Great Boer War

by Farwell, Byron,,

  The idea of sweeping up the inhabitants of entire districts and herding them into guarded camps was not new. Like the blockhouse system, the Spaniards had tried it in Cuba. In 1896 Don Valeriana Weyler y Nicolau, captain general of Cuba, had forced the inhabitants of the four westernmost provinces of the island into fortified areas where they died in great numbers of neglect, starvation, and disease. It is not known if Kitchener was aware of the Spanish reconcentrado system and its effects, but if he was it did not discourage him. Conan Doyle knew of it, but he protested that there was an “essential difference” in that “the guests of the British Government were all well fed and well treated during their detention.” There was to be considerable debate about this.

  Although a number of Boer families were brought into the concentration camps from certain districts soon after Kitchener’s memorandum was issued, the wholesale rounding up of women and children did not begin until after the meeting between Kitchener and Botha at Middelburg on 28 February 1901. This meeting was the first attempt on the part of the combatants to sit down together and seriously discuss peace terms, the first attempt by either side to find out what sort of terms each was prepared to accept.

  Botha later described his preparations for the meeting and his reception:

  We selected the best horses in our camp and applied a piece of soap to my own white stallion—a wasteful, profligate sort of thing to do, as soap is a rare luxury with us. But we wanted to look our best. Three miles outside the village we were met by a large military escort, and greeted with military honours.... Arrived at the British headquarters, Lord Kitchener came out to meet us, and offering me his arm, led me into a room.1

  Kitchener and Botha discussed a wide range of subjects and lodged protests with each other. Milner, who had been raised to the peerage, had recently been appointed administrator of the two new colonies; Botha protested the appointment and condemned the employment by the British of armed Bantu and Coloureds. Kitchener objected to the treatment given the Boer peace envoys he had sent and to the wearing of British uniforms by the fighting burghers. As to the peace terms, Botha asked that the legal debts of the republics, including IOUs issued by commandants of commandos, be honoured, that Dutch as well as English be taught in schools, that amnesty be granted for all bona fide acts of war and to the Cape rebels, that British financial assistance be given to rebuild and restock the farms, that prisoners of war be returned as soon as possible, and he asked for assurance that there would be no franchise for the Bantu. Most of all, Botha said, the Boers wanted their independence or, at least, early self-government.

  The meeting was friendly. The generals had a photograph taken together, Botha looking spruce in a tunic, riding breeches, boots, and a hat turned up on one side, Kitchener in khaki with a black arm band (Queen Victoria had died in January). Kitchener even taught Botha a new card game that was sweeping Britain: it was called bridge. Not even a translator (which he used) could dampen Botha’s charm, and Kitchener felt it and responded to it. In his report on the meeting he made a shrewd prophecy: “He will be, I should think, of valuable assistance to the future good of the country in an official capacity.” Afterwards, in a letter to Roberts he wrote:

  If the Government wish to end the war, I do not see any difficulty in doing so, but I think it will go on for some time if the points raised by Botha cannot be answered. I do not think Botha is likely to be unreasonable; there is a good deal of sentiment about it—particularly as regards giving up their independence, which they feel very much.2

  Kitchener, ever practical, thought that suitable peace terms could be worked out. But when the enemy begins to talk of peace the brutality of the soldier is replaced by the ruthlessness of the politician. Soldiers develop respect for a gallant foe; diplomats and politicians feel none of this; they want more than the defeat of the enemy’s armies; they want their enemies grovelling before them, stripped, humble, and helpless. The original aims of the war are forgotten in the determination (harboured by the most democratic of politicians) to crush completely and then dictate to a beaten foe. The words “unconditional surrender” spring more readily to the lips of the politician than to those of the soldier. As soon as Milner arrived on the scene the possibilities for peace vanished.

  Milner examined the list of Boer aspirations and agreed with none of them. He was as unwilling to compromise then as he had been at the Bloemfontein conference eighteen months earlier. And it was Milner’s uncompromising views that were accepted by Chamberlain and Salisbury. To take but one issue, the treatment of the Cape rebels, Milner was vindictive and insisted that they be treated as traitors; the Boers could not in honour turn their backs on these men who had helped them. Kitchener thought Milner’s intransigence was absurd, and in a letter to Broderick he said:

  I did all in my power to urge Milner to change his views, which seemed to me very narrow on the subject.... Milner’s views may be strictly just, but to my mind they are vindictive, and I do not know of a case in history where, under similar circumstances, an amnesty has not been granted.

  We are now carrying on the war to be able to put 2-3000 Dutchmen in prison at the end of it. It seems to me absurd, and I wonder the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not have a fit.3

  When word of the disagreement between Kitchener and the politicians leaked out, Lloyd George blamed Chamberlain: “There was a soldier, who knew what war meant; he strove to make peace. There was another man, who strolled among his orchids, 6000 miles from the deadly bark of the Mauser rifle. He stopped Kitchener’s peace!”4

  There was general disappointment in Britain that the Middelburg meeting failed to bring peace. Still, it is doubtful if Botha would have been able to persuade the other Boer leaders to accept terms even if he and Kitchener had been able to agree. Steyn was furious that Botha had even met with Kitchener. Independence was the basic issue for the Boers, and this the British would not agree to give. When Kitchener telegraphed the report of his meeting to London, Chamberlain was quick to reply that the British government “cannot take into consideration any proposals which have as basis the sanction of the independence of the former republics, which are now formally annexed to the British crown.”

  On one major issue, however, Kitchener was able to reassure Botha. The British had always advanced the protection they stood ready to extend to the rights of the Bantu and Coloureds as one reason their rule was preferable to that of the Boers. The Boers almost believed them and feared that Britain would go so far as to give them the vote, but Kitchener assured Botha that “it is not the intention of His Majesty’s Government to give such franchise before representative government is granted to these colonies, and if then given it will be so limited as to secure the just predominance of the white race.”5 So much for the rights of the blacks.

  There was another agreement of sorts reached at Middelburg. In essence this was that the women and children at the seat of war were not to be allowed to interfere with the fighting. This came about, it would appear, when Kitchener protested against the Boer practice of putting pressure on burghers who had surrendered and taken the oath of neutrality to rejoin commandos. Botha replied: “I am entitled by law to force every man to join, and if they do not do so, to confiscate their property and leave their families on the veld.”

  Kitchener tried to make a deal with Botha: he would spare the farms and families of burghers on commando if Botha would agree to leave in peace those who had surrendered or who wanted to remain neutral. Botha would not agree. The fate of tens of thousands of women and children was thus sealed.

  There was some correspondence on the subject after the conference, but the doom of thousands of innocents was pronounced when on 16 April 1901 Kitchener wrote Botha:

  As I informed your Honour at Middelburg, Owing to the irregular manner in which you have conducted and continue to conduct hostilities, by forcing unwilling and peaceful inhabitants to join your Commandos, a proceeding totally unauthorized by the recognized customs of war, I have no other cour
se open to me, and am forced to take the very unpleasant and repugnant steps of bringing in the women and children.6

  Neither Kitchener nor Botha foresaw all the consequences of their decisions. Neither could see that between them they had contrived the war’s greatest tragedy. “From the one side or the other it was clear that the Boer women with their little ones must suffer,” wrote Emily Hobhouse. “They were between the devil and the deep sea.”7

  They were indeed.

  Only a few Britons but all Afrikaners now have an historical remembrance of the concentration camps. The British view at the time was well expressed by W. Basil Worsfold: “Judged by the laws of war, they [the Boers] had been saved from the alternatives of physical annihilation or abject submission by the almost quixotic generosity of the enemy who fed and housed their non-combatant population.”8 Far from considering the British quixotically generous, the Boers saw the internment of the women and children as vindictive, a punishment meted out to the innocent because their men were fighting. State Secretary F. W. Reitz wrote a poem expressing the Afrikaner view—then and now:

  Lord Roberts burns our houses down;

  The women out he drives;

  He cannot overcome the men

  So he persecutes the wives.9

  And De Wet wrote:

  Any one knows that in war, cruelties more horrible than murder can take place, but that such direct and indirect murder should have been committed against defenceless women and children is a thing which I should have staked my head could never have happened in a war by the civilized English nation. And yet it happened.10

  Between December 1900 and February 1902 about 120,000 Boers, mostly women and children, were inmates of some fifty camps which ranged in size from 7,400 people in the Potchefstroom camp to the small Waterval North camp which contained two men, three women, and three children. There were also camps established for Bantu and Coloureds. The standards, discipline, and quality of life varied considerably from camp to camp depending upon a number of factors such as the capabilities of the camp superintendent, the location of the camp—its proximity to wood and water, its distance from a base or source of supplies—the date the camp was opened (later camps were usually better than earlier ones), and the functioning of the railway system, which the guerrillas constantly disrupted. There were well-run camps in good locations at Kimberley, Norval’s Pont, Johannesburg, and Krugersdorp; there were badly run and poorly situated camps at Aliwal North, Mafeking, Kroonstad, and Standerton. It is generally agreed that the worst camp was at Merebank. The death rates also varied considerably from camp to camp. In January 1902 the Potchefstroom camp had 7,126 inmates, of whom 35 died in that month; in the same month the camp at Bethulie, with only 4,088 inmates, had 139 deaths.

  The reaction to the camps by the inmates depended not only upon actual camp conditions but to a marked degree upon the status and quality of the people before they entered them. For some who had been bywoners (squatters or poor tenant farmers) or back-veld Boers, living conditions in the camps were sometimes better than anything they had previously known; for the families of prosperous farmers and town Boers the conditions seemed intolerable. Inmates’ attitudes also depended, of course, on the reasons for their being there. It made a difference whether they had actually sought British protection from their own countrymen, whether they had been forced by the farm burning to seek shelter and food at the camps, or whether they had been rounded up on the veld and put into the camps against their will.

  Men were paid for any work they did, usually from 3s to 8s per day, but at the Kimberley camp the men refused work offered by De Beers and would not even work around the camp or grow vegetables. The same was true at the Krugersdorp camp, where the superintendent tried to encourage men to work by offering “first-class rations” to those who did and “second-class rations” to those who did not: this was not a success, for on 31 July 1901 he reported that his daily issue was only 246 first-class rations and 2,692 second-class rations. At Potchefstroom, however, there were more men willing to work than there were jobs available.

  Paying Boers to work in the camps aroused some resentment. Corporal Murray Jackson wrote:

  They lived in a way that used to make the brutal soldier’s mouth water when he came into town after trekking. Our food in the Mounted Infantry was generally good enough, but we never had shelter.... These persecuted people, however, were living in roomy, cool marquees and were paid for doing things for themselves. Thus, if they wanted an oven to bake their bread in, the men made one and got paid for it. This I know for a fact in some camps.11

  The inmates of the camps were not totally confined and were generally free to leave for short periods, although rules varied in different locations. At Heidelberg people could go out only once a week, while at Pietermaritzburg they could leave camp every day from eight in the morning until six in the evening. Still, most found the confinement a hardship. Dr. T. N. Leslie at Vereeniging wrote in his diary: “The confinement to a camp of a people whose whole lives are spent isolated from the rest of the community.... who feel themselves crowded if another family should live within a mile of them ... is in itself the greatest hardship that they endure.”12

  In establishing the concentration camps the British authorities gave little thought to what they were doing or how they ought to go about doing it. They began by providing hospitable refuges and ended by herding people into semiprisons. They had no idea of the numbers of people they would have to provide for; they had only vague ideas concerning the equipment and services they would have to provide; and they seriously underestimated the problems involved. There was little advance planning; difficulties were solved only after they became apparent or pressing or could no longer be overlooked. Sites selected by the army with military security in mind were not always the most healthy locations for permanent camps.

  The British military mind also failed to take into account the emotions and states of mind of the women and children they uprooted. The officers responsible were, in fact, remarkably obtuse. To a soldier’s mind life in a settled camp did not appear to be a bad thing. The life of Boer women on the veld, alone on a farm with only her children and Bantu servants, miles from neighbours or towns, struggling to keep going while their men were gone, did not smack of the good life to the average Englishman, but it was the only existence most of the women had ever known; it was the life their mothers and grandmothers had led. They missed their men, but they could cope. The concerns, cares, and comforts of children, farm animals, crops, Bantu servants; the acquistion of possessions; the simple pleasures of farm life—all this provided an active, full life. It made a world where happiness could be found. For a woman to be possessed of all this one day and the next to see her treasured animals killed, her precious crops destroyed, and her house containing all she owned go up in flames, to be herded with others like cattle and carried off to the alien environment of a crowded camp with strangers pressing around her, to be guarded by and dependent upon the enemy who had destroyed the work of her and her husband’s lifetime, foreigners who did not even speak her language—all this was traumatic in the extreme.

  Camp life has its own rules that must be followed if those who live in camps are to remain healthy or reasonably comfortable, rules of which the Boer women were ignorant. It is no wonder that the bewildered, saddened, frightened women did not immediately adjust to this new life into which they were suddenly thrust, did not change at once their habits of a lifetime. But the authorities complained that the women did little to help themselves, that they did not at once cosily settle down to make themselves comfortable. It was a sad, depressing, unworthy insensitivity.

  The authorities could not plead ignorance of the conditions in the camps, for they were set forth in two Command Papers (No. 819, November 1901, and No. 853, December 1901). As first established, ten of them had no stores and the Command Papers reported that “these people are bare-footed and in rags.” At the Bloemfontein camp, “The children are mostly not
well or warmly clad. There was a shortage of boys’ clothing and materials for shirts. Boots are very badly wanted.” At Potchefstroom, the largest camp, there were no tents and the “refugees” had to be housed in crude reed huts. In Johannesburg families were put in stables and had to hang up blankets for privacy. At Irene water was drawn from an open ditch in which cattle and sheep often strayed. At Middelburg some families had only one blanket each and hundreds of children were without shoes. Here too a measles epidemic was followed by an influenza epidemic and there were no isolation wards; a shortage of coffins necessitated burying children in packing cases. In November 1901 there were no qualified nurses at the Orange River Station. Some of the doctors in the camps were foreigners who could speak little English and no Dutch or Afrikaans.

  Although there were a few camps in Natal and Cape Colony, most were in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. In retrospect it seems extraordinary that all the camps were not established outside the theatre of war at locations where they could more easily be maintained and supplied. The reason given for keeping them in the war zone was that the inmates wanted to remain in their own districts. This was probably true, but it added to the difficulties of the British and to the hardships of the inmates. New camps were opened only when their need became obvious, and the absence of forethought continued as long as the camps remained under military control. Kitchener had suggested that all of the inmates be transported and settled somewhere outside South Africa—then “there will be room for the British to colonize”—but this idea did not find favour with the politicians.