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 These names can change due to politics, cultural shifts, or language evolution, and some may become outdated or offensive.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.

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.

Episode 205 of the series covers the A Russian Struggle Thread, Two Disabled Men in the Free State and a Surge in Surveyors.

Sprinkled with tales of Hoffman.

That would be Johannes Hoffman commonly known as Sias Hoffman, the first president of the Orange Free State who signed the Bloemfontein Convention with the British in February 1854.

Regarded as a shrewd and able merchant, he had been disabled in an accident, but that didn’t stop Hoffmann from wielding political power. He was also a fundamentalist voortrekker, hard core. Hoffman was one of the representatives of the Smithfield District in the Orange River Sovereignty during the negotiations between Boers and British.

Both Hoffman and his State Secretary Jacobus Groenendal were disabled and their government to quickly gained the nickname 'the crippled government’ which is not only wicked, but wouldn’t fly in today’s equitable lexicon.

Groenendaal had been born in Holland then travelled to South Africa as a teacher in 1849.

Hoffman was a friend of Moshoeshoe of the Basotho, conciliatory towards the Griqua who lived in the transOrangia, and pretty distrustful of Pretorius’ more militant Boers. His friendships with the black and coloured people living around the Free State caused deep mistrust amongst his fellow Boers. Hoffman's term in office was also short-lived, just under one year, thus the crippled government epithet.

As a gesture of good faith, Hoffman had given a present of a keg of gunpowder to king Moshoeshoe. His fellow burghers found this an unwise move, over-friendly and potentially dangerous for the survival of the new state. Relations between the Boers and the Basotho were less than cordial with the border dispute unresolved. What sealed Hoffman’s fate, however, was not the gift itself so much as the fact that he tried to hide his actions from the Volksraad and the Orange Free State parliament.

Living in the Caledon Valley and Orange River confluence areas were the Thlaping - a combination of Tswana peoples who had gathered in the area during the Difaqane, loosely led by Adam Kok but ostensibly under their chief Lephoi. French missionary Jean Pierre Pellissier set up his station at a place called Bethulie and by 1854 more than 3 000 Tswana, Thlaping and others lived there.

They were a pretty mixed community, escaped Rolong, Sotho, Tswana and a number of Bastaards as they were known, Khoi and freed slaves — and many of these with special skills. Ironically, many of the former slaves were literate, which made them influential members of the community.

Inside this sprawling Free State land of 80 000 square kilometres lived 10 000 Boers and English along with about 30 000 Griquas, Rolong and Thlaping.

While Hoffman focused on local diplomacy, Treasurer Jacob Groenendaal and a 26 year-old Irish land surveyor called Joseph Orpen wrote the Free States’ first constitution. And this was far more sophisticated than the Transvaal Constitution which was based on the Trekker 33 point manifesto and the Old Testament.

In the Cape, the growing density of farm settlement had led to the post of Surveyor General way back in 1826. This officer would oversee surveys within the colony, promote a trigonometrical survey and then produce a map of the Cape and if possible, beyond.

Charles Cornwallis Michel who was an energetic colonel of the Royal Engineers set about his task. He also had a perchant for sketch and watercolour. Unfortunately for everyone, except for greedy speculators, he could not complete his task effectively. An enormous backlog of farm and town plot diagrams awaited approval and by mid-1830s, the task was deemed impossible for Michel and his two assistants.

Episode 204 - A quick whip around the globe in 1855 and Cetshwayo kaMpande makes his Regal Entrance.

First up, a quick thank you to Adi Badenhorst at AA Badenhorst family wines in the Swartland of the Cape — your gift was extraorindarily generous and well received. I am truly indebted to you. And to all those folks sending me tips and notes, thank you its gratifying to receive correspondence from such learned people!

Straight to our episode 2024, Planet Earth 1855, Cetshwayo kaMpande grows powerful and Natal Land Realities.

A legend is the only way to describe the amaZulu king who was going to dethrone his father Mpande kaSenzangakhona, usurp his brother’s right to rule, and later in life, destroy an entire British column at Isandhlwana. In this episode we’ll deal with the initial years of his life.

Folks tend to focus on Shaka when it comes to important Zulu warriors, but by the time we’re done, you’ll agree that Cetshwayo was probably more significant. I’ll end the editorialising there - let’s head over to the eastern seaboard of South Africa, into Zululand across the Thukela.

It’s 1855.

Mpande had overthrown his half-brother Dingana, and one of his professed goals was to stop the internecine conflict that had riven the house of the Zulu. Peace is what he strived for, and so he set about creating sons unlike Shaka and Dingana who had their offspring killed and tried to insure themselves against being bumped off by their own children by just not getting their wives or concubines pregnant.

Easier said than done.

Mpande had at least 30 sons with his wives, believing that protection lay in numbers.

Problem was, there will always be someone who thinks they’re better than the eldest son of the Great Wife. And the eldest son of the Great Wife will always believe he should be king. Fade up the ominous music.

And thus, in a nutshell, Cetshwayo.

The settler port village of Durban had gone through various ructions by the mid-1850s. For some distance around the port and into the interior, English settlers had replaced the original Dutch farmers with the stipulation that a farmer could own only one farm of 2500 acres and security of tenure had improved. Originally tenure was a measly 15 years - then changed to perpetuity. Marking out the farms was done on horseback at walking pace. One hour each way. Four hours later, that was your farm.

Of course most mustered the fastest horse they could find, some even changed horses, then tried to gallop or canter the four hours. Land sizes could top 5000 acres by cheating in this way.

Simultaneously a clash of ideas between the indigenous population of South Africa and the British Government was most marked in Natal.

Most of the region is suitable for farming in some manner — the region can be divided, pretty broadly, into two zones. The interior grasslands and open tree savannah, and the coastal bush and forest. The grasslands were not ideal for arable agriculture, but were great for livestock farming. The coastal zone was a different story — more rain fell along the coast, it was more suitable for farming — and that’s why sugar became such an important story in Natal a little later.

With that, its time now to step back and peer inscrutably at what was going on internationally in the year 1855. The Panama Railway became the first railroad to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, long before before the time of the Canal which was built between 1904 and 1916.

In 1855 Alexander the Second ascended the Russian throne while in China, the Taiping Rebellion rolled on — the Taiping army of 350 000 invaded Anhui in the east of the country.

Van Diemen’s land was seperated from New South Wales and granted selfgovernment and later in the year, renamed Tasmania. For the wine connoissours listening, including Adi Badenhorst I hope, the Bordeaux wine classification system was first listed in 1855.

We’re picking up speed from here on, the fulcrum that was the mid-19th Century is passed and our story is developing quickly - this is episode 203 the Siege of Makapansgat and Reconstituting history.

It is 1854, almost mid-way through the sixth decade of this momentous century and the region that’s under our gaze is the northern Limpopo territory, the Waterberg. Those who live there today will know of its grandeur, and its extensive mountain ranges, riverine bush, delightful geology.

Thaba Meetse is the northern Sotho name for the Waterberg, where the average height of the peaks here are 600 meters, rising to 2 000 meters above sea level.

The vegetation is officially known as dry deciduous forest, or just the Bushveld to you and me. The original people here date back thousands of years, early evolutionary stages of hominid development can be traced here, so in some ways, it’s part of the story of human existence on the planet.

Its all about the type of rocks here, and the soils. Clamber amongst the red koppies and ravines and you can look out over the bush veld, with it’s minerals such as vanadium and platinum, part of the Bushveld Igneous complex I spoke about in episodes one and two. Tectonic forces forced the rocks upwards, creating the famous Waterberg, the Thaba Meetse ranges, rivers deposited sediment and in these sandstone layers, you’ll find the famous caves surrounded by cliffs hundreds of feet high, rising from the plains.

Scientists and palaeontologists tracked our very first human ancestors who lived at Waterberg as early as three million years ago, and inside the cave we’re going to hear about, Makapansgat, skeletons of Australopithecus Africanus have been found. Homo Erectus remains have also been found in the cave.

This site has yielded many thousands of fossil bones, and what is known as The Cave of Hearths preserves a remarkably complete record of human occupation from Early Stone Age “Acheulian” times in the oldest sediments through the Middle Stone Age, the Later Stone Age and up to the Iron Age. It also is where one of the earliest Homo sapiens remains were found, a jaw found in the cave layers by archaeologists. The lime enriched deposits and dry conditions within the cave have allowed for the exceptional preservation of plant, animal and human remains as Amanda Beth Esterhuysen points out in her 2007 Wits University PhD.

So its really metaphorical — an iconic cave because this is where the Boers and the Kekana people were going to go to war. Part of our story this episode is about a track, a wagon trail, that passed between the ivory hunting centre of Schoemansdal, Soutpansberg and the newly established Boer town of Pretoria and which cut straight through the middle of Kekana chief Mokopane’s territory. And inside this territory is Makapansgat.

Since the first trekkers had arrived in 1837, the Langa and Kekana people who lived in the Waterberg had watched in some disquiet as the numbers of Boers increased over the years. It was almost two decades after Louis Trichardt had wheeled his wagons through the Waterberg, and by the mid-19th Century there wasn’t a week that went past without hunters or prospectors wandering through.

It’s a double irony then to relate that both the Langa and Kekana had origins further south, they were part of the amaNdebele who had fled from Northern Zululand during Shaka’s reign, related to the amaHlubi, and had been involved in some land seizing themselves. Don’t simplify history, its more radical than a buffet hall of red berets.

King Mghombane Gheghana of the Kekana, and Mankopane of the Langa, were not prepared to accept Trekker overlordship like they had fought against Mzilikazi’s overlordship. They rejected the trekker system of labour where every black adult male was supposed to work for the Boers for nothing.

Mokopane by the way is a northern Sotho form of Mghombane Gheghana, and he was known throughout the territory as Mokopane.

This is episode 202, the sounds you hear are the sounds made by wagons rolling across the veld — because we’re going to join the trekkers who’ve mostly stopped trekking.

For the trekkers, the promised land was at hand. The high veld, parts of Marico, the northern Limpopo region, the Waterberg, the slopes of the Witwatersrand into the lowveld, the Free State with its rocky outcrops and vastness, the dusty transOrangia.

In the Caledon Valley, Moshoeshoe was monitoring the Dutch speakers who were now speaking a combination of languages, morphing the taal into Afrikaans.

Further east, King Mpande kaSenzangakona of the Zulu had been keeping an eye on the colonial developments while indulging in expansion policies of his own. This period, 1854 and 1855, is like a fulcrum between epochs. The previous lifestyle of southern Africa, pastoral and rural, was running its final course, the final decade before precious mineral discoveries were going to change everything.

Let’s just stand back for a moment to observe the world, before we plunge back into the going’s on in the Boer Republics. Momentous events had shaken Europe, a succession of revolutions which had somehow swept around Britain but never swept Britain away.

This is more prescient than it appears. These revolutions are forgotten now, they’re an echo but in the echo we hear the future. The 1848-1855 revolutions were precipitated by problems of imperial overload in Europe.

Liberal nationalism was also sweeping the world, and the American constitution was on everyone’s lips.

Copies of the American Constitution were cropping up in the oddest places. Like the back of Boer ox wagons and inside the churches, alongside the Bibles. American missionary Daniel Lindley who you heard about in our earlier episodes, the man from Ohio who had started out life in south Africa as a missionary based near Mzilikazi of the amaNdebele’s great place near Marico. He had copies distributed to the Boers.

This is important. There is a direct link between the American constitution, South African concepts of what democratic rights were, which you could then track all the way to the 1994 New Constitution after apartheid.

Schoemansdal, to the north, and the basis of ivory trade, was much bigger and richer than Potch. The Schoemansdalers looked down their noses at the Potchefstroomers — it was an ancient Biblical pose — it was hunters and shepherds versus farmers, Cain versus Abel. The clash between settled and nomadic societies.

One of the dirty little secrets of South African life in the mid-19th Century was how successfully these new arrivals in the north, the trekkers, had decimated the elephant, rhino, lion, leopard, crocodile, and hippo populations. Schoemansdal was living on borrowed time.

The story begins with a hunting party seeking white gold — ivory. An elephant hunt.

It also begins with a massacre, and ends with a siege of a cave.

The Nyl Rivier was always disputed territory, particularly since chief Makapan and Mankopane, otherwise known as Mapela - Nyl means Nile and the Boers had renamed this river for all sorts of important resonant reasons. This river is a tributary of the Limpopo and it is located in the northern part of the Springbok flats.There are two main versions of what happened, and I’m going to relate both, then we shall try to extricate fact from fiction. This episode will deal with the initial events, and next episode we shall conclude the saga with it’s terrifying cave fighting and ultimate South African symbolism.

The Langa and Kekana people first experienced trekkers in 1837 when Louis Trichardt entered their territory — from then on a steady trickle of trekkers could be found inside Langa and Kekana territory. The area we’re focusing on is close to where the town of Potgietersrus would be founded, the modern day town of Mokopane.

We can begin to connect our histories here. Makapan, Mokopane, Mankopane, Potgieter.

This is episode 201. The sounds you’re hearing are those of roadworks, because South Africa is upgrading.

Quickly.

The arrival of governor sir George Grey in 1854 heralded a new epoch. Previous governors had been Peninsular war Veterans, they’d fought against Napoleon. This one was the first who was the child of a veteran of the war against Napoleon, and a person who was schooled in liberal humanism.

He was also a Victorian, steeped in the consciousness of evolution, principled and simultaneously, flaunting truth. A fibber who was in a delirium of post-renaissance spirituality, combining dialect and salvation.

You heard about George Grey’s time in New Zealand last episode, and here he was, the new Cape Governor. So without further ado, let’s dive into episode 201.

He was free from prejudice against black and coloured people, and all indigenes as such, firmly believing from his own insight into the Polynesians cultures, the Maori, that there was nothing to distinguish them in aptitude and intelligence from anyone else in mankind. The same applied to Aborigines and black South Africans he believed.

At the same time, Grey wanted indigenous people to wean themselves from what he called barbarism and heathenism. By suppressing tribal laws and customs, and incorporating indigenes into the economic system through labour and industry.

During his short stint in Australia, he had set the Aborigines to work building roads, and those who worked hardest, earned the most. At the same time, he ruthlessly suppressed any sort of push back from the Aborigines, then the Maoris, and now he brought this brand of colonialism to South Africa.

Dangling the carrot of labour, then applying the stick of punishment. The Cape colony was his laboratory in the Victorian age of discovery. An intellectual exercise. There was quite a bit in it for him of course. An ideologue and highly learned, he had written the New Zealand articles of Representative Government, an act that led to him being knighted.

Sir George.

Utopia beckons those who are imbued with internal fire — it’s only now and then that history provides a crack into which people with this sort of vision can plunge. A man or woman appears at a particular point in time, restructuring entire territories and societies by dint of their character, and their timing, their epoch.

During this time, a powerful figure with a vision for change could restructure an entire land before his minders back in England could do anything about it. Correspondence with the antipodes, New Zealand and Australia, took nearly a year for an exchange of letters to take place. Six months one way, six months return. In the meantime, an industrious social engineer could get very busy indeed.

South Africa was closer to the centres of power, the new steam driven ships could do the return journey in four months, but that was more than a financial quarter in modern jargon. A person with initiative could launch quite a few initiatives before the folks back in London put a stop to their initiating.

The biggest problem at this moment for Grey was not the amaXhosa or AmaZulu or Basotho, nor the Khoe, or the Boers.

IT was the British colonial office. They were in the throes of recession not expansion. Retrenchment and withdrawal.

Grey pondered the solution. Five thousand white European immigrants should be brought in he wrote, the occupy British Kaffraria. There was a certain problem, and that was the amaNqika Xhosa lived there at a pretty squashed density of 83 people per square mile. To give you an idea of how squashed this was, the Cape colony population density of 1854 was 1.15 per square mile at the same time.

The second conundrum was accessing cash to construct all these new schools and public buildings. Grey sent a letter to the Colonial office outlining his needs — this new plan would require 45 000 pounds a year.