Why I tell History the way I do
People often ask me what drew me to history. The truth is I grew up here on a pineapple farm. I played on these lands with my amaXhosa friends, learning the languages of English, Xhosa and Afrikaans. I lived the integration of the cultures here. It ignited a passion for the stories of my world and this valley I call home.
To understand what happened here, we first need to understand the land itself
The more time I spent exploring and listening to the stories attached to particular places, the more I realised that this region can’t be understood through a ‘normal’ view of history. History basically told as a sequence of events. A battle happened here. A treaty was signed there. A leader rose to prominence. A government passed a law. It is such a dry window to explore history with. And I have come to see how they are only part of the story.
To understand what happened here, we first need to understand the land itself. Long before settlers arrived. Long before colonial boundaries were drawn. Long before the Frontier Wars. People were responding to the realities of climate, geography, water, grazing, drought, and opportunity. The land decided first.
For tens of thousands of years, people adapted to changing environmental conditions. Communities moved, settled, hunted, herded livestock, traded, and built relationships with the landscape around them. Every generation inherited opportunities and challenges shaped by the natural world.
When I look at history, I don’t separate people from the environment that influenced their choices. That is why I often begin a story in a place where many history books do not.
I am interested in why people moved where they did. Why settlements emerged in particular places. Why conflict happened in some places and not others. Why some communities prospered while others struggled.
The Eastern Cape is one of the most fascinating places in South Africa because it has always been a meeting place. For thousands of years it has been a place of movement and interaction. San hunter-gatherers, Khoi pastoralists, amaXhosa communities, European settlers, missionaries, traders, soldiers, immigrants, and countless others all became part of the story.
Yet the history of the region is often reduced to simple categories and opposing sides. The reality was rarely that straightforward.
Complexity is what makes this region compelling
The reality on the ground was often much messier and more interesting than the labels we use today. People traded with one another, worked together, competed for resources, formed alliances, and married across cultural boundaries. Over generations they created communities and identities that didn’t fit neatly into any neat box. That complexity is what makes the Eastern Cape so compelling, so interesting to explore.
History through a different lens
It is also why I find myself looking at history differently. I am less interested in presenting heroes and villains than I am in understanding people. History becomes far richer when we ask why individuals made the choices they did, what circumstances shaped those decisions, and how they experienced the events unfolding around them. This perspective has become even more meaningful through my research into my own family history, where I discovered connections that stretch across many of the communities that helped shape South Africa. What I found reinforced how interconnected we are, more than we often realise. The deeper we look, the harder it becomes to separate “their story” from “our story.”
Perhaps that is why I enjoy taking people into the landscape itself. A book can tell you what happened. A document can tell you when it happened. But standing where it happened changes you. Standing on the ground of history, you find yourself asking different questions.
Why here?
Why this valley?
Why this river crossing?
Why this mountain pass?
Something interesting happens when you walk the ground where history unfolded. You begin to see that history isn’t just about what happened, it’s about why it happened here. That relationship is at the heart of everything I do.
Whether I am leading a tour, presenting a talk, researching a family story, or writing about climate and settlement, I am ultimately exploring the same question: how did people and landscape shape one another?
The Eastern Cape demands this broader perspective because it has never been a simple place. It is a region of extraordinary beauty, remarkable resilience, and layered human stories that stretch back tens of thousands of years.
Its history cannot be understood through a single lens. And perhaps that is why I continue to be fascinated by it. The more I learn, the more I discover that history is not simply something that happened here. It is something the landscape still remembers.
Did you know that the mounting pressure from colonial expansion was resisted by the Xhosa people for over 100 years?
This put these proud and persistent people at the forefront of African resistance – underlining their prominence in South African politics today.