMfengu Crossing, and the Battle for Land
    Jun 8 2025
    The years between 1865 and 1870 would bring a tangle of new challenges for the people of the south. Drought gripped the land with merciless fingers in 1865 and 1866, only to return with cruel insistence between 1868 and 1869. Livelihoods withered, landscapes turned brittle. And yet, amid the dust and desolation, there was a glint of promise on the horizon, a hint of glitter in the forecast.

    British Kaffraria — that volatile strip of land east of the Kei — had been the stage for repeated wars between the British Empire and the amaXhosa. By 1866, the inevitable had come to pass: the territory was formally annexed to the Cape. This was not a popular move in the Cape Parliament. Most members balked at the idea, not out of principle, but pocket — British Kaffraria was a drain on the Treasury, propped up entirely by funds from London. The Cape, in its self-conscious autonomy, wanted no part in the bill.

    But Attorney General William Porter reminded his fellow parliamentarians that their indignation was selective. The Cape itself, he said, could not “talk big and look big” when its own house was being kept warm with British money. Independence in name meant little, he warned, if the machinery of government still ticked by the grace of Empire coin.
    But before the ink was dry on the annexation, another, more immediate matter took precedence — the fate of the amaMfengu, along with the amaNgqika and amaGqunukhwebe. The structures of amaXhosa political authority had already been dismantled within British Kaffraria. Now, as the imperial tide rolled further inland, it was the amaMfengu who found themselves repositioned — this time as subjects to be moved, their loyalty rewarded not with land, but with a fresh dislocation.
    Soon, the area around Butterworth became an amaMfengu stronghold. Many local amaXhosa were absorbed into their ambit — politically subdued or socially assimilated. For the British, this migration had a twofold effect. It removed thousands of Black residents from British Kaffraria, freeing up land under Crown control. And it advanced a broader goal: clearing the way for the Cape Parliament to annex the territory, albeit reluctantly and under pressure from Westminster.
    Just to flick the future switch for a moment — Back to the Future, in 2003, a constellation of dignitaries descended on Phokeng for the coronation of Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi of the Bafokeng. That’s near Rustenberg just for clarity. Among them were Nelson Mandela, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, First Lady Zanele Mbeki, and the Queen Mother of Lesotho. A drought pressed down on the land in 2003, dry and unforgiving, but the dusty heat did little to mute the occasion’s quiet grandeur.

    For a small nation to command such presence — to draw the gaze of the region’s most prominent figures — spoke to something more than mere ceremonial gravity. It hinted at a deeper, long-cultivated influence. This is the story of how the Bafokeng came to be recognised as one of South Africa’s most quietly successful peoples — not by avoiding the tides of history, but by learning, early on, how to navigate them. From their dealings with the Boers and Paul Kruger, to their survival under apartheid’s grip, the Bafokeng carved a path few expected — and fewer still understood.
    There’s an almost whispered history here, a counterpoint to the dominant narrative of dispossession and defeat. The Bafokeng lived on land of consequence long before that significance was measured in ounces of platinum. It wasn’t until the metal was prised from the earth beneath their feet that the rest of the country — and eventually, the world — began to pay attention. But the roots of their agency run deeper, older. They reach back to a time when Paul Kruger was still cobbling together unity among the Voortrekkers, long before his epic confrontations with the British had begun.
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    26 mins
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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.

Fantastic and necessary!

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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.

Longform history

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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.

Impressive

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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.

Fantastic Podcast

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