The Boer War Read online

  First published in 2012 by Athenaeum – Polak & Van Gennep, Singel 262, 1016 AC Amsterdam, Netherlands

  First published in English by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd in 2015

  First Seven Stories Press edition January 2018.

  Text © Martin Bossenbroek 2012

  Translated into English by Yvette Rosenberg

  This book is published with the support of the Dutch Foundation for Literature.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, writing or recording, or through any other system for the storage or retrieval of information without the written permission of the publisher.

  Seven Stories Press

  140 Watts Street

  New York, NY 10013

  www.sevenstories.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Bossenbroek, M. P., author. | Rosenberg, Yvette, translator.

  Title: The Boer War / Martin Bossenbroek ; translated by Yvette Rosenberg.

  Other titles: Boerenoorlog. English.

  Description: Seven Stories Press first edition. | New York ; Oakland : Seven

  Stories Press, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017001137 (print) | LCCN 2017002436 (ebook) | ISBN

  9781609807474 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781609807481 (Ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: South African War, 1899-1902. | Leyds, Willem Johannes,

  1859-1940. | Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965. | Reitz, Deneys, 1882-1944.

  Classification: LCC DT1896 B6713 2017 (print) | LCC DT1896 (ebook) |

  DDC

  968.048--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017001137

  Printed in the USA.

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  Prologue – Heritage Day

  Bloemfontein, 24 September 2011

  Part I – For a good cause

  June 1884 – October 1899

  An extraordinary meeting (Amsterdam, June 1884)

  For thou art dust (Pretoria, October 1884)

  Hunger for land (Veertienstroom, January 1885)

  Gold (Johannesburg, January 1887)

  Concessions (Pretoria, June 1887)

  Boers and Hollanders, love and hate (Amsterdam, November 1889)

  Rhodes & Company (Pretoria, July 1892)

  Lifeline (Lourenço Marques, July 1895)

  To arms (Berlin, January 1896)

  Diamond Jubilee (London, May 1897)

  A parting of ways (Pretoria, February 1898)

  Last chances (Atlantic Ocean, January 1899)

  Part II – Like a boys’ adventure story

  October 1899 – June 1900

  Rule, Britannia! (Southampton, 14 October 1899)

  War on four fronts (Cape Town, 31 October 1899)

  A hail of bullets (Chieveley, 15 November 1899)

  The rules of warfare (Pretoria, 18 November 1899)

  The abandoned mine (Witbank, 15 December 1899)

  A warm welcome (Durban, 23 December 1899)

  Blind spot (Spion Kop, 24 January 1900)

  Breakthrough (Monte Cristo, 18 February 1900)

  Fever (Ladysmith, 3 March 1900)

  Columns on the move (Bloemfontein, 16 April 1900)

  Colour (Kroonstad, 12 May 1900)

  Victory (Pretoria, 5 June 1900)

  Part III – Death and destruction

  June 1900 – May 1902

  Adrift (Pretoria, June 1900)

  Flushing out the foe (Bronkhorstspruit, July 1900)

  His own way (Lydenburg, October 1900)

  Foreign territory (Warmbaths, November 1900)

  Guilty landscape (Naauwpoort, December 1900)

  Dead horse (Ou Wapad, February 1901)

  Winter of famine (Tafelkop, April 1901)

  Banished for life (Zastron, August 1901)

  Black death (Herschel, September 1901)

  Foray (Suurberg, October 1901)

  Retaliation (Leliefontein, March 1902)

  The bitter end (Concordia, April 1902)

  Epilogue – Winners and losers

  Bloemfontein, 6 July 2012

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Prologue

  Heritage Day

  Bloemfontein, 24 September 2011

  If there is any place where the memory of the Boer War is kept alive, it is in Bloemfontein, the seat of South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal. This is where both the National Party and the African National Congress (ANC) were conceived, though there is little to see that recalls either of those historic events. But the city does have a worthy memorial to the war fought by the former Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State against Great Britain in 1899–1902. It consists of a monument and a museum standing side by side in a large park.

  Understandably, no one wants to remember Bloemfontein as the place where the seeds of the reviled apartheid system were sown. In 1914, however, it saw the establishment of the National Party, which came to power in 1948 with an official policy of racial segregation. The embodiment of white supremacy is not something to be commemorated or inscribed in stone.

  The founding of the ANC is a different matter. Originally the South African Native National Congress, the ANC was established on 8 January 1912, two years before the National Party, in a small church near the railway station in Fort Street. It took power from the white regime in 1994 and has governed the country ever since. The church in which it first saw the light of day is now a liberation heritage site. Like Nelson Mandela’s prison cell on Robben Island, it has become a cultural and historical memorial to African nationalism.

  At least, that was the plan, but it hasn’t yet materialised. For years, no one had given the building a second glance. It was only recently rediscovered in the run-up to the ANC’s centennial celebrations. The problem, however, is that the church is currently being used for a different purpose. It is a panel-beating workshop and appears to be doing a good trade. The yard is littered with car wrecks and waste. Time is running out. The owner knows what his property is worth, but in spite of that ANC spokesmen are confident that he’ll be moving out soon and that the building will be restored to its original state by 8 January 2012.1

  Time isn’t an issue in Monument Road, just a few kilometres away. The two structures dedicated to the Boer War have stood there for decades. The Bauhaus-style museum dates from 1931. The monument is a towering obelisk, 35 metres tall. Unveiled in 1913, it is nearly as old as the ANC.

  The park they stand in is an oasis of peace, with manicured lawns and rustling trees. Even so, it has a boom at the entrance and observes opening hours. Time seems to have stood still. A stroll through the grounds strengthens this impression. The entire park is a memorial site, in 1950s style, just as it was meant to be. There are statues, guns and railway carriages, a wall of remembrance and a group of sculptures at the foot of the obelisk, all telling the story of the struggle and suffering of the Boer nation in their Second War of Liberation. For that is what they themselves called the war they fought against the British after an earlier conflict in 1880–81.

  It is the story of two insignificant Boer republics forced into war by the imperialist superpower Great Britain. Surprised and exasperated by their successful resistance, first in conventional combat and later in a protracted guerrilla war, the British commanders resorted to a campaign of terror against the civilian population. As a result, the Boers became victims of persecution as well as heroes. This is the narrative the park conveys.

  Three sculptures symbolise different stages of the war. Farewell 11-10-1899 represents a militant young Boer leaving for the front at the outbreak of war. The Exile depicts a man and his grandson at t
he railing of a ship, representing the thousands of Boer prisoners of war whom the British sent to camps overseas. The Diehard 31 May 1902 illustrates the plight of the surviving commandos at the end of the war. It shows a battle-weary Boer on an emaciated horse, exhausted from years of hardship and deprivation, but with head held high.

  These are the memories preserved here. It is the story of David and Goliath, except that this David was forced to surrender under the pressure of unendurable suffering. This is expressed on the circular plinth on which the column rests. An inscription between the sculptures and the plaques reads: ‘This National Monument has been erected in commemoration of the 26,370 women and children who died in the concentration camps as well as other women and children who succumbed elsewhere as a result of the war of 1899–1902. Unveiled on 16th December 1913.’

  Visitors today might be misled by the inscription. Since the Second World War the term ‘concentration camps’ has been associated with the Nazis’ systematic murder of the Jews, but that is not what it meant in 1913. In the light of what we know today, it would be more accurate to call the British camps ‘internment camps’, because that is what they were. And they were massive.

  Commander-in-Chief Lord Roberts and his successor, Lord Kitchener, hoped that removing the civilian population from the war zone would force the Boer commandos to surrender. Some 115,000 people, mostly women and children, were rounded up and incarcerated in appalling conditions, where almost a quarter of them, mainly children, perished. The population of the two Boer republics was decimated.

  The National Women’s Memorial—its official name—depicts the suffering of the Boer nation, and shows why the Boers were unable to keep up the fight. But it also alludes to heroism: the monument is dedicated to ‘our heroines and beloved children’. Beneath the inscription is a quotation from the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Thy will be done’, four words that encapsulate the Boers’ unwavering belief in divine predestination. Five tombs that were later incorporated into the monument also allude to heroism and martyrdom. Here lie the remains of Emily Hobhouse, the British activist who exposed the cruelty and injustice of the camps, along with those of the president of the Orange Free State, Marthinus Steyn, the ultimate diehard, and his wife Tibbie. Beside them are the graves of the commandos’ spiritual mentor, ‘Father’ Kestell, and the legendary Boer general Christiaan de Wet.2

  This romantic image of the Boers as tragic heroes will be familiar to an older generation of Dutch readers. It lingered on in the collective memory of the Dutch long after the Second World War. Those who grew up with books by L. Penning will recall works like De verkenner van Christiaan de Wet (Christiaan de Wet’s Scout), one of five volumes in the famous Wessels series, originally published between 1900 and 1904 and reprinted until the 1970s. The Boers in Penning’s books were tough, intrepid pioneers, people who feared God but didn’t flinch in the face of ‘bloodthirsty kaffirs’ or ‘wild animals’. Men with beards. With a psalm on their lips and a loaded rifle in their hands, they threw themselves into battle defending a righteous cause against a numerically superior force of treacherous Rednecks. Generations of Dutch youngsters revelled in the unequal but heroic struggle. Good against evil. The Boer War.

  The adventures of Penning’s protagonists, Field Cornet Louis Wessels and his trusty companion Blikoortje were an empathetic blend of fact and fiction. Penning had never actually seen the world he was describing, but neither had his German contemporary Karl May, who created Winnetou and Old Shatterhand without having set foot in the Wild West. Penning, however, had access to reams of documentation. When he started his Wessels series the whole of the Netherlands was riveted by the unfolding story of the Boers. Everyone supported the liberation struggle of their two beleaguered republics and followed their progress day by day. Information was readily available in the early stages, before communications with the Transvaal and the Orange Free State were severed, and there were eyewitness reports in abundance for Penning to consult.

  The entire European continent sided with the Boers, but nowhere was their support more emotionally charged than in the Netherlands, where the war rekindled the nation’s awareness of its blood ties with the Boers. Until the late nineteenth century, the Dutch had barely given a thought to their cousins on the faraway southern tip of Africa. Most of the Boers, or Afrikaners, were descendants of Dutch colonists who had settled there after Jan van Riebeeck’s arrival at the Cape in 1652. The Dutch back in Europe, rather than feeling any affinity with them, were disdainful of their archaic ideas and lifestyle.

  All of that changed dramatically when the Boers rose up successfully against British rule—first in 1880–81 and subsequently in the war that began on 11 October 1899 and lasted longer than anyone had expected. Suddenly the Dutch discovered their ties with the Boers, descendants of the same heroic tribe, with the same ancient blood flowing through their veins. The Boers were embraced like prodigal sons, all the more passionately to make up for lost time. Their fond welcome into the family circle created bonds of solidarity. Every right-minded Dutchman identified with their valiant struggle, from young Queen Wilhelmina down to her lowliest subject, from the Protestant centre of the country to the Catholic south and the liberal north. The Dutch began to dream of a new Netherlands under the Southern Cross.

  The rise of militant nationalism in the Netherlands around the turn of the century strengthened this sense of shared identity. After decades of struggle, the Dutch colonial army had finally managed to bring the East Indies archipelago under control. Lombok and Atjeh had recently become names spoken of with pride instead of shame, and soon afterwards they started appearing as street names in the Netherlands. The Netherlands’ success in the East Indies was infectious and fostered a taste for more. In this context, the Boers’ armed conflict in the name of a ‘righteous’ cause won admiration and support. Alongside Indonesian neighbourhoods, ‘Transvaal’ neighbourhoods now sprang up in many Dutch cities, with streets named after ‘Oom’ (Uncle) Paul Kruger, Louis Botha and many others, including of course Steyn and De Wet.

  But there was one crucial difference. In the East Indies the Dutch were in a position to act independently, which they did—with an iron fist. Within a few years Dutch rule was firmly established throughout the archipelago. There, they could rightly speak of ‘our East Indies’. But South Africa was a different matter. From the start, they had applauded from the sidelines but not actually taken part. The glory they were basking in wasn’t their own. The Dutch were quick to offer their services as volunteers, or support the Boer cause in other ways, but as a country the Netherlands was powerless. It was unwilling—because of the East Indies—to incur the wrath of Great Britain, which still ruled the seven seas.

  When the tide of war turned against the Boers their defeat was inevitable. Nothing and no one could prevent it. Even the Great Powers balked at the thought of antagonising almighty Britain. The effect was sobering. The dream was over. The Netherlands’ infatuation with the Boers fizzled out as abruptly as it had flared up. After the war, a small core of faithful supporters continued to take an interest in the fortunes of the Boers, but for the Dutch as a whole they slipped back into the mists of history. The Boer heroes lived on only in adventure stories for boys and in street names, except for those that have since been renamed to honour a new generation, like Steve Biko and Nelson Mandela.3

  Although the memorial park in Bloemfontein may look like a relic of bygone times, the museum itself has a surprise in store. Here, time has moved on, at least in some parts of the building. The first sign of this is startling. Two objects dominate the entrance hall. One is an original harmonium, once the pride of every Boer home, around which the family would gather for their daily psalms. It was also a familiar feature of the living rooms of orthodox Dutch Protestants well into the twentieth century. Directly above the harmonium is its incongruous counterpart in modern domestic life: a wide-screen television set, with a slide presentation of what the museum has to offer. A sudden glimpse into the modern ag
e.

  For anything more of this kind, the visitor has to be patient. The route starts off in exhibition halls named after well-known Boer leaders—Steyn and De Wet, Kruger, Botha, and Koos de la Rey, ‘the lion of the Western Transvaal’—which still appear to be in their original state. The room on ‘concentration camps’ is named after Emily Hobhouse, corresponding to the scheme outdoors. So far, nothing new. The same applies to the display, where the maxim seems to be the more the better. The inscriptions are in Afrikaans and English. The strains of Bach accompany us from room to room. The whole arrangement is a wonderful time capsule of the 1950s.

  Then at last comes the surprise: the Sol Plaatje Room, named after the only black South African known to have kept a diary of the Boer War, in Mafeking during the siege by the Boers. Plaatje was also one of the founding members of the ANC in 1912. He was a good choice as the symbol of a historical truth which only came to light in the 1980s. The Boer War may have started as a white man’s war, but it wasn’t only whites who were involved in the hostilities. The indigenous African and coloured populations (in South Africa, the term ‘coloured’ became a way to classify people of mixed-race descent), along with immigrants from British India, were also caught up in the conflict, actively and passively, as participants and as victims. As it progressed, the war increasingly became a struggle between the Boers, the British and the African and coloured communities.

  This discovery was revealed in 1983 in a book by Peter Warwick. Black People and the South African War 1899–1902 was an eye-opener. Warwick describes how the African and coloured communities were caught up in the war, which he consequently renamed the South African War.

  In the first place, Warwick explains, the Boer commandos employed between 7000 and 9000 African and coloured servants to ride with them, known in Afrikaans as agterryers. The British, too, used unarmed Africans and coloureds to perform chores of all kinds. In the guerrilla stage of the war the number of blacks employed by the Boers fell dramatically, while their counterparts on the British side increased at the same rate. Moreover, the British started engaging large numbers of African and coloured paramilitaries as couriers, scouts and guards. They also started arming them and deploying them in active combat. Towards the end of the war an estimated 30,000 armed blacks were in British service. To put this in perspective, the entire British army comprised roughly 250,000 men. The number of Boer commandos who were still active had declined from 60,000 to 15,000.