South Africa -- Boers and Brits [15min]

The Dutch who ceded the Cape to the British at the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) never got on with their landlords, particularly when the British extended their slave-owning ban to the colony. Furthermore, the Dutch wanted more land -- an Afrikaner farmer estimated that to make a profitable business out of cattle ranching he would need about 6,000 acres. Furthermore, the Afrikaners felt threatened by the Xhosa tribes on the other side of the Fish River and, with the slave ban it was clear why they decided to look for new lands north of the Orange River. So started the Great Trek [De Groot Trek]. But the trek could never resolve the differences between British and Boer. The conflict between them took three quarters of a century to come to a terrible and inevitable conflict. "This Sceptred Isle: Empire" is a narrative history of the British Empire from Ireland in the 12th century to the independence of India in the 20th, told in 90 programmes written by historian Christopher Lee and narrated by actor Juliet Stevenson. (You may listen again online to the five most recent episodes of "Empire".)

Immediately in mid-century both British and Dutch saw a threat from the conflict among the Africans. It had started when the Zulus, under their celebrated chief, Shaka, were seemingly at war with the rest of black Africa. Consequently many of the other tribes were escaping westward into the Cape. Consequently, the Afrikaners met few tribes all the while they stuck to the northern route. However, the land they reached was mainly poor. So, many then moved towards the east and the coastal regions.

It was here that the Boers came up against the Zulus. Afrikaners and Zulus skirmishes and battles were uncompromising affairs. The British were wrong-footed. They thought that once the Afrikaners had gone north then they were no more than another tribe easily controlled by their surrounding geography.

However, if the trekkers were settling along the coast, then that was an entirely different matter. The British regarded control of the coast as essential to their wider strategic plan. First the ports had commercial values and, if British interests in the African interior were threatened, then Britain had to control the entry points to get in their troops. In 1844 the British annexed Natal, the province that controls the coastline. Once more Afrikaners moved on and in 1852 the Boer South African Republic, the Transvaal, demanded some form of independence.