Podcasts about boers

Last week we started this series with the story of how our kidding system evolved — from show goats and January barn kidding through commercial Boers, and then the Spanish goats arriving and refusing to work in the system we'd been running for years. Today is Part 2, and this is where we get into what that shift actually took. How do you move a herd that's been bred for intensive management toward something completely different? What does culling look like when you're selecting for a new system? And how long before you actually see the results? Let's get to it.   Episode Mentions: 110 | Kidding Management: How Our Kidding System Evolved, Part 1 of 3   Leave a review on Apple Podcasts + grab your free Kidding Due Date Chart: https://www.goatwise.com/kidding-chart Join the insider email list: https://www.goatwise.com/join Email: millie@drycreekpastures.com Instagram: @drycreekpastures   This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for veterinary advice.

Die Dorsland — the Thirstland — is part of the Kalahari that has an interesting history when it comes to pastoralists. The San didn't call it the Thirstland, for them it wasn't a barrier but part of a network of seasonal resource nodes. They would navigate the dry spans using sip-wells, inserting long, hollow reeds deep into the damp sand, use grass filters, and literally suck water up to store in hollowed-out ostrich eggshells buried along transit routes for future journeys. Around 2,000 to 2,500 years ago, a massive economic shift occurred when groups in northern Botswana acquired livestock, sheep and later cattle, transitioning from hunter-gatherers to pastoralists—becoming the Khoekhoe. Archaeological evidence indicates the Khoekhoe moved out of the northern Botswana/Zambezi region and split. One major migration route skirted the western edge of the Kalahari desert, moving down through modern-day Namibia and into the Northern and Western Cape with the Kalahari was the geographic pivot around which this entire pastoralist expansion rotated. Moving large herds of sheep and cattle through a Thirstland required moving between reliable pans and riverbeds like the Nossob, Auob, and Molopo rivers. They transformed the Kalahari from a hunter-gatherer landscape into a series of strategic grazing corridors. The Dorsland Trekkers were going to reverse that course to some extent, using the north western Botswana region to reach Namibia, and eventually, Angola. The Khoekhoe like the Voortrekkers, appreciated their freedom, moving in small extended family groups, their mobility part of their world-view. Instead of heading north west like the trekkers, they had headed south west for hundreds of years, arriving in Southern Africa about 2400 years ago. That was about the time parts of south-central Africa experienced a shift in rainfall, forests and dense woodlands expanded or contracted, the tsetse belts moved. If you were an early pastoralist whose entire wealth, diet, and social structure depended on cattle and sheep, a shifting tsetse belt was an existential threat. The arid margins of the Kalahari, the Namib, and the Karoo environments further south were too dry for the tsetse fly. The Karoo was a safe haven for livestock, the Namib too dessicated. In high-rainfall, tropical areas, grass grows fast but loses its nutritional value in winter, it becomes sourveld. In more arid regions like the fringes of the Kalahari and the Karoo the grass grows slower but retains its high mineral and protein content year-round, even when dry - it is sweetveld. To a sheep or cow, the arid south was an open buffet of incredibly nutritious feed. The Khoekhoe migration pushed into the Western Cape, where they hit a completely different climate zone, the winter rainfall region, so just as the summer rainfall area dried out, the Cape valleys were greening up. But where the trekkers moved northwards taking a decade and arrived Angola in 1880, the Khoekhoe migrations took hundreds of years. A gradual seeping south if you like. After the Khoekhoe, and before the Boers, the people of the Ngami area near the Okavango Delta were known as the Khwebe - from the word Kwe which simply means “people”. They dwelled close to a geographical anomaly in Botswana - the Khwebe Hills — Botswana is one of the flattest countries on earth. The Khwebe hills are a windy place and Khwebe mythology speaks of the Gas Bird which lives in a certain baobab near the upper Okavango River valley. If you listen closely, you can hear his hissing voice inside the tree. The mythology is linked to earlier San cosmology, where the word !Khwe means wind — and where the wind is a supernatural being.

In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas sits down with Dr. Gary L. Stiles — physician, medical researcher, former Distinguished Professor of Cardiovascular Research at Duke University, and lifelong Churchill scholar — to discuss his new book A Prelude to Immortality, published by Unicorn Publishing Group. Gary's book is the definitive study of Churchill's most beloved work, My Early Life — his only autobiography, written in 1930 when Churchill was in his mid-fifties, and never out of print in nearly a century. Drawing on previously unpublished letters from the Churchill Archives, Gary walks Jonathan through the five specific reasons Churchill wrote the book, the remarkable ambulatory dictation process by which he composed it, the POW escape from the Boers that made him internationally famous, the strategic gifting of inscribed copies to over 100 influencers including T.E. Lawrence, Churchill's Nobel Prize for Literature and his complicated feelings about it, and the surprisingly human, vulnerable side of Churchill that his nanny shaped and that the history books rarely capture. The episode closes with a Churchill lightning round — favorite quotes, anecdotes, books and films — including the extraordinary story of Churchill reciting Hamlet from memory alongside Richard Burton at the Old Vic. Links A Prelude to Immortality by Gary L. Stiles (Unicorn Publishing Group) My Early Life by Winston Churchill Savrola by Winston Churchill (Churchill's only novel) Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert The Churchill Archives, Cambridge — chu.cam.ac.uk Chartwell, Kent (National Trust) — nationaltrust.org.uk/chartwell Darkest Hour (2017 film) Young Winston (1972 film) Friends of Anglotopia Takeaways My Early Life, published in 1930 when Churchill was 55, is his only autobiography — covering only the first 27 years of his life — and has never gone out of print in nearly a century. It was also the book most prominently cited when Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. Churchill wrote My Early Life for five specific reasons: to reinvigorate his public persona as the wilderness years approached; to describe the Victorian era that formed him; to tell his story in his own voice for posterity; to generate desperately needed income; and to inspire a post-WWI generation he felt was paralyzed by fear and disengagement. Churchill's writing method was "ambulatory dictation" — he would pace his library at Chartwell, mumbling and testing sentences aloud for cadence, rhythm, and word sound, while secretaries stood ready to transcribe. He never wrote My Early Life by hand; every word was dictated. The book is deliberately written in the voice of Churchill at the age of each event — as a frightened schoolboy, a cavalry officer, an escaped prisoner of war — not as a 55-year-old man looking back. This was a conscious literary choice to make readers feel what he felt, not intellectualize it. Churchill's escape from a Boer prisoner of war camp in 1899 — a 400-mile solo journey through hostile territory — was the pivotal moment that made him internationally famous and launched both his writing career and his political one. Captain Haldane never forgave him for it, calling him a cad; Churchill's two chapters on the escape in My Early Life are, in large part, a carefully crafted defense of his honor. Churchill kept fresh flowers on his nanny Mrs Everest's grave from her death until his own in 1965 — over 90 years — and kept her photograph at his bedside at Chartwell, where it can still be seen today. Gary argues it was Mrs. Everest, not Churchill's famously neglectful parents, who taught him humanity, empathy, and the capacity to care for others. Churchill was nominated for the Nobel Prize over 27 times in both the Peace and Literature categories. He won the Literature prize in 1953 — beating Hemingway, who came second — though he would have preferred the Peace Prize. Hemingway publicly stated Churchill deserved it, and had previously included Churchill's war writing in his own books as examples of great prose. Churchill was the original influencer: he personally managed the distribution of over 100 pre-publication inscribed copies of My Early Life to royals, politicians, business leaders, friends, and voters — with three handwritten iterations of the list found in the Churchill Archives, with personal notes on each recipient. Churchill's prodigious memory — which left FDR, Stalin, and his own staff in awe — was the key tool that allowed him to weave My Early Life from four earlier books, 13 major articles, and hundreds of newspaper dispatches, selecting and transforming individual sentences across decades of work. Churchill was not the impenetrable marble figure of popular mythology — he cried frequently, could be easily hurt, and never stopped seeking the parental approval he never received. Gary's research in the Churchill Archives reveals a side of him that is rarely discussed and fundamentally changes how you read everything he wrote. Soundbites "Churchill kept fresh flowers on his nanny's grave until the day he died in 1965. For 90 years. And he kept a picture of her at his bedside. If you go to Chartwell now, you can still see it. That's how close and important she was to him." — Gary on Nanny Everest and Churchill's lifelong devotion. "He was what I call stubborn. If he didn't want to study math or Greek or Latin, he just didn't — even at age twelve, he just told the teachers, I can't do this. I'm not interested in doing this. Which drove them absolutely crazy." — Gary on Churchill's unconventional education. "He would mumble. He would say words. He would say bits of sentences. Then he'd stop and say, no, no, no, that's not it. And then start again. He was listening to the cadence, the word play, the story he was telling — until he got the sound of the words, the pacing, the tone, the rhythm, and the message all clear." — Gary on Churchill's ambulatory dictation method. "He wanted to grab life by the throat. He wanted the post-WWI generation involved in politics, involved in social issues. He flatly states that if you do not make a difference in the world to make it a better place, your life is absolutely wasted." — Gary on what Churchill wanted the next generation to take from My Early Life. "Churchill was the original influencer. He sat down and planned who should get the books — Royals, business leaders, politicians, friends, voters. He went through three iterations of the list in his own hand, with personal notes on each person." — Gary on Churchill's strategic gifting of inscribed copies. "He would have preferred the Nobel Peace Prize. He wanted to be seen as the person who could get the Soviets, Americans, British and French together to create a calmer world. That obviously didn't happen." — Gary on Churchill's complicated relationship with his Nobel Prize for Literature. "Who's the bloody fool on the gray? Someone who wants to be noticed, I imagine. He'll be noticed — he'll get his head blown off." — the exchange Gary quotes about Churchill's habit of riding a conspicuously grey pony into cavalry charges to ensure he was seen. "It usually nauseates me. It's usually written by somebody who knows nothing about Churchill and what he really stood for. Churchill is a great name to drop when you want somebody to support what you're trying to support." — Gary on Churchill being invoked in modern political discourse. "Churchill begins to hear some kind of rumbling. He speeds up and the sound speeds up. He slows down and the sound slows down. And what he finally realizes is Winston Churchill is in the audience — reciting the speech from memory, out loud, word for word." — Gary recounting the Richard Burton / Hamlet anecdote at the Old Vic. "The price of greatness is responsibility. He turned that on himself. If you're great, you've got to be very responsible." — Gary on Churchill's favorite quote, first used in a speech at Harvard in 1943. Chapters 00:00 Introduction — Jonathan sets up the episode and introduces Gary Stiles and A Prelude to Immortality 01:47 How a Cardiologist Became a Churchill Scholar — A lifelong passion for resilience, literature, and collecting 02:59 What First Grabbed Gary About My Early Life — Churchill as a role model for success and getting back up 04:06 The Research Journey — 40 years, unpublished letters, and the surprising discovery of Churchill's humanity 06:33 Nanny Everest — The woman who shaped Churchill more than his parents ever did 08:36 What My Early Life Actually Covers — Ireland, Harrow, Sandhurst, Cuba, India, Sudan, South Africa, and Parliament 12:29 Why Churchill Stopped at Age 28 — The wilderness years, crossing the floor, and a planned second volume that never came 14:19 Writing in the Voice of His Younger Self — A deliberate literary choice, and how he pulled it off 17:00 Ambulatory Dictation — Pacing, mumbling, secretaries, and the sound of sentences 18:32 The Five Reasons Churchill Wrote the Book — Persona, legacy, income, inspiration, and the Victorian era 22:38 Churchill's Financial Chaos — Chartwell, near-bankruptcies, the best wine and cigars, and Clementine's despair 25:16 The Boer War Escape — Capture, the plan, the jump, Captain Haldane, and a 400-mile solo journey to freedom 32:24 How the Escape Made Churchill Famous — International press, a political career launched, and a grudge that lasted decades 34:50 The Dedication to a New Generation — Churchill's message to post-WWI youth, and its echo in JFK's inaugural address 37:43 Weaving the Book from Earlier Work — Prodigious memory, four books, 13 articles, and hundreds of dispatches 40:54 Two Titles, Two Markets — My Early Life in Britain, A Roving Commission in America, and a battle with publishers 43:13 The Inscribed Copy Strategy — Over 100 recipients, three handwritten lists, and T.E. Lawrence's extraordinary reply 47:36 Churchill's Education in English at Harrow — Mr. Somerville, color-coded sentence parsing, and the foundation of a Nobel laureate's prose 49:49 The Nobel Prize for Literature — 27 nominations, beating Hemingway, preferring the Peace Prize, and what Hemingway said 53:35 Churchill and Hemingway as Contemporaries — Two Nobel laureates who admired each other across the Atlantic 54:36 Churchill in the Modern Political Discourse — Gary's frank response to selective and misleading invocations of Churchill today 57:44 Churchill Was Not Perfect — Gallipoli, mistakes, humanity, and the importance of judging the past in its own context 58:17 Lightning Round: Favorite Churchill Quote — "The price of greatness is responsibility" 59:32 Lightning Round: Favorite Churchill Anecdote — Richard Burton, Hamlet at the Old Vic, and Churchill reciting it from memory out loud 1:01:35 Lightning Round: Favorite Churchill Book — Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert, and Savrola, Churchill's only novel 1:03:11 Lightning Round: Favorite Churchill Film — Darkest Hour, Young Winston, and the blubbering scene on the Underground 1:04:20 Wrap-Up — Where to find A Prelude to Immortality and My Early Life, and a call to read both Video Version

datum: 22 maart 2026 gast: Steven Boers Vlak voor zijn eerste try-out spreken we met Steven over zijn voorstelling en over Homerus, de Odyssee Trojanen en paarden. Het artwork is van Tom Metdepenningen (Check zijn WikiTom op Instagram)

Today we're starting a three-part series on kidding management, how a system actually works, why it matters which genetics you're running, and how to build an approach that fits your operation. Part 1 is the story of how our system evolved from show goats and January barn kidding in twenty-below weather, through commercial Boers, and then the moment the Spanish goats arrived and showed me something I hadn't seen coming. Let's get to it.   Episode Mentions: 105 | Two Reasons Why People Quit Goats: Fence and Genetics   Leave a review on Apple Podcasts + grab your free Kidding Due Date Chart: https://www.goatwise.com/kidding-chart Join the insider email list: https://www.goatwise.com/join Email: millie@drycreekpastures.com Instagram: @drycreekpastures   This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for veterinary advice.

El 22 de mayo de 1859 nacía uno de los grandes autores de la literatura de los dos últimos siglos, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Hoy viajamos por la contradictoria y sorprendente vida de quien dio vida al increíble Sherlock Holmes o de escribir panfletos para justificar la sangrienta guerra de los Boers. Sin olvidar sus últimos años rodeados de espíritus, médiums y Houdini.

The hill of Doves — in isiZulu amaJuba means the place of many doves or pigeons. It became a place of violence and blood, and yet the catastrophic defeat of the British at Majuba was indeed to lead to peace. The doves would fly again albeit fleetingly. As you heard last episode, British commander General George Colley had been one of the casualties of the battle — Sir Evelyn Wood was now in charge of the empire's army in the Transvaal. Or to be more accurate, in Natal attempting to enter the Transvaal. Colley was buried at Mount Prospect — the British base below Laings Nek in sight of Majuba — letters of condolence were sent to his wife Lady Colley by the Town councils of Pietermaritzburg and Durban .. and also by the Transvaal Boer Leaders. Colley had asked that his body should be allowed to remain where he fell on the battlefield, and so it was. His wife would have to travel to the Transvaal border to see where he lay. A state of war existed, the Boers continued to besiege all British garrisons in the Transvaal in early 1881. More about that in a moment. The Summer rains were falling, drenching the landscape like the blood of Majuba, and both sides sought peace. Boer emissaries had met with the Swazi king, but he was loathe to join the attack on the empires forces. On the 2nd March 1881 Evelyn Wood relayed a letter to the Boer leadership, the triumpherate as they were known from his base at Newcastle. “to President Brand, Bloemfontein, P Joubert (he means Commandant Piet Joubert, Boer commander in the Transvaal) requests me to send you the following telegram…” The British commander as postman — relaying one Boer message to another. Brand's message back was reconciliatory in tone. “…We are willing to accept every offer made by your Honour …” and by your honour Joubert meant Wood … “that peace may be, as far as it is not in direct opposition to our liberty…” That was the minimum demand — the Boers demanded their liberty. ON the 5th, Wood and his staff met Piet Joubert and Boer leaders half way between Mount Prospect and Laing's Nek in a hastily erected tent. The British hardliners were horrified - how could Wood, an English General who had now built up a force of 10 000 soldiers in Natal concede to an interview with the leaders of the enemy for the sake of gaining time to negotiate peace? Some said it was too absurd to be credited, others in the English camp were astonished. But he was also a general who represented an army that had been beaten four times in an open fight — Bronkhorspruit, Laings Nek, Schoonspruit, Majuba. Why continue the war? It was time to resolve things. While the English nationalists bayed for Boer blood, were calling for this upstart Transvaal Republic to be crushed as a warning to other rebels across the empire, cooler heads prevailed. Joining Wood were Major Frazer, Captain Maude and Mr Cropper the translator. On the Boer side, Piet Joubert, DC Uys, CJ Joubert and CHJ Fouchees, with AJ Foster interpreting. A tight group. The fewer involved the better. Wood opened with meeting with an explanation — he was there to call for an armistice so that Kruger and the Volksraad could reply to General Colley's communication of the 21st February re: peace. The entire meeting was to last an astonishing 90 minutes. Joubert presented the Transvaal position most concisely, Complete amnesty for all leaders, freedom of the Transvaal from British government although they'd accept suzerainty, no interference in Transvaal's internal affairs — they meant on matters pertaining to race and land. It was the word suzerainty that was the problem child here. To the British government, particularly officials in London, suzerainty implied that the restored Boer republic in the Transvaal would enjoy internal self-government but would remain subordinate to the British Crown in matters such as foreign relations as well as overall imperial authority. The Boer negotiators understood the term far more loosely.

The hill of Doves — in isiZulu amaJuba means the place of many doves or pigeons. It became a place of violence and blood, and yet the catastrophic defeat of the British at Majuba was indeed to lead to peace. The doves would fly again albeit fleetingly. As you heard last episode, British commander General George Colley had been one of the casualties of the battle — Sir Evelyn Wood was now in charge of the empire's army in the Transvaal. Or to be more accurate, in Natal attempting to enter the Transvaal. Colley was buried at Mount Prospect — the British base below Laings Nek in sight of Majuba — letters of condolence were sent to his wife Lady Colley by the Town councils of Pietermaritzburg and Durban .. and also by the Transvaal Boer Leaders. Colley had asked that his body should be allowed to remain where he fell on the battlefield, and so it was. His wife would have to travel to the Transvaal border to see where he lay. A state of war existed, the Boers continued to besiege all British garrisons in the Transvaal in early 1881. More about that in a moment. The Summer rains were falling, drenching the landscape like the blood of Majuba, and both sides sought peace. Boer emissaries had met with the Swazi king, but he was loathe to join the attack on the empires forces. On the 2nd March 1881 Evelyn Wood relayed a letter to the Boer leadership, the triumpherate as they were known from his base at Newcastle. “to President Brand, Bloemfontein, P Joubert (he means Commandant Piet Joubert, Boer commander in the Transvaal) requests me to send you the following telegram…” The British commander as postman — relaying one Boer message to another. Brand's message back was reconciliatory in tone. “…We are willing to accept every offer made by your Honour …” and by your honour Joubert meant Wood … “that peace may be, as far as it is not in direct opposition to our liberty…” That was the minimum demand — the Boers demanded their liberty. ON the 5th, Wood and his staff met Piet Joubert and Boer leaders half way between Mount Prospect and Laing's Nek in a hastily erected tent. The British hardliners were horrified - how could Wood, an English General who had now built up a force of 10 000 soldiers in Natal concede to an interview with the leaders of the enemy for the sake of gaining time to negotiate peace? Some said it was too absurd to be credited, others in the English camp were astonished. But he was also a general who represented an army that had been beaten four times in an open fight — Bronkhorspruit, Laings Nek, Schoonspruit, Majuba. Why continue the war? It was time to resolve things. While the English nationalists bayed for Boer blood, were calling for this upstart Transvaal Republic to be crushed as a warning to other rebels across the empire, cooler heads prevailed. Joining Wood were Major Frazer, Captain Maude and Mr Cropper the translator. On the Boer side, Piet Joubert, DC Uys, CJ Joubert and CHJ Fouchees, with AJ Foster interpreting. A tight group. The fewer involved the better. Wood opened with meeting with an explanation — he was there to call for an armistice so that Kruger and the Volksraad could reply to General Colley's communication of the 21st February re: peace. The entire meeting was to last an astonishing 90 minutes. Joubert presented the Transvaal position most concisely, Complete amnesty for all leaders, freedom of the Transvaal from British government although they'd accept suzerainty, no interference in Transvaal's internal affairs — they meant on matters pertaining to race and land. It was the word suzerainty that was the problem child here. To the British government, particularly officials in London, suzerainty implied that the restored Boer republic in the Transvaal would enjoy internal self-government but would remain subordinate to the British Crown in matters such as foreign relations as well as overall imperial authority. The Boer negotiators understood the term far more loosely.

It is not a stretch to say that the defeat by the British at Majuba was also the political birth of the Afrikaner people. While the Great Trek provided the origin story, Majuba provided the validation—the sense that their culture was not only distinct but divinely protected and militarily capable of standing against the greatest empire of the age. Before the main event, there was the small matter of Schuinshoogte. It was February 1881, and General Sir George Pomeroy Colley was in a bind. Boer patrols under Commander J. D. Weilbach were constantly harassing his communications with Newcastle. Colley was determined to act. The recent defeat at Laing's Nek had energized the Boers, and he needed to clear the road between Newcastle and Mount Prospect. His reinforcements were finally on the way, but first, he had to keep those vital British supply lines open. Deputy President Paul Kruger sent a letter to George Pomeroy Colley on the 12th February 1881, requesting negotiations. “We desire to seek no conflict with the Imperial Government but cannot do otherwise than give the last drop of blood for our lawful right, for which also each Englishmen would give his blood..” Colley wrote back on the 21st February. “Sir I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter…” “…I must inform you that as soon as the Boers, now in arms against her Majesty's authority, discontinue their armed resistance, Her Majesty's Government is prepared to appoint a Commission…” Both sides had agreed that some kind of Royal Commission would be responsible for investigating the causes of this war. That placated the Boer Triumpherate leadership. Kruger sent another letter on the 28th February 1881, “to this excellency, Sir G Pomeroy Colley… I have the satisfaction … to inform you that we are very thankful for the declaration…” He meant of a commission — Kruger and the Boers were sure they would be exonerated by a proper investigation “It appears to us…” he continued “…that now for the first time since the unhappy day of the annexation, an opportunity occurs of coming to a friendly settlement…” Kruger was calling for a speedy resolution. Colley never read the letter. He was already dead. His end was to come at Majuba on the 27th February. On Saturday night, February 26th, General Colley left his camp again on a secret expedition. With him was a compact force of 405 men, two companies of the 58th Regiment, two of the 3-60th, two of the 92nd highlands, the Naval Brigade, some Hussars, the cavalry. Two other companies of the 3-60th were to leave a little later with reserve ammunition and form a defensive position behind Colley's advancing expedition. The troops had no idea where they were going, only after the march began did word spread they were on their way to a high hill called Majuba to the left of the British camp. From their they would have a commanding view of the Boer camps, and their line of defences on the escarpment flats beyond Laing's Nek. The 3-60th were on the left, facing a difficult pass. They all stopped at a ridge below this imposing mountain, the horses, the Hussars, and the guns were sent back to the camp, there was no way they'd make it up this steep side. That alone should have been a warning to Colley. He knew he was outnumbered by the Boers, but decided to go ahead and climb to the summit of Majuba anyway despite leaving his vital artillery behind. It was a very difficult climb, and they reached the top just before daybreak on the 27th February. Sunday morning. Six hours of toil, but they'd made it, despite the dangerous climb. To his credit, General Colley was the second man to reach the top, behind his two IC Major Fraser. As the sun rose, subaltern's pitched a tent for Colley, the soldiers ate their breakfast, while some began to dig wells for water. Crucially, they were not digging in for battle, presuming that no-one would be able to reach their position — they held the high ground after all.

It is not a stretch to say that the defeat by the British at Majuba was also the political birth of the Afrikaner people. While the Great Trek provided the origin story, Majuba provided the validation—the sense that their culture was not only distinct but divinely protected and militarily capable of standing against the greatest empire of the age. Before the main event, there was the small matter of Schuinshoogte. It was February 1881, and General Sir George Pomeroy Colley was in a bind. Boer patrols under Commander J. D. Weilbach were constantly harassing his communications with Newcastle. Colley was determined to act. The recent defeat at Laing's Nek had energized the Boers, and he needed to clear the road between Newcastle and Mount Prospect. His reinforcements were finally on the way, but first, he had to keep those vital British supply lines open. Deputy President Paul Kruger sent a letter to George Pomeroy Colley on the 12th February 1881, requesting negotiations. “We desire to seek no conflict with the Imperial Government but cannot do otherwise than give the last drop of blood for our lawful right, for which also each Englishmen would give his blood..” Colley wrote back on the 21st February. “Sir I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter…” “…I must inform you that as soon as the Boers, now in arms against her Majesty's authority, discontinue their armed resistance, Her Majesty's Government is prepared to appoint a Commission…” Both sides had agreed that some kind of Royal Commission would be responsible for investigating the causes of this war. That placated the Boer Triumpherate leadership. Kruger sent another letter on the 28th February 1881, “to this excellency, Sir G Pomeroy Colley… I have the satisfaction … to inform you that we are very thankful for the declaration…” He meant of a commission — Kruger and the Boers were sure they would be exonerated by a proper investigation “It appears to us…” he continued “…that now for the first time since the unhappy day of the annexation, an opportunity occurs of coming to a friendly settlement…” Kruger was calling for a speedy resolution. Colley never read the letter. He was already dead. His end was to come at Majuba on the 27th February. On Saturday night, February 26th, General Colley left his camp again on a secret expedition. With him was a compact force of 405 men, two companies of the 58th Regiment, two of the 3-60th, two of the 92nd highlands, the Naval Brigade, some Hussars, the cavalry. Two other companies of the 3-60th were to leave a little later with reserve ammunition and form a defensive position behind Colley's advancing expedition. The troops had no idea where they were going, only after the march began did word spread they were on their way to a high hill called Majuba to the left of the British camp. From their they would have a commanding view of the Boer camps, and their line of defences on the escarpment flats beyond Laing's Nek. The 3-60th were on the left, facing a difficult pass. They all stopped at a ridge below this imposing mountain, the horses, the Hussars, and the guns were sent back to the camp, there was no way they'd make it up this steep side. That alone should have been a warning to Colley. He knew he was outnumbered by the Boers, but decided to go ahead and climb to the summit of Majuba anyway despite leaving his vital artillery behind. It was a very difficult climb, and they reached the top just before daybreak on the 27th February. Sunday morning. Six hours of toil, but they'd made it, despite the dangerous climb. To his credit, General Colley was the second man to reach the top, behind his two IC Major Fraser. As the sun rose, subaltern's pitched a tent for Colley, the soldiers ate their breakfast, while some began to dig wells for water. Crucially, they were not digging in for battle, presuming that no-one would be able to reach their position — they held the high ground after all.

El 26 de abril de 1994, Nelson Mandela fue elegido presidente de Sudáfrica. Con ello terminaba uno de los episodios más oscuros de la historia reciente, el apartheid. Pero todo comenzó a finales del siglo XIX, 2 grupos de blancos se dieron de tortas por unos territorios que no eran suyos. Es lo que se conoce como las guerras Boers.

Weather, some say, is fickle. Of course nature is just nature but when you're on high ground, the mountains, and the weather moves in, the temperature drops in minutes and wind shifts. It is a dangerous place and that's during mid-summer. Perhaps summer is the most dangerous time to be caught in a mountain storm, particularly in South Africa because there's more moisture and freezing sleet and snow sweeps over the summit, overwhelming hikers in shorts and T-shirts. During January and February 1881, the weather along the Natal escarpment near Volksrust and Majuba was characterized by high rainfall, frequent thunderstorms, thick mist, and cold nights. This period was at the height of the summer rainy season, creating wet, muddy conditions that significantly impacted military operations during the First Boer War. The weather at times was bitter, just like the Boer sentiment. Laing's Nek gravesite was desecrated in 1969 when Afrikaner Nationalists under cover of dark, blew up a large Cross that had been erected over the graves of Royal Navy sailors who'd perished during the Battle of Laing's Nek in February 1881. Such was the depth of historical bitterness. Memories run deep. The last known Boer of the First Anglo-Boer war, Jacob "Jaap" Coetzer died in the same year as the exploding cross — 1969 - showing just how long veterans of war can live amongst a population that has no clue about their past. A vet of the first Anglo-Boer War had lived to hear Beatles music. Coetzer was 15 year's old when he joined Commandant Piet Joubert's commandos in the area of Laings Nek, and was a survivor of the next major clash, Majuba. Not that Jaap Coetzer was in any way linked to the desecration. Laing's Nek lies on the N11, a quick 20 minute drive through this pass and you ascend from the rolling hills of KZN into the highground of Mpumalanga — or the Transvaal as it was in 1881. In January 1881, the British force under Major General Sir George Pomeroy Colley moved off from Newcastle after his ultimatum to the Boers had been ignored. Despite his intelligence and administrative competence, his battlefield record would reveal a critical weakness: a tendency to apply textbook European tactics in environments where they were increasingly obsolete. The Boers, by contrast, were armed with modern Westley Richards breech-loading rifles and other similar breech-loading firearms, which allowed for faster and more accurate fire than the older muzzle-loading weapons that had shaped earlier British tactics. Many Boers were also skilled marksmen, accustomed to hunting and irregular warfare, and they fought from concealed positions—rocks, ridges, and scrub—rather than in formal lines. This combination of mobility, cover, and firepower was going to be devastating. Colley led 1216 officers and men including five companies of the 58th Regiment, 5 companies of the 3rd Battalion of the 60th Rifles, 150 cavalrymen, a party of Royal Navy sailors with two 7 pound guns, and a mounted unit of Royal Artillery with four 9 pound guns. Major General Colley was determined to revenge the previous month's debacle at Bronkhorstpruit. The Boers setup four main laagers on the escarpment north east of Majuba. Their main camp was based at a point south of the Standerton Road, about 10 kilometers from Wakkerstroom. From here, flanking the two roads which approached from Newcastle, their patrols could ride out to watch the Buffalo River fords, as well as Laing's Nek. Colley had moved off from Newcastle on the 24th January, after two days of heavy rain held up his wagons. On the 25th they struggled across the Imbazane River, and on the 26th, crossed the Ingogo River. British patrols saw Boers moving on the pass, and on the evening of the 27th, noted that Laings Nek was occupied in force. More heavy rain fell that day, and a thick mist drifted across the landscape. On the morning of the 28th, Colley led his force out of the laager.

Weather, some say, is fickle. Of course nature is just nature but when you're on high ground, the mountains, and the weather moves in, the temperature drops in minutes and wind shifts. It is a dangerous place and that's during mid-summer. Perhaps summer is the most dangerous time to be caught in a mountain storm, particularly in South Africa because there's more moisture and freezing sleet and snow sweeps over the summit, overwhelming hikers in shorts and T-shirts. During January and February 1881, the weather along the Natal escarpment near Volksrust and Majuba was characterized by high rainfall, frequent thunderstorms, thick mist, and cold nights. This period was at the height of the summer rainy season, creating wet, muddy conditions that significantly impacted military operations during the First Boer War. The weather at times was bitter, just like the Boer sentiment. Laing's Nek gravesite was desecrated in 1969 when Afrikaner Nationalists under cover of dark, blew up a large Cross that had been erected over the graves of Royal Navy sailors who'd perished during the Battle of Laing's Nek in February 1881. Such was the depth of historical bitterness. Memories run deep. The last known Boer of the First Anglo-Boer war, Jacob "Jaap" Coetzer died in the same year as the exploding cross — 1969 - showing just how long veterans of war can live amongst a population that has no clue about their past. A vet of the first Anglo-Boer War had lived to hear Beatles music. Coetzer was 15 year's old when he joined Commandant Piet Joubert's commandos in the area of Laings Nek, and was a survivor of the next major clash, Majuba. Not that Jaap Coetzer was in any way linked to the desecration. Laing's Nek lies on the N11, a quick 20 minute drive through this pass and you ascend from the rolling hills of KZN into the highground of Mpumalanga — or the Transvaal as it was in 1881. In January 1881, the British force under Major General Sir George Pomeroy Colley moved off from Newcastle after his ultimatum to the Boers had been ignored. Despite his intelligence and administrative competence, his battlefield record would reveal a critical weakness: a tendency to apply textbook European tactics in environments where they were increasingly obsolete. The Boers, by contrast, were armed with modern Westley Richards breech-loading rifles and other similar breech-loading firearms, which allowed for faster and more accurate fire than the older muzzle-loading weapons that had shaped earlier British tactics. Many Boers were also skilled marksmen, accustomed to hunting and irregular warfare, and they fought from concealed positions—rocks, ridges, and scrub—rather than in formal lines. This combination of mobility, cover, and firepower was going to be devastating. Colley led 1216 officers and men including five companies of the 58th Regiment, 5 companies of the 3rd Battalion of the 60th Rifles, 150 cavalrymen, a party of Royal Navy sailors with two 7 pound guns, and a mounted unit of Royal Artillery with four 9 pound guns. Major General Colley was determined to revenge the previous month's debacle at Bronkhorstpruit. The Boers setup four main laagers on the escarpment north east of Majuba. Their main camp was based at a point south of the Standerton Road, about 10 kilometers from Wakkerstroom. From here, flanking the two roads which approached from Newcastle, their patrols could ride out to watch the Buffalo River fords, as well as Laing's Nek. Colley had moved off from Newcastle on the 24th January, after two days of heavy rain held up his wagons. On the 25th they struggled across the Imbazane River, and on the 26th, crossed the Ingogo River. British patrols saw Boers moving on the pass, and on the evening of the 27th, noted that Laings Nek was occupied in force. More heavy rain fell that day, and a thick mist drifted across the landscape. On the morning of the 28th, Colley led his force out of the laager.

De nieuwe roman van bestsellerauteur Eva Posthuma de Boer. Over verlies, vriendschap en liefde. 'Eva Posthuma de Boers beste roman tot dusver.' - HP/De Tijd Uitgegeven door Ambo|Anthos Spreker: Eva Posthuma de Boer

The British had instigated a war in the Transvaal which fired off in early 1881, but they had already ignited another flashpoint - in Basutoland. This was a fascinating conflict, and it has modern overtones. For the new British government of Sir William Gladstone, the fact they had stimulated a simultaneous slew of conflicts in South Africa was more than irksome, it was expensive and ill-timed. While Britain was dealing with a humiliating setback against the Boers, it was struggling to enforce authority in Basutoland—highlighting how imperial control was both stretched and inconsistent in southern Africa. Following Basutoland's transformation into a British dominion on 12 March 1868, it became the target of rapid westernization efforts by the Cape Colony administration. By 1879, the Cape Parliament had extended the Peace Preservation Act to Basutoland, with the aim of disarming the people of the territory. This did not go down well. Guns, like horses, were of immense significance in Basotho society. Most Basotho who worked on the Kimberley Diamond fields bought both muskets, and later rifles, as well as Boer ponies and other horses before making their way home. What was going on in the minds of the Cape Colony, and those in the imperial colonial office? It is important for our story to understand global events of the time. For decades all of the European governments concerned with the coast of Africa, both east and west, had tacitly agreed not to allow the quarrels of their respective traders and officials to become occasions for empire. That was the theory. The ministries in Paris and London wanted nothing more than to continue their gentleman's agreement, although each suspected the other of wanting to break it. Napoleon the third had nourished a few sporadic projects for African expansion, but the catastrophe of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 had slowed them down. The French Third Republic pulled out of the Ivory Coast and was considering renouncing all options in Dahomey. It wanted to leave Gabon as well as the Congo. But Senegal was another matter. The French colonial government in Daka had developed a local expansive programme derived mainly from the French army's influence rather than pure economics. There were plans to build a major railway line to the upper Niger River which would link Senegal to Niger. The French rulers of Senegal were expanding eastwards as well as southwards, and had begun to encircle Gambia. All of these moves in Africa must be recognized as part of our story here in South Africa. Globally speaking, the main British nightmare was the Russian advance towards the Dardanelles, Turkey, Persia, India and China. So the British maintained a navy allied with Turkish armies in the near east to protect the Indian route through the Suez against the Russians. London allied with the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II who ruled greater Turkey and his subordinate Khedive Ismail of Egypt. They were being schmoozed as reliable vassals who served Britain's financial and imperial interests. Britain could avoid seizing territory directly which would be expensive and politically ruinous. No boots on the ground, just deploy the one-step away approach via their the navy it was thought. The Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid ii however had been borrowing heavily from the English and even more from the French, while his revenues fell short of expenditure, and debt mounted so he raised land tax. Christians in Bosnia and Herzogovina revolted against Turkish rule, more loans defaulted, and the Sultan, and therefore the Turkish Ottomans, went bankrupt. With that as the backdrop, let's return to the Basutoland Gun War. Tension had been growing for many years between the Basuto and the British. The southern corner of Basutoland was settled by the Baphuthi led by chief Moorosi who had been a tributary ruler of Moshoeshoe. In 1869 he had agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to merge his territory with British Basutoland.

The British had instigated a war in the Transvaal which fired off in early 1881, but they had already ignited another flashpoint - in Basutoland. This was a fascinating conflict, and it has modern overtones. For the new British government of Sir William Gladstone, the fact they had stimulated a simultaneous slew of conflicts in South Africa was more than irksome, it was expensive and ill-timed. While Britain was dealing with a humiliating setback against the Boers, it was struggling to enforce authority in Basutoland—highlighting how imperial control was both stretched and inconsistent in southern Africa. Following Basutoland's transformation into a British dominion on 12 March 1868, it became the target of rapid westernization efforts by the Cape Colony administration. By 1879, the Cape Parliament had extended the Peace Preservation Act to Basutoland, with the aim of disarming the people of the territory. This did not go down well. Guns, like horses, were of immense significance in Basotho society. Most Basotho who worked on the Kimberley Diamond fields bought both muskets, and later rifles, as well as Boer ponies and other horses before making their way home. What was going on in the minds of the Cape Colony, and those in the imperial colonial office? It is important for our story to understand global events of the time. For decades all of the European governments concerned with the coast of Africa, both east and west, had tacitly agreed not to allow the quarrels of their respective traders and officials to become occasions for empire. That was the theory. The ministries in Paris and London wanted nothing more than to continue their gentleman's agreement, although each suspected the other of wanting to break it. Napoleon the third had nourished a few sporadic projects for African expansion, but the catastrophe of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 had slowed them down. The French Third Republic pulled out of the Ivory Coast and was considering renouncing all options in Dahomey. It wanted to leave Gabon as well as the Congo. But Senegal was another matter. The French colonial government in Daka had developed a local expansive programme derived mainly from the French army's influence rather than pure economics. There were plans to build a major railway line to the upper Niger River which would link Senegal to Niger. The French rulers of Senegal were expanding eastwards as well as southwards, and had begun to encircle Gambia. All of these moves in Africa must be recognized as part of our story here in South Africa. Globally speaking, the main British nightmare was the Russian advance towards the Dardanelles, Turkey, Persia, India and China. So the British maintained a navy allied with Turkish armies in the near east to protect the Indian route through the Suez against the Russians. London allied with the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II who ruled greater Turkey and his subordinate Khedive Ismail of Egypt. They were being schmoozed as reliable vassals who served Britain's financial and imperial interests. Britain could avoid seizing territory directly which would be expensive and politically ruinous. No boots on the ground, just deploy the one-step away approach via their the navy it was thought. The Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid ii however had been borrowing heavily from the English and even more from the French, while his revenues fell short of expenditure, and debt mounted so he raised land tax. Christians in Bosnia and Herzogovina revolted against Turkish rule, more loans defaulted, and the Sultan, and therefore the Turkish Ottomans, went bankrupt. With that as the backdrop, let's return to the Basutoland Gun War. Tension had been growing for many years between the Basuto and the British. The southern corner of Basutoland was settled by the Baphuthi led by chief Moorosi who had been a tributary ruler of Moshoeshoe. In 1869 he had agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to merge his territory with British Basutoland.

La guerre des Boers, le théorème du dictateur, les tempêtes solaires by Radio Victoria

The approach by the English political parties of the time to the young Boer Republics was confused, and even contradictory. William Gladstone, a liberal, had succeeded in ousting the Tory's under Benjamin Disraeli in his famous Midlothian Campaign of 1879 and 1880. In 1880 Gladstone formed his second ministry and almost immediately, the promises he'd made about foreswearing foreign wars were broken. There is a direct link between what was going on in South Africa and in Ireland. These two territories, so far apart geographically, featured as joint threats in the English mind of the time. The most direct link is Gladstone himself. He had criticized the annexation of the Transvaal during his Midlothian Campaign, but once in power, he hesitated to reverse British policy, fearing a domino effect where weakness in Pretoria would lead to revolution in Dublin. By 1880, the Irish Nationalists began to see the Boers not just as fellow farmers, but as fellow victims of British coercion. This Irish link flourished throughout the 19th and part of the 20th Century with Irish Nationalists fighting both for the Boers during the Second Anglo-Boer War. The shift in Irish nationalist alignment was driven by a move from anti-imperial solidarity to human rights internationalism. Initially, the Irish supported the Boers as fellow "peasant-republicans" fighting the British Empire, but as the 20th century progressed, the Irish Republican movement increasingly identified with the ANC, viewing the struggle against Apartheid as a mirror to their own fight against institutionalized discrimination in Northern Ireland. By the height of the Cold War, the Irish Republican Army's Marxist-leaning leadership saw the Afrikaner government as a pro-Western, colonialist proxy, leading them to provide tactical advice and training to Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) to help dismantle the very state they had once ideologically championed. But at first, they were close allies in both spirit and in their political expression. The South African crisis which led to the first Boer War of 1880 and 1881, occurred because the British government claimed to be the paramount authority and trustee of South Africa, and the Boers rejected this claim. Earlier, in 1878, Paul Kruger and Piet Joubert had sailed to London with a petition signed by over 6,500 Boers demanding the reversal of the Transvaal annexation. Sir Michael Hicks Beach had just taken over as Colonial Secretary from the more diplomatic and polite Lord Carnarvon. Hicks-Beach was nicknamed Black Michael, referring to his famously long, dark beard, his tall, thin, imposing frame, and his legendary dark temper. He was known for being abrasive, combative, and having very little patience for those who didn't respect British authority. To the English, it seemed that South Africa was on the verge of becoming another Ireland, the inveterate hostility of whose people might only be held down at tremendous cost by main force. Gladstone and his cabinet grappled with one main question. In both territories, Transvaal and Ireland, should a nationalist reaction be met with coercion, or concession?

The approach by the English political parties of the time to the young Boer Republics was confused, and even contradictory. William Gladstone, a liberal, had succeeded in ousting the Tory's under Benjamin Disraeli in his famous Midlothian Campaign of 1879 and 1880. In 1880 Gladstone formed his second ministry and almost immediately, the promises he'd made about foreswearing foreign wars were broken. There is a direct link between what was going on in South Africa and in Ireland. These two territories, so far apart geographically, featured as joint threats in the English mind of the time. The most direct link is Gladstone himself. He had criticized the annexation of the Transvaal during his Midlothian Campaign, but once in power, he hesitated to reverse British policy, fearing a domino effect where weakness in Pretoria would lead to revolution in Dublin. By 1880, the Irish Nationalists began to see the Boers not just as fellow farmers, but as fellow victims of British coercion. This Irish link flourished throughout the 19th and part of the 20th Century with Irish Nationalists fighting both for the Boers during the Second Anglo-Boer War. The shift in Irish nationalist alignment was driven by a move from anti-imperial solidarity to human rights internationalism. Initially, the Irish supported the Boers as fellow "peasant-republicans" fighting the British Empire, but as the 20th century progressed, the Irish Republican movement increasingly identified with the ANC, viewing the struggle against Apartheid as a mirror to their own fight against institutionalized discrimination in Northern Ireland. By the height of the Cold War, the Irish Republican Army's Marxist-leaning leadership saw the Afrikaner government as a pro-Western, colonialist proxy, leading them to provide tactical advice and training to Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) to help dismantle the very state they had once ideologically championed. But at first, they were close allies in both spirit and in their political expression. The South African crisis which led to the first Boer War of 1880 and 1881, occurred because the British government claimed to be the paramount authority and trustee of South Africa, and the Boers rejected this claim. Earlier, in 1878, Paul Kruger and Piet Joubert had sailed to London with a petition signed by over 6,500 Boers demanding the reversal of the Transvaal annexation. Sir Michael Hicks Beach had just taken over as Colonial Secretary from the more diplomatic and polite Lord Carnarvon. Hicks-Beach was nicknamed Black Michael, referring to his famously long, dark beard, his tall, thin, imposing frame, and his legendary dark temper. He was known for being abrasive, combative, and having very little patience for those who didn't respect British authority. To the English, it seemed that South Africa was on the verge of becoming another Ireland, the inveterate hostility of whose people might only be held down at tremendous cost by main force. Gladstone and his cabinet grappled with one main question. In both territories, Transvaal and Ireland, should a nationalist reaction be met with coercion, or concession?

This week, Nigel and Tazziii dive deep into GOAT (starting at 29:28), with animator and illustrator Fahim Motahar.GOAT is a sports animation that feels nearly there with strong individual elements, but they do not always click together into a fully satisfying whole. We get into where the narrative works and doesn't beyond its impressive look and all star cast.We also examine the sport itself and how authentic the animation feels to the rhythms of play, then unpack the narrative journey with questions around both the protagonist and antagonist, where the themes land (or fall short), and what it really means to make stories for younger audiences. This week's storytelling tip is about clear skill progression for your protagonist.Other stories we're enjoying include: Outer Wilds (Xbox), The Anarchy (book), Loot (Apple TV), Severence (Apple TV), Arcana Academy (book), Dan Da Dan (Netflix), Jack of All Trades (Crunchyroll), Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (Netflix), Project Hail Mary (Cinema), Louis Theroux: Inside The Manosphere (Netflix).Connect with Fahim online:Website: https://fahimation-art.webflow.io Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fahimation_artStory x Story #216: Behind The Story With Fahim Motahar (Animation) - https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/mayamada/episodes/Story-x-Story-216-Behind-The-Story-With-Fahim-Motahar-Animation-e33s334Connect with mayamada:mayamada is a manga brand and mission-driven creative agency all about equipping young and aspiring creatives to thrive on the creative journey - whether they're discovering what's possible, developing new skills, or sharing expertise with the next generation.Website: https://mayamada.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mayamadatvTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mayamadatvBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mayamada.comYouTube: https://youtube.com/mayamadatvTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/mayamadaJoin our Studio77 community on Discord to connect with other creatives and be part of the journey: https://discord.gg/b5fmnuT

The Bapedi have a rich and textured history, as with most of South Africa's past, where religion and tradition are entwined to create a consciousness of life that is attractive to the naturally curious. Today, part of Limpopo Province bushveld contains private game parks with Bapedi and other African names — including Moya which has three meanings. It is used for wind, or breath, or the soul, roughly translated. It is something they say which cannot be seen, but can be heard. When a sick person wheezes, you know they're alive, because you can hear their soul, it has not departed. At night, when there is stillness, and you pick up the faint sounds of someone speaking, and upon investigation you find noone, then you know it is the soul of a dead person. Parts of your body are Moya, the lungs, blood, heart, liver, kidneys, and sex organs, your head and your hair. It is also these parts which are mostly associated with or susceptible to, disease. Your Moya is like your iris, or your fingerprint, there is noone else who has a copy of your Moya. While humans cannot live without Moya, sometimes it can live without their seriti, your shadow and reflection but this is the supernatural representation. The Bapedi word for shadow and a reflection in water or a mirror is Moriti. Your Seriti is created at birth, when you cast your first shadow. For extremely traditional Bapedi, it is bad manners to step on anothers shadow, or allow your shadow to fall on someone else. Traditional healers therefore won't work at midday when the sun is directly overhead, because it is said, the spirits of the dead are sleeping. Chief Sekhukhune of the Bapedi knew this when he built his fortress in a steep sided narrow valley south of the Olifants River at what was called his Stat. While the British were focusing on the Zulu's in 1879, Sekhukhune was sparring with other English authorities along the Olifants, and the towns of Lydenburg and Middelburg were reinforced. The Bapedi Chief wanted to expand his territory across the Steelpoort River and his raiding parties were bothering the Boers there. His position was further strengthened by a drought which meant British and Boer commandos could not take to the field, there wasn't enough grass and water for their oxen and horses. The dreaded horse sickness had also broken out, further complicating the Transvaal Government's plans.According to the blueprint for the Transvaal that had been devised by administrator Theophilos Shepstone and Cape Governor Sir Bartle Frere, the defeat of the Bapedi would be proof to the Boers of the British good faith. It would demonstrate that British rule was a blessing. To their considerable astonishment, this act actually put the final nail in the coffin of confederation as the Cambridge History of South Africa puts it. Since the British took control of the Cape in 1805, their policy had been grounded in the belief that once the won allegiance of the Dutch and Huguenot settler population, peace and prosperity would be guaranteed.

The Bapedi have a rich and textured history, as with most of South Africa's past, where religion and tradition are entwined to create a consciousness of life that is attractive to the naturally curious. Today, part of Limpopo Province bushveld contains private game parks with Bapedi and other African names — including Moya which has three meanings. It is used for wind, or breath, or the soul, roughly translated. It is something they say which cannot be seen, but can be heard. When a sick person wheezes, you know they're alive, because you can hear their soul, it has not departed. At night, when there is stillness, and you pick up the faint sounds of someone speaking, and upon investigation you find noone, then you know it is the soul of a dead person. Parts of your body are Moya, the lungs, blood, heart, liver, kidneys, and sex organs, your head and your hair. It is also these parts which are mostly associated with or susceptible to, disease. Your Moya is like your iris, or your fingerprint, there is noone else who has a copy of your Moya. While humans cannot live without Moya, sometimes it can live without their seriti, your shadow and reflection but this is the supernatural representation. The Bapedi word for shadow and a reflection in water or a mirror is Moriti. Your Seriti is created at birth, when you cast your first shadow. For extremely traditional Bapedi, it is bad manners to step on anothers shadow, or allow your shadow to fall on someone else. Traditional healers therefore won't work at midday when the sun is directly overhead, because it is said, the spirits of the dead are sleeping. Chief Sekhukhune of the Bapedi knew this when he built his fortress in a steep sided narrow valley south of the Olifants River at what was called his Stat. While the British were focusing on the Zulu's in 1879, Sekhukhune was sparring with other English authorities along the Olifants, and the towns of Lydenburg and Middelburg were reinforced. The Bapedi Chief wanted to expand his territory across the Steelpoort River and his raiding parties were bothering the Boers there. His position was further strengthened by a drought which meant British and Boer commandos could not take to the field, there wasn't enough grass and water for their oxen and horses. The dreaded horse sickness had also broken out, further complicating the Transvaal Government's plans.According to the blueprint for the Transvaal that had been devised by administrator Theophilos Shepstone and Cape Governor Sir Bartle Frere, the defeat of the Bapedi would be proof to the Boers of the British good faith. It would demonstrate that British rule was a blessing. To their considerable astonishment, this act actually put the final nail in the coffin of confederation as the Cambridge History of South Africa puts it. Since the British took control of the Cape in 1805, their policy had been grounded in the belief that once the won allegiance of the Dutch and Huguenot settler population, peace and prosperity would be guaranteed.

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with author and historian Gary Clemente for a deep dive into the remarkable life of Nicola Gentile, one of the most influential yet little-known figures in early American organized crime. Click here to find books by mob expert Gary Celemente Gentile was no street thug. Born in Sicily in 1884, he immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s and became a roving Mafia diplomat—trusted to mediate disputes among crime families in cities such as New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Kansas City, Pueblo, Chicago, and beyond. Known as Zio Nicola (“Uncle Nick”), Gentile operated as a stabilizing force during the most violent period of Mafia history, including Prohibition and the Castellammarese War. Clemente reveals that Gentile's story survives largely because Gentile broke the ultimate Mafia rule: he wrote memoirs. Those writings—published in Italy in the 1960s—were seized by the FBI and later translated by Clemente's father, Peter Clemente, one of the first Sicilian-born agents assigned to the FBI's elite Top Hoodlum Squad. The episode offers rare insight into those translations and the intelligence value they held for federal investigators. The discussion traces Gentile's interactions with legendary figures such as Carlo Gambino, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Vito Genovese, as well as his behind-the-scenes role in shaping the Mafia's modern organizational structure—including the creation of the national Commission. The episode also explores Gentile's personal contradictions: a lifelong criminal who saw himself as an honorable man, a mediator capable of violence, and a romantic who later believed a lover betrayed him to federal authorities. After fleeing the U.S. under indictment, Gentile returned to Sicily, where he later provided intelligence to Allied forces during World War II—another unlikely chapter in an already extraordinary life. Despite being sentenced to death by Mafia leaders for publishing his memoirs, Gentile was spared due to the respect he commanded on both sides of the Atlantic. He died peacefully in Sicily in 1970, leaving behind a story so expansive it feels tailor-made for film. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers, Gary Jenkins back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I am a former Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective and now turned podcaster and documented filmmaker. We record the mafia, everything we can about the mob. And today I’ve been wanting to do this story, guys, as a man named Nicola Gentile. Did I get that right, Gary? Beautiful. All right. This is Gary Clemente, and Gary’s been on before, or GP Clemente. He’s been on before. His father was Peter Clemente, who was one of the original Sicilian-born FBI agents in the United States and did a lot of translation work with Bellacci. And he’s written, he’s writing books. So we talked about the first book, but tell just a little bit more about it. And guys, I’ll have links to that book. And then tell me a little bit about the two more you have coming out. The first book that I wrote in a series of books about my father’s lengthy FBI career is called Untold Mafia Tales from the FBI Top Hoodlum Squad. [1:04] And it’s about my father’s career in the mafia from 1950 to 1976. And in 1957, he became a part of the Top Hoodlum squad, which is an elite group that J.H. Goober started as part of the Top Hoodlum program. And what happened was in 1957, they had a big mafia conclave meeting in Appalachian, New York. [1:30] And they had about 60 members of the mafia throughout the country, all the bosses that attended this meeting. And it became publicized. The cops were there. They confiscated their identification, their wallets, the money, everything. And it got released into the news. This was a big story. [1:50] So what happened was J. Edgar Hoover at that time had been denying the existence of the mafia for a number of reasons. Probably because he didn’t want to get involved with all of the muck of trying to prosecute these gangland people because he knew that they had a lot of buffers between the bosses and the guys committing the murders. So he knew it was going to be difficult, and it would blemish their conviction record and rate. So he kind of stayed away from it, denied the existence of the mafia, And along comes this Appalachian Conclave meeting. It got released into the news, and everybody was up in arms about this. That’s when Hoover decided to start the Top Hoodland program, because there was absolutely no denial of what was going on here, that there was some sort of vast criminal organization that was highly organized, and he had to do something about it. So in 1957, my father became part of the Top Hoodlum program. [2:54] And in particular, the Top Hoodlum squad in New York City, which is really a hotbed of mafia criminal activity. You couldn’t get any more hotter than what they had. They had five mafia families alone in New York. And the first book was really about how my father confronted Carlo Gambino, how Carlo Gambino became one of his original subjects for him to study and to profile. [3:24] He was ordered to do that, and he was happy to do that. The book is really about him confronting face-to-face with Carlo Gambino, and then afterwards wiretapping him at the Golden Gate Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. He was on the other side of a wall. From Gambino for six weeks. Gambino did not know he was on the other side of the wall wiretapping him with another agent. So that’s what the first book was about. And the second book is about really the backstory of my father’s life before he got into the FBI a little bit. Then his first years in the Bureau, when he was a part of the investigation of the Communist Party and the Workers’, Party and the few offices that he was in, like the Springfield, Illinois office, and also Cleveland. And then he became a part of the New York office. He was still investigating communist activities at the time. And then he became a part of the Top Woodland squad. And his milieu, his wheelhouse, became organized crime and the mafia. So that’s generally what has happened so far. The second book is being released this coming month, and it will We’ll have book two and book three talking about these sorts of things. [4:44] Interesting. Interesting. All right, guys, I’ll have a link to the old book down there in the show notes and look for that new book coming up and we’ll get back together. I’ll get back with Gary after the book comes out sometime and we’ll do another show. And we’re not going to talk about the mafia so much. We’re going to talk about these activities, which I think is interesting, of the FBI against the Social Workers Party and the Communist Party USA because they did a lot of work. When I was growing up, Gary, do you remember I Led Three Lives, the TV show about, his last name was Phil Brick. It was a weekly TV show about an undercover FBI agent who supposedly was working as a member of the Communist Party. He would go to these meetings and things like that. Do you remember that? I Led Three Lives. I do remember that. That show goes way, way back. What year was that show? Oh, that had to be 1953, 54. I had to be like 9, 10 years old, 55. I was 10 years old, so it probably may be 1955. I do remember the show. I think I’ve seen reruns of it. Yeah, I bet it’s on YouTube. I have to look that up for fun one of these days. [5:52] Issue Machine’s show back then, we will talk about this later on at another time as regards to the second book. Back in the 1950s, J. Edgar Hoover’s main enemy was the Communist Party. It wasn’t organized crime. That was his top focus. He wrote a book called Masters of Deceit. And people, I think everybody, they should have this book in public school system, but they don’t want to do that today. Today’s public school system, they try to inculcate youngsters in more social activities and social warriors and not learning about the perils of Marxism and communism. [6:33] Okay, today we’re going to talk about Nicola Gentile. Now, 1903, he was a Sicilian immigrant that came to the United States, and he found a lot of opportunity among the other Sicilian immigrants because he was a blackhander, if you will, when he first got here. He was a criminal who came over from Sicily, but he was able to move among all the different families, all the different cities, and settle disputes and help people get organized and do things like that. Gary, start telling us a little bit about what you remember about Nicola Gentile. First of all, I want to tell people that Nicola Gentile was an uber jovelace. He was jovelace on steroids. Somebody later on in his life, toward the end of his life, he wrote his memoirs down. This was in 1963. So what happened was he published his memoirs in Italy. He had a co-author, he had another journalist write these memoirs down in Sicilia. [7:36] These memoirs were then grabbed by the FBI and they were given to my father. My father had the papers written in Sicilian. And I remember as a boy in 1963, when this happened, my father was sitting at a table translating these memoirs with my grandmother. Now, my grandmother grew up not too far away. My grandmother and my grandfather grew up not too far away from Nicola Gentile. Nicola was born in the town of Siculiana. Try to say that, Gary. [8:14] I give. I said that one real fast. So he’s writing these, translating the memoirs with my Sicilian-speaking grandmother and grandfather. My grandfather spoke, my grandparents, my father spoke Sicilian as well, too. He grew up with that as a little boy. But my grandmother and my grandfather were helping him translate these papers. These are the FBI papers. This is a copy. This is a copy of the FBI photocopy after it got translated. And my father did write some notes here and there. You can see it’s fairly light. The print is fairly light on it. I do have some post-it notes or notations, comments on it. But this is about 185 pages that were translated. And the language is quite formal, I’ll read to you a little bit of the first page What Nicola Gentile wrote as he started off Before you get started there, was that book ever translated? Is that available here in English form like on Amazon as a book you can buy today? I know a lot of people are wondering, can I find that? [9:34] That’s a good question. I haven’t gone that far yet. Okay, all right. I don’t know. I’ll take a look. That is a good question. But this is the translation that my father and my grandparents did. And whether it came out that way in these books that are out now, I don’t know. There are some books that do talk about Nicola Jantili, but I don’t know if there are any English translation books. So this is how the first page of Nicola’s book opens. Siculiana, a small town of Sicily, did not, prior to 1900, offer any opportunity for work or secondary school education for the betterment of life of its youth. [10:22] The greater portion of whom in which there existed the disposition encouraged by the family while still young frequented the shop of an artisan where they struggled to learn a trade, but at the same time often neglecting school so that illiteracy reigned supreme. So that’s the sort of language that Nicola used in it. And it’s quite interesting. It’s a bit formal. He does jump around a bit from his activities from one place to another. He talks a lot about how he knew practically everybody in the mob at that time. He knew people like Luciano. He knew he interacted with Al Capone. He interacted with Vito Genovese. He interacted with Albert the Mad Hatter, Anastasia. These were all the big shots. I’m talking about in the 1920s through the 1930s and all the way after. If you remember that in the 1920s, the 1919 prohibition happened, okay? That’s what really blew up out of everything, the prestige, the money, and the power of the mafia. That’s how it grew because of prohibition. and they were able to bootleg liquor, and Nikola was indeed a part of this. [11:51] He traveled around a lot. Now, what was the deal with that? He was in New York. I think that was his base, and that’s where he got started, but he traveled to, I think, New Orleans, or did he come up from New Orleans? I can’t remember. He was in Kansas City. He was in Cleveland. He was in Pueblo, Colorado. He made some connections. There’s a really old, early family in Pueblo, Colorado. I’ve talked to a descendant of that family, and I’ve talked to another author that knew quite a little bit about it so he traveled around to these different families what was the story with that, For whatever reason, he was a robing ambassador and a mediator. Look, you’re talking about organized crime. You’re talking about the mafia. You’re talking about vicious people who had one thing and one thing only in mind. What was it? Duh, money. Money and power. Because of that, you’re going to have disputes. You’re going to have arguments. You’re going to have people being killed as a result of it. And Gentile was the sort of individual that, think of Nicola Gentile as a Vida Colleone. [12:59] Think of him as a godfather figure. Very wise, understanding how to mediate the disputes, realizing that, as everybody else did, that if we do not mediate these disputes, what will happen? We will be at each other’s throats like animals. Yeah. And our organization cannot exist. Our universe, our world cannot exist if this happens. So we must mediate these disputes. We must have an organizational structure. We must have a boss. We must have an underboss. We must have a consigliere, an advisor, who tells, who gives words of wisdom about how to proceed with business. Whether to take somebody out, how to proceed in such a fashion. So all of that was a part of the world. And it existed for many years, for many decades because of that. [14:01] Now, let me start off a little bit to tell you the beginnings of Nicola so we can lead up to how he got to this position. So he was born in 1884. He came to America at the age of 19 and went to New York. He travels to Kansas City to meet with his brother Vincent, who lived in Topeka, Kansas, not too far away from Kansas City. He started working out in the Santa Fe Railroad, and he became a linen peddler, and he did make some money doing that. He returned to Italy in 1909. He married in 1910 and had a daughter named Maria. Now, in his papers, you really don’t hear anything more about that happening. You don’t hear anything about his wife, children, nothing. And it isn’t until later on, at the very end of his memoirs, he talks about the women in his life. We’ll get to that later. But so what happened was he returns back from Italy, gets back to America, and he goes to Canada. Then he moves to San Francisco with his brother, and he continues to sell linen until 1914. And it isn’t until he was a year or two later, maybe about the age of 19, 20 or so, he starts getting involved with the Honor Society. [15:27] Now, he knows about the Honor Society from back in Sicily. He’s been well aware of it. He’s been involved with it. At the age of 15, he had been convicted of a crime, and he had been sentenced to jail at the age of 15. So he wasn’t new to the world of organized crime. He knew it from back in Sicily. It’s a very deep fabric of the world of Sicily at that time. Why is that? Because in Sicily, in those years, in the late 1800s, you had either what? You had a sort of a feudal system where people were working for these large landowners, and the landowners were absentee landowners, okay? They delegated authority to people underneath them, and the people working for their land and working on their land were really, for example, a lot of poverty happened because of it. So to bridge that sort of gap with poverty, the Mafia started, in other words, and they called it the Honor Society. These were men of honor. And Nicola Gentile describes it as the, let me see here. [16:39] He describes the honor society, originating many years ago in antiquity, and it gives the right to defend the honor of the weak and to respect human law. With these principles as its guide, it’s still operated within the mafia. So you understand that within the honor society, here’s the code that we must be civilized, even though we’re acting like animals. [17:08] We don’t want to act too much like animals but otherwise we will destroy, the golden goose so this is what they put in the back of their minds we must act in a civilized manner, so that was the understanding of how the outer society worked so he went to New York he went to Brooklyn, and at that time the mafia probably had 2,000 2,000 members of the mafia in New York at that time, between the five families. They call them Bocate families. So he joined the Outer Society in Pittsburgh. [17:49] And soon after, he was asked by Gregorio Conte, the head of the mob boss in Pittsburgh, to do a killing for him. Okay? Now, he doesn’t say whether this was an initiation right, because that’s what they usually did in the mafia. You had to kill somebody in order to be initiated into the mafia, become a member of it. So he was ordered to do a killing, and what happened was he confronted this individual in front of a restaurant. His brother shoots the victim in front of the restaurant. He runs away before Nikola, empties his gun into the guy. Paul runs away. Nicola’s standing there with his gun. People are yelling and screaming, oh my gosh, he did it. He killed this person. Paul is running down the street. He takes his firearm. He shoots it up in the air. [18:45] Scares the crowd away. Nicola runs away. He escapes from that scene. Now, Nicola really has never, throughout his mafia career, he’s never been arrested. It isn’t until later on in his life that he actually does get under the eye of the police and he becomes indicted and will get arrested. So that’s what happens to him later on. But later, during his life in the mob, he does not get arrested in any way, shape, or form. Although he got to Italy, when he goes back to Italy, he was under the scrutiny of the police there and he had been arrested. He gets out on bail, and he was accused of crimes there. So he was pretty slippery. But in terms of what we’re talking about, his mediation skills, little by little, he becomes this sort of individual that people look at as somebody that can mediate their problems and to tamper down the situation that can become very hot. And he became somebody that the other mobsters called, they called him Uncle Nick or Zio Nicola, Zio Cola, Uncle Cola. They saw him as a sort of a vunticular figure. [20:07] That could ameliorate these disputes and these situations that they were involved with. In Kansas City, our mob boss was Nick Savella for a long time, and I was looking over some wiretaps, and people were talking about him, and one of his underlings was talking to another underling about something he was going to take to him, and he called him Zeo the whole time. They always referred to him as Zeo, so that’s a term of honor and respect throughout the mafia world. [20:37] That’s right. As I keep saying, the mafia was able to exist for as long as it did because they had an organizational structure. They had a code of honor that kept them from not acting like wild animals too much. Too much. A lot of these people, you’ve met more than your share of criminals. Gary, you know how many of these people can be. Some of them can be very business-like. Some of them can be very vicious, vicious, sick people too. And the great scarpets of the world that would kill dozens of people. These were psychopaths. You had your whole range. You had your whole range of people. And the fascinating thing about Gentile was that he knew a lot of these individuals. You talked about the Kansas City, the Kansas City entity. Yes, Pueblo, Colorado did have its problems at that time. And somebody had been killed, the Pueblo, Colorado family, and that sort of spilled over into Kansas City. Kansas City was asking to mediate the situation, and it was Chile mediated the situation because of it. [21:57] Chantina became the boss of the Kansas City family. Now, he does not get into this in great depth about what he did in Kansas City at Boston, but it was a temporary thing. He was bopping around from Pittsburgh to Cleveland to Kansas City. He went to New York. He was in Boston. He was far away, San Francisco, Los Angeles. He was all over the place. And he was very well respected. He had a lot to do with what was going on in Chicago with Al Capone. Interestingly enough, Al Capone, at that time, when Gentile encountered him, his family, if you want to call it his crime family, had a lot of international entities in it. It wasn’t an Italian thing. He had a lot of different people from different ethnic backgrounds as a part of his organization. It wasn’t until Nicola comes around and the mafia bosses came around and told him, look, this is what the mafia is like. We’re not an international group here. [23:08] It’s strictly Italian. You want to be a part of it, you need to buy into this. Okay. And that’s indeed what he did, bought into the mafia, marginalize the people that were not Italians. Booted them out and or killed them sometimes and started his own mafia italian thing in chicago which became very very well known as as a bloody place to believe bloody bloody place to be because of the the killings that they had prior to him being a part of the mafia officially there were a tremendous amount of gangland killings as you know in chicago so he had a large part to and he He did keep a lot of those other ethnicities around as players, as people he could use, though. And on into Frank Nitti’s time and on up into current modern times, up into the 50s and 60s, they had several people that were on the periphery would be associates. But I guess he had more organization of Sicilians, it looks to me like, over the years. Yes, yes, he did. What happened eventually was, as Gary, the Castellamareci War erupted in the 1930s. That’s another hard one to say, Castellamareci. Castellamareci. I can say that, Castellamareci. [24:35] Try to say that real fast. So what happened, the Castellamareci War erupted. In June, the boss mazzeria was the boss of bosses. They called him the king. Was the boss of the Capetituticape, the boss of bosses, okay? [24:53] And Mazzaria was wielding a very heavy hand that a lot of the other bosses in the country did not like at that time. And in particular, Maranzano became his chief foe. And he was originally from the Castellammare area of Sicily, okay? and his henchmen, his crew, the men around him were from that area. So they had a big war with the children past Mazaria. They wanted to assume power. A lot of people were dying. They were dropping like flies, especially over in New York. And Nicola Gentile was one of the people that were trying to mediate this situation between Mazaria and Marazano. Originally, Nicola sided with Mazaria, but then the ties changed. In turn, everybody wanted Mazaria dead. All the other bosses wanted him dead, including Capone. Mazaria was eventually executed in, I believe it was 1931. [26:05] And so Salvatore Marzano assumes power, okay? The people that Mazaria had underneath him, And Marisano said, we need to get rid of these guys. So he wound up killing all of the mazzarela boys. So everybody was saying, look, I don’t see any end of this bloodshed. We don’t need this publicity, okay? We need to operate in the shadows, okay? And Carlo Gambino was an expert at doing that. So what happened was the war ended. Marisano took over. He kills the boys. But then after that Marzano, what happens power gets to his head and easily lies the crown of the king, Marzano eventually gets killed by the other bosses and it was Vito Genovese. [27:00] It was Vito Genovese that was ordered to do the hit on Marazano with his crew. And as a result of that, Gary, the other bosses said, look, we need more structure here. There’s too much bloodshed. We can’t have this going on forever and ever. So they created a commission. Now, they did have other commissions before. They did have general assemblies like that. And so they created a commission that included Lucky Luciano, included Al Capone. [27:35] Included Joe Profaggi, included Joe Bananas as part of the commission to settle down, settle things down. Now, I said that originally, when we started that, that they had an Appalachian conclave, right? They had about 60 bosses, 60, 80 bosses there at that conclave. That’s big. Believe it or not, while the big war was going on, Al Capone had a meeting on his dime in Boston, I believe. Guess who was there? I’m sorry, about 500. They had 500 mafia guys there. And there was no publicity about it. Not what happened later on in Appalachian, New York. So here you have, you imagine, 500 mob guys meeting at a hotel in Boston, and it wasn’t covered by the media at that time. But that’s part and parcel of what Nicola was involved with, some of the people he was involved with at that time. So what happens to him later on? What stirs him to write this book? [28:44] What happened was, toward the latter part of his life, he starts to talk about a couple of women that he was involved with. He talks about, I will put all the paperwork so you can actually hear the words that he talks about. He talks about how he met this woman named Maria. [29:08] He meets this woman named Maria, and he really captures his imagination. He doesn’t talk about that he had been married, that he also had a child, too. He had a child named Maria. So he meets this woman named Maria, and she’s really stricken with him. And to the point where she tells him that she’s so smitten with him that I’m going to read what, He tried to pose as a jewelry salesman so that he could meet her. He says, I suspected that you weren’t a jewelry salesman. She says to him, she said, you did. She whispered in my ear, lightly touching my earlobe with her lips. She used to finish by kissing me on the mouth wild with love. There were moments of passion that our bodies would entwine, palpitating with love, and which would later be abandoned with languid reproves. So that’s the sort of language he used. And at one point, he talks about how he liked going to her apartment to visit her when he was feeling edgy. [30:28] You’re a mobster. You feel a little bit edgy. You’re always looking over your shoulder, right? So he was happy to go to her apartment to calm down, and she would talk to him. And she says, Mary was happy to see me. She used to tell me, Nick, that’s how she called me, you are an extraordinary man. You don’t know with what fear and respect those Boers, the Shacatani, speaker view. The Shacatani were the people of Sciacca, Sicily, that were mobsters that he associated with. It says, your name impresses everyone. Any woman alive brought to live among this rabble would be happy to be your co-worker, to wear men’s clothes, and at the necessary time of the occasion should present itself, to embrace a Tommy gun and die in your arm. [31:26] So that’s the sort of romantic verbiage that they used at the time. So what happened, too, was he sees her, then eventually he meets another woman named Dorothy. [31:41] She professes herself to be Irish to begin with, but then he finds out later as she tells him, I’m actually not Irish. I come from a Sicilian family. But she just wanted to impress him somehow to get his eyes. She was very attracted to him, to this woman, Dorothy. What happened was they have a love affair with each other, and Nikola, this is to the very end of his story here, Nikola had been involved with a gambling house in New York, and the gambling house was starting to go underwater. He needed money, so it was proposed to him by another mobster by the name of Jacono to do some narcotic trafficking down in Texas and Louisiana. [32:31] He gets the permission to do so from his bosses. Look, Nicola was still a roving asset, and he had to get permission to do things so that he could acquire enough money for investments, so he can give them money back, so he gets permission to do this. He starts getting involved with the drug trafficking trade in Texas and Louisiana, and he sees that he’s being tailed a lot. He doesn’t understand why. He says, out of nowhere, the police would show up. How did they find out? At the same time, he was trying to contact Dorothy. Before he left, Dorothy asked him. [33:11] Will I be seeing you much? She said, I don’t know. I could be gone six months or a year. She says that she’s so heartbroken about this. And he leaves and he gets involved with the drug trade. And he’s asking these questions about how is it that the cops are showing up at these different places where we are trying to transact business? What happens was he tried to contact Dorothy at different places where she said that she could be contacted. She didn’t get back to him. So he puts two and two together. He thinks that he believes that Dorothy was actually a treasury agent. She had been spying on him, that she was the Mata Hari, so to speak, and was feeding the information to the feds. to where he was. So what happened was they indicted him, got out on bail on $18,000 bail, and he was urged to be a stowaway to get to Italy. So he stows away on a ship, gets back to Italy. And interestingly enough, Gary. [34:23] He starts at World War II erupts, and he becomes an asset to the Allies in Sicily. He’s given them intelligence about what’s happening in Sicily with the mafia in Sicily. And the mafia in Sicily did not want to have anything to do with Mussolini. Mussolini was trying to bag on them big time. He’s trying to shut them down. And Nicola helped the Allies with intelligence reports on what was going on in Sicily. And that was a big part of what he was doing. And then later on, it wasn’t until 1963 or so, and he was still getting involved. He was still getting involved with the mafia at that time, doing criminal activities. But he wasn’t welcomed as much as he had been before. But he was still involved with them. What happened was the 60s came around, and he started writing his memoirs. He was an older man, and he started writing these things down on paper. [35:28] Which is what a mafia member does not do. You do not speak a word, let alone try to write it on paper. Otherwise, it’s a penalty of death. So he wrote all of these memoirs down in 1963. It got published that he was sentenced to death. But one of the mafia families in Sicily refused to do it. They refused to do it because he had a lot of respect. Members of the mafia in the U.S. And also in Sicily respected Gintilian very much because he had this godfather air about him. He had the Vita Corleone air about him. I will talk to you, and I will come up with a solution for you. Everybody’s calmed down by that. They’re not so excited and bloodthirsty when they hear that. They sense him to death. The mafia family in Sicily refused to carry out the hit. The book was published, and he lived the rest of his life in peace. He died peacefully as an old man in Sicily in 1970. Wow, 1970. That’s a hell of a story. That is a hell of a story, man. [36:44] I’m telling you you can make a movie out of this man’s life oh yeah literally the way he was jumping around from one place to the other he was really a maverick rogue sort of individual who is who did not have a higher education about him but was extremely intelligent and was able to use this and that’s what that’s why they respected him a lot of these individuals that he dealt with were boars and uneducated individuals to begin with. Many of them were highly intelligent. And as my dad always told me, his son, these individuals, especially the mob bosses, they could have been tycoons of finance. They could have been industrial tycoons, wizards of finance and economics and Wall Street if they had wanted to, but they did not want to. So they choose a life of crime. [37:40] Interesting. I’ll tell you what, that’s a hell of a story, Gary. That is a really cool story. I’d always wanted to do this guy’s story, mainly because I knew of his Kansas City connection. I talked to our local FBI agent here that has chronicled a lot of these things, got a book out there about those early days, and he’s excited. He’s looking forward to listening to this. So I really appreciate you coming on the show. Gary Clemente, GP Clemente. His father was Peter Clemente, the first Sicilian-born member of the FBI Top Hoodlum Squad. And Gary has been translating his works, is what he did. He wrote down a lot of stuff, and Gary’s been translating. He’s putting it down to a series of books. It’s called, let’s see, it is Untold Mafia Tales from the FBI Top Hoodlum Squad, I believe. I think I can read that on your event there. He does speaking events, too. If you’re back east, you’re from New York City area. Where are you from? Where do you speak at? I originally grew up in New Jersey, not too far from one of the Sopranos guys. [38:47] In New Jersey, my father was working at the New York office at that time and decided to buy a home in the suburbs of New York, not too far away from New York City. So that’s where I grew up. On the right side of the track. If somebody wants to get a hold of you to do a speaking engagement, though, how do they find you? They can get a hold of me at my email, gpclementibooks, gpclementibooks, at gmail.com. And I’m also on X, gpclementi16, I’m also on X. And the book is available on Amazon. You can pick it up there, and it’s doing quite well. I’m looking forward to the next one coming out next month. Yeah, I bet you’re looking forward to that. Yeah, and if you get his book, be sure and give him a review. Give him a good review on whatever review you want to give, but give him a good review. Please. [39:48] Because it helps these guys a lot to get a good review. More people will buy their book. And we, guys, we all want to encourage these mob historians. And Gary has done a real great job at chronicling the history, not just the blood and guts. We all like the blood and guts stories and the murder stories, but the entire history. You were talking about them being out in Pueblo, Colorado, and I just couldn’t figure that out. I just talked to a woman whose ancestors were in Pueblo, Colorado, connected to the mob out there. And she said that what it is, there was lead mines out there, and a lot of Sicilians were miners, and they went to that southern Colorado area to work in the mines. And I know we have a large group of Sicilian populations in southwest Missouri where there were strip mines down there for coal. And it’s a huge family of them down there. And so it’s, you know, where the work was is where people went to, and that’s how they ended up spread around the country. [40:45] That’s right. There were many Sicilians in San Francisco, Louisiana. Believe it or not, when Sicilians were in Louisiana when they first immigrated to Louisiana, there were several of them that had been home because they were looked upon as less than human. And the locals did not want them infiltrating their population. So it didn’t just happen to African-Americans, it also happened to Sicilians. Yeah, I’ve read about that story. So it’s an immigrant experience. Any group of immigrants that comes to the United States at first. [41:25] You know, the greater population, the English and the Irish and the Germans already have the good jobs and they keep them pushed out. And they have a different language, totally different language. And everybody else is speaking English. And so it’s really hard for an immigrant population to move in. That’s why they have to start businesses. And along with them, they brought the mafia. They had brought this tradition of the mafia that is shadow government, if you will, for them. Well, that’s true. And I must add that even though I talk a lot about the mafia and the world of the mafia, the Cosa Nostra, that my father was involved with, My father would be the first to tell you he was not proud of the criminal association and organization that these people started. He was not proud of it in any way. In fact, if you read my first book, you will read the part about how my father confronted Carlo Gambino and told him to his face that he was not proud of what Gambino and his associates were doing. And the bad name that they were bringing upon other Italian and Sicilians that had come to this country, like my grandparents, that work hard and made something of themselves. It’s not something to be proud of. Fascinating, interesting, but it’s not something that I’m certainly not proud of either. But pretty amazing, considering these people could have done something more honest. [42:51] But they chose not to. That’s a whole other story and movie to talk about. Yeah, it is. Gary Clemente, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks so much. You’re welcome. Thank you, Gary. Great being here. Gary to Gary. Gary to Gary, yeah. You know, they don’t name Gary anymore. Gary, little kids, Gary anymore. That was back right after the war in the early 50s. Everybody was named Gary. I had three Garys, I think, in my class. I tell you, I went to this movie with my grandkids. It’s called Zootopia. And they had a character in there called Gary the Snake. [43:27] So that’s what we’ve devolved down to, We’re nothing but snakes, Gary Guys, I really appreciate y’all tuning in And don’t forget to like and subscribe And down in the show notes, I’m going to have links to this stuff And I’ve got links to some of the stuff that I sell My books and DVDs If you want to rent them, I’ve got a link to that You can rent my DVDs for $1.99 So thanks a lot, guys. Okay, Gary, thank you. Hey, thank you, Gary. Thank you very much. Really appreciate that you’re having me on. Really enjoy it. Anything I can do for you, please let me know. Anything I can do. You know that I’ve got your endorsement on the back of the book, right? I didn’t remember. I do so much sometimes, Gary, that I forget all what I do good. Yeah, I’ve got your endorsement on the back of the book. I gave you a good endorsement. All right. The second book, the one that’s coming out, the one that’s coming out, we’ll have the same thing on there. You got some author blurbs? You got enough author blurbs on there? Yeah, yeah. Your endorsement will be on the back of the next book, too. Okay, all right, all right. All right, Gary. Thanks a lot, my friend. Hey, thank you, buddy. Anything in Kansas City. When the other book comes out, I’ll let you know. Yeah, let me know. We’ll do that show here in a couple of months. Okay? Hey, thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right, all right. Stay safe. Okay, buddy. Take care. Bye-bye.

Cornelius Vijn had made a few bad decisions in his life as we all do at some point. Born in Holland in 1856, he made his way to Natal in 1874 where he rapidly learned both English and isiZulu. That wasn't necessarily a bad decision. During his childhood, however, he'd suffered an accident, he was run over by a wagon — the wheel shattered his leg, it healed badly and from then on he walked with a limp. He had lived in Natal for over 4 years before setting out from New Guelderland with six Zulu drivers and assistants, sixteen oxen, and a wagon loaded with woollen, baize and cotton blankets, picks, knives, saddles bridles and beads. Just to put his location into perspective, New Guelderland is a few kilometers north of KwaDukuza aka Stanger. Cornelius Vijn's destination — Zululand. This was a miscalculation because his journey began October 1879 on the eve of the Anglo-Zulu war. Tension had been rising for months, and most whites had fled the territory. Vijn was determined to go the other way. He sensed he could make some extra money without any competition from the other Natal Traders. Vijn was 23 years and six months old. After being held up by rainy weather and a border check to make sure he wasn't carrying guns, he crossed the Thukela on November 1st. We know all of this because Cornelius' journal was published by Bishop Colenso in 1880 — and you can find a copy online at the University of Cape Town archives. It's called Cetshwayo's Dutchman, and what a fascinating read it is. His plan was to travel to meet King Cetshwayo kaMpande and sell him all the goods in the wagon in exchange for cattle. The king had good reason to treat Vijn well, he needed someone who could function as a translator and letter writer because Cetshwayo would spend most of the coming months repeatedly sending emissaries to Lord Chelmsford, asking for negotiations. In May, word arrived that the Boers were at Cetshwayo's home, they were working together to defeat the English. Later Cetshwayo was to tell Cornelius that “No doubt the Boers are better than the English, for Mpande was setup as king by the Boers and died as King, whereas I, Cetshwayo, was crowned by the English and now my country is taken from me…” Following the British disaster at Isandlwana and the agonizingly slow progress of the second invasion of Zululand, the British government lost confidence in Lord Chelmsford's strategic capabilities. In May 1879, Sir Garnet Wolseley was appointed as Supreme Commander in South Africa, effectively superseding Chelmsford.When word reached him deep in Zululand his reaction was one of desperate urgency rather than resignation. Knowing his reputation was on the line, Chelmsford took several decisive actions including what you may call a race for Ondini.

As the British tried to wrap up their war against the Zulu in South Africa, further afield the happy sound of a baby being born could be heard in Germany. Not just any baby. Albert Einstein was born at 11.30 in the morning on March 14, 1879 in Ulm. His birth was not without drama; his family initially worried about his development because the back of his head was unusually large, and his grandmother feared he would have delayed development based on the sound of his cry.  His mother Pauline was deeply concerned when Albert didn't start talking until he was three. Then when he started speaking, he had a habit of repeating sentences to himself, which led the family maid to nickname him "Der Depperte" (the dopey one). When Albert was five and sick in bed, his father Hermann gave him a magnetic compass. This invisible force fascinated Albert and is often cited as the spark for his lifelong obsession with physics. A compass is what the British surveyors carried, so too did some Boers of the Wakkerstroom District. The area wasn't as stable as British Army Lieutenant Colonel Evelyn Wood had supposed. Sure, the hyena of Phongola chief Mbilini — had been killed but the abaQulusi still lurked about their mountains undefeated. While the British had gone about their war against the Zulu with some zeal in 1879, the Boers of the Transvaal were seething about their territory being summarily annexed by the Empire only two years earlier. The Boers of Wakkerstroom, east of Volksrus, lived on a frontier and a ledge. The escarpment along this north eastern line intersects with places like Luneburg, Paulpietersburg, Bilanyoni with Swazi territory further towards the rising sun. June mornings are cold — as cold as the relations between the Boers of Wakkerstroom and local Englishmen. Luneburg was a Lutheran mission station and on the 4th June, the pastor's son Heinrich Filter was killed there along with six black border policemen. Large groups of Qulisi warriors swept back into the northern Zululand region, scooping up hundreds of cattle and other livestock. So it was with fury that commander Chelmsford and Wood heard what was going on between the Boers and the Zulu along the Mkhondo River. The two nations were in league against their common imperial enemy. Zulu deputations had visited the bughers and some Boers had even travelled to go and see king Cetshwayo kaMpande. By June reports circulated the there were even more Boers than usual wintering along the border, below the icy escarpment amongst the Zulu imizi of the Phongola. The fact that they were safe confirmed all suspicions that there was Zulu-Boer collusion. Suspicions were further confirmed when the British found out that the Boers were even acting as guides leading the Zulu impis in their June raids that had been so destructive. Chelmsford had been putting together a potent column for his return to Zululand after he had relieved Eshowe, and in May he began a slow moving march to Ondini. Ranging in front of his force as it gathered close to Rorke's Drift for the second major invasion, were his reconnaissance units, scouts and observers. And one of these observers was the enthusiastic but reckless twenty three year-old Prince Imperial of France, Louis Napoleon. The last hope of the Bonapartist dynasty, serving on Chelmsford's staff. He was the only son of Emperor Napoleon the Third, great-nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. In his first 14 years he had lived the pampered life of a monarch-in-waiting, but that changed in 1870 when his father was deposed after a string of defeats in the Franco-Prussian war. Louis fled to England with his mother Empress Eugenie. Queen Victoria gave them a warm welcome — in 1871 his father was released by the Prussians and joined Eugenie and Louis at a rented mansion in Chislehurst in Kent. A failed attempt to remove a gallstone killed the Emperor n 1873, and Louis ended up in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich.

The last quarter of the 19th Century was in some ways, like the first quarter of the 21st Century - full of tone-deaf business barons gambling building vast riches — financing politicians and in accelerating the planet towards world wars. There are ripples in the timeverse, all the way to now, because the latest empire has started a war that it cannot end. The infinite rule of war is do not start a war you cannot finish — British back in 1879 set off a whole host of pain for itself by invading Zululand because the Boers of the Transvaal were flexing. First, however, was the small matter of trying to Crush the Zulu empire. Not only had the British suffered sharp reverses at Hlobane and, most dramatically, at Isandlwana, but Lieutenant-Colonel Pearson's column had now been shut up in Eshowe for nearly two months. At first the invasion had been greeted in Britain with confidence and patriotic support, yet that mood began to shift as the scale of the setbacks became clear and questions were asked about Lord Chelmsford's conduct of the campaign. Confidence gave way to unease as news filtered home that the war was proving far more difficult than anyone had expected. So it is to Eshowe we go. At the end of March 1879 Zulu warriors were spotted hiking down the hills near the Eshowe garrison, heading towards Nyezane near Gingindlovu on the coastal flats. They were led by Somopho of the emaNgweni ikhanda, Cetshwayo's chief armourer — and the army he led towards the Thukela was an interesting bunch. They included 3000 Tsonga from St Lucia Bay, along with 1500 from the kwaGingindlovu ikhanda, joined by Dabulamanzi, Cetshwayo's headstrong son who lived at eNtumeni near Eshowe and who commandedd 1000 men. There were 3000 men of the iNgobamakhosi, uNokhenke, the uMbonambi and uMcijo, joined by 1500 of the iNdluyengwe. Chief Sigcwelegcwele led these amabutho, along with Phalane kaMdinwa of the Mphukunyoni — Phalane was of royal blood and set an imposing figure amongst his troops. He wore brass ornaments on his ankles and neck, and had grown his fingernails five centimeters long, they were apparently as white as ivory and gave him a dangerous cat-like appearance, he was tall, a Marvel Superhero of the Zulu. This force of about 11 000 was in Lord Chelmsford's way, and he was about to cross the Thukela River to relieve Pearson in Eshowe. Cetshwayo's was aware that the English Zulu chief, had turned his coat, John Dunn who had initially fled Zululand, then tried to remain neutral, had now openly thrown in his lot with Chelmsford's relief column. He had observed the British response to the defeat at Isandhlwana and realised that the Zulu could not win this war, nor even draw it. Chelmsford's response was to turn to John Dunn, and with him came something the British had lacked until then — a practical understanding of African warfare. Dunn encouraged constant forward reconnaissance, understood the rhythms and tactics of Zulu fighting, and insisted on the discipline of laagering, measures that addressed many of the army's earlier weaknesses. He was placed in charge of 244 men and effectively made chief of intelligence — a somewhat unusual appointment. Until then such responsibilities had normally fallen to regular British officers. Dunn, however, was no officer of the Crown. What he brought instead were deep personal ties within the Zulu kingdom, along with a network of scouts and informants. In Chelmsford's camp he would operate not only as an intelligence gatherer, but also as a crucial intermediary between the British command and the African world beyond their lines.

Join host Ed and Phil as they explore how PLCnext Technology is redefining what industrial controllers can do, and why openness in automation is both a massive opportunity and a serious responsibility. Martin Boers, Technical Specialist at PLCnext Technology with Phoenix Contact, joins to discuss the origins of the PLCnext ecosystem, what IT/OT convergence really looks like on the plant floor, and how partnerships with companies like Festo and Yaskawa are shaping the future of automation platforms.Key topics in this episode:- The four pillars of PLCnext Technology: Control, Engineer, Store, and Community- IT/OT convergence: LDAP, firewalls, certificates, and the EU Cyber Resilience Act- Docker containers and the PLCnext Store app ecosystem- PLCnext Technology partnerships and the all-electric society----------------------------------This episode is proudly made possible by PLCnext TechnologyPLCnext Technology is the ecosystem for industrial automation consisting of open hardware, modular engineering software, a global community, and a digital software marketplace.Learn more at:⁠https://www.plcnext-community.net/news/synergy-edge-cloud/----------------------------------Connect with Martin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mboers/Connect with Phil on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philseboa/Connect with Ed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edfuentes/Learn more about PLCnext Technology: https://www.plcnext-community.net/

The twenty thousand strong Zulu army was camped near Nseka Mountain south of the British camp at Khambula hill — north west of modern day Vryheid. After defeating Lieutenant Colonel Evelyn Wood's Number 4 column at Hlobane, Zulu commanders Ntshingwayo and Mnyamana stopped to rest their men on the banks of the White Mfolozi. about twenty kilometers from the British camp. Wood's column had retreated to the base at Khambula Garrison — along with the cavalry led by Redverse Buller after the thrashing they'd received at the Battle of Hlobane. You heard about that in episode 262. Perhaps it made sense to wait, the British had already been reinforcing Kambula for weeks and the position that Evelyn held was strong. They had spent weeks digging elongated earthworks, a redoubt on a narrow ridge of tableland on the summit of Khambula. There were two guns here, and it was connected to the main wagon-laager which lay 20 meters below and 280 metres away by the four other guns placed at regular intervals. These were significant weapons. The wheels of the wagons were lashed together, and each wagon-pole or tied tightly to the wagon ahead, sods of earth had been thrown up under the wagons to form ramparts, and bags of provisions run along the outside of the buckrails of the wagons with firing slits every few yards. Below this defensive structure was another smaller laager of wagons, connected by a palisade — into which 2000 cattle were crammed. On the right side of both laagers lay a rocky ravine, no-one would be climbing up this access point and through which the stream of Selandlovu rushed. To the left, the ground sloped away more gently, and provided an excellent field of fire. Wood had 2 086 officers and men, including eight companies of the 90th Light Infantry — and seven companies of the 1/13th Light infantry totaling 1240 troops. The mounted squadron included 99 from the Mounted Infantry, four troops of the Frontier light horse of 165 men, two troops of Raaff's Transvaal Rangers, almost a hundred of Baker's Horse, 40 more from the Kaffrarian Rifles, bolstered by a Mounted Basotho group of 74, they'd come all the way from Basotholand, from further south, joined by 16 men of the Border Horse, along with 41 Boers from a local northern Zululand commando. 58 black support troops were also camped at Kambula, along with 11 Royal Engineers, and 110 men of the number 11 Battery, Royal Artillery and their six 7 pounders. This was a well balanced column, but still about ten percent the size of the nearby Zulu army. The British had a major advantage, they were defending a well constructed and armed with the latest weapons of war. Unlike the other battles, the British had measured out range markers and setup stone cairns painted white. The Zulu would not be able to easily charge Khambula over the open ground, nor climb quickly enough in numbers to attack over the steep eastern edge. Dawn broke on the 29th March 1879 and the Zulu commanders gathered their men. The youngsters demanded the army launch a straightforward charge up the slope to smash the English once and for all, but Chiefs Mnyamana and Ntshingwayo were smarter than that. Both had strict orders from Cetshwayo about tactics, and he'd made it clear there would be no more direct full frontal attack on well dug-in British camps. Mnyamana was more of a diplomat than soldier, if you remember it had been Ntshingwayo who led the men in their victory at Isandhlwana, but Mnyamana was technically the senior commander - so it was he who formed the amabutho into their traditional circle. As the sun lifted over the hills, mist coiled along the White Mfolozi, and thousands of Zulu warriors formed in their regiments on the riverbank. They stood shoulder to shoulder while their commanders strode before them, voices rising, calling them to courage and endurance.

The battles are coming thick and fast because this is the end of the seventh decade of the 19th Century - the British have just been defeated at the Battle of Hlobane mountain on the 28th March. There's been so much skop skiet and Donner it's time to reflect on matters further south west Before we buzz back to Zululand next episode. n the Transvaal, resistance to British rule was slowly setting, like mortar hardening between stones, the scattered grievances of the Boers beginning to cohere into something firmer, more deliberate. Far to the west, Kimberley glittered with a different intensity - fortunes were rising from the dust, deals were struck in the heat and noise, and the great hole in the earth swallowed men and money alike. Yet beneath the clangour of picks and the shimmer of diamonds, another current was moving. For even as the town prospered, a sequence of personal tragedies was about to cast a longer shadow over Kimberley shaping not only its mood but the hardening temper of one of its most ambitious young men. Cecil John Rhodes would endure a series of personal blows in the years ahead. These losses did not soften him. If anything, they seemed to harden an already melancholic temperament. One by one, the setbacks accumulated, and the young speculator who often appeared distant in manner would, in time, come to embody the ruthless vanity and moral ambiguity that marked the diamond fields and the empire they fed. The string of tragedies began with his brother Herbert. It was he who had come to South Africa first and started the Cotton farm at Richmond near Pietermaritzburg. And It was he who had impulsively upped and off to Kimberley to look for diamonds. Once these had been unearthed and he'd convinced young Cecil to join him — he upped and off once more to the eastern Transvaal, where gold had been discovered. After a while he tired of that life and began gun running from Delagoa Bay to amaPedi people, then roved about into northern Mozambique and what is Malawi today. He hunted the next gold find everywhere he went, a mad Victorian searching for his personal treasure. Cecil John Rhodes watched and took his own notes. He was already thirsting for power, and now he realised there were two routes. From Barney Barnato he learned the value of politics, and from JB Robinson he came to understand the uses of Journalism. Rhodes wanted something much bigger, and that was a seat in the Cape Parliament. He ran for representative of a rural territory, Barklay West which was a mistake. When he appeared at a meeting one of the local boers told him off “In the first place, you are too young, in the second, you look so damnably like an Englishman…” Rhodes, unlike certain modern politicians, listened. First stage of campaign complete, time for second stage. And here it may surprise many listeners, but he turned to black South Africans because at this time in our history, blacks could vote in the Cape. All they had to do was show they had enough cash, the Cape qualified franchise. Every voter had to show either 25 pounds of land or more in value or prove they received at least 50 pounds a year in income. After disbursing black workers with an unknown sum of money, 250 turned up to vote for Rhodes on election day and largely because of this support, he won. It is truly amazing that Cecil John Rhodes won his seat in the Cape Parliament because of black voters, and would go on to hold that seat in periods of triumph, disgrace and depression, until the day he died.

Colonel Rowland's number five column had been sent to guard the roads and garrison the Boer towns in the north eastern Transvaal — part to police the Zulu across the border, but also to overawe the more volatile Boers who wanted to take advantage of the war in Zululand by rebelling against British rule. The German village of Luneberg was vulnerable, within striking distance of Mbilini, who was Cetshwayo's loose canon along the Phongola River, and Manyanyoba who hailed from the Ntombe Valley. Although Manyonyoba had seemed prepared to open negotiations with the British, he was overborne by his chief induna who wanted to intensify the raiding. Once convinced he should support king Cetshwayo's call for war, Manyonyoba led a powerful force to join Mbilini and Qulusi induna Tola kaDilikana who had made his way east from Hlobane. Their target was the 1500 or so Christianised black workers, the amakholwa of the Ntombe Valley. They killed 41 amakholwa, burned their homes down and drove off hundreds of cattle. In retaliation, British troops were sent to garrison Luneberg and four companies of the 80th Regiment were dispatched there under Major Charles Tucker. Redverse Buller joined them from Khambula further west, leading a force of 54 mounted men and 517 black auxiliaries against Manyonyoba's caves. 34 Zulu were killed, five imizi were burned down and 375 head of cattle, 254 goats and 8 sheep captured for the loss of two black auxiliaries - but Manyonyoba remained at large, his main force unaffected. Late in February a convoy of 18 wagons loaded with ammunition, flour and mealies left Lydenburg to resupply the garrison. At first things went well, but when they arrived at the border with Transvaal, their route was less secure — particularly as they approached the Ntombe River because Mbilini was operating close by. Tucker sent a company of the 80th to escort the wagon train from Derby — but heavy rainfall swelled the rivers and softened the ground. By March 8th the convoy was still 16 kilometres out from Luneberg. Fearing an attack, Tucker sent a message to the company commander to get into Luneberg that night ‘at any cost' — but the officer took the message literally and abandoned his wagons. The British were riding their luck, and that lady was about to run out. The Zulu were monitoring all this movement and Mbilini realised his relatively large amabutho was powerful enough to smash this small company of British soldiers. Cetshwayo knew that important rule - keep your friends close but your enemies closer — at the outbreak of war he had ordered Hamu to oNdini where he could be kept under close scrutiny. But Hamu communicated with his chief izinduna Ngwegwana and Nymubana back in his district who exchanged secret messages with Colonel Wood in turn.

In the final hour, Matt Spiegel and Dan Wiederer were joined by former Score host Dan McNeil to reflect on the life and legacy of legendary Score host Terry Boers, who passed away last week. McNeil and Boers were partners who formed the Heavy Fuel Crew, one of the most iconic shows in Chicago radio history. After that, Spiegel and Wiederer revisited a Bears topic from 2022 after old friend Danny Parkins brought it up Wednesday on the Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show.

Matt Spiegel was joined by former Score host Dan McNeil to reflect on the life and legacy of legendary Score host Terry Boers, who passed away last week. McNeil and Boers were partners who formed the Heavy Fuel Crew, one of the most iconic shows in Chicago radio history.

For years, Word Balloon has celebrated comics, pop culture, and the creative voices that shape them. Now, I want to turn the spotlight home, to Chicago radio comedy, a tradition that doesn't always get its due.Other cities produced comedy collectives that broke out nationally—groups like The Credibility Gap, The Committee, Ace Trucking Company, and The Firesign Theater. They built reputations that went far beyond their local airwaves. Chicago took a different path. Our radio comedy was more idiosyncratic, more personality-driven, and deeply rooted in the city itself. But make no mistake—we had stars, innovators, and voices that mattered.This series of Word Balloon episodes will explore that history by talking directly to the people who lived it. Writers, performers, hosts, and producers who made Chicago radio funny, fearless, controversial, and unforgettable. Today's episode starts on a personal note. During my years at WSCR The Score, I was lucky enough to contribute parody songs and character voices during a time when bland sports radio stiffness made room for sketch comedy. I learned the sports street chatter from some of the best like Mike North and Dan McNeil but a guy who's persona stood out most was Terry Boers, one of the great Chicago newspaper men and radio voices.A mentor whose impact on this city's airwaves can't be overstated.Terry passed away last week, and on Tuesday, WSCR The Score aired a tribute show in his honor. I was deeply touched to be asked to participate. That led to this conversation. I sat down with Matt Spiegel, someone I worked closely with during those years. Someone who helped me shape those parody songs as both a performer and a comedy writer, and who has since become one of the most recognizable voices on Chicago sports radio. What followed was a warm, honest conversation about the creative chaos, the laughs, and the influence of a man who helped define an era.This episode is about remembering Terry Boers, celebrating Chicago radio comedy, and setting the stage for a deeper dive into a pop culture scene that deserves to be documented, and remembered.

We celebrated the life and legacy of legendary Score host Terry Boers, who passed away Friday. Boers was a Score original who joined the station when it launched in 1992, and he shaped the station's voice over the course of his iconic 25-year radio career. To remember Boers, we welcomed on many former Score hosts, producers and colleagues, including George Ofman, Matt Abbatacola, Jason Goff, Mike North, Dan Jiggetts, Mike Greenberg, Brian Hanley and Dan Bernstein.

We celebrated the life and legacy of legendary Score host Terry Boers, who passed away Friday. Boers was a Score original who joined the station when it launched in 1992, and he shaped the station's voice over the course of his iconic 25-year radio career. To remember Boers, we welcomed on many former Score hosts, producers and colleagues, including George Ofman, Matt Abbatacola, Jason Goff, Mike North, Dan Jiggetts, Mike Greenberg, Brian Hanley and Dan Bernstein.

Leila Rahimi and Marshall Harris opened their show by welcoming on Score vice president Mitch Rosen to reflect on the life and legacy of legendary Score host Terry Boers, who passed away Friday. After that, Rahimi and Harris opened the phone lines for Score listeners to share their favorite memories of Boers.

Leila Rahimi and Marshall Harris listened back to legendary Score host Terry Boers' past comments reflecting on his career at the station. Boers passed away Friday.

Joe Ostrowski and Sam Panayatovich pay tribute to 670 The Score legend Terry Boers. Joe shares some of his favorite memories from growing up listening to Terry and later working alongside him, reflecting on what made Boers truly one of a kind. From his sharp wit and unapologetic opinions to his warmth, humility, and devotion as a father, Terry's impact went far beyond the microphone. A thoughtful and personal remembrance of a Chicago radio icon whose voice, humor, and humanity will never be forgotten.

Regenerative practices lead to higher quality and much higher prices in year one and, over time, to lower costs, which makes the regenerative business case in certain cash crops that are exported (spices, tea, coffee, etc.) so strong that it almost spreads on its own. Nothing is easy, but this is really hopeful. In this conversation with Thekla Teunis and Gijs Boers, founders of Grounded, Grounded Ingredients and Grounded Investment Company, we discuss why quality is intimately linked to regenerative practices.We talk about why we don't need transition finance in many cases, but we do need philanthropic capital to figure out what regenerative looks like in specific circumstances. When that research and development (in other sectors we would call that R&D ) is done, it can be rolled out profitably and relatively easily with more commercially focused, return- driven capital.We talk about why it's easier to act regeneratively in many places in the Global South (easier, not easy). And we talk about the why of super hands-on investing. Knock knock- there are regenerative barbarians at the gate. What if we do private equity right and use it as a tool for good?More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

Canada has a rich military history. Alongside the British they stood toe-to-toe with the Americans in the war of 1812, battled the Boers, shocked the German's on the Western Front in both world wars and proved themselves amongst the world's greatest warrior nations. But do they still have what it takes? In this podcast, I explore both the past and the present of the Canadian army. Are there other nations armies you would like me to look into? I was thinking Australia and also South Africa could be next if this episode is well received. Join my Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/RedcoatHistory  Sign up for the Redcoat History Newsletter - https://redcoathistory.com/newsletter/ 

fWotD Episode 3151: Battle of Bronkhorstspruit Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day, your daily dose of knowledge from Wikipedia's finest articles.The featured article for Saturday, 20 December 2025, is Battle of Bronkhorstspruit.The battle of Bronkhorstspruit was the first major engagement of the First Boer War. It took place by the Bronkhorstspruit river, near the town of Bronkhorstspruit, Transvaal, on 20 December 1880. Threatened by the growing numbers of militant Boers in the Pretoria region, the British recalled the 94th Regiment of Foot, which had several companies garrisoned in towns and villages across the wider area. The regiment's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Philip Robert Anstruther, led a 34-wagon column consisting of roughly 250 men on a 188-mile (303 km) journey from Lydenburg back to Pretoria. A similar-sized Boer commando force, led by Francois Gerhardus Joubert, was ordered to intercept and stop the British.Despite several warnings of the threat of attack, the British travelled largely unprepared for combat, and the many wagons they travelled with slowed their progress significantly. On 20 December, 24 days after receiving the order to return, Anstruther's column was confronted by the Boers, who demanded under truce that the British stop their march. Anstruther refused, and the Boers attacked while the British soldiers were still preparing. The British took heavy casualties and surrendered after about 15 minutes; their surviving men were captured. Anstruther was badly wounded and died of his injuries a few days later.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:12 UTC on Saturday, 20 December 2025.For the full current version of the article, see Battle of Bronkhorstspruit on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm standard Kendra.

The invasion of Zululand did not arrive suddenly. It had been constructed brick by brick over the preceding months, through decisions made in distant offices and on dusty border farms. By early January 1879 the machinery of British imperial confidence was fully wound, and the commanders in Natal believed they were about to conduct a short, sharp campaign to correct what they regarded as a troublesome frontier problem. For the people living along that frontier, the mood was more complex. Rumour travelled faste, and the Zulu intelligence network was already humming with accurate reports of British movements. Settlers and colonial units in Natal, meanwhile, watched the gathering storm with a mix of unease and bravado. The Boers, who had faced Zulu power before, offered advice the British would soon wish they had followed. And so, as the new year opened, both sides prepared for a conflict neither truly understood. The British approached with modern rifles, rockets and the calm assurance of empire. The Zulu prepared with discipline, speed and an intelligence system that outperformed anything Chelmsford could muster. All that remained was for the first column to step across the river January 11 1879 — the rainy season in Zululand lasts from January to March so the going would be muddy and the rivers flooding, but most importantly, there would be lots of sweet green grass for the thousands of oxen and horses. The fuel tank of mother nature was full. The British were keen to exploit their power, and were going to cross the border using ox-drawn wagons. On the eve of the invasion, Lord Chelmsford had declared martial law along the borders with Zululand. The Boers and the settlers who fought alongside this army met with Chelmsford and advised him to adopt the standard laager once inside enemy territory, a proven technique of holding out against vast numbers of warriors. Chelmsford ignored this advice from people who regarded as lower on the imperial ladder, but also because it took a great deal of time and effort to wheel the wagons into a circle, then outspan the oxen and even longer to reverse this procedure and inspan. He was going to learn a dreadful lesson in a few days and would begin laagering his troops as advised but too late for 1500 of his men. He had initially planned to break his 17 000 strong army in to five columns and to invade Zululand from different points, all joining up to converge at Cetshwayo kaMpande's Great Place, oNdini — modern day Ulundi. By breaking up the columns, Chelmsford was hoping they would move faster across wet Zululand. He was forced to trim the number of columns down to 3 - the same number of columns in a Zulu attack with their two horns and a central chest tactic. These two combative nations were deploying similar ideas, the centre crashing into the foe as the two wings fold around them from the sides like the thumbs pressed together and hands throttling an enemy. It was in the area of intelligence however that Cetshwayo was ahead of Chelmsford. Whereas the British had no idea about where the Zulu army was, once the British entered Zululand, Cetshwayo was provided daily updates about the movement of his enemy. Even the smaller reconnaissance patrols were under scrutiny. He had a network of spies throughout the region, from beyond southern Natal all the way to Delagoa Bay, and into the Transvaal. If you've listened to this series you'll remember how the Zulu and other military societies like the Basotho and amaNdebele valued accurate information at a time of war. Zulu spies were extremely detailed gatherers of data, an oral society after all prides itself on being able to memorize long lists of facts and figures. The number of troops, horses, guns, the direction of movement, the names of the commanders, even their character type all flowed into the Zulu heartland and Cetshwayo and his counsellors hungrily consumed the data.

Sir Bartle Frere's ultimatum to Cetshwayo kaMpande of 11 January 1879 was about to expire. Last episode I explained the reasons behind Frere's fevered decision, egged on as he was by Sir Theophilus Shepstone whose shadow looms large over the history of Natal - and South Africa. Cetshwayo's diplomacy had relied on the British supporting him against the claims of the Boers to his territory to the north west, already volatile by Mpande's reign, now it was going to set off one of the most unique wars of the colonial period. The Boers, Swazi and the Zulu all claimed this zone, rich as it was in reddish deep soil, around Phongola, Ntombe, Mkhondo. Beautiful territory too, it must be said, the deep riverine bush, open plains between, flat topped high mountains. In summer its warm, in winter, waterless, cold. The Zulu relied on seasonally moving their cattle up to these highlands in spring, and down to lower reaches of the hills in autumn. The Swazi would do the same if they could, and conflict over this land extended way back before the Boers rolled onto the landscape. Because the Disputed Territory was so far north, Natal authorities found it impossible to control any movement here, and as you heard last episode, their Border Commission report ruled that the land belonged to the Zulu and that the Boers had no legal status there. But Shepstone who was now Administrator of the annexed Transvaal, wanted to curry favor with the Boers and Frere wanted the various colonies and republics of South Africa to form a confederation. Cetshwayo was standing in his way, along with Pedi chief, Sekhukhuni. The last Eastern Cape Frontier War had ended, the amaXhosa were thought of as a defeated nation, while by now the British also regarded the Basotho as benign, so the industrialised military might of the British empire swiveled increasingly towards Zululand. Cetshwayo was walking a delicate line through the 1870s, frustrated internally by having no glorious campaign to prove he'd bloodied his men in a fantastic war, although defeating the Swazi, sort of, seizing a few mountain fortresses in the Lubombo range. These were on the margins of the Boer and Swazi, it was where Zibhebhu of the Nyawo lived. It was where Dingane had died if you recall — so the capture of the territory was a feather in Cetshwayo's cap. While Cetshwayo brooded about his northern reaches, it was the murder of two Zulu women I mentioned last episode that was seized upon by the Natal Authorities as a part of the many pretexts to go to war. Cetshwayo was well aware of the value of firearms and horses. By 1878 there were 20 000 muskets in Zululand, but these were used like a throwing spear, and the stabbing spear was still the preferred method of dispatching your opponent. The stabbing was the principle of washing the spear, soaking it in your enemies blood, thus entering the hallowed portal of manhood. If your regiment did enough washing, then the King would announce that the amabutho had permission to marry and the man could don a hearing. So in a sense, successfully wielding a spear led directly to a sanctioned marriage, and the ability to create sons and daughters. The spear was a symbol of procreation if you like. Such a system had global resonances. In the homesteads of Zululand in 1878 as the build up to war took place, the senior commanders and chiefs were aware of the tide of colonialism washing up against their military system. It was in terms of tactics that the coming war that would be the greatest undoing of the Zulu system. All of these were overtaken by a more modern state or the machinery of empire and the pressure of time. The Spartans lost their supremacy after Leuctra (LOO-ktruh) in 371 BCE, their military culture fading under Macedonian and then Roman rule. The Aztec Empire was obliterated by the Spanish conquest in 1521. The Mongol empire fractured within a century of Genghis Khan's death, its unity dissolved into regional khanates.

Episode 247 launches us into an intense period. We're going to travel to the border between the Zulu kingdom and the Transvaal because there's trouble brewing. When you hear what shenanigans were planned by British Governor Sir Bartle Frere, you probably won't believe it. His partner in crime was Sir Theophilus Shepstone who in 1877, had just completed thirty years service as Secretary for Native Affairs in Natal. For the Zulu, the transformation of the Native Affairs Secretary into the Administrator of the newly annexed Transvaal was a serious development. As historian Jeff Guy points out, it destroyed the diplomatic link forged between Cetshwayo kaMpande and Shepstone at a particularly sensitive moment in history. Previously, Shepstone had been sympathetic to the Zulu in their border dispute with the Boers, but once the Natal official took office in the Transvaal, that sentiment shifted. The pressure of trying to reconcile the Boers to their newly annexed state was too much for Shepstone — he did not have the emotional courage nor the courage of his convictions to balance the needs and wants of both the Boers and the Zulu. “He turned his coat in the most shameless manner…” one Colonial Office official by the name of Fairfield is quoted as writing in a minute to Edward Stanley the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs after the War. Sir Bartle Frere the British High Commissioner in Cape Town, was determined to eradicate what he thought of as the Zulu threat. He was still busy sorting out the Ninth Frontier War against the Xhosa, and watching the Pedi battle the Boers in the north Eastern Transvaal. While that irritating side-show .. at least in Frere's mind .. continued, here was Cetshwayo openly defying his Native Affairs man in Natal. Cetshwayo approached Natal's lieutenant Governor Sir Henry Bulwer — after whom the town of Bulwer is named. By now it was clear the Zulu relationship with Shepstone was done. Bulwer had monitored what was going on and he was deeply disturbed by developments. It was ironic that the Zulu chief was turning to a British official as a mediator of sorts. Bulwer appointed a boundary commission to probe the dispute between the Boers and the Zulu.To Frere's surprise, the commission found that the Boers of the Transvaal had no right to be in Zululand. Bulwer's next dispatches concluded that Natal could maintain a peaceful policy towards the Zulu nation because it hadn't violated any agreements with Natal and the Transvaal. Frere was dumbstruck, and so dumbstruck, he was struck dumb. He kept the report a secret for five months.

Today's West Coast Cookbook & Speakeasy Podcast for our especially special Daily Special, Blue Moon Spirits Fridays, is now available on the Spreaker Player!Starting off in the Bistro Cafe, Trump is spiraling out of control and calling for the nuclear option to deal with his Big Beautiful government shutdown.Then, on the rest of the menu, Whisky Pete Hegseth ordered the military to detail dozens of JAG attorneys to the Justice Department to act as special assistant US attorneys; a judge ripped apart the Trump administration's argument against her ruling this week by quoting their top goon's own words directly from a Fox News interview; and, drugmakers recalled a blood pressure medicine tainted with a cancer-causing chemical over a month ago, but Trump's FDA is only letting us know now.After the break, we move to the Chef's Table where Radio Free Asia says it is halting its news operations due to funding troubles caused by Trump's shutdown; and, Trump is limiting refugee admissions to the worst Boers in the world.All that and more, on West Coast Cookbook & Speakeasy with Chef de Cuisine Justice Putnam.Bon Appétit!The Netroots Radio Live Player​Keep Your Resistance Radio Beaming 24/7/365!“Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy profession, and a large number of its practitioners spend many nights drowning their sorrows in Ouisghian Zodahs.” ― Douglas Adams "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/west-coast-cookbook-speakeasy--2802999/support.

Sir Bartle Frere had sailed into South Africa in March 1877 - lauded as a great British administrator in India. He arrived just in time to witness Sir Theophilus Shepstone seize, sorry, annex the Transvaal under the noses of the incredulous and in equal amounts, contemptuous Boers. Frere was another of Carnarvon's boys, determined to enforce confederation onto south Africa. He was regarded as one of the most effective English civil servants in India, keeping the vital province of Sind quiet during the recent Indian Mutiny, and as Governor of Bombay, now Mumbai, he had been instrumental in upgrading the vast city's infrastructure. He was by accounts, a man of integrity and quiet, diffident even as Frank Walsh puts it. The British Royal Family were friends, he was a member of the Privy Council and was showered with honours. India was compared to South Africa, it was diverse, more populous yes, but in India he dealt with sophisticated Indian Rulers and merchants. Carnarvon regarded Sir Bartle Frere as the ideal man to settle the quarrelsome and individualistic South African communities. But he was Indian in his experience, and not African. By contrast to the sophisticated Indian Rulers, South Africans were and are uncomplicated and pugnacious. All its people were the same then as we are now. Whatever our backgrounds, we remain pugnacious Africans, English, Afrikaners, Blacks, Coloureds, Indians and tick whatever box suits you on form XYZ. It would take only a few years trying to govern the ungovernable before he disintegrated in delusion, self-deception, irrationality and apparent senility. Frere had barely settled into his governor's armchair to read Shepstone's report into the latest challenges in the Transvaal — when the Ninth Frontier War burst into flame in the Eastern Cape.The amaMfengu had taken rapidly to the opportunities afforded by being part of the Cape Colony, and were also taking to urban trade in a revolutionary way. The Gcaleka resented the success of the amaMfengu, as well as their relationship with settlers. The Gcaleka were suffering the effects of the last war, the longest Frontier War and also the most vicious. Across the Kei, alcoholism was spreading, and poverty seeped through every household — made far worse by the actions of Nongqawuse's cattle killing episode. What pushed everyone over the edge was mother nature, a series of devastating droughts across the Transkei destabilised the situation further. As Historian De Kiewiet says, in South Africa the heat of drought easily becomes the fever of war. What was supposed to be a wedding celebration in September 1877 turned into a bar fight when the tensions emerged after Gcaleka harassed the amMfengu in attendance. Things got a lot worse later that day when some Gcaleka men attacked a Cape Colony police outpost manned by amaMfengu in the main. Just a bit of trival violence said local officials, moving along, let the local police handle the matter. But back in Cape Town, Sir Bartle Frere sensed his moment partly because of his belief that Great Britain was spreading civilisation and eradicating barbarians, extending black rule over blacks, you know old chap, guiding them up the ladder of evolution and improving their standards of living through good administration and economic prosperity. Chief Mgolombane Sarhili kaHintsa of the amaGcaleka royal line was summoned by Frere but he had seen his ancestors summoned only to be thrown onto Robin Island. He ignored the summons so Sir Bartle promptly declared war on the amaXhosa. This was totally against the advice of the locals. All that Frere's warning did is prompt the warriors among his people to gather and mobilise. Cape Prime Minister, John Molteno refused to sanction any invasion of the Transkei when he heard that Frere had declared war on Sarhili. At a meeting between Molteno and Frere, the British Governor promised that imperial troops would stay put and not cross into Gcalekaland.

Episode 244 and Victorian popular fiction author H Rider Haggard features as one of the main characters of this tale. Rider Haggards' creation called Allan Quartermain appeared in 18 novels - the first in what has become known as is the Lost World genre. George Lucas and Philip Kaufman copied the Allan Quartermain template for Indiana Jones character - as well as the basic storylines for movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark. While King Solomon's Mines is Rider Haggard's most popular work, Allan Quartermain has since reappeared in movies in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which gave his books a bit of a push. His novels, which blended exploration, myth, and early ideas of evolution, also influenced the subconscious of his generation, resonating with spiritual and psychological themes that were explored by figures like Jung and Freud. Furthermore, his work reflects and grapples with late Victorian anxieties, including imperial politics, the changing role of religion, and burgeoning notions of race and empire. Right now, we're saddling up with Theophilus Shepstone in Pietermaritzburg - it's 1877. If you recall last episode, Transvaal President Burgers had gone to war against baPedi chief Sekhukhuni, which ended in a stalemate and reports of atrocities committed by German lead mercenaries. Burgers had already complained in England about their treatment of the Boer claims to the diamond fields - and the Colonial office had coughed up 90 000 pounds as compensation. You could call it a bribe, because that's what it was. The boers accepted the compensation, but did not back down on their claims to land in the vicinity of the Transvaal, including baPedi land. As long as the Transvaal remained receptive to the confederation idea at least in Carnarvon's mind, there was no real conflict to deal with amongst the local officials. But there was growing tension between an historian JJ Froude and Garnet Wolseley for example. Froude had been sent on a fact-finding mission to the colonies by Carnarvon and he became a surprising advocate for the Boers and the Free State and Transvaal Republics. His advice to Carnarvon was to let the states handle their own problems, as they resented interference from Downing Street. Cape Governor Sir Henry Barkly had been sending Carnarvon reports drawn largely from pro-annexationist newspapers in the Transvaal and the Cape Colony. These implied that the Transvaal was nearing a state of anarchy as a result of its war with the Sekukuni's baPedi. Eagerly lapping all this up was Sir Garnet Wolseley who was the very epitome of the Stiff upper lip Brit, a military officer and administrator, represented the opposite, more interventionist imperial view. In late December 1876, Sir Theophilus Shepstone departed from Pietermaritzburg in Natal with a small, almost symbolic, escort of just 25 Natal Mounted Police and a handful of officials including the young H Rider Haggard. Just as an aside, Haggard was not being paid for his duties as Shepstone's secretary. Work experience I guess you'd call it. However, Shepstone's secret instructions were far more decisive: if he deemed it necessary and opportune, he was to annex the territory to the British Crown. The Transvaal had no easy revenue base, and Shepstone introduced new taxes on both black and white Transvalers, while his administrative reforms chafed the Boers. Most resented they now had no elected representation under British rule and resistance started almost immediately.

By 1876 the Sotho, Tswana, Venda, Pedi, the amaXhosa had all managed to secure for themselves a fairly easy access to firearms. The Griqualand Diamond fields ignited what could be called a small arms race on the veld. There was supposedly an arms embargo on blacks instituted by the British government two decades before, but this was frequently broken. In the Cape colony and Griqualand west diamond fields, the trade in firearms depended on two technicalities. Importers of these weapons had to deposit a bond which indicated to whom they were going to sell the guns. Because the colonies used these bonds or tariffs which is probably a more accurate description, as a source of revenue, the procedure was applied creatively. The second technicality was that Africans needed a magistrates permit to buy guns. Because the demand for labour was so extreme particularly in the diamond fields, this permit system was ignored by most of the miners. The winter of 1876 settled hard across the Transvaal. At night, the frost lay white along the banks of the Steelpoort River, the cattle breath rising like smoke in the early dawn. By mid-morning the sun was sharp, the air brittle, and the mountains to the east seemed to shimmer in their haze. Shimmering today are the minerals mined here, chrome, platinum, vanadium. These are the Leolo mountains, bastion of the Pedi under King Sekhukhune I. Across the valleys his people had built stone-walled settlements, ringed with thorn stockades, their cattle kraals protected by rifle pits dug into the hillsides. To the south, in Pretoria, President Thomas François Burgers prepared his republic for war. He was no soldier—trained instead in theology, prone to long speeches, dressed in sombre black. But he was determined to show that the Transvaal could still assert itself after years of debt, political squabbling, and military vascillation. On 16 May 1876, the Volksraad declared war on Sekhukhune. The long-simmering contest between the Pedi and the Boer republic was about to reach a climax.The Pedi kingdom was no stranger to conflict. Under Sekwati, Sekhukhune's father, they had fought off repeated attacks during the mid-nineteenth century. Their stone fortresses had turned back Boer commandos in the 1840s and 1850s. Sekwati had once been besieged in Thaba Mosega, surviving by ingenuity, patience, and the determination of his people. Just a few weeks later came the episode that etched itself into Pedi memory. Johannes Dinkwanyane, half-brother of Sekhukhune led his people at the settlement of Mafolofolo. They were Christians, linked to missionary networks, yet fiercely loyal to Pedi sovereignty. In mid-July, Swazi forces allied to the Boers descended on Mafolofolo. The defenders fought desperately. After two days of fighting, Johannes was gravely wounded on 13 July and died three days later.By late August the war had collapsed into stalemate. President Burgers' grand promise of quick victory had evaporated among the ridges of the Leolo mountains. The commando had withdrawn, Fort Krugerpos was thrown up in haste, and burghers grumbled about lost time and wasted cattle. The republic was broke, its men unwilling, its president mocked. It was into this void that Conrad von Schlickmann arrived.

When we left off last episode amaHlubi chief Langalibalele and a few hundred warriors had sought shelter inside Basotholand, crossing the Drakensberg Mountains through Bushmans Pass in November 1873. When the British tried to send columns to corner him, one of the columns had been stopped by amaHlubi at the pass where five of the British troops had been killed, three young Natal Carbineers, a Basotho tracker and a translator. This event had shocked the settlers of Natal, and in response by Lieutenant Governor Chilly Pine began a campaign to destroy the amaHlubi and amaNgwe in their two locations, west of the town of where Mooi River is today. Pine declared Martial Law. Most of the amaNgwe and amaHlubi men fled, and the British rounded up women and children and the elderly. The women and children were placed in the charge of friendly chiefs in the up-country districts, while the old men were sent to Pietermarizburg to be kept under surveillance by other friendly black chiefs. On the 17th December, as a kind of afterthought, Pine followed this up with a declaration that all amaNgwe were now officially dispossessed of their land. The arbitrary killings of both clans continued mostly by the African levies, under the watchful eyes of colonial officers who appeared to be egging them on. Major Anthony Durnford, a professional soldier and engineer who'd been wounded by the amaHlubi during the battle of Bushman's Pass earlier in November was one of the few who spoke up against the bloodletting. “There have been sad sights …” he reported “…women and children butchered by our black allies too often unhappily by the permission and encouragement of the white leaders… old men too … the burnt villages — dead women … it was horrible.” Two columns of volunteers and African levies were now searching for Langalibalele. One headed to East Griqualand, while the other rode back to Bushman's Pass following the spoor left by the amaHlubi cattle. The amaHlubi warriors had taken all their cattle into Basotholand to join their chief. Natal authorities were offering a one pound reward per warrior captured, and 100 cattle for Langalibalele, dead or alive. The amaHlubi chief was deep in Basotholand, close to the Senqu river, the Orange, about fifty kilometres west of the Bushman River Pass. By early January several hundred men and about 7 000 cattle assembled under his command. He had no clear plan about what to do, his original idea was to escape from the British then ponder next steps. But now he was in Sotho territory, very much out of his depth. Boers in the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek and the Free State formed commandos and sent them to the borders in case Langalibalele showed up — or in case any of the chiefs that surrounded their territories decided to join in. Eastern Cape and Natal English farmers sent their women and children into towns, battening down their farm hatches. Their fears were heightened by the role that Basotholand was appearing to play. In the minds of the colonists, this mountain kingdom was thought of as the Central South African powder Magazine — a place no-one could control, full of guns now bought by workers on the diamond mines and farms. It was in the heartland of south Africa, annexed by the British in 1868, ruled by a new king Letsie who had succeeded Moshoeshoe. Although annexed to the Cape in 1871, it remained a highly unstable land in the minds of colonials. Langalibalele had no idea of all of this as he considered his next steps inside Basotholand. The British had also mobilised hundreds of troops who boarded the HMS Rattlesnake in Cape Town and were en route to bolster Natal while a large police force rode into Basotholand from the Cape's eastern Frontier region. IN East Griqualand, Adam Kok's Griqua also mobilised in support of the British. The amaHlubi chief eventually handed himself over to the Basotholand chief Molapo and was taken back to Pietermaritzburg for his trial.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with South African filmmaker, author, and activist Dr. Ernst Roets. They discuss the genetic and cultural hyper-diversity of Africa, the early settlement patterns of South Africa, the origin story of the Boers, how forgotten history breeds rhyming conflicts in the present, and the complex needle that must be threaded for shared prosperity. Dr. Ernst Roets is an Afrikaner activist, author and filmmaker from South Africa. He serves as Executive Director of the newly established Pioneer Initiative, which seeks to promote a more sustainable political dispensation for South Africa, based on the principles of decentralization and self-governance. Dr Roets is the leading expert on the topic of farm murders in South Africa. His book, Kill the Boer: Government Complicity in South Africa's Brutal Farm Murders is an international bestseller on Amazon. He is also the producer of several documentary films. He regularly appears in the media - both in South Africa and the international media - about issues relating to South Africa and he regularly speaks at international conferences, including CPAC and NatCon. He is a leading advocate for the protection of free speech and property rights in South Africa, and for farm murders to be regarded as a priority crime. This episode was filmed on March, 14th, 2025.  | Links | For Dr. Ernst Roets: On X https://x.com/ernstroets?lang=en On YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@ErnstRoets Read “Kill the Boer: Government Complicity in South Africa's Brutal Farm Murders” https://a.co/d/cMWyuMH