History of South Africa podcast

When I started this series off a couple of years ago, it was a dive into the deep end — although it was the sixth podcast series I’d launched — this was the biggest gamble.

But the wonderful response I’ve received overall has been a big surprise, a motivator so thank you for your comments. I have a website www.desmondlatham.blog, which is stuttering along and in the future, shall be more responsive as I incorporate some of the ideas sent through by listeners.

Back to where we left off in episode 126 — as Gerrit Maritz and Hendrick Potgieter rolled south trying to get away from Mzilikazi Khumalo’s amaNdebele warriors after their audacious raid on his main homestead in the Klein Marico valley. The main target of their raid, Mzilikazi, along with the man known as Kaliphi his 2 IC, were 50 miles north of Marico when they raided and avoided death by Voortrekker musket.

The returning party of trekkers were exultant, having dealt the amaNdebele a severe blow, 107 horsemen made their way back along with 58 Baralong footmen carrying shields and assegais herding 6 500 cattle and thousands of sheep, two ox-wagons with the three American missionaries, their two wives, and two young children.

The commando trekked through the entire first night away from Mosego in the Klein Marico valley without taking a break. They rested for an hour at 11 :00 the next morning, then trekked on until late the following night.

It was imperative for Maritz and Potgieter’s men to make it to the south side, so the trekkers built a raft of tree trunks to ferry the missionaries wagons across the river, everything was now wet, and just to add to their suffering, the drizzle turned to heavy rain.

Wagons safely across, the commando stopped at Kommando Drift for a few days — it took that long to herd the remaining cattle across.

Then just to celebrate, the burghers shot an ox to eat and hunted game to add to their meagre rations. A preliminary redistribution of the cattle was conducted at Kommando Drift with the Baralong, the Griqua and the Kora receiving their share of the spoils.

The victorious raiders triumphant return was going well.

The lion share of the raided livestock went to the trekkers, who began divvying up the loot at Blesberg. The Potgieter trek party believed they were owed a greater portion to compensate for the terrible losses at the Vaal River and Vegkop battles.

As the bickering worsened, the demographics of this area began to change.

A week or so after Potgieter trundled off to seek his fortune across the Vet River, something very important took place further south. On the 8th April 1837 Piet Retief crossed the Orange River leading a significant party of trekkers — 100 wagons with 120 men. Size matters folks, and when he heard about this, Maritz eagerly sought Retief’s support. He knew that Retief was respected, a man who had the ear of even the British back in the Cape.

Retief was 57 years old and while not being young, was restless.

Retief eventually published a memorable document on 22nd January 1837, his manifesto which functioned as a kind of declaration of independence for the Voortrekker farmers. It has echoed over the ages, and as we cover various political moments in the coming episodes, you’ll hear these echoes. Everything is connected.

The Voortrekkers had survived the trauma of the Battle of Vegkop, they had narrowly survived and as they huddled together in Thaga ‘Nchu a form of unity was required. These different Voortrekker parties under various leaders, Trichardt, Van Rensburg, Cilliers, Potgieter, Maritz, focused their minds on the main threat to their further expansion in southern Africa.

Mzilikazi of the Khumalo. The man born in Zululand, the raider of many across southern Africa, he who had defeated numerous clans on the highveld, the Hurutshe, Barolong, Batlokwa. The BaSotho feared him, the BaTswana hated him.

The external threat to the Voortrekkers suppressed internal divisions, but that wouldn’t be for very long. Gerrit Maritz had arrived in transOrangia with a huge trek party, 700 men women, children and servants.

One hundred of these were Boer men - a relatively large company of soldiers if you take the firepower of the day into account.

Gerrit Maritz was not your average trekboer, he was a wagon maker from Graaff-Reinet, prosperous, more middle class if you like than working farmer type. He was well educated compared to other Voortrekkers, and young - in this 30s. A large man, dwarfing most around him, his upper lip clean shaven as was the manner back in these days, but he sported a beard — noticeably darker than his tawny coloured hair.

He also painted his wagon light blue, not the usual green adopted by most Voortrekkers which allowed them to blend a little better into the Veld — not for Maritz. He also dressed up, long coat, top hat, latest fashionable trousers. Maritz could crack a joke, but was also a pillar of the Dutch Reformed Church. He regarded the Doppers, the extremist arm of the trekboers, the most thin lipped and orthodox of the church members, with contempt.

The amaXhosa had just done that against the English, and the amaNdebele were the new challenge to the Boers.

The trekkers also were motivated by a more primordial need - revenge. The amaNdebele had killed their men, women and children. This could not go unpunished. They also wanted to recover their looted livestock and wagons thus sending a message throughout southern Africa like the ripples of a pebble in a pool — do not fight us, there will be a payment.

So enter stage left, Erasmus Smit and his memorable wife Susanna. She was also living in Graaff-Reinet when her brother Gerrit suggested they trek out of the colony to escape the clutches of the evil English in 1836.

She and Erasmus Smit joined the Maritz trek with her husband in a wagon on loan from her brother. As they travelled, Smit conducted church services three times on a Sunday, and on Wednesday and Saturday evenings. Erasmus was a lay preacher, he’d been trained by the Netherlands missionary Society between 1809 and 1829, but he was never formally inducted. Susanna his wife was the official who greeted churchgoers — the helpmeet as they were known.

Susanna Smit wrote in her diary as the family departed for Thaba ‘Nchu “de Heere leide het Kroos der martelaren uit van onder Ingelsche verdrukking” — or The Lord led his progeny of martyrs away from English oppression.

And its back to the Kommando we now return.

A second section or detachment led by Gerrit Maritz left the following day, with the men wearing distinctive red ribbons around their hats. So who was in overall command? The Kommandant or the President? They were leading two different sections, companies if you like.

Historians generally agree that it was Maritz, not Potgieter, who were the leaders although he didn’t have the military experience. As with everything African, leaders get to divvy up the spoils and treasure, so this question was going to emerge later in a pointed fashion.

These 107 Voortrekkers, plus 100 auxiliaries, including 40 mounted Griquas under Pieter Dawids, were joined by 60 members of the Barolong tribe on foot led by chief Matlaba.

Last episode, we heard how the battle of Kopjeskraal near Parys had ended, where Mzilikazi’s second in command Kaliphi and his force of 500 men had been repulsed in a close fought affair.

This was an important clash, pitting Andries Potgieter’s second in command and brother in law, Piet Botha against Kaliphi, who was responsible for the entire southern reaches of Mzilikazi’s territory.

They had failed to overrun the Voortrekkers, but had decimated the Liebenberg party a few kilometers upriver, catching the small group unawares. That was also after destroying the Erasmus party and its wagons, although Petrus Erasmus and his son as well as Pieter Bekker made their escape.

But Erasmus had no idea what had happened to his two others sons. They were missing.

The other group that was virtually wiped out was the Liebenberg party was under command of Gotlieb Liebenberg senior, a 71 year old man, who’d left the Colesberg district seeking greener pastures. The trek party was made up of his wife, four sons and a daughter — all of whom were married — along with 21 children and a Scottish meester, or school master called MacDonald.

Liebenberg’s trek had been overrun from a section of the amaNdebele, the boers desperately rushing to pull their wagons together as the warriors descended.

The first inkling that the main Voortrekker party had of their fate was a disselboom that Botha’s laager had seen being dragged past by oxen as you heard last episode.

Nkaliphi had sent a smaller force onwards to launch an assault on this little Boer party at the same time that he’d attacked the larger Kopjeskraal laager. All six of the Liebenberg men were killed, along with 12 of their Khoesan servants. Two of the women were killed and six of the 21 children. The others were saved by a miraculous intervention further strengthening the narrative about chosen people.

Back at Mosega, near the Marico River, Mzilikazi was indeed planning a second major assault. He wanted the Boers crushed so that none would ever enter his country again, determined to eliminate what he correctly perceived as a real threat to his rule over this valuable land. He mobilised as many of his men as he could. Living with him were American missionaries Doctor Alexander Wilson, Daniel Lindley and Henry Venables. They had all been shocked when tye Ndebele returned with the Boers wagons and cattle, hearing that Stephanus Erasmus’ camp was destroyed and two of his children killed.

They were even more horrified when they heard that Mzilikazi was sending thousands of his men back to finish the job. While some have said that he was to mobilise 6000 soldiers, historians believe the number was about 2000.

Nkaliphi was placed in charge once more, and received strict instructions. All the Boer men and boys were to be killed, but all the women and girls were to be spared and brought back to Mosega, along with all the Voortrekkers herds of cattle and sheep. A classic amaNdebele raid, kill the possible threats, the men and boys, and bring the valuable women and girls to the king.

This was the build up to the incredible Battle of Vegkop, where Mzilikazi's warriors were finally beaten in a major confrontation with the Voortrekkers. This was an historic battle, a seminal moment, it has resonated down the ages.

Last episode we ended with Hendrick Potgieter and Sarel Cilliers riding to try and find a route to Delagoa Bay, and meeting up with Louis Trichardt.

If you remember, Potgieter had warned his followers camped the Sand Rivier not to cross the Vaal River into Mzilikazi’s territory, or they’d be attacked.

We’ll come back to what happened when a small group decided to ignore his orders in a moment.

Some explanation is required about what the difference is between a trekboer, and a Voortrekker.

The drosters, or raiders, had preceded the Voortrekkers, and in many ways, they had scarred the landscape and warped the perception of folks who dressed in trousers and carried muskets. The frontiers mixed race groups that had pushed out of the Cape starting early in the 18th Century, more than one hundred years before the Voortrekkers, had ploughed into the people’s of inner southern Africa, and these same people were to become the agterryers of the Boers in the future.

The Voortrekker Exodus was one of many early 19th Century treks out of the Cape by indigenous South Africans. There was a northern boundary and the Kora, Koranna, Griqua, basters and other mixed groups expanded this boundary, speaking an early form of Afrikaans, simplified Dutch, indigenised if you like.

The Zulus and Ndebele, and others, who were going to face the new threat on the veld, did not have the long history of fighting the Dutch and the English and did not really understand how to avoid suicidal full frontal suicidal attacks on entrenched positions — they were machismo to the max — believing that a kind of furious sprint towards the enemy would overcome everything.

The Boers had another system which was perfected on the open plains of southern Africa. They would ride out to within range of a large group of warriors, an ibutho, and fire on them while keeping a sharp eye out for possible outflanking manoeuvres. The warriors would persist in a massed frontal attack, and the Boers would ride in retreat in two ranks.

The first would dismount, fire, remount and retire behind the next line of men who would repeat the action. They would load as they rode, some could do this in less than 20 seconds, or they would hand their rifles to their baster agterryers who would hand them their second musket, increasing the volume of fire.

They would draw the enemy into the range of the rest of the Boers inside the laager, and these would open lay down a deadly fusillade, usually stalling the enemy’s assault and demoralising the attackers. Sensing victory, the an assault force inside the laager would ride out, routing the enemy.

The Voortrekkers departed from these eastern and north eastern locales in more cohesive groups, bound by religion. The differences that emerged the factions, were group based on the leadership of individuals, whereas the trekboers of earlier times had been far more isolated, small nuclear families roaming the vastnesses, the Karoo, the scrublands, the men often taking Khoi and Khoisan mistresses or wives. The earlier frontiersmen were like hillbillies facing off against each other sometimes — squabbling with neighbours.

The new moral code that imbued the Voortrekker way demanded conformity, it knitted the Groups together, and there would be no compromise or adaption of the Khoe or Xhosa way of life that had characterised earlier trekkers.

Meanwhile, carnage.

Just a quick thank you to the folks at East coast Radio, Diane and DW, for promoting this podcast with listeners to that station, I’m honoured to have cracked the nod and been selected to be part of their ECR podcast platform.

Also a big thank you to all the listeners who’ve reviewed this podcast on iTunes and elsewhere, it’s pushed the series into the top 20 or so at least according to Apple, and there’ve been close to 800 000 listens.

With that slightly self-serving service announcement, back to the real world of the third decade in the 19th Century.

Last episode we heard how Harry Smith was busy ridiculing the amaXhosa culture and religion, and planning to destroy their chiefs in order to ensure they would be pliable to the British government’s needs in the coming years. We’ll get back to Colonel Smith in future episodes.

Moshoeshoe’s kingdom had taken shape, and to his north, the kingdom of the BaTlokwa, who were led by Sekhonyela, the son of MaNthatisi. While she had been regal, stately, and charming, he was equally tall, but was surly and aggressive where she had been tactful. He was a capable war leader however, and Moshoeshoe had never managed to defeat him - in fact he had forced the BaSotho leader to hand over Thaba Bosiu to him in 1824. In the continuous war between Moshoeshoe and Sekhonyela, the greatest treasure was the Caledon River Valley - a land of water, pasturage, and defensive buttes and other landscape strongholds.

The Batlokwa ruled the upper valley, the north, and by 1835 Sekhonyela had emulated Moshoeshoe in forming alliances with the Drosters - the Griquas and other mixed race groups that were living along the western edge of his land.

The Drosters had been repeatedly defeated by Mzilikazi and he stood menacingly in the path of the Trekkers pushing north across the Vaal River - a confrontation was unavoidable. It had been a remarkable journey for Mzilikazi from the area at the headwaters of the Black Mfolozi in north Western Zululand, up on the highveld to the Vaal River. As he roamed, he killed off all competitors, particularly members of his own family, similar to what Shaka and Dingane had done.

He ran his kingdom as a Zulu, he also had age based regiments, he also forced his warriors to fight for him before they could marry, usually taking about 10 years, the unmarried men known as the amaJaha. The older men who were the members of the ibutho, had many wives and children, large herds, and took captives from war, who did the chores around the homestead, enslaved.

By the early 1830s these Ndebele were happily ensconced north of the Magaliesburg mountains with its excellent water and pastures. And its warmer than other areas of the highveld, with its ridges covered in thick vegetation. Despite controlling territory all the way south of the Vaal and for hundreds of kilometers around this central point, Mzilikazi was paranoid about his safety.

is diplomacy was specifically aimed at preventing others like the Drosters heading into his land from the Cape - and here he completely underestimated the Voortrekkers.

They conformed to no treaty either, which is not what Mzilikazi had expected.

Leading the most significant of these trek parties was Andries Hendrik Potgieter who was a farmer from the Cradock District who’d departed from his beloved Klein Karoo in December 1835. There were 49 armed men and teenage boys over 16, he led 50 wagons, and was joined by Charl or Sarel Cilliers as he became known, who lived near Colesberg. He had 25 adult men in his group, and included a ten year-old Paul Kruger as I’ve mentioned.

Let’s take another look at the push factors driving the Voortrekkers away from their frontier farms. Most had lived on the margins of society for generations, part of the first group of Dutch who began spreading out from the Peninsular in the 17th Century, developing an ethos of independence and a culture of self-reliance.

They were naturally anti-establishment if you like, while being presented as ultra conservative in their religion. In modern terms this implies certain characteristics which I creates a classic misreading of who they were.

Remember the first trekkers were not averse to marrying Khoekhoe and even amaXhosa women, it was only later that their conservatism morphed into a belief in racial separation.

You know enough by now not to make the mistake of double-guessing our ancestors based on modern politics and society’s rules, the prism of the present is a social blindfold when it comes to perception. It gets the crude and raw politician of any epoch into a logic gridlock, an intellectual cul de sac.

There was no doubt that the actions of Lord Glenelg when he took over the Colonial Office in 1835 exacerbated the Boers perceptions of the English. Remember how he’d met Andries Stockenstrom the Dutch Swede who had briefed him about how the Khoekhoe servants were treated in the Cape. Glenelg then overturned decisions to move the frontier to the Kei river, an action which marked him both as a blunderer and a misguided liberal.

It is true that this story became the most deeply embedded consequence of the war in the colonial pysche, it was an imprint that never faded, it was bitterly mulled over for the next one hundred years, and it was also in an ironic mental shift, the moment that the English speaking settlers became African. They’d been thrown under the colonial bus by both their King and country.

They suddenly realised that their homeland was no longer their friend, the political leadership of the British govenrment had turned them into aliens, they no longer recognized themselves as English. This would take another generation or two to play out, but folks, it was a moment.

What we have to understand is that while this was going on in relation to the 1820 Settler stock, further north east, in Port Natal, the settlers there were very much in favour of the British government. They were two different sets of English speakers, which we kind of lump together.

Interestingly enough, something like this was also going on in Canada and in Australia and New Zealand. The English speakers there were grappling with their own nationality.

For the Boers, Glenelg’s decision was easier to cope with than for the 1820 Settlers — the Boers had never trusted the English so it was time to leave. The boers had always directed their own fate, while the 1820 settler was implacably tied to their countries foreign policy. The Boers were interested in land, but didn’t really care for Glenelg’s annexation of the province of Queen Adelaide - they’d still be vassals to the British empire there anyway.

Moshoeshoe’s elder sons were now at a site that was to be named Moriah, 24 miles south of Maseru, chosen by the two French missionaries Arbousset and Casalis for its beauty - and the fact that it was uninhabited.

But before we return to what was going on there, we need to swing around southern Africa for a little update about what else was happening circa 1835 and 1836.

The Voortrekkers were coming.

Dingane was marauding - or more accurately - impis representing Dingane were marauding.

Port Natal traders were conniving.

The Koranna and the Griqua were expanding.

The British were conquering.

By now Moshoeshoe of the BaSotho was facing influx after influx, including word that more than 8 000 and possibly as many as 12 000 people mostly of the Rolong chief Moseme had arrived at Thaba Bosiu, his mountain redoubt.

But there were also Griqua under Barend Barends amongst these, and Bastaards under Carolus Baatje.

He welcomed these immigrants hoping for some protection against the Kora people, brigands who were operating with virtual impunity across the Orange River, predating on African groups as far as Ndebele territory along the Vaal.

But the Kora heyday was over, by 1835 Moshoeshoe’s sons Letsie and Molapo were bent on proving their manhood and planned on attacked Kora villages seeking bigger herds and more women. Moshoeshoe got wind of the plan and stopped them, fearing they’d both die in the attempt. And yet, their attitude was a precursor to the Kora’s final comeuppance.

Moshoeshoe was an expert at avoiding trouble if he could. He was going to need all his diplomatic skills because his territory was facing buffeting. At the beginning of 1836 as the Voortrekkers were beginning to appear and the Kora who had been strengthened by some Xhosa refugees from the Sixth Frontier War who’d scattered seeking a new home.

These Xhosa settled at Qethoane under chief Mjaluza, joining the Kora people living along the Riet River - just west of where Kimberley is today. Soon Moshoeshoe was hearing reports that Mjaluza was demanding a kind of travel and protection toll from BaSotho trying to return to Lesotho from the Cape colony. Mjaluza was also seizing their cattle.

A short while later he was informed two of his son Letsie’s councillors had been killed by Mjaluza. That was that for the bandit Xhosa chief.

Rumbling along slowly, at 5 miles a day - about 8 kilometers on average, were two main leaders we heard about and will hear about again. Louis Trichardt and Lang Hans Janse van Rensburg passed Suikerbosrand which had been the scene of a recent battle between the Zulu and the Ndebele, then turned towards the Olifants River and descended down the valley through a mountain range they named Sekwati Poort after the Bapedi Chief Sekwadi.

He welcomed the travellers, they were passing through after all and he had nothing to fear from the Boers. Travelling so closely however, was proving a problem for Van Rensburg and Trichardt. The Boer leadership had always been prone to infighting and their relationship was no different.

The conflict was sparked over Trichardts advice, which as actually good advice in retrospect, that Van Rensburg should stop killing so many elephants. His wagons were now groaning with ivory, wiping out entire herds, and expending a vast quantity of gunpowder. He’d need that to fight off rampaging hordes said Trichardt.

We join Moshoeshoe just before the arrival of the trekkers, as he sought to build his political power once the Ngwane and other roving bands had been defeated. Mzilikazi was attacking the area which would become known as Lesotho, from his headquarters on the Apies River north of modern Pretoria. His regiments were praying on the Shona people across the Limpopo and all the way down to the southern Basotho throughout the mid 1820s into the 1830s.

Moshoeshoe was at great pains to avoid fighting the Ndebele impis, and in 1828, he had delivered oxen to Mzilikazi with the message that

“Moshesh salutes you, supposing that hunger has brought you into this country, he sends you these cattle, that you may eat them on your way home…”

Later Moshoeshoe would send cattle to the British governor Sir George Cathcart in a similar attempt at placating a threatening power. That would not work out - but it did work with Mzilikazi, who did not send another attack on Moshoeshoe, although he continued predating on neighbour Sekhonyela. Mzilikazi had also found it easier to plunder the Shona across the Limpopo anyway.

From 1831 the Ndebele chief was also defending himself from attacks by the Zulu because Dingane ordered his impis into the highveld at times. Of course, the Griqua to the south were also of some concern to Moshoeshoe, but the Kora were a much bigger problem. Nothing was quiet in this part of southern Africa in the third decade of the 19th Century.

In June 1833, what we know as LeSotho came into being for the first time and their creation was observed by French missionaries who wrote down everything they saw. French Protestants reached Thaba Bosiu from Cape Town via Philippolis, and of these, Thomas Arbousset was probably the most eloquent.

On the 29th June 1833 he wrote that Moshoeshoe,

“… has a Roman head, an oval face, an aquiline nose .. a long chin, and a prominent forehead, his eye is lively, his speech animated, and his voice harsh….”

Later Arbousset’s fellow missionary Eugene Casalis would jot down a few thoughts in his memoirs, and his notes were more exaggerated and flowery

“…I felt at once that I had to do with a superior man, trained to think, to command others, and above all himself. ..”

And thus, in1833 the two French missionaries arrived, Eugene Casalis and Thomas Arbousset, along with a third Frenchman called Constant Grosselin,

Remarkably, because they were tough back in 1834, Arbousset was a Huegenot of only 23, and Casalis was just 20. Grosselin was 33, a Catholic who converted to Protestantism, a mason, a tough subordinate.

Krotz the freed slave guided them to Thaba Bosiu and this is where the first proper descriptions were noted about the bones scattered on the veld — and they saw the signs of the devastation that had been visited up these people, it was clear that many battles had been fought along the Caledon valley.

The story of south Africa is incomplete without scrutinising the kingdom of Lesotho, not only because geographic location means the mountains are part of our tale, but also because the entire region is intertwined like lovers, or wrestlers, or snakes that are hell bent on eating each other.

Sorry about the graphic description there, but by the time you’ve finished listening to this episode, I’m sure you’ll agree with the somewhat over the top analogy.

We must step back in time, from where we left off last episode, 1835, beginning of 1836 just to understand who King Moshoeshoe was, and what he means today. During his dramatic youth, events among the northern Nguni people who lived below the mountain escarpment, were going to impact the people who we now called the Basotho.

Before these sudden surges of people and the destruction caused by the Ndebele and the Ngwane, the people of the Caledon valley and into the hills above lived in small segmentary chiefdoms - where the chiefs made political decisions after consulting councillors and headmen.

The wars of Zwide, Dingiswayo, Senzangakhona and Shaka, then Dingane after him, had profound repercussions throughout the entire region as you’ve heard. For some on the high veld, the effects were catastrophic, Matiwane of the Ngwane had fled north as Shaka expanded his control, leaving his home along the Umfolozi River and attacking the Hlubi, who lived at the source of the Tugela River on the highlands. Some of these defeated Hlubi made it to Hintsa as you’ve heard, and by 1835 had marched into the Albany District seeking refuge, and being used as labourers.

Small world they say.

It was into this fractured society that Moshoeshoe had been born. Isolated and conservative, their culture had been utterly disrupted. Fields were not being cultivated and entire ruling family lines had been destroyed, vanished into the African air. Virtually every MoSotho had been driven from their homes, subjected to suffering and deprivation, human remains littered the landscape - and would be found for another decade.

Crunch Crunch went the oxwagons in 1836.

Hark! What sound breaks the inscrutable silence of the immense African veld?

Dozens of wagons, which would become hundreds.

Trundling along at about 5 miles a day, the Voortrekkers were leaving the Cape for their promised lands - albeit yet unidentified. This was a case of being pushed out at least in their minds - culturally, ideologically, fundamentally, they felt they did not belong in the Cape and the Karoo, they had been alienated in the land of their birth by the dreaded English.

These initial trundling wagons were the first major parties of Boers under Andries Hendrik Potgieter and Charl Celliers - aka Sarel.

We’re going to travel with these men and women, and also join African leaders like Moshoeshoe, Mzilikazi and Dingane, as they watched the approach of heavily armed and well organised settlers. Some of these regents saw the Boers as a threat, others as an opportunity.

Andries Hendrik Potgieter was a resolute and single-minded farmer from the Cradock District in the Eastern Cape who had decided to leave with a group of extended family, neighbours and friends - 40 men and boys, about the same number of women and girls, more than a hundred Khoesan slaves all aboard more than 50 wagons.

It was December 1835 when they crossed the Orange River, joined in a while by Charl Celliers’ trek party which included 25 men, attenuated by the arrival of Caspar Kruger’s small section - the one in which a very young Paul Kruger travelled.

These two parties had crossed the Orange River separately, and it wasn’t a crossing for the faint hearted - the river was flooding and the horses and oxen swam to the northern bank as the wagons and the trekkers and their other goods managed to float across on rafts made of the willow trees that grow along the banks.

As the women stepped onto the northern side, they began to sing hymns, here they were arriving on the hallowed land that they’d been hearing about for years. They had left the hated English behind, anything was better than that.

More fuel was thrown on the fire of bitterness when word filtered through to the frontier Boers that the English had fibbed about the compensation that was going to be paid to former slave owners after emancipation - less than half of the 3.4 million pounds worldwide was now available, and the British had put a price of 73.9 shillings on each slave.

73.9 shillings and 11 pence to be precise.

That’s about 10 rand in today’s currency - a lot of money in 1835 - but almost insulting isn’t it? Ten bucks for a human. The Boers thought so too - they regarded their slaves as far more valuable than a measly 73.9 shillings and 11 pence and were outraged.

So no compensation for the war, then what of their slaves?

Slavery was banned in December 1834 as you heard, and the slave owners were supposed to be compensated but here was London, reneging on another promise. The British government said that all compensation would only be paid out in England - and Glenelg rejected an appeal from the Cape that payments be made locally. How was that going to work, most of the Boers never travelled to Cape Town, let alone to London?

They were brought to the Cape from the first days of the VOC back in 1652. Most were southeast Asian Catholic converts from the island of Ambon, and soon this phrase, Merdeka, came to mean any creole mixed race person, or free black.

Just to add a layer of irony here because this is South African history, the first known Merdeka to the Cape was Anthony de Later van Japan who was actually from Japan, and eventually freed along with his wife Groot Cathrijn van Bengale. She was from a region of modern day Bangladesh. Anthony de Later van Japan’s foster parents were Japanese slave owners Johan van Nagasaki and Johanna van Hirado. Anthony it is thought was a child surrendered as debt bondage back in Japan.