Transvaal

So his politics ideology was in line with Frevoot directly, and they were very close.

In Transvaal, I think he had massive support within the party.

That when Frevoot was assassinated, there was no one really challenging him in the party itself.

uh his uh politics is shaped by um all what we know 1910 the union itself and and and and then um africana nationalism um we're really wanting to um control the country and as well as at a time when the global didn't have much support, but the Cold War, one way or another, brought that support.

These days it's all about the National Union of Mine Workers and others, allied to various political parties, the home of anti-capitalist sentiment.

but radical white marxists threatened johannesburg's capitalists repeatedly particularly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century starting in the diamond fields then barberton and johannesburg new identities were being forged by the discovery of valuable resources new identities which transformed south africa In the early days, before gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand, the site Afrikaanse Republik slash Transvaal was regarded as a poor cousin even of the Orange Free State.

Endless poverty wracked the region.

It could not collect any taxes of value and its citizens, the people of the Transvaal, were rebels, frontiersmen, almost impossible to control.

The Transvaal had been annexed by the British, then fought their first war of independence against the Empire and won.

Natal's English residents had delighted in the annexation at first, and now delighted in the discovery of gold.

Like Rhodes, these residents shifted allegiances from the empire to settler logic back to empire.

The mixture of people and politics was almost unending.

It's the 11th of October, 1899, and the British Empire has just gone to war against an ostensibly tiny enemy.

Britain had the world's most powerful navy and a large army boasting troops from around the globe, while the Boer republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State had a smaller population than many British cities.

18 years earlier, Britain had been forced to negotiate a peace after the First Boer War, and now, by 1902, three years into the second, they were still fighting a battle that they were struggling to finish.

Eventually, with the help of some controversial tactics, the Empire did come out victorious, with the Boer states becoming British possessions, and in 1910, the Union of South Africa would be formed.

Now, the Dutch settlers in Cape Colony and Natal, not all of them are happy being British.

And so you end up with voortrekkers, they're called.

They're people who take their wagons, they take their families, and essentially they go into Transvaal.

They go across the River Vaal and they set up the Orange Free State.

This was before South Africa was South Africa.

So it was the place where he was living was the Transvaal.

And through a series of events, he wound up studying with his naturalist background.

He lived with a troop of baboons, of Chacmo baboons, and was fascinated by them.

Africa.

Transvaal.

The total output of gold for November was 201,113 ounces, as compared with an output of 195,218 ounces in November 1895.

Madagascar.

I understood the reason.

Gold had been discovered in the Transvaal, and thousands upon thousands were coming from every quarter of the globe in anticipation of getting some of this metal.

And what is there about gold that cause people to go such vast distances and bear many hardships and even risks their lives in desperate efforts to obtain it? Is there more real value to gold than other metals? Not at all.

There is no more intrinsic value to gold than brass.

Okay, so it was obviously the Second Boer War.

Gold had been discovered in the Transvaal.

And the British were quite happy to let the Boers kind of live in the Transvaal.

They wanted the coast, really, their empire.

But when gold was discovered...