It is NOT the purpose of this website exhibition to rekindle old
controversies, but to omit any mention of them would be historically innacurate
and hardly acceptable. Atrocities, the use of children in war, and keeping
women and children as prisoners, were hardly new elements of warfare at
the turn of the 20th century. Strong feelings about the war still exist
today among some Afrikaner people.
Boer women in a laager. Wives sometimes
went with their menfolk's commandos. But
the British strategy later in the war of burn-
ing farmhouses and crops forced remaining
women to join too. Great privations resulted.
One such woman later applied for a Boer
decoration, but was told she was not eligible,
having not seen 'active service'.
The concentration camp at Krugersdorp. Women can be seen walking
up a road
through the centre of the camp. Such camps were an obvious and controversial
result of the British strategy of attrition. Overcrowded conditions,
when combined
with a lack of knowledge about hygiene among the prisoners, led
to fatal results.
Some of Krugersdorp's child prisoners pose shyly for the
camera.
(Left) A sick and starving Boer child. Pitiful scenes like
this still stir bitter memories today.
(Right) Every parent's nightmare--a dead child--is photographed
outside a tent in a concent-
ration camp. Such photographs were quite common in the late
1800s, often providing the only
keepsake for heartbroken families.
You can see the sickness/death rates for these camps in April 1901,
and for the Transvaal camps in mid-1901 by clicking
here.
"Not all concentration camps were so appallingly badly run"
says a South African visitor to this exhibition. "Certainly in the
case of the concentration camp in East London the refugees from the Rand
and the local communuity complained because while the British army recognised
its oblgation to house and feed the Boers, the refugees who had been expelled
from the Rand because they were British subjects had to survive on charity.
That was a huge strain on local communiuties whose pre-War economies had
depended heavily on trade with the Rand".
By the end of the war, the situation in the camps had improved to
the point where the death rate was said by British authorities to approximate
that of the major Scottish city of Glasgow. If this was so, it was hardly
a great improvement. Poverty and hygienic conditions in heavily industrialised
Glasgow were among the worst in Britain.
The Scandal of the Black Camps
A South African visitor to this site has raised the controversy
about the imprisonment of Black South Africans in conditions much worse
than those for Boer prisoners. Removed from farms or other areas, at least
14 000 Black people are believed to have died in these concentration camps--but
for nearly a century the ordinary South African was completely unaware
of their existence.
Unlike the Boer prison camps, the Black prisoners were mostly left
to fend for themselves, and were not given any rations at all. They were
expected to grow food or find work. In a few instances this actually improved
their chances of survival because they were able to get out of the camps
which were hellholes of infection and disease.
Where the dead from these camps are buried is mostly still unknown.
Studies by the British War Graves Commission and other bodies in recent
years have proved relatively fruitless.
Questions about British Army
leadership
The British Army saw action somewhere in its far-flung Empire during
every year of Queen Victoria's reign. Some were minor wars described in
official papers as mere 'disturbances'. But even the minor wars required
the commitment of British regiments and money. Successful tactics from
previous wars proved useless on the South African veldt, where a highly
mobile guerilla force could ambush British units both large and small at
will.
Frontal assaults against rocky outcrops like
this one in Cape Colony, 15 miles south of
Orange River, led to horrific casualty rates
in the first stages of the Anglo-Boer War.
General Roberts and questions
about 'Ethnic Cleansing'
Most British historians agree that General Roberts was a great improvement
on his predecessors. He managed to sucure military victories out of past
disasters.
The phrase 'ethnic cleansing' had not yet entered the English language,
but Ethnic Cleansing certainly took place on the Rand. When Roberts took
Johannesburg he had already prepared for immediate action to rid the town
of "Jews and other riff-raff." Many Mediterraneans and Central
Europeans were arrested and deported on trumped-up charges of plotting
to kill Roberts and his entourage. More than 300 were arrested the day
after the town had surrendered. Amongst them were two Englishmen!
Two days after the town was taken the British issued a gazette re-imposing
the Pass Laws of the ZAR to control Black inhabitants. Sadly many Blacks
had seen the British as liberators and some had even torn up their passes.
Gen. Sir George White
This magic lantern slide cele-
brates the exploits of British
General Sir George White,
who relieved the town of
Ladysmith, and Colonel
Baden Powell of Mafeking.
Baden-Powell and his treatment
of the Barolong People of Mafeking
The Siege of Mafeking by the Boers encircled town inhabitants both
Black and White. Leader of the defence of Mafeking was Colonel Baden-Powell,
soon elevated to great international celebrity for his part in the siege,
and future founder of the Scouting movement, including Boy Scouts.
Baden Powell's broken promises to the Barolong and other Blacks
in Mafeking who bore arms and participated actively in the Siege, led to
a high death toll among the Blacks. This is quite apart from his miserly
rationing which gave Blacks far, far less than their White--or their Boer--counterparts
and led to the starvation of an estimated 2000. When some of the women
left the town in desperation with their children the Boers refused to let
them through and drove them back to certain death.
Improvements in military medicine led
to a better survival rate among battle
casualties. But these men became em-
barrassing reminders of the horrors of
war when they returned home.
TYPHOID IMMUNISATION
More of the British Force in South Africa
died of typhoid (8,225) than from battle wounds (7,582). Professor Almroth
Wight of the Military School at Netley, England, had commenced work on
typhoid immunisation in 1895. Successful tests were conducted among some
army units, including some in South Africa, and a review in 1901 showed
that the vaccine worked effectively. Some of these pioneering results were
excellent, yet no plan to properly immunise the whole force was implemented.
The benefits of this research, with refinements and better vaccine, were
received eventually by the soldiers of the 1914-18 War.
CONTINUE TOUR HERE