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History of South Africa podcast

History of South Africa podcast

著者： Desmond Latham
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A series that seeks to tell the story of the South Africa in some depth. Presented by experienced broadcaster/podcaster Des Latham and updated weekly, the episodes will take a listener through the various epochs that have made up the story of South Africa.Desmond Latham 世界 旅行記・解説 社会科学
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  • Episode 287 - "Not Worth Hell Room" — JB Robinson, Widow Oosthuizen, and the Witwatersrand Gold Grab

    Episode 287 - "Not Worth Hell Room" — JB Robinson, Widow Oosthuizen, and the Witwatersrand Gold Grab
    2026/08/09
    Onwards!

    Or more accurately - downwards! Because we’re continuing the saga of early gold digging around the farm Langlaagte, and the other farms like Turfontein, it is 1886, hundreds of treasure hunters have descended on the empty veld just south of the Witwatersrand Ridge.

    First a quick note about Kimberley, where the mining magnates were locked in a struggle for supremacy trying to secure control over the lucrative industry. As you heard last episode, one of these, JB Robinson, had run into cash difficulties but was determined to travel to the Witwatersrand to assess for himself just how much gold could be mined in the Main Reef discovered by the two Georges.

    He’d borrowed 20 000 pounds from another Kimberley magnate Alfred Beit, and along with Beit’s partner Maurice Marcus, launched the Robinson Syndicate with a total capital of 30 000 pounds. Then he leapt aboard a stagecoach for the gruelling four day trip between Kimberley and Potchefstroom where he arrived on the 22 July 1886.

    When this archetype converged on the Witwatersrand in 1886, they encountered a landscape defined by absolute physical indifference. The main reef was not an easy vein of rich quartz waiting for a prospector’s spade as you’ve heard. It was a mysterious sloping and tilted sheet of ancient pyritic conglomerate, the banket, plunging deep into the earth’s crust.

    On the surface, the highveld in July is icy at night, sometimes sleet blows when the antartic fronts charge up from the south, sweeping the ridge with handfulls of pain. When Robinson pitched up and set about breaking the land to fit his intent, it was a virgin of veld, clean and wide open. Within a decade the land had been utterly transformed by thousands of men forcing their way along the sloping banket, intent on finding treasure.
    JB Robinson spent a few days crunching through the conglomerate and realised that this reef was like no-other. How deep it went was still unknown, but that it was extensive was obvious.

    Petronella Oosthuizen, the widow, owned Portion D of LAnglaagte Farm, and her fortunes were indeed improving by the day. Robinston made a b-line straight for her house, and secured mining and water rights from the widow on July 27th 1886, paying 450 pounds with an additional option to buy the farm outright for 6000 pounds.
    In September the canny investor did just that, and also negotiated mining and water rights from the owner of Langlaagte Portion B, Anna de Beer Mulder. That cost Robinson one thousand pounds.
    Robinson later faced criticisms and a whispering campaign, it was rumoured that he had used his charm to seduce Petronella Oosthuizen before negotiating her land away.
    Petronella was paid the equivalent of 7 million Rand for her land — not a little — but in comparison to it’s value, not a lot either.

    But he didn’t stop there. Remember Robinson had a war chest of 30 000 pounds and was determined to buy up as much land as he could. He purchased fifty percent of a portion of Vogelstruisfontein Farm, the other half was owned by prospector Jan Bantjies as well as 50 percent of the Turfontein Farm — next door to Langlaagte. By snapping up the 12 000 hectares, Robinson was the first of a wave of Kimberley’s rich who would make the journey north to the Witwatersrand.

    The second wave included Cecil John Rhodes. There is a bit of a myth about his involvement, that he was a late comer to the scene. That is inaccurate, if you cast your memory back to a far earlier episode, I explained how Rhodes had bought the farm Roodepoort near the gold bearing reefs more than ten years earlier — there it was a purchase based on a whim. A bit of luck you’d say.

    Rhodes had been present that day in April 1886 when Kimberley shop keeper Alexander had crushed conglomerate brought to Kimberley from the Witwatersrand, he had seen the public panning demonstration that revealed a gleaming line of wealth and was impressed as was JB Robinson.
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    22 分
  • Episode 286 - German Mercenary von Brandis formally Proclaims Johannesburg

    Episode 286 - German Mercenary von Brandis formally Proclaims Johannesburg
    2026/08/02
    Welcome back to the history of South Africa podcast with me your host, Des Latham.
    This is episode 286 - Johannesburg is proclaimed but the flow of water and cash provs challenging.

    We’ll start however, with the Orange Free State. Its president Johannes Brand was certainly carved from an original chunk of Boer marble — even the British empire recognized his magnificence, at least, Queen Victoria, who was knighted him.

    Brand was one of the main movers behind the first attempt at uniting the Boer Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State but the open hostility by Paul Kruger and the Burghers of the Transvaal scuttled his plans. President Brand had been voted into office in 1872 and for the next 20 years, the Free State was characterised by relative tranquility and modest prosperity. After Britain formally annexed Basutoland and Griqualand West, the Free State experienced a few ructions, but there was little friction between the Afrikaaners and their English compatriots.

    Brand was steadfast in his belief that the Republics should remain neutral when it came to Great Britain, while Paul Kruger’s Transvaal was openly hostile to London. The Free State leader was a warded the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George by Queen Victoria in 1882, turning Brand into Sir Johannes Brand. That rankled the still more. Kruger wanted utter independence, whereas Brand was willing to negotiate based on what was best for the Free State.

    A deeply religious man, Johannes Brand was extremely popular with the burghers of the Orange Free State, and his expression "alles zal recht komen als elkeen zijn plicht doet" (all will be well if everyone does his duty) is one of the most recognisable sayings of his presidency.

    Nor were there serious difficulties with black Free Staters, mainly because in the Free State, blacks had no rights and couldn’t own land and avoided the territory. It wasn’t like the Cape, where jobs abounded.

    In 1885, there were about an equal number of blacks and whites living in the Free State, with the independent Basutoland on the eastern border and territory around Thaba ‘Nchu prosperous under Basutho chief, Moroka the second. The Total population of the Free State in 1885 was 140 000 — smaller than most counties in England, which is amazing because the Free State was almost exactly the same size as the whole of England.

    Free State is 129 825 square kilometers, England is 130 279 square kilos. The Free State also lay directly between the Cape, which England controlled, and the Transvaal, which it thought of as a suzereignty. The reason for all this preamble is that railways were coming to South Africa, albeit slowly. In 1885, there were only 1 318 miles of track in operation and 1 213 of those were in the Cape, 115 miles in Natal. By contrast, 5 133 miles of track had been laid in Australia, and even New Zealand had longer lines - 1 486 miles.
    The new gold fields of the Witwatersrand were going to need railway lines urgently. By the end of July 1886 a crowd of 600 diggers had rushed to the district and had camped on two main farms, Turftontein and Doornfontein. Unlike the early rush to Kimberley, in this case there were no black diggers because of the discriminatory legislation prohibiting blacks from owning claims in the Transvaal. The South African Republic had passed a law in 1885 explicitly excluding blacks from buying or working their own claims or even dealing in precious stones and metals. They were practicing their race-based legislating for a much more refined version which would pop up in the 20th Century.
    But there was another reason which haunts Johannesburg to this day — there was very little water particularly during winter. Millions of litres were required to wash the ore and sieve the gold, no water, no mining. Providing water was going to cost a fortune, something beyond the cash flow of small operators.
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    23 分
  • Episode 285 - The Three Georges Gold Saga and a Bottle of Mampoer Vignette

    Episode 285 - The Three Georges Gold Saga and a Bottle of Mampoer Vignette
    2026/07/26
    Farming dominated the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek economy in the 1880s, even after gold was discovered in the eastern Transvaal but that was about to change. Last episode we heard about the early gold finds around Rustenburg which was part of the Witwatersrand Ward back in the late 1800s.

    Farms along the Ridge of White Waters had a fairly steady supply of water courtesy of the many springs that could be found along the ridge. Still, the freezing winters and the lack of wood meant the region was not in high demand despite water and fairly good soils.

    By 1886 dozens of diggers began arriving on the Witwatersrand, having heard reports of the earlier finds and growing tired of the limited options available in Pilgrims Rest. Others made their way from the south, from Kimberley or the coast, trekking on foot. Two of those were the George’s I mentioned in episode 284 .. George Harrison and George Walker, who walked from the Orange Free State who had decided to chance their luck in Barberton.

    If it were possible and we teleported ourselves back to this time, we would have come across hundreds of other fortune seekers tramping across the countryside, determined to strike it lucky.

    George Harrison is a bit of a mystery. He was Australian, or perhaps more accurately, an Englishman who’d live in Australia and joined the gold rush there, failed to find any treasure, then read about the Eastern Transvaal Barberton and Pilgrim’s Rest discoveries and made a B-line for South Africa. We don’t know much more about Harrison’s origin story.

    George Walker on the other hand had quite an extensive CV — born in Wigan in England in 1853, he made his way to Kimberley in 1879 but had little luck digging for diamonds. He joined a British cavalry contingent during the Anglo-Zulu war and fought in Zululand, after which he rode off to Pilgrim’s Rest and Kaapsehoop to dig for gold.

    Coal had been discovered in large quantities in the Free State, and he first took up a job at the Witrand Coal Mine near Kroonstad, where he met Elizabeth Johanna Catharina Pretorius and the couple married in 1883. It was there that George Harrison bumped into him on his great trek from Kimberley to the eastern Transvaal gold fields and the two decided to try their luck one more time at Barberton.

    George Walker left his wife Catharina and children in Potchefstroom, and joined Harrison for their trek to Barberton. They broke their journey on the Witwatersrand, deciding to earn more cash to set themselves up with a wagon, horses and other necessities before heading on to Barberton. It just so happened that the Struben brothers were looking for builders around their Confidence Mine, which as you heard last episode, was somewhat of a misnomer.
    When Hendrik Potgieter and other Voortrekker reconnaissance parties arrived along the Vaal and Witwatersrand in 1836, battles followed, eventually the Ndebele were pushed out the Transvaal completely and ended up in Zimbabwe.

    The two Georges would have been aware of the Potgieter saga, but blissfully unaware of the pre-history as they wondered through Langlaagte Farm. Originally 2 260 Morgan in size, It had been broken up into four portions. In common with other pastoral communities across Southern Africa, Boer custom stipulated that marriage entailed a land grant or farm subdivision for every son. The difference is most African communities relied on the King or Chief assigning land, whereas in the Boers case, it was the grandfather, or the father.

    Portion A was owned by Andries Breedt, Portion B by Anna Elizabeth de Beer Mulder - her maiden name was Oosthuizen - Portion C by Gerhardus Oosthuizen, and Portion D by the widow Petronella Oosthuizen and her son, Jan Hendrick Oosthuizen. Portion D was where Harrison was working, building the widow and her son their home.

    George Walker and George Harrison strolled onto Gerhardus’ Oosthuizen’s Portion C property, when they stumbled on a well weathered outcrop of rock.
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    20 分
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