Fortunately, they had assistants to lighten the load. ‘Those kaffirs make life much easier.’ They did the cleaning and the fetching and carrying—a good thing too, as the actual nursing occupied all their time. Many of the patients in the surgery ward, where Hellemans was assigned, were seriously injured. One Boer had ‘eleven wounds, caused by a bomb that went off’ and another ‘a bullet wound to the right temple, as large as a five-cent coin’. He also had a small swelling on the left side of his forehead and complained of headaches. When they operated they found a bullet, all right, buried five centimetres deep. A week after it was removed the man was up and walking about. He was ‘a rare example of how tough the Boers are’.
Hellemans and her team were happy with their work but the British advance soon had an impact on them as well. It grew quieter, which in the circumstances didn’t bode well. In the middle of May the Boers began to retreat. This meant they would have to evacuate the patients who were well enough to be moved as quickly as possible to prevent them from falling into the hands of the British. They managed in good time. Brother E. Meuleman took them to Klerksdorp in a special double-decker ambulance. The rest of the Dutch team would follow later.
Now that the Boer commandos had gone, those left behind spent a sleepless night. They assembled their belongings in the hospital grounds where they could keep an eye on them, and took turns looking after their patients. They didn’t know who to fear most, ‘the advancing British or … the kaffirs. We were equally afraid of both.’ Their worries weren’t over when the British actually invaded Christiana—without harming anything or anyone—and subsequently ‘abandoned it to its fate’ again. There was no garrison, but from now on British law was in force, which meant—so they believed—‘the kaffirs’ would be free to do as they pleased. The Africans may have been ‘a great convenience’ under the harsh Boer regime, but under British law they had ‘the same rights as a white person’. However, as they were ‘not yet civilised, the dramatic change in their status leads to excesses . . . they forget their place and take liberties, and they’re cheeky even to those who used to be their superiors’. And when they drank whiskey, which the British gave them ‘in abundance . . . they become murderous’.
No wonder the Dutch medics had trouble sleeping that first night. But all went well, and the following morning ‘at the breakfast table Doctor P [Pino] congratulated me on the way things had turned out’. There had been some plundering but only from unoccupied buildings. Their fears had proved unfounded. They stopped keeping guard at night and gradually the days grew ‘quiet, even monotonous’. When their remaining black servants—most had fled—stepped out of line, Hellemans was merely amused. ‘The kitchenboy was the funniest and the cheekiest.’ He even proposed—would you believe!—‘to one of the maids’, a Boer girl, for heaven’s sake.94
Colour was one of the main stumbling blocks when the two worlds collided. Boers and Britons held different views on the matter of race, at least in theory. The Boers scoffed at their opponents’ professed belief in equality. In God’s immutable creation black people were inferior and destined to serve whites. It was fine for black and white children to play together, but as adults their ways parted irrevocably. Relationships between them were sharply defined, in war as in peacetime: master–servant, supervisor– labourer, fighter–agterryer.
The British were more ambivalent. They believed in political rights for Uitlanders and some political rights for Africans. But in practice things were more difficult. Zealous as they were in their efforts to convert the Boers to their modern ideas, the British themselves weren’t always scrupulous about protecting the interests of their protégés and were inclined to make the same distinctions as the Boers.
This was most clearly evident in and around the three besieged towns, where the heaviest burdens—literally and figuratively—were borne by the black population. The relief of Ladysmith and Kimberley brought no change to that situation. Mafeking had not yet been liberated. This was down for 18 May in Roberts’s planning, but before it happened, the Boers mounted a last, desperate offensive.
The initiative was taken by Commandant Sarel Eloff, President Kruger’s grandson. From a strategic point of view the attack was meaningless, but Eloff was hoping to achieve a psychological coup. A last-minute success for the Boers at Mafeking would send the burghers a message of hope in troubled times. With 250 volunteers and his grandfather’s blessing, Eloff approached the force besieging the town. General Kootjie Snyman approved his plan to launch a surprise attack. He also agreed to provide 500 reinforcements once Eloff had managed to break through the defence.
They went into action on the night of 11 May. It started off well. Eloff and his men pushed through via ‘black’ Mafikeng and proceeded from there to the garrison on the boundary with ‘white’ Mafeking. Thirty men under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel C.O. Hore were overpowered and captured. To signal the breakthrough to Snyman, Eloff set fire to a few of the Tshidi Barolong huts. To provoke Baden-Powell he called him to say he had captured his second-in-charge and was on his way into town. But he spoke too soon. Snyman had changed his mind and Eloff’s unit fell apart. Eloff himself got no further than the garrison, which was now under attack from all sides—by the British in Mafeking as well as the Barolong in Mafikeng. The battle raged all day. By nightfall Eloff conceded that his situation was hopeless. He released Hore and surrendered, along with more than 100 other volunteers. The Boers’ final attempt to capture Mafeking had also ended in humiliation.95
Once again this was due to the Tshidi Barolong’s valuable contribution to the defence effort right up to the last months of the siege. They had been helpful, if not indispensable, in combat, trench work, espionage, courier assignments, cattle raids. The same was true of their main rivals, the Rapulana Barolong, on the enemy side. Both parties to the conflict knowingly violated their unspoken agreement to wage a ‘white man’s war’, yet kept hurling recriminations at the other. At the start of the siege Piet Cronjé—who was still the commandant at the time—had sent Baden-Powell an accusing letter: ‘you have armed Bastards, Fingos and Baralongs against us.’ Baden-Powell denied this, saying it was the Boers who were soliciting ‘the assistance of armed Natives’. The quarrel was resumed in January. As if he himself didn’t depend heavily on his Barolong auxiliaries, Baden-Powell warned Snyman that continuing to deploy armed Africans ‘would justify the English in allowing the Basuto to join in the war, in bringing Ghurkha troops from India, in using “dum dum” bullets, and other such acts’.
But both parties carried on as before. Right to the end, blacks as well as whites were involved in the siege of Mafeking, particularly in its defence. That some went hungrier than others was all the more shameful. As from November 1899 everyone was subjected to rationing on Baden-Powell’s orders, but Africans and coloureds suffered the most. To save flour, which was needed for ‘white’ bread, they were forced to switch to oats, which had previously been used as horse feed. The horses were put out to graze, if they hadn’t already been served up as meat or soup. In January rations were reduced again. In February they were cancelled for the black miners who had fled from the Rand. Their only recourse was the soup kitchen for broth made from the leftovers of horse, chicken, mule and dog meat. Baden-Powell would have liked to see them leave altogether. They could go to Kanye in Bechuanaland, where the British authorities had stockpiled huge reserves of food. He made one attempt to expel them en masse but subsequently abandoned the idea because the Boers had fired on them mercilessly. Expulsions and escapes on a smaller scale were more successful and brought some relief—at least for those left behind.
Malnutrition reached such proportions in Mafeking, and especially its black neighbourhood, that in April 1900 a plague of locusts was welcomed as an extra source of nutrition. That went for the white population too, according to a telegram from Churchill’s aunt, Lady Sarah Wilson, to the family back home. ‘Breakfast today, horse sausages; lunch minced mule, curried locusts. All well.’
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All well? Not for the town’s black inhabitants. They had to make do with less food and an even less palatable diet. Sol Plaatje, a court interpreter and to this day the only black African known to have kept a diary of the Boer War, saw them die of starvation, one by one, right there in the street, ‘backwards with a dead thud’. Crazed with hunger, people exhumed dead horses and dogs for food, with all the inevitable consequences. Diseases like diphtheria and typhoid were rampant, in Mafikeng most of all. And this in addition to the estimated 1000 people killed in the Boer bombardments.96
The mood was sombre even when relief finally arrived. Perhaps it was just bad timing. Around dinner time on 16 May, Lady Sarah heard a commotion in the market square. She ran out to greet the first cavalrymen trickling in, tired and covered in dust. Their welcome was lukewarm, no cheering crowd, no music. All she saw was ‘a score or so begrimed figures’ on worn-out horses and a cluster of women around them, weeping with joy. The rest followed in the middle of the night, Colonel Herbert Plumer’s columns from the north and Colonel Bryan Mahon’s from the south. After spending the whole day in combat against De la Rey’s commandos, they had continued on their way. They were exhausted. They fell asleep wherever their horses happened to be standing. After 217 days the siege of Mafeking had come to an end. Lady Sarah stayed up all night nursing the wounded in hospital.
The reaction in Britain was anything but lukewarm. In London and other big cities the news sparked off celebrations such as had never been seen before, more exuberant even than those after the relief of Ladysmith. Jubilant crowds took to the streets, singing, dancing and waving flags. Performances in music halls and theatres were interrupted, newspapers published special editions with exultant headlines. It was a huge outburst of emotion. The nation’s humiliation was over; there was a happy ending, with euphoria verging on hysteria. Baden-Powell was the hero incarnate, the personification of the British ideal: dauntless, invincible, dependable, humorous. The festivities went on and on. Mafeking Night became a tradition, and the word ‘mafficking’ entered the English language.97
The Boers still had one trump up their sleeve. At least, that’s how the Transvaal state secretary, Reitz, saw things. Not that they could stop Roberts’s advance: there was nothing they could do about that but keep fighting and hoping against hope. What they could do, however, was frustrate the British on a spectacular scale and settle their score with the Randlords and the Uitlanders at the same time. Blowing up the gold mines would get back at everyone responsible for dragging the Transvaal into the misery of war. It was nothing more than the revenge of the righteous. Big capital had planted in their midst the burgeoning and divisive organism that was Johannesburg. And it had obstructed them at every turn. Now the situation was hopeless and big capital deserved to go down the drain along with everything else.
Reitz didn’t stop at wishful thinking. In February 1900 Pretoria instructed the government mining engineer, John Munnik, to start making preparations. Holes suitable for taking charges of dynamite were drilled into some 25 mines. A project on this scale obviously couldn’t be kept secret. The Standard and Diggers’ News got wind of the scheme and proclaimed it a crime against civilisation and a blot on the good name of the Afrikaner nation. Johannesburg’s Peace and Order Commission promptly denounced any such act of random destruction. The state attorney, Smuts, sent the paper a letter denying the charge, but this didn’t put an end to the rumours. Nor were they unfounded, because work on the project continued surreptitiously.
In far-off Europe Willem Leyds initially believed that the Transvaal government had no intention of blowing up the mines. Needless to say, the turmoil overseas was causing consternation among shareholders. Unnecessary, Leyds wrote on 11 April 1900 to Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, the president of the Association of French Owners and Shareholders of the Transvaal Gold Mines. That kind of thing simply wasn’t in the Boers’ nature. They were people who respected property rights. It sounded reassuring, but at that stage Leyds was unaware that a letter from Reitz was on its way to him. It had been sent on 6 March and he received it on 4 May. It said, ‘If we are unable to save our country, we are firmly resolved to blow up and destroy the mines and equipment in Johannesburg and elsewhere.’
Leyds was taken aback. He thought it most unwise, but he wasn’t in a position to do anything. Pretoria was a different matter. The Transvaal leaders were sharply divided. President Kruger and Smuts supported Reitz’s view or, in any event, the idea of using it as a threat. It would be enough, they were sure, to persuade mine owners, shareholders and governments in Europe to put pressure on Great Britain. One man, however, was vehemently opposed. The new commandant-general, Louis Botha, condemned the plan as cowardly and barbaric. He set off for Pretoria as soon as he heard about it. If it was carried out, he warned Kruger, he would summon his men from the front to come to the defence of Johannesburg. This was going a bit far, but it made the point. Kruger gave his word that it wouldn’t actually happen.
In Johannesburg itself, meanwhile, distrust between the various communities was mounting by the day. Would the Boers retaliate by blowing up the mines? Were pro-British Uitlanders passing on information to Roberts’s advancing army? Would black miners run amok after the fall of the city? Amid this tension, panic broke out when a deafening explosion rocked the city at half past five on the evening of 24 April. Flames rising a hundred metres into the air were followed by a column of white smoke and a toxic green mushroom. In the event, it wasn’t the mines but the Begbie munitions factory which was reduced to ashes. The damage was enormous. Human limbs were scattered far and wide. Even before the casualties were counted—12 killed and 30 injured—the perpetrators had been identified. The British Uitlanders, who else? Rumour had it that a tunnel had been dug from an adjacent building. The electric light switch was supposed to have been used as a detonator.
Although nothing was proved, the government immediately carried out reprisals. All British subjects who were still on the Rand were ordered to leave the country. Only technicians who were indispensable, about 100 in all, were allowed to remain. The police commissioner, Schutte, also paid a high price. He had been responsible for securing the foundry. The public prosecutor, Fritz Krause, succeeded him as head of the Peace and Order Commission.
Roberts’s troops were awaited with fear and trepidation. On 22 May, after ten days’ rest in Kroonstad, they resumed their march to Johannesburg. It was now or never, Reitz decided. He found a willing collaborator in a young judge, the son of General Jan Kock, who had been killed at Elandslaagte. Antonie Kock was shocked by the brutal treatment of his father,98 and vowed to take revenge. On 23 May he went to Krause with a letter from Reitz, explicitly instructing them to blow up the mines. Kock requisitioned all the transport and equipment he needed. Krause refused. Earlier that day Botha—who knew about Kock’s mission and knew that he had Kruger’s approval—had given him exactly the opposite instructions. Krause was to protect the mine shafts, the buildings and the machinery at all costs. He warned Kock that he would have him arrested, executed if necessary, if he went ahead with his act of sabotage.
Kock wasn’t so easily deterred. That evening, he assembled a group of almost 100 volunteers, mostly Irishmen and Germans, who were prepared to help him. The next day they made their way to the Robinson, one of the mines now under state control. When on arriving there he found a load of crude gold, he assumed—wrongly—that it had been kept aside for the British. He went to Krause’s office and told him what he suspected. It wasn’t a smart move, because what was Kock doing in the Robinson in the first place? Finding himself in a corner, Kock drew his revolver, but Krause and his assistant, Commandant L.E. van Diggelen, managed to overpower him. He was arrested and sent to prison in Pretoria. The mine police dealt with his ‘desperadoes’. The mines were saved.99
The war wasn’t about gold, as Churchill kept reminding readers of the Morning Post and himself. Still, he was distressed by the scene before him. In the distance he saw ‘the tall chimneys
of the Rand’. Here, right in front of him, were 18 Gordon Highlanders, lined up with blankets over their heads, no boots, dead. Those grey socks saddened him more than anything else. ‘There they lay stiff and cold’ on the surface of the Reef. Their lives, more precious than all the gold in the world, had been cut short. It wasn’t about gold. It was the ‘lying foreigners’ who said so. But still. He was angry with the horizon, angry with those damned chimneys.
Churchill was overtaken by this bout of melancholy on 30 May 1900, the morning after the battle at Doornkop, a few kilometres west of Johannesburg. Commandos under Louis Botha and Koos de la Rey had taken up positions in one last attempt to block the British advance. Their previous positions, near the Renoster River and on the border near the Vaal, had soon proved untenable. On 28 May Roberts crossed into the Transvaal. A few days earlier he had issued a proclamation whereby the Orange Free State was officially annexed and would be known as the Orange River Colony. Hamilton’s army had been sent from the right flank to the left, so that with French’s cavalry they could surround Johannesburg from the west. Roberts’s main force had followed the railway line and approached the city from the south-east.
Doornkop was a historical place. It was where Jameson and his raiders had surrendered four and a half years earlier. The Boers went into battle fully aware of what was at stake. On their way, they had set fire to the grass. The smoke threw the advancing Britons into confusion. Conspicuous in their khaki uniforms against the blackened earth, they became easy targets for the Mausers. So fierce was the Boers’ resistance that Hamilton resorted to the old formula: the frontal infantry assault. French’s outflanking manoeuvre, as per his latest instructions, didn’t extend far enough. Now it was up to the Highlanders. Churchill was apprehensive. He had witnessed this on several occasions, in Natal. And indeed, the Scots fell by the score—besides the dead, 80 were wounded—but they kept up the fight, with bayonets on their rifles. By evening they had driven the Boers from their positions. The next morning, Wednesday 30 May, it was clear that they had all withdrawn. The way to Johannesburg lay open. Hamilton stationed his men in Florida, on the Rand tram route.
The Boer War Page 35
