About the episode
In this podcast Ciara McCombe speaks to Professor Bernard Mbenga and Professor William Beinart about pre-colonial African states and settler colonialism in Southern Africa. Together they discuss why it is important to contextualise a study of modern South African history with a consideration of South Africa before colonisation, and how settler colonialism in Southern Africa fits into the global story of colonisation.
Podcast length: 53 min 56 sec
Use the Drop-down menu below to view the questions posed by Ciara McCombe to Professor Bernard K. Mbenga and Professor William Beinart in this episode.
Questions and Podcast Timings
00:00 Introduction
01:55 Why is it important to understand South Africa before Apartheid?
04:22 What would be traded between the pre-colonial kingdoms?
05:00 Why is it important to study the people before the Europeans settlers?
08:50 To what extent, if any, was language a dividing factor in pre-colonial South Africa?
11:05 What challenges might we find when studying pre-colonial South Africa?
15:01 What is the empty-land myth and why is it important to challenge it?
19:08 What does the term ‘Bantu speakers’ mean?
20:10 Can you tell us more about the Mapungubwe civilisation?
24:37 How was Southern Africa colonised and which countries colonised Southern Africa?
32:50 Can you tell us about the Anglo-Zulu war?
39:10 What is settler colonialism and what was it like for the people settling in South Africa?
42:48 What happened with the Anglo-Boer relationship during this time period?
”“The idea that Africa had no history prior to colonialism was very strongly challenged during the course of the political struggle on the continent. So you find that by the late 1950s a demand for decolonised African history with an African perspective had emerged in the new African universities.”
Prof Bernard K. Mbenga
The golden rhinoceros of Mapungubwe, ca 1220-1290.
Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
King Shaka c.1787-1828. Lithograph by W. Bagg, 1836
GL Archive / Alamy Stock Photo
Biography of Historians
William Beinart is Emeritus Professor at St Antony’s College and the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. He is author of Twentieth-Century South Africa (OUP, 2001) and The Scientific Imagination in South Africa (with Saul Dubow, CUP, 2021).
Bernard K. Mbenga is a historian at North-West University, South Africa, where he is a specialist in the history of the north-west of South Africa. He was one of the editors of the first volume of The Cambridge History of South Africa.
Further reading
- Richard Conyngham, All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa 1920-1948. A Graphic History (Catalyst: 2022)
- François-Xavier Fauvelle, The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages (Princeton University Press: 2018)
- Herman Giliomee, Bernard Mbenga and Bill Nasson, New History of South Africa (Tafelburg: 2022)
- Carolyn Hamilton, Bernard Mbenga and Robert Ross (eds.), The Cambridge History of South Africa, vol 1, From Early Times to 1885 (Cambridge University Press: 2009)
- Zakes Mda, The Sculptors of Mapungubwe (Seagull Books: 2018)
- Dan Wylie, Shaka (Jacana Media: 2011)
General further reading
- William Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa (Oxford University Press: 2001)
- William Beinart and Edward Teversham, ‘South Africa, 1948-1994: From Apartheid State to Rainbow Nation’ in Edexcel AS/A-Level History Textbook, Searching for Rights and Freedoms in the Twentieth-Century (Pearson Education: 2015)
- Steve Biko, I Write What I Like (Harper & Row: 1979)
- David Goldblattt, Fifty-one Years (ActarD inc: 2001)
- Connie Field, Have You Heard From Johannesburg (Clarity Films: 2010) Documentary Series
- Peter Hain, Sing the Beloved Country (Pluto Press: 1996)
- Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (Black Bay Books: 1995)
- Thula Simpson, History of South Africa from 1902 to the Present (C. Hurst & Co: 2022)
- Leonard Thompson and Lynn Berat, A History of South Africa (Yale University Press: 2014)
- Nigel Worden, The Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, Apartheid, Democracy (Wiley-Blackwell: 2011)
