The Boer War

by Martin Bossenbroek

  After Lloyd George it was the turn of a Conservative member, someone who had witnessed the war at close range and could speak from experience. The Conservative speakers before him had opted for a counter-attack, drawing attention to the wrongdoings of the Boers. ‘Being loyal to the British Crown’: that and that alone had cost the lives of well-disposed citizens like Morgendaal, De Kock and, recently, Abraham Esau. The House was in suspense to hear what the next speaker would come up with. Young though he was, he was already known to be an independent thinker. At 26, he was a national and—since his recent lecture tour of the United States—international celebrity. But this was the House of Commons, the real thing. And this was his maiden speech.

  Winston Churchill didn’t launch a counter-attack. He just stood there, rigid with fear. A fellow Conservative, a seasoned veteran, finally whispered a prompt, a swipe at Lloyd George. Then he was on his own. As usual, he had memorised the whole speech. His tone was moderate, his argument sensitive. Instead of attacking, he presented a defence in the form of an extraordinary trilogy.

  First of all, he came to the defence of the discredited British generals: people he had come to know personally. There were few men, he assured the House, ‘with better feeling, more kindness of heart, or with higher courage than General Bruce Hamilton’. Churchill didn’t dwell on the specific allegations of farm burnings. Lapses, he said, are inevitable in any war, especially those in which a civilian population took part. What about the famine deliberately inflicted on Paris in the Franco-Prussian War, 30 years earlier? He could mention many more precedents, and on those grounds the British military authorities were within their rights. In his experience, the war in South Africa stood out for its unusual humanity and generosity.

  But he had words of redemption for the enemy as well. ‘The Boer is a curious combination of the squire and the peasant.’ Under the rough clothing of the farmer there were often noble instincts. He could also understand what impelled them to take up arms. ‘If I were a Boer I hope I should be fighting in the field.’ Chamberlain took exception to that remark. ‘That’s the way to throw away seats,’ he whispered to the person beside him, but Churchill only heard about it later. He continued by expressing the hope that the Boers could look forward to an honourable settlement.

  But not at any price. They would have to come to terms, he made that perfectly clear. If they weren’t open to reason, it should be made ‘painful and perilous’ for them to continue. He wholeheartedly supported the government’s decision to deploy 30,000 mounted reinforcements. More than that, he proposed a British combat force in South Africa comprising 250,000 men, with casualties and troops otherwise unable to fight being automatically replaced. The next step was to augment that number at regular intervals, by another 2000 to 3000 men a month, so that the Boers ‘will not only be exposed to the beating of the waves, but to the force of the rising tide’.58

  Deneys Reitz had met men of all kinds in his time, but his new companions were in a class of their own. They were conservative backveld Boers from Rustenburg,59 wary of his strange city ways. But they were ‘brave, unspoilt men’, and they got on well together.

  The hardships they endured together forged a bond between them. Reitz had met them—50 horseless men hoping to meet up with De la Rey—soon after he had decided to go to the Cape. They had spent eight days together, hiding out in the Magaliesberg, taking refuge from the incessant downpour and a division of British troops. The soldiers had made themselves warm and comfortable in houses in the valley, while they had shivered under their shelter of overhanging rocks, without even dry kindling to build a fire. For eight days they had survived on biltong.

  When the rain stopped, the British moved on and they descended to the valley. Reitz’s boots were ruined. He had to scramble down the sharp slope on bare feet, which were badly cut and blistered. Incapacitated, he spent a fortnight lying in a tobacco shed, where the Rustenburg men nursed him. One kind soul actually walked 30 kilometres to fetch a piece of rawhide to make him a new pair of shoes. Once he had recovered, Reitz was faced with a choice. Most of his companions decided to remain where they were, rather than take the risk of crossing the exposed plains of the highveld on foot. A few decided to continue south to join De la Rey, carrying their saddles and other possessions on their shoulders. Reitz wanted to head south as well. Thirteen of them, including himself, set off together.

  Fate was on their side. They passed the spot where De la Rey had set fire to a British supply convoy in early December 1900.60 The wreckage was still there and Reitz thought they might be able to improvise a serviceable oxwagon from the undamaged remnants. They succeeded. The question of transport animals was just as easily solved. A few kilometres on, they found a large herd of trek oxen grazing in a kloof. It was De la Rey’s reserve supply. The herdsmen allowed them to take 12, and the Rustenburgers, who were born cattlemen, selected the best. They hewed yokes, wove straps and rope, and a few days later the party set off in high spirits, pleased with their ingenuity and the fruits of their handiwork.

  But their mood gradually grew sombre. The land was a barren wilderness. Reitz had seen the same devastation in the eastern Transvaal: charred ruins, trampled crops, dead animals—the aftermath of a drive to denude the veld. For several days they trudged through a silent wasteland without seeming to move. Thirteen men on a life raft adrift on a smouldering sea.

  They saw the first sign of life five days later, when they met a Boer woman who had taken shelter in a gorge with her children and a native servant. She told them that De la Rey was camped nearby, at a place called Tafelkop. They found him the following day, in a sullen mood. There had been an incident, a false alarm as it turned out, but his men had fled in panic and he was angry. He was worried, too. Besides his 1000 fighters, 200 refugees had congregated around his laager with all their wagons and possessions, and he was finding them burdensome. Reitz and his Rustenburg comrades were welcome all the same, but he was unable to provide them with horses. He had sent patrols to the Orange Free State for a new consignment and was still waiting for them to return. They would just have to be patient.

  Reitz took the opportunity to explore the camp and become better acquainted with De la Rey. Like President Kruger on his veranda in Pretoria, De la Rey held daily meetings around his wagon to talk to his people. He was often in the company of an eccentric man with a long flowing beard and wild, fanatical eyes. Van Rensburg was said to be a prophet and a visionary. De la Rey trusted him implicitly.

  Reitz was sceptical by nature, but an incident that occurred a few days later gave him pause for thought. Van Rensburg had dreamed about a fight to the death between a black bull and a red bull. The red bull was gored and lay dying, which Van Rensburg interpreted to mean that the British would suffer the same fate. Almost before he had finished speaking, with outstretched arms and eyes ablaze, he cried out, ‘See who comes!’ Everyone turned to look. In the distance they saw a horseman galloping towards them from the east. He was a courier, exhausted and covered in dust, bringing a letter from Louis Botha. De la Rey read it at once. His face lit up and, in a voice trembling with emotion, he announced, ‘Men, believe me; the proud enemy is humbled.’ The British had proposed peace talks. Botha was going to meet Kitchener. Everyone was amazed, Deneys Reitz, too, in spite of a sneaking suspicion that Van Rensburg had stagemanaged the melodramatic finale. Even so, it was impressive.61

  Contrary to Van Rensburg’s account, the red bull was not at death’s door. It was attempting to lure the black bull away from the herd. Or, more prosaically, Kitchener had produced the bait and Louis Botha had agreed to talk to him. In mid-February Botha’s wife, Annie, brought the two men together after Kitchener had allowed her to visit her husband. The meeting would take place on 28 February 1901 in Middelburg, halfway between Pretoria and Botha’s temporary quarters in the eastern Transvaal. The date was carefully chosen. The hawks, De Wet and Steyn, were hundreds of kilometres away, hunting—and being hunted—in the Cape Colony. With luck, th
ey would be captured before the meeting and Botha would be more amenable as a result.

  Botha’s motives weren’t entirely clear. He was a strategic thinker from both a political and a military point of view. Kitchener had taken over as commander-in-chief, Brodrick as war secretary, Edward VII the new head of state: who knows, they might come up with something new. The best way to find out was by talking to them. At least Botha would hear what the options were, and he could always think things over. Acting President Schalk Burger and the state secretary, Reitz, approved the meeting. Still, there was something about it. A private get-together with the man who was hunting down his two closest allies.

  The meeting in Middelburg—on the day that De Wet and Steyn were at Botha’s Drift, making their way back home—was relaxed and had an astonishing outcome. After irreconcilable opening statements—annexation or independence—and a volley of reproaches back and forth, about the camps, the deployment of coloureds and Africans and suchlike, the conversation turned to the matter of terms for a peace settlement. Five hours later, they had a plan on the table. Of course, it was subject to the approval of London and the Transvaal and Free State governments, but there it was, in black and white.

  The draft peace agreement contained ten provisions: amnesty for all ‘bona fide’ acts of war, including those carried out by ‘Cape and Natal rebels’; the immediate return of all exiled prisoners of war; a transitional period as Crown colonies, followed as soon as possible by self-government in both territories; the use of English and Dutch in schools and law courts; respect for church property; taking over the national debt to a maximum of £1 million; compensation for the loss of horses; no further reparations; firearm licences on application; enfranchisement of non-whites to be negotiable only after the transition to self-government.

  The first person Kitchener had to talk to was Milner. The high commissioner had recently been charged with the civil administration of the two new colonies and—one could call it coincidence—on the same day, 28 February, he boarded a train in Cape Town, heading north. On the journey, he received a telegram from Middelburg, reporting on the outcome of the talks. He wasn’t pleased. Unlike Kitchener—and his predecessor, Roberts—Milner was soft in wartime and tough in peace. His ultimate goal was a united and anglicised South Africa and every step had to lead in that direction. This peace plan failed to do so.

  Kitchener and Milner met in Bloemfontein on 2 March 1901. Milner had pleasant memories of the railway station, where less than two years earlier he had driven Kruger to despair.62 But Kitchener was holding a stronger hand than the Boer leader had back then; or he was better at bluffing. Whatever the case, he conjured up a spectre of doom and disaster if the peace plan failed to go through. The British soldiers were fed up, he claimed, their morale was at a low ebb after their constant, futile pursuits of elusive Boer commandos. The war had to be brought to an end, if only (although he didn’t say so) because his eye had fallen on the position of commander-in-chief in British India, which would soon become available.

  Milner grudgingly agreed. Kitchener had a firm reputation and was popular back home. It would be foolish to ruffle his feathers. The only condition Milner categorically rejected was amnesty for the rebels in the colonies. He demanded that they be brought to justice. And with that, the agreement was submitted to London.

  The British government’s response came within a couple of days. A few amendments had been made to the text, mainly at Chamberlain’s insistence. The most substantial changes related to the first and last points. Milner got his way in the matter of amnesty. The rebels would be tried under the law of the land. As for enfranchisement, a clause was added to the document. Pending the introduction of voting rights for ‘Kaffirs’—which were to be ‘limited’, incidentally, in such a way ‘as to secure the just predominance of the white race’—‘coloured persons’ were to be given the same legal status as their counterparts in the Cape Colony.

  Kitchener was disappointed, Milner relieved. Botha probably wouldn’t accept this, let alone the bittereinders, the diehards among the Boer leaders. He was right. On 7 March 1901 the proposal, now official, was forwarded to Botha, who discussed it at length with Burger and Reitz. His reply came on 15 March: out of the question. The black bull had returned to the herd.63

  Winter of famine

  Tafelkop, April 1901

  It was an incredibly stupid accident. Deneys Reitz had been on commando for a year and a half; he’d often been under fire, but never harmed. A few days earlier, on 3 April, they had sat down to dinner to celebrate his nineteenth birthday, when he had yet another narrow escape. A surprise attack by the British. Shrouded in mist, the Boer fighters had managed to slip away from the column, trotting alongside their oxen. And now this. All they were doing was building a campfire. Trying to smash a log for fuel, he had thrown a large stone at it. The wood was hard and resilient, and the stone ricocheted ‘like a shot from a catapult’ and struck his right leg. He had an open wound, which exposed the fractured shin bone. Fortunately, one of his comrades was able to help him, and the British left them in peace for a while.

  But he wasn’t having much luck. Shortly before the accident 200 wild horses had been delivered from the Orange Free State. To share them among 300 men, De la Rey decided to raffle them. Reitz’s companions hadn’t done badly; nine of the 12 Rustenburg men had won a new horse, but he had drawn a blank. His only solace was the pleasure of watching the horses being broken in.

  A few weeks later, Reitz was hobbling around the laager with his leg in a splint. He still had no horse. Winter was approaching, no more horses would be brought in, and he was afraid of becoming ‘a permanent camp dweller’. His fortunes changed. One morning, a group of Germans led by Field Cornet Mayer arrived at the camp. They had a few spare horses; Reitz was there like a shot. If he wanted to join them, they would give him a small grey mare. His leg hadn’t healed completely, but he agreed without a moment’s hesitation. An opportunity like this wouldn’t come his way again. He took leave of his comrades and set off with the Germans, in search of De la Rey.

  The going was worse than he had expected. His leg throbbed and ached with every step the horse took, and the weather had taken a turn for the worse. It hadn’t troubled him in the shelter of the laager, but out here, on the plains, they were exposed to the bitter cold, to piercing winds and suffocating clouds of dust. At night he lay shivering under a threadbare blanket, listening to the crackle of ice in the pools.

  Three days later they met De la Rey’s commandos at Hartbeespoort. There was also a large British force in the area and an encounter was inevitable. Reitz didn’t take part. De la Rey had come by while one of the Germans was attending to his leg. On seeing it, he had sent Reitz to the field hospital, which had been set up in a deserted farmhouse. The doctor, a young Dutchman, prescribed a few days’ rest. One morning, Reitz was awoken by the sound of gunfire. The British were approaching, and even the sick and wounded were forced to flee. He rejoined the Germans, but it didn’t come to a serious clash. The Boers were too heavily outnumbered and decided to withdraw.

  De la Rey seemed unconcerned. In the afternoon he called a halt in a wood, and addressed his men. Dry humour with a serious undertone, that was his style, and it worked like a charm. There wasn’t a murmur when he announced that they would have to ride through the night. Even Reitz could cope. The rest had done him good and his leg was not as painful. It was a clear night, affording a good view of a comet that had been visible in the sky for some time. Its tail was in the form of the letter V. The prophet Van Rensburg was explaining that it stood for vrede, the Afrikaans word for peace, when suddenly, a voice called out of the dark: No, Mr van Rensburg, ‘it means Vlug [retreat].’ The night was filled with half-suppressed chuckles. The oracle said no more.64

  Flee again or settle for peace? Neither Botha nor the other Transvaal leaders had made up their minds. They had rejected Kitchener’s proposals out of hand, but in their hearts they were still troubled. The situation
seemed to be deteriorating by the day, winter was setting in, and they had no idea whether they could still expect anything of Europe. They hadn’t heard from Kruger, officially still their president, since his departure in September 1900. Nor had there been news from the delegation or from Leyds. By the same token, they probably had no idea what was happening in the Transvaal. They kept sending couriers to Lourenço Marques, but they had presumably been intercepted. In any event, none had returned. They had to find some other way to communicate.

  Desperate times called for desperate measures. On 14 March 1901 Botha sent for Johan Bierens de Haan, the surgeon and head of the first Dutch ambulance.65 The two men met in Ermelo, where Botha made an astonishing request, the more so considering the shortage of physicians in the field. Would Bierens de Haan be willing to return to the Netherlands? It was vital for President Kruger to be informed about the situation, and the Red Cross doctor would not only be a trustworthy emissary, but also above suspicion. Bierens de Haan was reluctant to abandon the sick and wounded Boer fighters, but Botha managed to convince him that the mission was of paramount importance.

  To ensure that the Red Cross was not compromised, he wouldn’t take any documents with him. He was given a briefing by Botha, Burger and Reitz and access to confidential information in the war files, which had been unearthed for his benefit. On that basis he compiled a summary of the relevant facts, committed them to memory and burned his papers before reaching the British front. On arrival in Lourenço Marques, on 24 April, he wrote it all out again so as to convey the information to Kruger and the others as accurately as possible.