The Boer War

by Martin Bossenbroek

  Maxim received a polite letter of thanks for his trouble, but his proposal was not taken seriously. His ulterior motives were just too obvious. He was simply putting new words to an old tune: buy out or buy off the Boer leaders. Leyds had seen and heard it all before. Earlier that month he had been approached by another luminary in the world of international business, at least, indirectly, as is the usual way.

  On 6 August 1901 a certain Simon Zadoks de Moerkerk had called on the envoy in Brussels, with a letter of introduction from a Berlin lawyer with whom Leyds was on good terms. Leyds had gone to The Hague, with Zadoks hot on his heels. They spoke together a few days later. Zadoks turned out to be a Dutch national, employed in the financial sector in Paris, and he was representing the most important banker in the city. He wasn’t at liberty to disclose his name. Rothschild, of course, Leyds concluded. The message Zadoks conveyed on his behalf was studded with hints and insinuations, but the gist of it was perfectly clear. The continuing state of war in South Africa was not only ruining the Boers, it was also costing the French financial world a fortune. The bankers there, ‘without wishing to become involved in politics’, were ‘prepared to make sacrifices to compensate [the Boers] up to a point for the losses they had incurred’. Leyds knew what he was implying and cut him short, to Zadoks’s obvious annoyance.

  A week later, Zadoks was badgering him for another appointment. Leyds grudgingly agreed. They settled on a meeting in Brussels, on 15 August. This time Zadoks spoke plainly, albeit with ‘greasy’ tact. The story was basically the same. A speedy end to the war would be best for the Boers as well as the French shareholders in the gold mines. Then he mentioned a figure. His principal in Paris would consider £400,000—and the one in London even more, he added.

  Leyds had heard enough. He could either show the man the door, or bait him for more information. He placed his bets on the latter. The following day Zadoks wrote him a letter, with a separate postscript attached. The message was as good as explicit. In the event of a personal peace initiative, ‘all benefits, moral and otherwise’ were for him. ‘And otherwise’: meaning the £400,000. Again Leyds found himself in a quandary. Should he expose them? To him it was crystal clear. The Paris Rothschilds were blatantly trying to bribe him, perhaps with the knowledge of the London branch. But was that enough to convince the outside world?

  After mulling it over and sounding out Fischer, he decided against. He was a good enough lawyer to know what would happen. They would deny the accusation, of course. They would argue that he had misinterpreted the note, that they had meant something entirely different. In any event, what would he gain by publishing it? The incident ended in a compromise. He didn’t bring the story out into the open. He ignored Zadoks’s further attempts to contact him. But what he did do was send the whole file to De Giers, his Russian counterpart in Brussels, who was still reporting directly to Tsar Nicholas II. He had to do something to let off steam.84

  Emily Hobhouse saw publicity as the only option. In late September the war ministry had released its statistics for June to August. She was shocked. The situation had apparently deteriorated dramatically in her absence, and this was just going by the official figures. By the end of August the number of Boers in internment camps had risen to 15,000 men, 40,000 women and 50,000 children: 105,000 in all. To judge by the mortality rate, the conditions must have been horrific. In those three months alone, 4067 people had died, 3245 of them children. Hobhouse made another appeal to the war minister, Brodrick, on behalf of the people interned in the camps, this time in an open letter to The Times of 29 September 1901.

  Three months had passed since she had initially approached him, she began, but instead of doing something he had opted for an investigation. Mrs Fawcett and her Ladies Commission had gone out to the camps, but she felt that they weren’t working efficiently. For one thing, they hadn’t consulted her, whereas she was the one with practical experience. A lot of time had been wasted, resulting in ‘3245 children who have closed their eyes for ever since last I saw you’. If things continued like that, the rest would soon follow. She urged him in the name of compassion to deal with the situation. Brodrick would surely be moved to heed ‘the cry of the children’?85

  Hobhouse’s impassioned plea was understandable. Her report on conditions in the camps had opened people’s eyes and hearts in Britain and subsequently on the Continent. Relief agencies were established in countries like the Netherlands, Germany and the United States to alleviate the suffering of the Boers in camps and prisons. Portugal, too, offered humanitarian aid. It took in almost a thousand refugees from the Transvaal, settling them first in Mozambique and subsequently in its home territory.86

  But nothing practical was done, no emergency aid was provided to alleviate the misery. Nor could it be, without the cooperation of the authorities running the camps. And these were still British soldiers, who had more important priorities than the well-being of their enemies’ women and children. Although Milner had been responsible for the civil administration of the two new colonies since February 1901, in practice his authority hadn’t yet been extended to the management of the camps. In any case, he had been in England since early May, and his responsibilities had been transferred to Kitchener.

  The commander-in-chief wasn’t interested in the camps in the first place. His stock reply was that the problem had been thrust upon him because of the tactics the Boer commandos were choosing to employ. As for the high mortality rate among children, he had an answer to that as well. The Boer women, he wrote to Brodrick, were themselves to blame. Their disregard for hygiene was tantamount to ‘criminal neglect’. Come to think of it, they ought to be charged with murder.

  The Ladies Commission gave serious consideration to this point. As soon as they started their tour of the camps in August 1901 they came to the same conclusions as Emily Hobhouse. As far as health was concerned, the conditions were alarming, especially for children. There were frequent outbreaks of measles and other infectious diseases. However, the causes they identified differed from Hobhouse’s. They enumerated three: polluted air, soil and water as a result of the continuing war, the inmates’ failure to observe the elementary rules of hygiene and medical care, and—it was true—shortcomings in the management of the camps.

  Those were the main findings of the report that Fawcett presented on her return to England, in December 1901. But, to Hobhouse’s relief, the commission had made a number of practical recommendations before leaving South Africa. They called for regular inspections, additional qualified physicians and nurses, improved medical facilities, increased rations and the dismissal of incompetent staff.

  It is hard to say whether anything would have come of the recommendations if it had been up to Kitchener and his military apparatus. But after mid-November 1901 the question didn’t arise. Brodrick, the minister responsible, had never taken much notice of the criticism, nor did he bother to respond to Hobhouse’s open letter in The Times. His experienced colleague, the colonial secretary, was more concerned about the public outcry. Chamberlain insisted that responsibility for the management of the camps be transferred to the civil authority. Milner had been back in South Africa since mid-September. He should be able to put an end to the problem. Brodrick offered little resistance. From then on, Chamberlain shouldered the political responsibility for the camps, and Milner administrative responsibility.

  The difference was apparent at once. The mortality rate, which in October 1901 had risen to 3200, including 2700 children, began to decline. The improvement was slight in the first two months, but spectacular after January 1902, falling to less than 200 in May 1902.87

  Winston Churchill had little in common with Emily Hobhouse, but he was just as critical, if not more so, of the war minister, Brodrick. Ostensibly his reasons were different, but both of them raised essentially the same objections. They felt that Brodrick was out of touch with the realities of South Africa, and as a result had little understanding of the matters for which he was responsible. Bu
t that was as far as Churchill’s and Hobhouse’s ideas coincided. Churchill said almost nothing about the internment camps, at least not publicly. He was mainly interested in the way the war was being fought, and there was enough wrong with that, in his immodest opinion.

  In his second debate in the Commons, on 12 March 1901, a good three weeks after his maiden speech, Churchill had still stood firmly behind the minister. The issue at hand was about the dismissal of a general, something he felt Brodrick was entirely within his rights to authorise. He had argued that parliament had nothing to do with staff management. In his third speech, however, on 13 May, he played a completely different tune. Brodrick had tabled a motion to reform the army. The gist of it was that the British army should be modelled on the Continental example. In the first place, it should be bigger in order to respond more effectively to acute crisis situations, like the outbreak of war in South Africa.

  Churchill thought it a bad, half-baked idea, and made no secret of his views. He said it was contrary to the nature of the British to have a larger standing army. Britain was different; it shouldn’t become embroiled in European disputes. His father, Lord Randolph, had said the same in the Commons 15 years earlier, and he endorsed his words wholeheartedly. Such an army was pointless. It would always be too small to play a significant role in the European context, it was too expensive, and it wouldn’t have ended the campaign against the Boers any sooner. The problem in South Africa was not the number of British soldiers. There were other reasons for their lack of progress in the war.88

  Churchill’s attack on Brodrick met with disapproval from his fellow party members, but his conviction remained firm. In mid-July 1901 he and four other young, critical Conservatives formed a parliamentary faction known as the Hughligans, the name alluding to its leader, Lord Hugh Cecil, Lord Salisbury’s youngest son. The group held weekly debates attended by prominent guests, Conservatives as well as Liberals. These debates sharpened Churchill’s independent mind. He gradually moved to the left, on the issue of the war in South Africa as well, but not as regards its ultimate goal. He was and remained a ‘victory-at-any-price man’, standing squarely behind Chamberlain and Milner. In a debate on the financing of the war, on 17 July, he was one of the staunchest defenders of the government policy. ‘Let us finish this job in style.’89

  Britain’s military policy, however, continued to trouble him. He had become closely acquainted with many senior officers during his stay in South Africa, and Churchill was a man who nurtured his friendships. He was still receiving excellent inside information about the progress of the war, which didn’t please him. Things came to a head when Kitchener issued his proclamation of 7 August, with the threat of exile ‘for life’ to Boer leaders who failed to surrender by 15 September. This was the wrong way to go, according to Churchill’s informants. The threat had no impact on Steyn, De Wet, Botha or anyone else; this much was evident from their response. It had no effect whatsoever other than to provoke another outpouring of sympathy in the European press.

  In the first week of October 1901 Churchill went into action. In a series of six lectures in Conservative clubs, five of them in his constituency, Oldham, he talked about men and horses—literally, because if the British forces in South Africa were short of anything, it was ‘suitable men . . . mounted on the best horses’. Men as such were there in abundance, he said. That wasn’t the problem. It was about quality. They weren’t deployed effectively. The Boer commandos had to be fought by their own means. This meant far better reconnaissance, more individual initiative and, most of all, real mobility, which depended on sufficient numbers of good horses. They were in short supply and the majority of those available were unsuited to heavy work. According to Brodrick, no fewer than 69 columns were active in the war zone, but Churchill had heard from a reliable source that virtually none of them had two horses per person. And that, he knew from his own experience in the cavalry, was essential not only to get the better of men like De Wet and Botha, but also to force them into submission.

  Kitchener’s threats, like his tendency to over-centralise, were selfdefeating. What it came down to, he quipped—and this always won them over—was ‘not to punish the Boers who have been caught, but to catch those who are still running about’. In Churchill’s opinion the situation had deteriorated over the previous year. It wasn’t safe anywhere beyond five kilometres of British positions either in the former Boer republics or in the Cape and northern Natal.

  This couldn’t continue. If Brodrick was unable to do anything about it, Salisbury and Balfour would have to assume responsibility and give Kitchener a nudge in the right direction. The war in South Africa was too important to be left in the hands of an ordinary minister. It needed determination and perseverance to achieve victory. Churchill would hear nothing about leniency towards the Boers, but reprisals and cruelty were not the answer either. They had to be defeated, and the nightmare had to come to an end. This was a sacred commitment, if only to the British soldiers who had fallen in the struggle. You could open a newspaper any day of the week and find the name of someone you knew—as had recently happened to Churchill with regard to his cousin R.B. Sheridan—‘and learn that some bright eye known and trusted is closed for ever’.90

  Black death

  Herschel, September 1901

  The men responsible for Lieutenant Sheridan’s death had themselves narrowly escaped only a few weeks earlier. After crossing the Orange on the night of 3 September 1901, Smuts and his men found themselves in the Cape Colony. Formally, it was British territory, but the first inhabitants they encountered were Africans from neighbouring Basutoland. No ‘European habitations’ were to be seen. Deneys Reitz saw only the occasional kraal. The men separated into smaller parties and went foraging for tobacco and fodder.

  Everything was fine. They thought nothing of it when a group of about 300 Sotho came riding towards them. They were armed, some with rifles, others carried battle-axes, assegais and knobkieries. Smuts ordered them to close in, that was all. The Boers continued on their way. The Sotho wouldn’t contemplate attacking ‘a white force equal to their own’. Reitz’s group, which included his uncle, Jan Mulder, and five other men, took their time, allowing their horses to feed from ‘the grain baskets to be found in any native village’. After a while, they noticed they had fallen far behind the commando. They had seen the last men disappear from view as they descended from the plateau to the plain beyond. The stragglers mounted their horses and rode on, but on reaching the edge of the plateau, they realised there was danger ahead. Their route led past a mission church with a low wall on the right. Directly opposite it, across their path, was a shelf of overhanging rock. It would be a good spot for an ambush.

  The Sotho had also seen its potential. Leaving their horses on the plateau, they had taken positions on the rocks, their eyes fixed on the Boers making their way down. Their intentions were clearly hostile. Reitz’s party gathered quickly to confer. They decided to descend and catch up with their force as quickly as possible. At first everything went well. Then suddenly there was a thunderous volley of rifle fire, not from the left, but the right, from inside the church. Bullets flew through the windows, bringing down showers of splintered glass. No one was hurt. Five of the men dug their spurs in and sped off. Reitz and his uncle abandoned their pack-horses and took cover behind a boulder. They had only a few seconds to reach a decision. They were being attacked from all sides and would have to make a run for it. Their only option was to continue down the path.

  Under cover of the crag, they broke into a gallop and then, mustering all their courage, stormed through the hail of bullets. Keeping their heads down, they galloped on at breakneck speed. Out of the corner of his eye, Reitz saw more Sotho warriors emerge from behind the wall. Assegais and knobkieries flew past his ears. About 20 metres further, the trail took a sharp bend and fell away into the valley. That was their salvation. But there was still another obstacle to overcome. Blocking their path were some 15 to 20 Sotho men. They were
squatting in a circle, engrossed in an object that lay on the ground between them. They could do little more than leap to their feet, brandishing their weapons. Reitz and Mulder galloped past in a flash. They were safe.

  As soon as they were out of range of their assailants, they paused to take stock of the damage. Miraculously, they had both come out unscathed. Their horses, however, were badly wounded. Mulder’s had taken two bullets to its hind legs, but the wounds looked superficial and they believed the horse would recover. Reitz’s brown mare had been less fortunate. Her lower jaw had been shattered and there was nothing to be done except put the ‘poor animal out of her misery’. The men continued on foot, Mulder leading their wounded horse and Reitz with his saddle slung over his shoulders. A few hours later they caught up with their commando. The only consolation was that their two pack-horses had fled and followed the group, and here they were now, with their blankets and cooking tins intact. Two of their five comrades had also escaped unharmed. No one knew what had become of the other three. They had probably been killed and ‘dreadfully mutilated by the natives for medicine, in accordance with their barbarous custom’. Reitz had his suspicions about the men they had seen squatting on the trail.91

  The attack by the Sotho wasn’t as surprising as Reitz thought. The company they had run into belonged to the Herschel Mounted Police. This was an auxiliary corps of a few hundred men set up by the British expressly to prevent incursions by Boer commandos. Similar border police units, recruited from the coloured community, were operating in the north-western Cape as well, like the Border Scouts, the Bushmanland Borderers and the Namaqualand Border Scouts. As the war progressed the British were engaging increasing numbers of Africans and coloureds to perform various duties, including combat, to the Boers’ consternation.