Podcast
The Story of South Africa: Empire, Apartheid, and Transformation — Fexingo History
Episodes
The Cape Corps: South Africa's Forgotten SoldiersIn Episode 218 of The Story of South Africa, we explore the Cape Corps, the segregated military unit of Coloured South Africans who served in both World Wars. From the battlefields…
- The 1960 Sharpeville Massacre: A Turning Point
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the Sharpeville massacre of March 21, 1960, a pivotal moment in South African history. They trace the events leading up to the protest again…
- The 1956 Women's March: Pretoria's Silent Protest
In August 1956, 20,000 women of all races converged on the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest the extension of pass laws to African women. Led by Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Ra…
- The 1955 Kliptown Congress: Freedom Charter's Radical Vision
In June 1955, 3,000 South Africans of every race gathered in a dusty township outside Johannesburg to adopt a document that would shape the anti-apartheid movement for decades: the…
- Women's Anti-Pass Protests in 1919: Defiance Before Apartheid
Before the famous 1956 march, Black South African women mounted a fierce but largely forgotten campaign against the pass laws. This episode follows the 1919 anti-pass protests in B…
- The 1956 Women's March to Pretoria
In 1956, 20,000 women marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest the pass laws that would have forced them to carry reference books. This episode tells the story of that…
- The 1948 Election: How Apartheid Won South Africa
In 1948, South Africa held an election that would shape the country for decades. The National Party, led by D.F. Malan, won on a platform of apartheid — a term newly coined and agg…
- The 1946 Mine Strike: Black Labour and the Cracks Before Apartheid
In 1946, 70,000 Black mineworkers on the Witwatersrand walked off the job, demanding higher wages and the right to organise. It was the largest strike in South African history up t…
- Emily Hobhouse's Second Mission: The 1903 War After the War
In 1903, two years after the Treaty of Vereeniging, Emily Hobhouse returned to South Africa to face the wreckage of the Boer War's concentration camps. The British had burned farms…
- The St Helena Prisoners: South Africa's Island Exiles
After the Anglo-Boer War, thousands of Boer prisoners were shipped from South Africa to the remote Atlantic island of St Helena, where they lived in tented camps for nearly three y…
- The War of Words: Afrikaner Nationalism and the Development of Apartheid, 1933-1948
In this episode, Lucas and Luna trace the intellectual and political roots of apartheid, focusing on the rise of Afrikaner nationalism from the 1930s through the 1948 elections. Th…
- The Boer War Concentration Camps: Emily Hobhouse's Crusade
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the concentration camps of the Second Boer War (1899–1902), where over 26,000 Boer women and children and more than 20,000 Black Africans di…
- The 1913 Land Act's First Protest: The African National Congress's 1914 Deputation
Just months after the 1913 Natives Land Act stripped Black South Africans of land rights, a delegation of African leaders boarded a ship to London to plead their case before the Br…
- The 1918 Flu's Forgotten Legacy in South Africa's Townships
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the devastating impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic on South Africa, focusing on the often-overlooked story of the Witwatersrand's mining…
- The 1918 Flu in South Africa: Hidden Toll of a Global Pandemic
In 1918, the Spanish flu swept through South Africa, killing over 300,000 people in six weeks. This episode looks at how the pandemic spread along the Witwatersrand's mining networ…
- The 1918 Flu in South Africa: Pandemic's Hidden Toll
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the devastating impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic on South Africa, a story often overshadowed by the Great War. They trace how the disea…
- The 1913 Land Act's Legacy: African Women's Resistance
Episode 202 of The Story of South Africa turns to a largely overlooked chapter in the struggle for land and dignity: the organized resistance of African women in the wake of the 19…
- The 1914 Rebellion: South Africa's Afrikaner Civil War
In 1914, as Europe plunged into war, South Africa faced its own internal crisis. Boer generals who had fought the British just a dozen years earlier now rose against their own gove…
- Diamonds, De Beers, and the Mineral Revolution
In this milestone 200th episode, Lucas and Luna return to the story of South Africa after the discovery of diamonds near the Orange River in 1867. They explore how the diamond rush…
- The Cape Town Water Crisis: Apartheid's Aftermath and Climate
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the Cape Town water crisis of 2015–2018, placing it in the long shadow of apartheid's spatial planning and infrastructural neglect. They dis…
