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History of South Africa podcast

History of South Africa podcast

Auteur(s): 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 Essais et carnets de voyage Monde Sciences sociales
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  • Episode 229 - Moshoeshoe and the Red Dust: How War and Famine Led to British Rule in Lesotho

    Episode 229 - Moshoeshoe and the Red Dust: How War and Famine Led to British Rule in Lesotho
    Jun 29 2025
    Episode 229 - Moshoeshoe and the Red Dust, How War and famine led to British rule in Lesotho - we’re speeding up on the trek along history’s trail.

    First, a word about the Boer Basotho War of 1865-1868. The 1850s and 1860s marked a period of profound demographic disruption for the Basotho as the borders of Moshoeshoe the First’s kingdom shifted repeatedly under pressure from colonial conflict and Boer expansion, waves of refugees poured both in and out of the territory.

    By 1865, the population of what is now Lesotho was estimated at 180,000 which was a sharp increase from five years earlier.

    Then drought and a three year war against the Boers of the Free State had induced famine by 1868, and Moshoeshoe the First was running out of options as some of his people left the region. The war had created an immediate famine condition, exacerbated by the drought, and this had a knock-on effect when it came to politics and human migration.

    After the territorial competition between the BaSotho and their African neighbours subsided to some extent as the Basotho emerged as a nation, the struggle against the Boers of the Free State gained momentum. Growth in the economies of both the Free State and Basotho had produced an ongoing competition for land and when drought struck, it stimulated violence.

    It’s important to stress how the Free State economy had shifted from herding cattle to sheep — mainly as a result of Great Britain’s demand for wool. The Boers regarded the English as an oppressive occupying force, but that didn’t stop farmers of the Free State making a buck off the empire when they could.

    This is reflected in trade data - in 1852 exports from the Orange River Sovereignty to Natal, the Cape and England totalled 256 000 pounds, with wool making up 230 000 pounds of that trade.

    In a census of 1856, Boers had 1.2 million sheep and goats, and only 137 000 head of cattle. But the golden years of wool exports were over by the mid-1860s. The terrible droughts of 1860 and 1861 were known as the Red Dust when the Caledon River dried up for the only time in anyone’s memory.
    If you want the full background, I covered the outbreak of the Boer Basotho war of 1865 in an earlier episode, along with the causes. The drought, and the scorched earth policy adopted by Free State president Johannes Brand, left Moshoeshoe with little choice. He could either surrender and be known as the Basotho King who gave away his people to the Boers, or he could ask the British to declare Basotholand a British Protectorate.

    Some have said cynically that the British were entertaining this anyway, hungry for more land and even more so after the discovery of diamonds — but that’s tautological when it comes to Basotholand. The diamond discovery took place after Basotholand was folded into the British empire.

    Still, we need to burrow into how this all worked out, the diplomacy and wheeler-dealing was extraordinary. By the end of 1867 the successes of the Boer commandos in their raids into Basotholand had put an end to the prospect that the Free State burghers would voluntarily submit to the reimposition of British control.
    Eugene Casalis, the French missionary who had spent so much time in Basotholand, sailed to England from France to urge the British Government to intervene. This was not a lightweight ecclesiastical mission, Casalis had established a mission station at Morija at the foot of Moshoeshoe’s royal mountain Thaba Bosiu in 1833. He translated the gospel of Mark into isiSotho, and was revered for his political advice to Moshoeshoe.

    The Duke of Buckingham who had succeeded Lord Carnarvon as Colonial Secretary in March 1867, was all ears. They say timing matters, and it so happened that CB Adderley who was parliamentary Under-Secretary was in favour of intervention provided it could be managed without expense.

    IE, without sending an army to fight the Boers.
    On the 9th December, Buckingham instructed Wodehouse to treat with Moshoeshoe.
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    22 min
  • 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 min
  • 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 min

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