Qualla: Upingtonia https://qualla.com/upingtonia en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:26 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Upingtonia https://qualla.com/upingtonia Upingtonia: Introduction https://qualla.com/upingtonia/ The price of a country, in 1885, came to twenty-five firearms, one salted horse, and a cask of brandy. That was what William Worthington Jordan paid the Ondonga chief Kambonde ka Mpingana for fifty thousand square kilometers of northern Namibia - a stretch of bush and pan running some 170 kilometers from Okaukuejo in the west to Fischer's Pan in the east. On that ground a band of weary Boer trekkers declared a republic. They named it Upingtonia, after a Cape politician they hoped would back them. He didn't. Within two years the republic was gone, its founder murdered, its name a footnote. But for a moment, there was a Boer state at the edge of the Kalahari, and its short, strange life is one of the odder episodes in southern Africa's colonial scramble.

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/k/s/b/upingtonia-wp/kksb-upingtonia-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Upingtonia: The Thirstland Trekkers https://qualla.com/upingtonia/ These were the survivors of one of the hardest migrations in Boer history. Beginning in the 1870s, families had loaded their wagons in the Transvaal and struck out across the Kalahari for southern Angola - the Dorsland or "Thirstland" Trek, a name earned in the bodies it cost cro...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/k/s/b/upingtonia-wp/kksb-upingtonia-the-thirstland-trekkers.mp3 0:06 2 full Upingtonia: The Man Who Sold Them the Land https://qualla.com/upingtonia/ William Worthington Jordan was the unlikely broker at the center of it all - a trader and adventurer who had positioned himself between the Boers and the Ondonga kingdom. His purchase from Kambonde was not a simple land deal but a move in a dynastic struggle. Kambonde wanted Jord...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/k/s/b/upingtonia-wp/kksb-upingtonia-the-man-who-sold-them-the-land.mp3 0:06 3 full Upingtonia: A Republic That Renamed Itself in Despair https://qualla.com/upingtonia/ The Republic of Upingtonia was declared on 20 October 1885, with Grootfontein as its capital and George Diederik P. Prinsloo as its president. The name was a bet: Thomas Upington, premier of the Cape Colony, was the patron the trekkers hoped would lend protection and legitimacy. ...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/k/s/b/upingtonia-wp/kksb-upingtonia-a-republic-that-renamed-itself-in-despair.mp3 0:06 4 full Upingtonia: Murder and Absorption https://qualla.com/upingtonia/ The end came through the rivalry Jordan had meddled in. In June 1886, Nehale lyaMpingana - the brother Kambonde had wanted defeated - had Jordan killed. With the man who had bought the land and brokered every alliance suddenly dead, the republic lost its keystone. Dependent on Ge...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/k/s/b/upingtonia-wp/kksb-upingtonia-murder-and-absorption.mp3 0:06 5 full