The Boer War

by Martin Bossenbroek

  But the ‘Lion of the Western Transvaal’ also had a less chivalrous side, which he revealed on hearing about the violent incidents on Schutte’s farm the evening before the fight. Among the prisoners of war were eight Cape coloureds who were alleged to have been involved in the disturbance. De la Rey lost no sleep over them. They were made to dig a mass grave, they were blindfolded and then shot.126

  Reitz was glad that Manie Maritz was still around. At times like this he was worth his weight in gold. No one else could have done what he did. He was an acrobat and shot-putter in one. He had tied three dynamite bombs together to make a ten-kilogram missile. Balancing on someone’s shoulders, he carefully estimated the distance from the rock on which they were standing to the blockhouse. He lit the fuse, paused for a moment and then hurled the bomb with all his might. It landed right on the roof. The fuse hissed for two seconds, and soon there came a thunderous explosion as rocks and sandbags went flying through the air. Then silence. They crawled through the coils of barbed wire and stormed the entrance. As they approached, they heard groans and a choked voice whimpering, ‘Stop throwing, stop throwing.’ The interior of the blockhouse was reduced to rubble and the roof had collapsed. The soldiers were dead, wounded or stunned.

  In the end Smuts had given Maritz the benefit of the doubt. Maritz said he had had no alternative; it was a matter of life and death. The Khoisan in Leliefontein had attacked him without warning and he had barely escaped with his life. He had retaliated the following day. In other words, a premeditated matter of life and death. But it didn’t take a brilliant lawyer like Smuts to know that there is no such thing. Still, he had left it at that. Maritz’s men wouldn’t be pleased to see their leader hauled over the coals, and the bottom line was that Smuts couldn’t really do without him.

  Smuts was reminded of this during his attack on the three mining towns in the northern Kamiesberg. Everyone knew he wasn’t interested in Springbok, Concordia or O’Okiep as such. They were bait to lure the British. The authorities in Cape Town couldn’t simply abandon the local garrisons to their fate. Moreover, they had an obligation to the Cape Copper Mining Company to conduct a rescue operation. This left them no option but to send reinforcements. The more serious the threat, the larger the force they would dispatch from Cape Town. The Boers had to launch an assault that would make them stand up and take notice.

  Their improvised dynamite bombs were a good start. A few Irishmen had made them (there were ample supplies of dynamite and fuses in the mining district) and they had done the job well. On 1 April 1902 Smuts with 400 commandos attacked Springbok, which was defended by a medium-sized garrison of 120, mostly coloured men. The Boer rifles were all but useless against their three forts, although Reitz managed to fire into the loopholes and shoot two of the guards in the head. The hand grenades they had cobbled together were more effective. Maritz turned out to be a master of his art. They destroyed and captured two forts on the first night of the attack. The guards defending the third one held out until the following night, but were forced to surrender when their water supply ran out.

  At the second town, Concordia, just the threat of a raid was enough. Like Springbok, it was defended by about 120 men, but their commander was more open to persuasion. On 4 April Smuts sent a letter urging him to surrender. It was in everyone’s best interests, he said. Captain Francis Phillips promptly agreed, on condition that all private property and property belonging to the mines was left intact. Smuts consented.

  The third nut was the hardest to crack. O’Okiep was a real stronghold. It consisted of a central fort with reinforcements on two sides. These were surrounded by a ring of 15 blockhouses with coils of barbed wire forming barricades between them. The garrison was manned by more than 900 soldiers, three-quarters of them coloureds. Again, Smuts initially tried intimidation. He sent out two messengers—one of whom was Reitz—under the protection of a white flag. Their demand that the garrison surrender met with expletives from officers and men alike. ‘Surrender! Surrender be damned; we’re Brummagem boys, we’re waiting for you.’ Their commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel W. Shelton, expressed himself more colourfully, but basically to the same effect.

  If that’s what they wanted, Smuts concluded, it would have to be a siege, if only to be convincing. This meant laying in another supply of dynamite bombs. On the night of 10 April they mounted their first serious assault on the blockhouses at either end. They easily disposed of one, but the other somehow withstood the onslaught of explosives. Their attempt to breach it the following night was no more successful. Reitz was exasperated and Smuts was starting to feel sheepish. It was time to bring in Maritz.

  Third time lucky. Reitz was present again, now as an admiring witness of Maritz’s skilful delivery, which brought the second blockhouse crashing down. Thirteen to go, plus the main fort. But Smuts felt it was too dangerous to attack them. They stood on open ground, at too great a distance even for his master pitcher, Maritz. Instead, he proposed that they content themselves with cutting off access to O’Okiep. He and his staff installed themselves in Concordia. Reitz shared a room with his friends Edgar Duncker and Nicolaas Swart. ‘Several Hottentot prisoners’ cooked for them and looked after their horses, there were plenty of animals for slaughter, they slept in real beds and there was even a library. It was pleasant enough. They just had to wait for the British relief expedition to show up. The opportunity to invade Cape Town was imminent.127

  The bitter end

  Concordia, April 1902

  It didn’t work out that way. One day in the last week of April Reitz, Duncker and Swart had been sniping at the British posts in O’Okiep. On their way back to Concordia they saw a wagon with a white flag over the hood in the distance. Inside were two British officers who had come to deliver a dispatch from Lord Kitchener to Smuts. They didn’t know what it was about, or so they said. Reitz had his own thoughts on the matter.

  Smuts received the officers in his quarters in Concordia. After a while he emerged, looking subdued. He walked out into the veld, lost in thought. That evening he spoke to Reitz about it. As he had suspected, it was indeed a communication from Kitchener, the British commander-in-chief. He had held talks with the Boer leaders. Peace talks. The outcome would be discussed at a conference in Vereeniging on 15 May. All Boer commandos that were still active were to send representatives. The Transvaal government also wanted Smuts to attend, as their legal adviser. A safe-conduct pass for the journey was enclosed. By train to Port Nolloth, from there by sea to Cape Town, and on to Vereeniging by train.

  It was a crushing blow for the men who had stolen into the Cape Colony eight months earlier, looking like scarecrows, who had endured peril and hardship, and finally gained control of almost the entire western Cape. And now this, when they were just about to achieve a spectacular coup. Was the situation in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State really so bad? What else could they conclude? Smuts was depressed, but he had no choice, he would have to go.

  Reitz was bitterly disappointed too, but his spirits lifted on hearing that Smuts had a safe-conduct pass for a secretary and an orderly as well. He would accompany Smuts—he could choose in which capacity—and it would give him an opportunity to see his father again. The prospect revived his spirit of adventure. In spite of the dark clouds gathering on the horizon, this would be a unique journey. He wasn’t sure what an orderly was, but he thought it was some kind of aide-de-camp, so that was what he chose. Smuts’s brother-in-law, Tottie Krige, would go along as secretary.

  The hardest part was taking leave of the men who were staying behind: Reitz’s friends Edgar Duncker and Nicolaas Swart, and all the companions with whom he had shared so many experiences. Smuts summoned them all and told them about the peace talks, hinting gently that the outcome might not be what they were hoping for. But they responded only with cheers and encouragement, unable to entertain any thought other than that Britain had lost the war and that the conference had been convened ‘to give us our country back’. The part
ing was joyous. Smuts left it at that.

  Escorted by a patrol, they rode to the British lines in O’Okiep. There, their patrol relieved them of their horses, sang the commando anthem for the last time, and galloped away, firing a farewell volley. A British carriage took them to the railway at Port Nolloth. Once on the train, Reitz discovered his mistake. An orderly was a servant, not an officer. He was packed into a cattle truck, with ordinary soldiers, including a group of coloureds, while Smuts and Krige were ceremoniously ushered into a first-class compartment. Reitz was out of sorts and had an altercation with one of the coloureds. Fortunately, he was soon promoted. Over dinner Smuts mentioned that his orderly was the son of the state secretary of the Transvaal, whereupon he was plucked out of his cattle truck and invited to join the distinguished party at table.

  When they reached Port Nolloth their steamer, the Lake Eerie, was ready to leave. A boat was sent to fetch them. Waiting on the quay, all three fell silent, each lost in his own thoughts. Reitz wondered whether Smuts and Krige were also reminiscing about campfires on mountain slopes and wide open plains, marches under the stars, the ordeals of cold, hunger and rain, and, most of all, ‘the good men and splendid horses that were dead’.128

  In the end it was Abraham Kuyper who had set the flywheel in motion. On 25 January 1902 the British foreign secretary, Lord Lansdowne, was handed a memorandum drawn up by the Dutch prime minister. It was in French, the language of diplomacy, but the gist of it, in typically Dutch style, was forthright. The government in The Hague offered its services to negotiate ‘un traité de paix’, a peace treaty, between the British and the Boers. They had already worked out a scenario. First, the three members of the Boer delegation, who were still in the Netherlands, would return to South Africa to confer with the Boer leaders. They were to return with an authorisation to conduct peace talks somewhere in the Netherlands. The Dutch government would willingly provide ‘the accommodation required’.

  Lansdowne replied, just as bluntly, on 29 January. The British government appreciated the humanitarian considerations that inspired the offer, but on principle declined the intervention of foreign powers in the South African war. In any event, London saw no benefit to be derived from a delegation that was accredited only in the Netherlands. Steyn and Burger were the Boers’ highest-ranking authorities. If they wished to negotiate, they should contact the British commander-in-chief in South Africa.129

  Leyds only heard about this from the newspapers—it was debated in the British parliament—and he was not amused. Apparently that Fox fellow who had approached him in November 1901 hadn’t been bluffing about Prime Minister Kuyper’s interest in mediating. But Kuyper hadn’t taken the trouble to inform him or Fischer or Kruger about his proposal. The only person he contacted was Wolmarans, as it transpired later, and he had kept it to himself.130

  This certainly wasn’t what Leyds had understood by mediation. The Dutch memorandum didn’t call on the British Cabinet to put an end to a legally and morally reprehensible war. On the contrary, it implicitly urged the Boer leaders to give up a hopeless cause. Leyds was afraid the British would use this to their advantage. He received bad news from America at almost exactly the same time. President Roosevelt’s response to the Boer representatives’ appeal of mid-December 1901, though sympathetic and kind, was unhelpful. Roosevelt pointed out that his predecessor, McKinley, had previously offered his services as a mediator, which was more than any other head of state had done. London had refused categorically, and would undoubtedly do so again.

  A month later, towards the end of February 1902, a negative reply came from Switzerland as well. But the other government heads they had written to didn’t stoop to send so much as a word of acknowledgement, not even the Russian foreign minister, Lamsdorff, in spite of an accompanying letter from his own envoy, De Giers, in support of their cause. Leyds had exhausted his diplomatic options.131

  March was a month poised between hope and fear. On the one hand, Leyds waited in suspense to see whether the British would try to exploit Kuyper’s peace initiative and, if so, how. At the same time, he was excited about De la Rey’s resounding success at Tweebosch on 7 March, and his capture and astonishing release of Lord Methuen. The fact that the Boers were still capable of such a great military success, and such a noble gesture besides, was restoring the confidence of their supporters in Europe.

  Leyds’s hopes revived even further when four couriers arrived from South Africa towards the end of March 1902. They had come via German South West Africa, bringing news from Smuts—fantastic news. In a series of reports dating from December and January, Smuts sketched a rosy picture of the current situation in the western Cape. It made Leyds profoundly homesick. He wrote to his wife, Louise, ‘I would so dearly love us to be in the open veld in South Africa. Having spent much of my time with the couriers over the past few days, I so enjoyed savouring the air that it was almost unbearable to be here.’132

  It would have been a terrible disappointment. The South African veld was becoming more oppressive by the day. Discord hung in the air. In the course of February 1902 Milner and Kitchener had been sent the texts of Kuyper’s memorandum and Lansdowne’s dismissive reply. In early March Kitchener had figured out how best to use the correspondence. He thought carefully about what he wanted to achieve. With the briefest possible accompanying note he sent the two communications to Schalk Burger, the deputy president of the Transvaal—and purposely not to his Free State counterpart, the unshakeable Marthinus Steyn.

  The effect the note had on Burger surpassed his highest expectations. Burger replied on 10 March, saying he was ‘eager and willing’ to ‘propose terms for a peace’. But first he would have to confer with Steyn. Would Kitchener be willing to provide him and the other members of the government with a safe-conduct pass to cross the British lines? Kitchener couldn’t agree quickly enough. But where was Steyn? Burger didn’t know. Nor did Kitchener. He had last been spotted somewhere near Kroonstad. At Kitchener’s suggestion, Burger and the other Transvaal leaders decided to head that way.

  Steyn was finally tracked down on 26 March. He turned out to be somewhere else, in the western Transvaal. His eyes had been troubling him for weeks and he was being treated by De la Rey’s physician. Steyn proposed a meeting somewhere nearby, in Potchefstroom or Klerksdorp. Kitchener took the decision: it would be Klerksdorp. Besides the political leaders, the top military authorities also received an invitation and a safeconduct pass. By 9 April everyone had arrived. There were ten Transvalers, including Burger, Reitz, Botha and De la Rey, and seven Free Staters, most importantly Steyn, De Wet and Hertzog.

  Almost ten months had passed since the Boer leaders had all met together. Back then, in Waterval on 20 June 1901, they had confirmed that they were all in agreement, or rather, they had reached a consensus again after arguing for months about the best course to follow. In any event, they had adopted a unanimous and final resolution: no peace without independence.133

  In Klerksdorp it soon transpired that some were more steadfast than others. As before, it wasn’t the Free Staters who had misgivings. De Wet made his position clear. ‘I would rather be banished for ever than sacrifice one iota of our independence.’ Steyn and Hertzog echoed that sentiment. De la Rey, too—with Tweebosch in mind—was in favour of ‘continuing the war’. That made him the only Transvaler to take an unambiguous stand. All the rest had reservations, Burger and Botha in particular. Burger didn’t mince his words. ‘Our position is getting weaker by the day.’ Winter was on its way, which meant that ‘many burghers will have no choice but to give in to the enemy. Our nation has always had its share of stalwarts and cowards.’ Of course, they could fight on and perhaps accomplish what they wanted in the end. But at what cost? They would probably end up concluding that ‘our nation has been annihilated. Then for whom will we have fought?’

  Botha made no secret of his concerns, either. There were differences between the regions under his direct authority, but the overall picture was discouraging
. The countless drives by the British columns and the strangling network of blockhouses had taken their toll. In the space of a year the number of men he could raise had almost halved, from 9570 to 5200, of whom 400 were unmounted. Food was scarce. There were almost no slaughter-cattle left. He was on the verge of surrendering parts of the Transvaal which had been rendered uninhabitable; even their commandos were struggling to survive. Communications with, and traffic to and from, the outside world had been blocked. He was encountering armed Zulus with increasing frequency. Nothing much could be expected of the Cape Colony either. The number of Boer fighters there had risen only slightly over the preceding year, from 2000 to 2600 men. ‘It’s too late for a rebellion of any significance.’ All told, only 15,000 to 16,000 Boers were still active in the field. In spite of it all, the men were still in good spirits. That wasn’t the problem. ‘But what about the people?’ As their representatives, they could choose ‘to persist and die like men or until we are banished to far-off islands . . . but we have a duty towards the people’.

  Peace, agreed, and gladly, but at what price? The opinions expressed in Klerksdorp differed radically. A future as an independent nation or physical survival? That’s what the difference between the Free State leaders and most of the Transvalers boiled down to. On one point they all agreed. They had to determine what the British would be prepared to concede. Only then could they decide what to do. This meant talking to Kitchener. On 10 April Steyn and Burger made it known that they wanted to speak to him personally. They were more than welcome. A day later they boarded the train to Pretoria. The following day, Saturday 12 April, they sat at the table with the British commander-in-chief at his headquarters in Melrose House.

  The two Boer presidents—Kruger was out of the picture—were accompanied by the last remnants of their governments. So Reitz senior and Hertzog—as legal counsel—were present as well. Kitchener was alone when they arrived. Two days later Milner joined them. The set of hidden agendas was complete. Each of the four protagonists had a different objective. Steyn wanted independence, Burger an honourable peace, Kitchener a knockout victory, Milner an unconditional surrender. But not all of them were as explicit as Steyn: ‘The people must not lose their self-respect.’