It’s episode 216 and we are lurching back to the north east, to Zululand.

The heat is building up, and the conflicted relationship between King Mpande kaSenzanghakhona and his son, Cetshwayo kaMpande, is growing more complex by the minute.

But this being Zululand, that wasn’t the only competition in town.

There was an older son of Mpande, called Hamu, who was his first-born son by Nozibhuku, who in turn was the daughter of the much respected chief Sothondose of the Nxumalo people. If we turn our thoughts to the succession process of the AmaZulu which has always been a tricky trail, this episode will serve to illuminate the razor-sharp line royal heirs must walk.

Sothondose you see was Mbuyazi’s brother. And if you recall, Mbuyazi was the man who had been killed along with seven of his brothers and half brothers at the Battle of Nondokasuka by Cetshwayo. King Mpande had publicly referred to Mbuyazi as his heir apparent, and Cetshwayo thought he was a better candidate.

The plot thickens. It more than thickens, it congeals like thick red blood, spattered many times this episode. There is a Shakespearian correlation between his epic tales and those of the AmaZulu, where both are interlaced with human truths.

This week’s tale is a mist-mash of Macbeth, Richard the third, Henry the Sixth Part three. Perhaps you could include others, but let’s leave it at that for now.

IN Zululand, Mpande was king and he was apt to change his mind about his heir apparent. Cetshwayo had worked himself into the position by dint of killing Mbuyazi, and had begun to refer to Mpande as ixegwana, little-old man. Or Oomie which is why calling some middle-aged men Oomie can get you into trouble.

Hamu kaMpande was an insidious man, a persevering leader who wriggled about, an indulgent man according to oral tradition as well as the written descriptions we have of him.

Flabby, with the immense thighs of the house of Senzangakhona.

Hamu led the Ngenetsheni clan, and had supported Cetshwayo during the recent Civil War, where Mbuyazi had been defeated. That was the case even though his grandfather, Sothondose, was Mbuyazi’s brother. In other words Hamu fought against his Great Uncle.

Blood, it seems, isn’t thicker than water—unless it’s pooling in a cauldron of treachery and Macbethian dread.

Hamu also resented his bad luck, descended from Nzibe who ranked behind Mpande’s other sons. He liked to show off his bling so to speak, and gathered a massive isigodlo of women, 300 in all, and bragged about being quasi-independent of Mpande.

Cetshwayo kept a beady eye on these two, and there were confrontations with them, one took place in 1857. But nothing was resolved. Initially, Mbuyazi’s remaining brothers turned out to be more of a threat than Hamu and Maphitha, and this is where the Shakespearian blood letting began in earnest.

Cetshwayo wanted to kill Mbuyazi’s thirteen year old brother Mkhungo. Someone tipped off the teen that the death squad was on its way and he fled to safety in Natal across the Thukela River. Other members of his direct family were already seeling refuge there, his mom Monase and Sikhotha his half-brother.

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Episode 215 has a rather grandiose title but let us stop for a second and take stock.

This southern land, swept by thunderstorms that appear as if by magic, and lash the landscape, rumble across the stubby veld, slinging lightning like a million volt silver sjambok, shaking rocks with their deep growls, bring everything back to life. The air before this denizens of the blue sky pass by is sullen, the horizon hazed over, after the rains everything is crisp, visibility can change in seconds from a few hundred metres to a few hundred kilometres.

I was raised in Nkwalini valley in northern Zululand, where the mysterious Mhlathuze River flows powerfully after these storms, the valley is ringed by mountains that rise from 650 feet above sea level feet to over 3000 feet a few minutes drive up around Melmoth. And from these heights, you can see the Indian Ocean 40 kilometres away after one of these refreshing storms.

Southern Africa had been drying out substantially throughout the first half of the 19th Century. Historian Charles Ballard notes that climatic research has pointed to opposite extremes of weather patterns in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

The climatic regime in southern Africa of dry and warm conditionsin the early nineteenth century was the reverse of the Northern Hemisphere's colder and wetter weather at this time. Some animals, like humans, would not survive this —others like the ostrich were in their element.

Turning to Natal, much of the interior was unstable, drought and famine led early white settlers to believe it had always been devoid of people whereas it had been abandoned. There is a difference between the two concepts — never settled or previously settled?

Nguni speaking refugees, not always amaZulu, arrived back in their homes in Natal through this period only to find that the settler community considered them to be aliens and a race of "vagabonds."

It became a conventional ideological tool for those who sought to justify the expropriation of land. The people were driven away by a long list of threats, military, environmental, meteorological.

With that preamble, let’s focus initially on the strange saga of John Dunn who has appeared in all his curious glory in prevous episodes. Cetshwayo gave John Dunn ten oxen and a tract of land. By July, the former border agent had resigned his job and moved into Zululand permanently. He’d had it with the British. The tract of land given to Dunn was extensive, in the immediate coastal region of southern Zululand known as Ungoye, which extended from Ngoye forest all the way down to the lower Thukela. Shortly after he moved in, Dunn took many wives. By1860 he was regarded as one of the most influential chiefs in the Zulu kingdom, ruling over more than 50 square kilometers of land and thousands of subjects. By 1860 Dunn was the main source of fireams entering Zululand, and these items rapidly replaced cattle as the main payment for lobola.

This is episode 214 and we’re going to probe the fascinating and these days, hidden history of Port Elizabeth or Gqeberha, a bit about indentured Indians arriving in South Africa, and a spot of Boer Republic rebellion.

It’s hardly ever a quiet day in sunny South Africa.

In the eyes of most folks of the south, the Windy City features as a minor point on the urban map and in popular consciousness. The people of the city however are fiercly patriotic, and fiercely independent.

Always smaller than Cape Town in terms of population size, never the seat of government, it’s enormous importance as a premier centre of trade and finance in southern Africa has been readily overlooked.

Yet from the 1850s all the way through to the 1880s, Port Elizabeth was called “The Liverpool of the Cape” and for some years in that period, was the centre of the Cape’s economy. Coming soon, however, was the discovery of Diamonds that would shift power to Kimberley, then later in the 1880s, to gold and power would shift again to Johannesburg.

The period of the mid-19th Century, saw the financial heart shift from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth although the elites of Table Bay continued to hold sway. A commercial elite of merchants, accountants, lawyers and other professions controlled the economies of Cape Colonial towns. Cape Town was the seat of government, it’s population had grown to 25 000 people and was easily the largest urban centre in southern Africa.

There were only 17 joint stock companies in 1859. Only five towns outside Cape Town, Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth had local banks. There was a cozy and close link between the merchants of Cape Town and the government. Similar links existed between local government officials and merchants in the smaller towns which enhanced the ability of local commercial heavyweights to control trade through their districts.

There was a constant tussle between the local merchants and the businesses that controlled the ports. Port Merchants were closer to the maritime traffic, closer to the heart of the empire, London, and acted like a commercial filter between the periphery and the centre.

In 1857 Merchant John Paterson gathered a few like-minded entrepreneurs around him and floated the Standard Bank of Port Elizabeth. It sank almost immediately, funds were hard to come by. These merchants however had direct links with London, they bypassed the Cape Towners — and by this time half the ships sailing between South Africa and Britain were leaving from Port Elizabeth.

Paterson gathered his entrepreneur pals together again in March 1859 and sailed to England where he launched his prospectus the the Standard Bank of British South Africa in April 1860.

A Group of Cape Town merchants were not to be outdone by this eastern Cape upstart and in July the London and South Africa Bank .. henceforth to be known as the L and SA Bank, came into being.

Governor Sir George Grey was very interested in all of these moves, and is believed to have intervened to help the Cape Town group as they negotiated for a charter and necessary capital.

Port Elizabeth traders regarded the L and SA bank in a negative light. Despite their reservations, they could not deny the power of the bankers of Cape Town — a branch of the L and SA bank was opened in Port Elizabeth in 1861, and eventually, The Standard Bank’s progenitor, Paterson, managed to scrounge together the funds and opened in 1862.

South Africa was changing fast by 1860. In Natal, Grey believed the answer to the chronic labour shortage was the introduction of indentured Indians. These were to make their way to Natal over the next few decades, but Grey’s initial request was rejected by the Indian Government.

Speaking of success, that is a not a word you’d probably have used to describe the Boer Republics of 1860. They were sinking deeper and deeper into confusion and outright impotence.

This is episode 213, and Sir George Grey, the Cape Governor was peering intensely at the Boer Republics to the north.

The Free Staters under Boshof had failed in their mission to drive Moshoeshoe out of the disputed territory south of the Caledon River and many of the burghers changed their tune when it came to possible amalgamation with the Transvaal. They were now considering this a viable option.

Marthinus Pretorius had made good progress north of the Vaal, despite the boers of Lydenburg opposing his overtures for a single large and powerful Boer state. The fragmentary nature of the Voortrekker’s states was hard to overcome. But it was heartening for those Boers who wanted unification to hear that the Zoutpansbergers were prepared to listen to arguments for cohesion.

One of the most strident and convincing voices that emerged was that of Paul Kruger. He was acting on behalf of Pretorius and the Zoutpansbergers accepted the Grondwet of the Transvaal, the constitution, which the Rustenburgers had adopted.

The northern republics were moving towards some sort of union, by 1858 the tiny Boer Republic of Utrecht in northern Natal had thrown in their lot with tye Lydenburgers. Grey regarded these moves as ominous. The British empire had experienced a serious jolt when the Indian Mutiny broke out in 1857, and now he’d heard the reports of the Boer expedition to Moshoeshoe’s Thaba Bosiu which had ended in defeat. He’d have to send reinforcements to India, and deal with instability on the frontier at the same time.

The Bathlaping people had also taken advantage of the Boer assault on the south eastern edge of the free State into Basotho territory by doing some invading of their own - into the Free State from the West. The San and Korana had also broken loose and Boshof’s commandos were going to be very busy as they rode around the Free State, trying to subdue these raiders.

The Boers had recognized that beneath the monarchial authority and prestige of Moshoeshoe lay a weakness in the political structure - chiefs were patriarchs in their own domain and bound to this hiearchy primarily as the guarantor of their local status.

But that status was tied directly to access to land and the acquisition of wealth through cattle or other livestock. One of the strategic shifts in the Volksraad was to reach Moshoeshoe’s political supporters by offering them autonomous territories. These black statelets would then be part of a broader Boer state, supposedly free from settler and other Basotho raids and harassment.

The mark of this land use was through a collective, a group living on the land in a specific geographic space who provided territorial power for any chief agreeing to join the Boers. AS you’re going to hear in future episodes — Moshoeshoe’s second son Molapo would seek an independent state aligned with the Boers. Mopeli Mokachane, Moshoeshoe’s half-brother, was another enticed away from the Basotho polity by the late 1860s.

By late May 1858, the Transvaal sent a commando to assist the Free State in dealing with these raiders, defeating the Bathlaping and imposing crushing reparations on the people for having sheltered some of these rebels. The defeat by the Basotho, however, proved to most Free Staters that they could not survive alone, and they turned on their president, Boshof.

He’d written to Sir George Grey and asked for help in dealing with the Basotho king, an act which stuck in most burgher’s craws — asking the very people who’d indirectly driven them out of the Cape for help. It was a stunning act of weakness they thought.

Grey concluded once and for all that the division of the white South African communities into seperate polities had destroyed their capacity to deal with African chiefs. But he opposed the idea of Boer states leading this unification.

Even more alarming was the news that the two main Boer Republics might unite. In his eyes, this would threaten the stability still further.

Episode 212 it is - we’re cruising into 1858 but wait!

The sounds of gunfire!

Yes, it’s that old South African tune, war, set to the music of the guns.

Our society is steeped in action, movement, confrontation. This is not a place for the insipid, the weak, the fearful.

Whatever our belief system or our personal politics, what cannot be disputed is that the country and our ways are those of the warrior. This is an uncomfortable truth for metropolitans who are more used to single latte’s than sling shots.

Globally, 1858 is full of momentous events and incidents. It was the year in which Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace present their papers on evolution by natural selection in London. In India, a peace treaty ends the Indian Rebellion and later in the year the British parliament passes the Government of India Act. This transfers the territories of the British East India Company and their administration to the Direct Rule of the British Crown.

The great stink in London led parliament to a bill to create modern sewerage system after the dreadful odours wafting about the British capital during the summer.

Another young girl dreams up appiritions in the mode of Nongqawuse who dreamed up the cattle Killings - this time its Bernadette Soubirous who claims she saw several appritions appeared before her in the southern French town of Lourdes. Without going into too many gory details, around Ash Wednesday a woman appeared before her inside a grotto and after three appearances over time, began to talk. By October, the government had shut down the grotto there were so many people pitching up to take part in what was called a miracle.

A miracle only she could see. Strange how these stories in this period repeated themselves.

Back in Africa, David Livingstones six-year long second Zambezi expedition arrived on the Indian Ocean coast.

Which is an important moment because inland, the tension between the Boers of the Free State and King Moshoeshoe of Basutoland had been exacerbated.

A drought was reported in the region in 1858 which exacerbated everything.

The Volksraad met in February 1858. They were faced with a request for help to deal with Posholi signed by a field-cornet and sixty five other burghers in the disputed area.Later in February 1858 Smithfield Landdrost Jacobus Sauer sent more news from the badlands - Posholi was, in his words, parading through Smithfield district with warriors and when accosted, said he was on a hunting expedition.

When the Commando eventually gathered, there were one thousand armed and mounted Boers. Which was exactly ten percent the size of the Basotho force of ten thousand, all mounted with at least five hundred firearms.

Back at the Thaba Bosiu ranch, Moshoeshoe was a sea of calm. It was now war and the king along with the territorial chiefs and councillors, put their plans into motion. They’d faced this kind of attack before, the British had raided them in 1852 if you recall. That had ended in disaster for the empire, so Moshoeshoe was not rattled by the latest assault on his independence.

Episode 211 - the year is 1857 heading into 1858. Lots the talk about!

The original frontier republics and wildlands were being transformed - turning into governed territtories. In 1856 Natal was created a Crown Colony by Royal Charter, Legislation there was entrusted to a council of four officials and 12 members elected every four years by ballot.

By the way, this was not only a first for South Africa, but for Great Britain itself. An experiment in election power, although the Crown retained considerable powers of veto. A civil list of those who could vote was more than modest, although the low franchise meant most were eligible to vote.

Most English and Dutch, that is.

What really angered the elected members was that five thousand pounds for administration was earmarked by the Crown for the benefit of black Natalians. Still, the New and unique Natal Legislative Council sat for the first time in March 1857 and its first job was to authorise the new Crown colonies stamps.

By 1857 there were eight, three colonial and five republican, that is of the Cape Colony, British Kaffraria and Natal, on the other hand, the Orange Free State, Utrecht Republiek, Lydenburg, the Zoutpansberg and Pretorius’ South African Republic.

This was what really clever historians call Balkanisation. Little entrepots, squabbling states, spread out across the southern African landscape, sometimes working together, often competing.

Natal was a kind of detached district of the Cape until it was declared a Crown Colony, an inconvenient way to run a territory. IN Natal, most of the Boers had gone, except for the northern parts.

IN their place came other Europeans, like the Germans. A few had taken to market gardening around Durban, while Joseph Byrne and other speculators had launched various schemes for British Immigrants. As you know by now if you’ve listened to the series, quite of few of the new arrivals left almost immediately. Living in Natal is not for the squeamish, even today. Still, the villages of Pinetown, Verulam and Richmond owe their existence to these English immigrants, and so too those of Ladysmith.

By 1857 there were only 8000 whites in Natal, 150 000 blacks and what they lacked in size, they made up for by being vigorous, a plethora of religious sects existed, each had its own education system, associations sprang up, and the Natal Bank opens its doors. Soon there were six newspapers in Natal including the Witness in Pietermaritzburg and the Mercury in Durban.

There was almost zero industry — and both coffee and cotton had failed. The first sugar cane was imported from Mauritius and seemed to offer more, but the problem was labour. But for many years hence, the main export from Natal was ivory. And as we know, they were being shot out of existence at break kneck speed.

If we glance at Southern Africa as a whole in 1857 we would notice that government had become more elaborate and less subordinated to the Cape Authorities. Local Justice was in the hands of local magistrates. Lieutenant Governors changed with bewildering rapidity, but their powers were growing as these little states began to emerge, blinking like undersized infants, into the African sunshine.

Federation instead of Balkanisation was in the air at least in the mind of Cape Governor Sir George Grey. The boers were of course not thinking of anything of the sort, let alone Federation.

After the wars, the settlers in the Cape were dead set against reserves, the Theopolus Shepstone plan, these drained off labour, and said the nervous English immigrants, it was dangerous to mass blacks in the heart of the Colony.

The effect of the Battle of Ndondokusuka didn’t help Shepstone. Thousands of amaZulu refugees of the Civil War across the Thukela led to Natal’s Immigrant rules. Further inland, the policy of the Republiks was even more blunt.

This is episode 210 - Barbarians on the Borderlands - the 1857 Basotho Free State conundrum

Last episode we plumbed the depths of the amaZulu civil War battle of Ndondakusuka, this episode we’re skirting Moshoeshoe’s Basotho mountains with the BaPhuthi people.

Before we kick off, just a quick note about terminology and the fact that South African History is a terminological nightmare.

Not my words, those of historian Clifton Crais.

As we all know, living on this mercurial landscape, with our mercurial brothers and sisters, shape-shifting appears to be our national sport. Names and places are changed at the drop of a politicians ribbon. As Crais noted, its called Historical Ethnonyms.

Historical ethnonyms are names that different groups of people have been called over time, often by outsiders. These names can change due to politics, cultural shifts, or language evolution, and some may become outdated or offensive.

So its with that carefully crafted bit of age-restriction warning that we’ll plunge into the fizzy waters of what Barbarians mean. In a nutshell, Barbarian means ” the “raw,” the “primitive.”

On closer inspection those terms mean ungoverned, not-yet-incorporatedoughtful folks, there’s no understanding that people can voluntarily go over to the barbarians. I mean, think about the Vikings for a start. And one persons Barbarian is another person’s Warrior tribe.

So why the explanation? Today’s episode deals with the Baphuthi, about whom many smart thinkers have deployed historical ethnonyms. Post enlightenment bigwigs, those Johnny coke-bottles geniuses, liked to define things. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, bless his powdered nut, case in point. His stages of man starts with the savage, who is a hunter, moves towards barbarian, who is a herdsman to the civilised man, a tiller of the soil. A farmer.

By the mid-19th Century classifying colonial subjects by these criteria determined how they’d be treated. IT is important for our story to understand that there was a geographical element to the ethnic classification. When authorities summed up the situation at any time, representations of the type of environment were crucial. Historian Laura Mitchell has written about this phenomenon, its a rejection of the simplification of settler meets native or coloniser meets subject narrative. More about how the social bandits seize the day on the bad lands, the border lands.

The BaPhuthi people are part of our story about social bandits - particularly by the mid-19th Century. They gathered in the eastern part of the Eastern Cape, on the border with what was to become Basotholand, Moshoeshoe’s land.

They were diverse in origin, these BaPhuthi, comprised of Basotho who did not support Moshoeshoe, San, and a hodge-podge of Nguni speaking societies. The ancient ways of the San mingled through this group, based along the Maloti-Drakensberg and they did not regard the landscape as marginal.

IF you recall a few episodes back, 204 to be exact, we were introduced to the conflict between the sons of Mpande kaSenzangakhona, Cetshwayo kaMpande and Mbuyazi kaMpande.

Mpande had moved Cetshwayo and his uSuthu regiments away from their northern power zones and Mbuyazi and his iziGqoza to the south east in an abortive attempt at reducing Cetshwayo’s growing power.

There had been a mock hunt organised supposedly to sort out the differences between the two, but the iziGqoza had melted away when they realised how many more warriors had pitched up to fight with Cetshwayo.

It was in November 1856 that Mpande had made the move, and upon arrival in the north, Mbuyazi began throwing his weight around, provocatively clearing nearby homesteads and ordering the local clans to pay him tribute.

Eating up the opponents as it was called.

Many of the cattle he began to expropriate technically belonged to Cetshwayo. Maphitha, who as advising Cetshwayo, suggested it was time to sort things out finish and klaar.

“…You will never be king if you do not act at once..” He told Cetshwayo in late November.

Where Dingana and Shaka had held total control over their cattle, Mpande had begun to lose his grasp over the amaZulu nation. Senior chiefs Masiphula and Mnyamana joined forces with Cetshwayo’s brothers Ndabuko and Silwana, along with half brothers Dabulamazi, Shingana, Ziwedu and Hamu and marched to Cetshwayo’ Great Place at oNdini.

Cetshwayo plotted his next moves. He had the luxury of a bigger army thought to number between 15 000 and 20 000 men. The odds were in his favour, but Mbuyazi was the nominated successor to Cetshwayo and obligated to fight for his honour.

Cetshwayo formed up his uSuthu regiments, and proceeded to march south. By now, Mbuyazi had turned to the white traders for help. He gathered up his people, men, women and children, as well as all his cattle and other livestock, near iSangqu — and near a mission station run by Norwegian missionary, Hans Schreuder. I have mentioned him before, six feet tall, powerful, and with a very short fuse.

He did not take too kindly to Mbuyazi arriving lock stock and barrel at his mission station, with Cetshwayo imminent arrival at iSangqu which is near the town of Ntumeni. Schreuder was relieved when Mbuyazi continued south with his plan to cross the Thukela River.

But it was early summer and the rains had begun. The mightly Thukela was already flooding, it’s yellow and orange waters leaping in giant swirling rapids, in places five metres deep.

All of the hullabaloo had reached the ears of one of the most important characters of the mid-19th Century South Africa. John Dunn. His tale and those of his significant descendants will weave through our story from here on and for good reason. As a British trader, he had decided that the ways of the amaZulu were more to his liking.

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…”

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.