of 26 March 1897 (a local British-colonial publication) described Spain as a ‘disgrace to civilisation’. Shortly after this, the same causes led to the same effects, and a colonial war between the Boers and the British generated yet another system of concentration camps. Aware of what was developing in South Africa, Lloyd George, a Liberal member of the opposition, expressed his concerns to the House of Commons on 25 July 1900, declaring that ‘it seems to me that in this war we have gradually followed the policy of Spain in Cuba’.[4] At this point, it may not yet have been entirely the case, but the military failures of General Frederick Roberts and the imminent arrival of General Horatio Kitchener would soon seal the fate of the Boer and black South African population.
This volume of social history is exact and original in its revisiting of this total war – a war characterised by the destruction of farms, the killing of animals, the widespread use of arson and interpersonal violence between men and women. Contributors carefully explore themes such as the complex relationship between charity and Anglicisation: the British authorities only accepted the former because they anticipated it leading to the latter. The authors also enable the voices of the unofficial prisoners to be heard from their hospital beds, their schools, their places of worship, and through their romances and their deaths, thereby giving a picture constantly illustrated by rich documentary and visual sources.
It all unfolds in the summer of 1900. The British have a military advantage over the Boers. They have control of the cities and rail network, but are still far from winning the war in the face of their adversaries. So they begin the classic method of deporting military prisoners to Saint Helena, Bermuda and India. Protection in camps is even offered to those who surrender. Nonetheless, the guerrilla forces continue to generate mayhem for the British army and the idea of internment of families in concentration camps is considered an extension of the scorched-earth policy. The British believe that the only viable solution would be to destroy the farms and the harvest, and to cut off supplies to the Boer troops. Kitchener sets out to resolve the problem when he takes command at the end of 1900. For him, there are no innocent bystanders among the Boer population – and the testimonies of those who resist, discussed in this volume, fail to prove otherwise! Kitchener focuses on dissuading Boer resistance, and insinuates, despite the evidence, that the ‘joiners’ themselves suggested internment camps for their families. In reality, virtually the entire population is taken hostage. White and black people are all taken as prisoners of war and subjected to harsh reprisals. Moreover, the camps are run by the military with their own clearly punitive goals.
This was the atmosphere, and those who appeared to be victims reacted accordingly. The example of Nonnie de la Rey is of particular interest. She wanted to be considered a prisoner of war in the event of her capture. This would ensure that she would be protected under the first Geneva Convention, or be viewed as neutral under the humanitarian laws that were vaguely in place during the war. Nonnie was a product of the prevailing Boer patriarchal system and she considered herself a ‘man’, in practice a substitute for her man during his absence. Even if she could not expect the British to respect this decision, she continued to support her husband on commando, where active combatants fought side by side and, at times, women accompanied men. It was for this active role, above all else, that she refused to be incarcerated in the concentration camps. Unsurprisingly, the French, Dutch and Belgians (fuelled by anti-British sentiment) eagerly rallied in support of such an austere and relentless freedom struggle by European Calvinists.
As seen in the pages that follow, the British described the Boers as primitive and unrestrained sensual beings, with a strong sense of family values, who would only submit if their kin were affected. At the turn of the century, reference was made at times to ‘Boer herds’ or ‘Boer flocks’, depictions which drew on social Darwinist ideas of human evolution and placed the enemy at a sub-human level.[5] With little choice but to submit, they were enclosed in a camp, which represented a kind of human zoo. There, they were registered, housed in tents, given ration coupons and became names on lists. The process was haphazard.
Neither Roberts nor Kitchener had considered the consequences of their orders. Pushing civilians into cramped quarters with poor sanitation and feeding them on reduced military-level rations could only lead to a disastrous outcome. Already, more British soldiers were dying from disease than in battle, a phenomenon not uncommon in nineteenth-century warfare. In the camps women, children and the elderly were prone to the same fate. Devastating outbreaks of measles were particularly common and later became symbolic of the trauma of camp life.
By the autumn of 1900, high mortality rates were causing a stir among pacifist groups in London, such as the South African Conciliation Committee. Emily Hobhouse, the founder of the South African Women and Children Distress Fund, belonged to this committee. In December 1900, she arrived in South Africa and produced a report on concentration-camp conditions which served as an indictment of the camps. Although not entirely anti-British, this was used to the advantage of the Boers and countries opposing Great Britain (the first translation of the report came from France). Although Emily Hobhouse was expelled from South Africa during her second trip in 1901, her message had been heard in Great Britain. The Liberal Party leader, Campbell-Bannerman, spoke scathingly of his country’s use of ‘methods of barbarism’[6] and made Hobhouse’s report public, an action which led to a subsequent parliamentary inquiry.
The inquiry focused on the desperate situation in white camps. Yet the separate camps established for black Africans were even worse. Their dwellings and plots were also burnt to prevent guerrillas from obtaining resources to continue their resistance.
These inmates worked in the camps and were expected not only to tend to their families, but also to meet some of the needs of the British Army. The high mortality rate in the black camps was largely overlooked by white observers and resulted in little protest and few witness testimonies.
Instinctively, the British tried to deflect their culpability by blaming the unsanitary conditions in the camps on the Boers; their ignorance and inability to be civilised were said to be the cause of the problems. In a complete reversal of the Victorian, British values that glorified the countryside as opposed to industrial cities, the Boers were frequently depicted as primitives living in rural squalor, incapable of cooking the food that was provided and unable to care for their children. To explain this, the authors of this book place the plight of women, children, black servants, white bosses, sick people, caregivers and early humanitarians within a broader reflection on the war. The reader bears witness to the inflicted trauma, the resilience, the helplessness, the loss and the trials of a daily existence. Moreover, a glimpse is provided into the monotony of life that introduced the notion of the ‘barbed-wire syndrome’ familiar to many prisoners – part of a litany of misfortunes that made these civilian camps the first of their kind in the twentieth century.
As the essays indicate, camp conditions gradually improved during the war. By 1902, nurses and teachers from Britain were being employed to care for the sick and the children. Was this in the tradition of Protestant charity? Was it an aspect of civilising enlightenment? Arguably, not quite. For instance, the English language was to replace Afrikaans, in addition to other cultural impositions. Yet, ironically, the political situation was also changing by then because civilians whose farms had been destroyed were no longer being rounded up and incarcerated. In the middle of that dispersion of civilians and erosion of the last of commando resistance, surrender came.
By then, the British had inadvertently created exemplary victims for the Afrikaners to mourn. The existence of the concentration camps gave more impetus to white Afrikaner nationalism than the rest of the colonial experience. Globally, too, the focus was no longer on Cuba. Although the pro-Boer movement stemmed from opposition to the British Empire and colonialism, its widespread outcry – even if exaggerated at times – against what were viewed as crimes, had a genuine basis.
In the September 1901 issue of L’Assiette au Beurre (which was swiftly translated into Dutch), the artist Jean Veber presented several sinister illustrations from the ‘reconcentration camps of the Transvaal’, as they were then referred
