The Boer War

by Martin Bossenbroek

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, a few minutes later Commandant Malan was also hit. He took a bullet through the throat and died within minutes. Reitz was devastated. He had been considering joining the Afrikander Cavalry, but now abandoned the idea. They seemed to be under an unlucky star.

  So he remained with the Pretoria commando. The weeks that followed were uneventful. They lingered around Pretoria and kept an eye on the British troops, sniping at them from time to time. The spell of relative calm gave the Boer leaders an opportunity to reorganise their scattered troops, and the townspeople time to recover. It was mid-July, in the dead of winter.9

  Piet de Wet had been mulling over the idea for some time. It was 19 July, and that day’s encounter at Karroospruit confirmed the conclusion he had reached. He had done all he could, along with Danie Theron, the commandant of the Scouts Corps, but they had been forced to flee from Broadwood’s troops. They had been hopelessly outnumbered and hadn’t stood a chance. It had been like this all the time lately. There was simply no point. He would have to have a word with his brother.

  It is hard to say who was the more stubborn, Christiaan or Piet de Wet. Perhaps that’s why they had always got on so well together. Piet was seven years younger than Christiaan, his favourite elder brother. They came from a family of 14, living in Dewetsdorp in the Orange Free State, a village named after their father. The brothers had farmed together in the Transvaal for a while and shared many memories of the war. They had been in Paardekraal in December 1880, the first time war was declared on the British. They had also helped to win that war, on the slopes of Majuba Hill on 27 February 1881. And their names were linked to the successes of the present war as well, most notably the battles at Nicholson’s Nek on 30 October 1899 and Sannaspos on 31 March 1900. They had risen through the ranks at lightning speed; both had become generals in almost no time at all. Christiaan was commander-in-chief of the Free State forces. Piet held the same rank over the men on the ‘Cape’ front, to the south.

  But they reacted differently to Roberts’s advance, and this drove a wedge between them. Christiaan wanted to change tactics right away. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for. He would let the British through and attack their communication lines from the rear, taking decisions one at a time as events unfolded, and relying on his instincts. A resourceful, independent thinker with a recalcitrant streak, he found this kind of approach suited him best. Piet preferred tried and trusted methods: shrewdly chosen positions and skilful manoeuvres to intercept the British advance, rather than improvisations and decisions on the spur of the moment. He was a man committed to law and order, a man with respect for private property.

  These traits came to the fore in a dispute that dragged on for months between himself and the Transvaal military procurements commission. Shortly before the war, Piet de Wet had supplied them with 100 horses. They had agreed on a price of £20 per head, but De Wet received only £18. He was incensed and even the war did nothing to take his mind off the matter. On 18 March 1900—within days of the fall of Bloemfontein—he sent two furious telegrams to Pretoria, one of them to Kruger himself. It was scandalous. The sale had set him back £200. Did those office clerks actually have the authority to take decisions like that at their own discretion? Who were they to say his horses weren’t worth the price they had agreed on? It was the worst kind of injustice: a man who was out fighting, risking his life, while they were simply juggling paper clips in Pretoria.

  No one knows how the affair ended, but it showed what kind of man Piet de Wet was. If he believed he was in the right, nothing could persuade him otherwise. And that was his attitude to the war. The closer the British approached, the less convinced he was that it would end well. The Boers had done their best, he more than anyone else, but it hadn’t been enough. It was time to face up to the truth. To continue would cost them their land, their possessions, their wives and children. The Boer leaders would have to make the best of it. They owed it to their families. He decided to act. On 18 May he informed Broadwood and Hamilton that he was prepared to surrender on condition that he could return to his farm in Lindley. His proposal was turned down—on Roberts’s authority, he was given to understand. They would accept only an unconditional surrender. For him, this was a step too far.

  So he continued to fight. Two weeks later, on 31 May, he achieved a brilliant success. Not far from Lindley, he and Commandant Michael Prinsloo—Marthinus’s younger brother—captured an entire British battalion. And not just any battalion. It comprised 500 volunteers of the 13th Imperial Yeomanry, including many from wealthy, aristocratic families.

  The Lindley affair caused a commotion in Britain, but that didn’t raise Piet de Wet’s hopes. In early June he decided of his own accord to propose a partial ceasefire to Lord Methuen. Steyn was against it—Roberts too, incidentally—and in a military council meeting on 6 June Piet’s elder brother called him to account. It was a serious clash, with Piet in turn accusing Christiaan—along with Steyn and particularly the Transvaal authorities—of misleading the public. The foreign intervention they were promising was a myth. In the meantime, Pretoria had also fallen. Continuing the war would ruin the country, he warned them, with innocent women and children paying the highest price. But his words fell on deaf ears. Worse than that, Christiaan lost his temper and flew into a rage.

  At the end of June a more personal quarrel widened the rift between the brothers. Surprisingly, they found themselves embroiled in a squalid contest. Steyn had nominated Christiaan to succeed Naas Ferreira as commandant-general. He hadn’t been elected in accordance with the usual procedure, and Piet and two other generals, Marthinus Prinsloo and Jan Olivier, raised objections. Although Steyn saw no need for it, Christiaan decided to call an election to remove any doubt. The outcome was clear: he won 26 votes, Olivier three, Prinsloo two and his brother one.

  The implications were self-evident. Piet de Wet left the meeting, disappointed. He took command again, out of a sense of duty, but never moved far from his farm in Lindley. He and his wife, Susanna, had a heart-to-heart talk. She was worried about the British burning down their house as well. What would become of her and their 11 children? Would they end up living like vagabonds, like her sister-in-law Cornelia? The prospect was too awful to contemplate.

  After grappling with the problem for several weeks, Piet decided to make one last attempt. On 20 July he visited his elder brother in Blesbokfontein. Did Christiaan still see any chance of being able to continue the struggle? The question alone infuriated him. ‘Are you mad?’ was his only reply. There was nothing more to be said. Piet returned to his troops and discussed the matter with a few trusted friends. They agreed with him. On 24 July he made enquiries about the terms the British were offering. In reply to one of his men, he said, ‘I can’t advise you. Each of you must do what you believe best, but I am going home.’ On 26 July 1900 he went to Kroonstad to surrender.10

  Flushing out the foe

  Bronkhorstspruit, July 1900

  Early one morning Deneys Reitz woke up with a start. One glance into the distance was enough. The British were advancing again. It wasn’t a column or a battalion, but a complete army. A cloud of dust obscured the entire western horizon. As far as he could make out, there were more than 30,000 men. The Pretoria commando took positions on koppies a short distance away. Before long the first shells came hissing down in the pale light of dawn. More followed in rapid succession, frighteningly close by. They didn’t stand a chance. The only thing to do was break up, fall back and take new positions.

  The British were approaching over a broad front on either side of the railway line to Lourenço Marques, and they were quickening their pace. The Boer fighters had no option but to retreat. They fell back from hill to hill, firing the occasional frantic salvo on a unit of scouts and then retreating further. They were too heavily outnumbered, the shellfire was overwhelming. There was no doubt about it: Roberts was determined to cut off the Boers’ lifeline.

  The speed of the pu
rsuit reminded Reitz of their earlier retreat, in the Orange Free State. They had got to Middelburg, halfway to Machadodorp, within a week. But there was one important difference. This time, the Boers were keeping their spirits up. No one was talking about going home. By all accounts, Botha was intending to fight one last pitched battle, in a carefully chosen spot. After that, like Christiaan de Wet, he would divide his force into ‘smaller bands’. That prospect made it easier to endure the humiliation of being constantly on the retreat.

  Reitz experienced some frightening moments. Near the hamlet of Belfast, there was such confusion in the dark that he found himself separated from the Pretoria Commando. The following morning his comrades were nowhere to be seen, so he joined a division from the mining village of Boksburg, men he had met once before in Johannesburg. A few days later, they arrived in Dalmanutha, just outside Machadodorp, where they were assigned a new position.

  This was where Botha intended to make a last stand, the mountainous area at the edge of the escarpment. To Reitz it seemed the perfect place. He had been here two months earlier, visiting his father, and it was indeed a ‘natural fortress’. From the mountains they had an unobstructed view over the plain, and behind them was a precipice offering ‘excellent cover for men and horses’. Moreover, the British advance came to a halt at Belfast. For weeks nothing happened. The Boers took advantage of the opportunity to strengthen their defences.

  A week later the Pretoria Commando arrived unexpectedly, and, to Deneys’s surprise, his two elder brothers were with them. He took leave of the Boksburgers and rejoined his unit, happy to be back with Hjalmar, Joubert and his comrades. He was ready to face the British.11

  The attack came, but only on 21 August 1900, exactly a month after the British had set off along the eastern line. There were two reasons for their slow progress over the previous few weeks. The first related to another proclamation which Roberts had issued on 17 July. This time it affected the families of Boers who were still on active commando. Many of them, women and children, had fled from their homes to seek refuge in cities like Johannesburg and Pretoria. Poverty-stricken and with no means of support, they were dependent on the British administration. But in Roberts’s opinion, it was absurd to be feeding the enemy’s families. The Boer insurgents should be providing for their wives and children. So he decided to return them to their care. As from 19 July they would be transferred by train to Van der Merwe, 15 kilometres east of Pretoria.

  Botha was shocked by the news. They were talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of women and children for whom he would have to provide food and shelter—in two days’ time. He had his hands full regrouping his men. He was still busy protesting about the British burning down farms—and now this. From Machadodorp Kruger advised him first to refuse responsibility for the families and then to demand a ceasefire. In any event, he was to lodge a formal protest against these deplorable measures.

  Botha’s objections made little impression on Roberts, who callously replied that the British administration couldn’t continue to support Boer women and children. Their husbands and fathers were to blame for their plight. It was they who were destroying the railway lines and holding up food supplies. If they stopped committing sabotage, their families would get what they needed. But as long as they persisted, he had no alternative but to send destitute women and children elsewhere. On 19 July more than 400 of them were crammed into open goods trucks and sent to Van der Merwe, where they arrived in the late hours of a bitterly cold winter’s night.

  Racing against time, Botha had asked General Ben Viljoen to improvise temporary accommodation for them. From there the families were taken to Barberton, in the eastern Transvaal, near the Swaziland border. The arrangements took time and effort, and heightened the anguish of those who knew that their families were involved. And instead of a ceasefire, Botha was facing the prospect of another offensive. On 21 July the British began to advance along the same railway line. It was as much as he could cope with. He had to organise the defence and at the same time prepare to receive another contingent of women and children.

  Roberts was threatening to send more. He dismissed Botha’s complaint that the families had fled to Johannesburg and Pretoria because their farms had been burned down. The real culprits, he argued, were the bands of roaming insurgents who were inciting civilians to renounce their oath of loyalty and resume the struggle. They were also forcing those families to provide them with food. And in any event, they were still sabotaging the railway line. He therefore saw no reason to stop the deportations. In early August he announced that another batch of 450 women and 1500 children would be transported on the 11th and 13th, this time to Belfast. His only concession was an undertaking to suspend all troop movements until 16 August.

  Botha could only resign himself to the situation. The next group of 800 women and children arrived late on the evening of Saturday 11 August, shivering in open cattle trucks. Again Viljoen arranged accommodation until they could be sent on to Barberton. The women had lost none of their fighting spirit. Wearing the Vierkleur on their clothing, they raised their voices to sing the Transvaal anthem as the trains pulled in. They seemed to be coping better than Botha, who expressed his despair in a telegram to Kruger. He was ‘tired and overcome by the transports of women and children, because it’s clear that the British are using the women as a weapon against us’.12

  Although Roberts obviously gave no sign, the army’s delay actually suited him quite well, because he was anxious—the second reason—to wait for Buller, who was advancing from the south-east with a detachment of his expeditionary army. Roberts thought it wiser for the two forces to mount a joint attack against Botha’s ‘natural fortress’.

  Buller’s advance from Natal hadn’t been as swift as Roberts’s. After his experiences along the Tugela line, he had been especially wary when approaching the Boer positions in the Biggarsberg and Drakensberg mountains. There he had found a new adversary, Chris Botha, Louis’s younger brother, and earned himself a new nickname, Sitting Bull. But he had achieved results. Thanks to his thorough reconnaissance of the area and skilful flanking manoeuvres he had managed to overcome both formidable obstacles, incurring surprisingly few casualties in the process.

  Buller had crossed the Transvaal border on 1 June. His priority was to repair the south-eastern railway line from Durban to Johannesburg. By 7 July he was able to travel to Pretoria himself to pay his respects to Roberts. The two men had a long history of rivalry—one had been the leader of the ‘Indians’, the other second-in-charge of the ‘Africans’—and in South Africa new wounds had been added to the old. The darkest cloud over their heads was Colenso, where Buller had forfeited his command and Roberts had lost his only son, Freddy. Each of them had reason to blame the other, and so they did. But at this—their first—encounter, they were calm and pragmatic.

  At this stage at least, there was one thing they agreed on and that was to answer sabotage with reprisals. Buller felt even more strongly about this than Roberts. As soon as he had entered Transvaal territory—a couple of days before Roberts’s Proclamation 5 of 16 June—he had put up posters warning that ‘the residents of any locality will be held responsible both in their persons and their property if any danger is done to Railway or telegraph or any violence done to any other of the British forces in the vicinity of their homes’. In early July it was clear that he meant it. Six farms in the Standerton district, where ‘a few scattered bandits’ had allegedly planned attacks, were demolished on his instructions. One of them was the farm Varkenspruit, the property of none other than Louis Botha.

  People said it was sheer coincidence, but Buller’s well-targeted reprisal wouldn’t have displeased Roberts. Two weeks earlier it had been Roodepoort, this time it was Varkenspruit. Another harsh deterrent. No Transvaler who continued to resist could delude himself by thinking he was safe. Not even their commandant-general, that was the message. Botha protested vehemently, condemning what he called godless, barbaric practices, which had
no place in a civilised war. But Roberts had grown accustomed to criticism of this kind, which he fielded with accusations of his own. British troops had been under fire from farms displaying the white flag; Boer commandos were intimidating law-abiding citizens.

  He pushed it even further. On 14 August he published a new proclamation, the twelfth. Burghers who had not sworn neutrality would be deemed prisoners of war and could be sent to the camps. Buildings in which ‘the enemy’ were harboured would be razed to the ground. Boer families who failed to inform British soldiers about the presence of ‘hostile elements’ would be deemed guilty of complicity.

  There was no escape for anyone, which was precisely the object. And certainly no escape for Louis Botha. On 15 August the two British army corps joined forces, a few kilometres south of Belfast, with Roberts’s troops approaching from the west and Buller’s from the south-east. It was time to deal the final blow.13

  It was also time for a bit of good luck. Bad news had come in from the western Transvaal a day earlier. De Wet, along with Steyn and some 2000 men, had managed to escape after all. No one could tell Roberts how on earth it could have happened. Everyone pointed a finger at somebody else, Methuen at Kitchener, Kitchener at Hamilton, and Hamilton—well, there wasn’t really much he could say. He just happened to be the last in the line of British generals who had allowed the Free State commandantgeneral to slip through their hands. They had spent a whole month stalking him, from east to west, right across the Orange Free State, across the Vaal to the Magaliesberg mountains. It had been a massive hunt, bigger than anything anyone had seen before, and they had covered a huge distance. They had been at his heels for hundreds of kilometres, with—in successive stages—no fewer than 50,000 men. But they still hadn’t caught him.