The Boer War

by Martin Bossenbroek

  But Brodrick stuck to his guns, arguing, as always, that the Boers and their guerrilla activities were to blame; their wives and children were sent to the camps in their own best interest. He denied allegations of neglect. They were doing all they could to improve conditions in the camps. The majority of Conservatives were satisfied. Lloyd George’s no-confidence motion was defeated, with the Liberal Imperialists abstaining from voting.

  The document that had caused all the upheaval was released a day later, on 18 June. The ‘Report of a Visit to the Camps of Women and Children in the Cape and Orange River Colonies’ held no surprises. Soon after her arrival, Hobhouse had circulated drafts of it among supporters and opponents alike. The 15-page final version described the problems and set out recommendations to improve the situation. In an appendix she reported on her interviews in the camps.

  She had succeeded in drawing public attention to the suffering of Boer women and children, but what had that actually achieved? The Cabinet had brushed off the criticism like dandruff. She had been refused permission to organise a mass demonstration in London. She was invited to give talks in other parts of the country, but none of them were on the same scale as the one in the Queen’s Hall.

  There was another bitter disappointment. In mid-July 1901 Hobhouse received Brodrick’s reply to her recommendations. A few had been adopted, certain categories of women would be allowed to leave the camps. A special commission would be appointed, but, contrary to her proposal, it would be instructed to conduct further investigations, not exercise supervision. Six women were already being considered for the job: two physicians, a nurse, a labour inspector and a general’s wife. The commission would be headed by the prominent protofeminist Mrs Millicent Fawcett. Brodrick described the candidates as women who were ‘removed from the suspicion of partiality to the system adopted or the reverse’—which, as he observed, did not apply to Emily Hobhouse. Her report and lectures had generated ‘much controversy’. Her presence anywhere near the camps would not be tolerated.77

  Deneys Reitz had lost all sense of time. It was still winter, that was clear; it seemed endless this year. But was it August? Or still July? Since he had left De la Rey’s camp at the end of May, one uneventful day had flowed into the next and it was hard to tell them apart. The nights, too, had all been the same; actually it was more like one long, bitterly cold night, interrupted only by the occasional gallop to warm up. Biltong, day in and day out. He could hardly remember what bread, salt, coffee, vegetables or tobacco tasted like. Nor did he have much of a plan. With Jan Kemp’s commando he had dodged British columns in the western Transvaal. He had taken part in an unsuccessful raid in Bechuanaland, crisscrossed the Orange Free State with a steadily dwindling group of Germans, and finally fallen in with Jacobus Bosman, a young Afrikaner who was making his way back to the Cape. That’s what Reitz was aiming for as well, and the reason why they were now travelling together.

  He was despondent about what he’d seen on the way—the same ‘interminable plains devoid of human life’, abandoned homesteads, sheep clubbed or knifed to death, unploughed fields, ‘an infinite, unpeopled wasteland . . . even the natives having fled’. Once or twice they had come across laagers occupied by women and children, scores of them, taking refuge in caves or kloofs. That, anything, rather than being imprisoned in camps.

  It had also become more difficult to cross the railway line that bisected the Orange Free State. They had succeeded twice, but at Edenburg they’d been forced to abandon their third attempt. The British had been tightening up security to guard their strategic lines of communication. They had built a cordon of blockhouses at regular intervals, with barbedwire barriers filling the gaps between them. Sentries, both black and white, were stationed at each one. In their third attempt to cross the tracks, Reitz’s horse had become entangled in the barbed wire. Alerted by the ensuing noise, the sentries on duty had shot and killed it. Reitz managed to escape on a Shetland pony he had found roaming near a British camp a few days earlier.

  So Reitz and Bosman were still on the west side of the railway line, but they had managed to get further south. Near Fauresmith they ran into trouble again. Three attempts were made to relieve them of their saddles and saddlebags. The first time, they had caught the thieves, but allowed them to go. The men had probably mistaken them for British spies. The second time, in Fauresmith itself, two ‘forbidding guardian angels’ had saved them from being robbed by a band of ‘riffraff’ who had been ‘ejected from the fighting commandos’. On the third occasion Reitz had apprehended the thieves, and grazed the arm of one of them with a bullet ‘to teach him better manners’.

  Soon afterwards, they fell in with better company: General Hertzog, ‘a high-cheeked man with angry eyes’, who was in command of the southwestern districts, and his 300 men. Reitz had known him in Bloemfontein, where he had been a judge in the old days. He and Bosman were delighted to join Hertzog. They were also hoping that some of his men would want to accompany them on their journey to the Cape. In the event, they were unable to recruit even one. Everyone had been there on commando before and they were still smarting from the ordeal and their heavy losses. It looked as if Reitz and Bosman would have to continue on their own.

  One morning, however, they found luck on their side. A small group of ten young Transvalers turned up, some of whom Reitz knew from the Pretoria Commando and the Afrikander Cavalry Corps. Though weatherbeaten and ragged, they still had a sense of humour. The ‘Rijk Seksie’ (Rich Section), they called themselves. They were making for the Cape. Things couldn’t have worked out better. The 12 of them would press on together.

  The following day they took leave of Hertzog and his men, and headed south-east, where people who knew the area had advised them to cross the Orange. They would find fewer British troops, more wild horses and good grazing. But it did mean they would have to cross the railway line again. They returned to Edenburg, fortunately in the company of burghers who knew their way around and could guide them safely past the blockhouses and through the barbed-wire barricade.

  All went well. Near the Caledon River they came upon troops of wild horses. Each man took two, Reitz a brown mare and a roan. Within a few days they were broken in. On their fresh mounts they rode almost all the way to the Orange. Across the river lay the Cape Colony. It was the end of August 1901. Reitz had found his bearings.78

  Banished for life

  Zastron, August 1901

  Deneys Reitz was in for an even bigger surprise. His ragged companions had come as a blessing. The Dirty Dozen were ready to enter the Cape Colony. The morning they were preparing to set off on the last stretch to the Orange, a large body of horsemen came riding towards them over the hills in the distance. They were Boers, as was clear from the way they rode. But who were they? An hour later the horsemen were close enough for Reitz to recognise the man at their head. It was none other than Jan Smuts. He had met him earlier in the war, right after the fall of Pretoria, in the vicinity of the First Factory.79 At the time, Smuts had been the state attorney, a colleague of his father’s, but he had since gained a reputation as a general as well. There was only one reason for him to be here: he was also on his way to the Cape. That was the biggest blessing of all.

  Smuts was pleased, too, and welcomed the reinforcement. His journey from the western Transvaal to the south-east of the Orange Free State had been strenuous. The British had got wind of his plan to invade the Cape and had done their utmost to obstruct him. Smuts had escaped by moving swiftly and fighting hard, sustaining a heavy toll in casualties. He now had barely 200 men left. They were all fine young fighters from the western Transvaal, the pick of De la Rey’s men, and these 12 would fit in well. He intended to deploy them as scouts.

  Reitz was eager to serve under Smuts. He was also pleasantly surprised to come across a few more old acquaintances, among them his Hollander uncle, Jan Mulder, with whom he had fought in Natal almost two years earlier. According to Mulder, Smuts was probably intending to take a half-moon r
oute to the central region of the Cape Colony and from there launch a ‘flying raid’. His object was to investigate the feasibility of a large-scale invasion and, at the same time, relieve the pressure on the commandos in the north. Smuts himself said nothing about his plan, but Reitz had every confidence in him. Whatever he was doing, he wanted to be part of it.

  That afternoon Smuts gave the order to set off for the Orange. Around five o’clock they could discern a dark line in the distance marking the gorge through which the river flowed. This was the border between the two territories. But there was something else on the horizon as well. British soldiers were stationed along the edge of the cliff, forming a cordon to prevent them from reaching the drifts. Smuts decided to retreat and spend the night under cover, hoping to run into someone familiar with the terrain who might know of another place to cross.

  The following day they had two lucky breaks. A group of 50 local burghers under Louis Wessels came to join them, and with them was an elderly man who was able to guide them to a long-forgotten drift. The footpath that led to it was steeper than the horses could manage, but it was their only chance. There were also British columns approaching from the north, and if they remained where they were, they would be surrounded the next day.

  Setting off at dusk, they reached the path at three in the morning. They descended in darkness, walking their horses down the gorge. The next obstacle was the river itself. It wasn’t wide, but in the turbulence of the water gushing down from the mountain it was difficult for the horses to maintain their footing. It was sunrise by the time the last man reached the other side. They had made it into the Cape Colony.80

  These had been frustrating months for Lord Kitchener of Khartoum. February 1901 seemed promising. There were the talks with Botha in Middelburg, the third manhunt for De Wet—and Steyn—which he had coordinated personally. The war could have been over, just like that. But March had brought disappointment. De Wet and Steyn had eluded them as usual, Botha had changed his mind, and in May they had taken him for the same ride again. The Transvaal leaders’ request to telegraph Kruger had given him new hope. Apparently they were still wavering. But from the reply they had received from Europe, peace was clearly not on the horizon. On the contrary, it seemed to have strengthened their resolve to keep up the fight. The tone of the General Notice they had drafted on 20 June in collaboration with the Free State authorities had been militant.

  Only three weeks later did Kitchener discover just how desperate the Transvalers had been. In the early morning of 11 July 1901 a column led by General Broadwood carried out a surprise attack on the village of Reitz—named after the former president, now state secretary of the Transvaal—in the north-east of the Orange Free State. The village’s name was ironic, the spoils prodigious. The British captured almost every single member of the Free State government, including 29 administrative staff, and in addition made off with more than £11,000 in cash plus all the government’s official documents. Among them was the anguished letter Reitz had sent the Free Staters on behalf of the Transvaal government on 10 May, and with it Steyn’s indignant reply of 15 May. It was mortifying for the Transvaal leaders, Reitz in particular, especially when Kitchener relayed the letters to London, where they were published on 19 July. The discord between the Boer leaders was out in the open.

  But it was embarrassing for Kitchener, too. He had hounded the Transvaal leaders to a point where they were about to surrender, and then allowed them to slip through his fingers—like De Wet, who was always getting away at the very last minute. And Broadwood’s action also fitted the mould: an excellent haul, but not quite the jackpot. One of the Boers at Reitz had been hurriedly woken by his Griqua agterryer, Jan Ruiter, who helped him mount his horse. Ruiter too had managed to hoodwink the British. ‘Just an old Boer,’ he had shouted, as his master slipped away. It was President Steyn, the soul of the Boer resistance, the man who more than once had prevented the Transvalers from capitulating. He was still riding around free.81

  It was always nearly but not quite. The frustration must have driven him wild. Kitchener was all the more determined to tighten the screws. In May 1901 the strength of the British army in South Africa peaked at 240,000 troops—equalling the entire Boer population—a third of whom were mounted. In other words, the British had 12 times more men than the 20,000 the Boers could raise. And with 100 heavy guns, 420 field guns and 60 pom-poms, they were also superior in firepower. But it wasn’t just a question of numbers. At the end of the day it was about deploying human and other resources effectively, organising the drives and filling the bags.

  Kitchener had thought up a new system to achieve this. It was already being used, but in March 1901 he decided to make it more effective by applying it methodically and consistently. First, he would erect blockhouses with barbed-wire barriers running between them along both sides of every railway line, then rows of them at right angles to obstruct the enemy’s movements. The idea was to divide the endless highveld into manageable plots, leaving the Boer fighters and their families with no means of escape. Mobile columns would be assigned to plots, which they would sweep clean of human life, livestock and crops. The system would work beautifully, like an iron spiderweb. The British would make their move, the enemy would be snared.

  The scheme took logistics and labour. The standardised round blockhouses were initially made from bricks and mortar, later from corrugated iron. Thousands upon thousands were built. Huge quantities of building materials were needed and had to be transported and offloaded. The same applied to the thousands of kilometres of barbed wire that formed the barriers between these miniature forts. Finally, they had to be manned. Between five and 20 troops were stationed in each blockhouse; in the end, a total of 60,000 men. Another three or four coloured or African sentries were assigned to each, that is, an additional 25,000 men. It made a considerable dent in the available manpower, but Kitchener was convinced it would work.

  It certainly would, in combination with targeted individual sanctions. The Boer leaders’ General Notice had given Kitchener an idea. Discipline had never been the commandos’ strongest point, but those who were still fighting seemed to obey orders from their leaders. It was time to strike at those leaders personally. This had also been done before: Roberts and Buller had burned down Christiaan de Wet’s and Louis Botha’s farms, but the measure hadn’t been applied systematically. Kitchener would take care of that.

  On 7 August 1901 he published a proclamation with an ultimatum to all the Boers’ political and military leaders, from commandants down to the heads of ‘armed bands’. Anyone who hadn’t surrendered by 15 September would be ‘exiled from South Africa for life’. Moreover, those who had families in the camps would be required to pay for their maintenance. He would hit them where it hurt the most.82

  On the other hand, perhaps South Africa should rid itself of the Boers altogether. That would actually be the best solution, Kitchener thought. He ran the idea past Brodrick, Roberts and Milner in his letters. About half the Boer population was already incarcerated—100,000 men, women and children in internment camps, 20,000 men in prisoner-of-war camps overseas, and they would undoubtedly continue to be a burden, even after the war. So why not deal with the problem now, once and for all? If they were all packed off, maybe to the Fiji islands, the whole country would be safe and there would be plenty of room for new British colonists.

  Kitchener wasn’t the only one who thought along these lines. The idea that the Boers should settle somewhere else cropped up from time to time. It could be in Africa—Madagascar, for instance, or German South West Africa—or perhaps another continent. Willem Leyds had heard some of these wild plans before. But the letter he received in late August 1901 was in a class of its own, if only because of the person who sent it.

  The 61-year-old Hiram Maxim was an American by birth, a British subject by naturalisation and one of the last people on whom Queen Victoria bestowed a knighthood. The actual ceremony was conducted by her son the Prince of Wales. The h
onour was conferred for his accomplishments as an inventor. Although his claim to inventing the lightbulb was debatable, he definitely held patents on the mousetrap, the merry-go-round and—presumably the most appreciated—the machine gun. He gave his name to the Maxim gun, the fearsome pom-pom which, along with the Mauser repeating rifle, was responsible for the deluge of bullets unleashed on the South African battlefields. And they came from both sides. His invention was sold to the Boers as well as the British.

  He was, as he professed at the beginning of his letter to President Kruger, well disposed to the Boers. ‘The Boers are Dutch and, like all Dutchmen, are the bravest of the brave.’ But bravery wasn’t everything; there were also numbers to consider. That’s what the British had. A few scores of thousands of soldiers more or less didn’t make too much difference. That’s why they would win hands down, while the Boers were doomed to lose. Maxim had thought up a plan to protect them from complete annihilation. The Boers would leave South Africa en masse to establish a new colony in the north of Mexico. The landscape and climate there were comparable to the Transvaal’s for human habitation, and better for raising cattle. There was plenty of land for sale; he had made enquiries. It would take planning and there would be costs involved, but he had an answer for that as well. The owners of the gold mines and other stakeholders, who had lost so much because of the war, would be only too willing to finance the whole enterprise. And in the end, ‘Mexico would become a great country completely in the control of the descendants of the Boers’.83