circumstances created by invasion and occupation. Their war was the struggle for a tolerable and decent existence in a complicated landscape of conflicting interests – defiance and accommodation, resistance and collaboration, interaction and withdrawal, fragile certainties and acute insecurities, and hope and despair. If our readers are to remember or commemorate anything about this total war in South Africa, we hope they will gain a sense of perspective when considering what the conflict meant for those who were not under arms.
In the chapters that follow, our contributors look at the powerful implications of gender in wartime, as well as at the personal trials in the countryside of one intriguing and prominent Boer woman who was able to avoid Britain’s concentration camps. The camps are, of course, a particularly controversial aspect of the war. For more than a century, their existence has inspired comment and condemnation from scholars, historians, politicians and sentimental Afrikaner citizenry.
We apply a broad-minded approach when analysing the purpose and nature of the concentration camps, and the reasons for their establishment. We also question the common assumption that the development of the camps was inevitable, based on the justification that the war could not have taken any other direction in the calamitous winter of 1901. In the same way, we deal with the evolution and dynamics of the black camps. Contrary to popular perceptions, historical works have documented their existence for several decades. This book suggests that white and black camps were more intertwined and that there was a greater degree of interaction between their separate inhabitants than has often been assumed.
We also record the experience of family life in the concentration camps. Even though there has been considerable focus on the camps, little is known about the circumstances of interned children. To make up for this historical neglect, this collection offers insight into wartime camp childhoods and provides readers with an understanding of how children survived and expressed themselves. It is time to move beyond the narrow view of their presence counting only as a toll of wasted and dead bodies.
In this way, we turn a searchlight on the complex inner workings of the camps. We investigate the everyday life of inhabitants, as well as how the conflicting medical cultures of the confined Boers and the occupying British administration influenced attitudes towards healing and recuperation. Finally, the common link between the horror of war and black or ironic humour leads us to a consideration of the views of those who resorted to comic expression to cope with their extreme circumstances. We also consider the significance of the comic imagination as the ordinary Boer population dealt with the immediate aftermath of hostilities.
As The War at Home shows, there were many wars fought from 1899 to 1902. With the fighting front and the home front often being indistinguishable, the Anglo-Boer War was a momentous struggle with many facets and faces, some of which are portrayed here. We invite readers to visit, once again, South Africa’s total war.
Bill Nasson and Albert Grundlingh
WHEN THE FIRST SHOTS OF THE ANGLO-BOER WAR were fired on 12 October 1899 at Kraaipan, south of Mafeking, neither the Boers nor the British could have foreseen the extent of the damage that this war would cause. By May 1902, thousands of hectares of land had been destroyed, thousands of inhabitants of the former Boer republics were displaced and thousands more had died. In addition to the carnage on the plains and koppies, the scorched-earth policy and the concentration camps left a deep scar on the physical and psychological landscape of South Africa.
Most of the concentration camps, established by the British from the second half of 1900, were in the two Boer republics, the Transvaal and Orange Free State, but there were also large camps in Natal and the eastern Cape. Towards the end of the war, there were around 50 camps for white civilians and 64 for black civilians. More than 4 000 Boer women and approximately 22 000 children died in the camps. Although there are no precise figures, it is estimated that between 15 000 and 20 000 black people, again mostly children, died in the black camps. All in all, it is likely that more than 40 000 people lost their lives.
What were the direct and indirect reasons for establishing concentration camps? Was the camp system an inevitable consequence of the war, or could it perhaps have been prevented? To what extent did the scorched-earth policy comply with the contemporary rules of civilised warfare? These questions will be explored in this chapter.
When professional soldiers wage war
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Boer forces on the offensive at Mafeking in the early stages of the war |
The British army, and other armed forces in Europe, became increasingly professionalised in the late nineteenth century. War was conducted in a less haphazard manner than the former method of simply overwhelming the enemy by charging at them. And this was one of the more indirect reasons for the concentration camps.
The British Empire was involved in many military expeditions and it was becoming necessary to conduct war in a more solid, comprehensive and varied way. Different expeditions required different approaches, and military planning was adjusted accordingly. Command structures, logistics and strategies were determined bureaucratically and with specific outcomes in mind.
Military professionalism created a distinct culture that emphasised instrumental rationality – the belief that the end justifies the means. This became so entrenched that other considerations were gradually eliminated. Among other things, it led to military personnel assuming the responsibility of organising the civilian population when hostilities spread from the battlefield to society at large.
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If not the republican Irish, blame the republican Boers: a bridge over the Vaal River blown up by Britain’s enemy. |
As professional soldiers, the military leadership considered that they possessed the competence to deal with civilian matters as well, but gave little thought to their potential complexities. This attitude made it relatively easy for them to implement extreme measures and to justify them. An academic explanation of this mindset maintains that ‘militaries, because violence is their business, do not need external ideologies or motivations to encourage excess; and their basic assumptions (the military culture) that develop to handle it may be sufficient in themselves’.[1]
When the civilian population of the two republics initially came under military rule, the way they were treated foreshadowed what would happen later in the Anglo-Boer War. The poor handling of the Boer civilians was not an exceptional case, as similar approaches had been taken by military leaders before.
Professional armed forces had played a part in the reconcentrados, the concentration camps established by Spain during its campaign in Cuba from 1896 to 1897. The Spanish forces were under the command of General Valeriano Weyler, who was sent to Cuba in February 1896 to suppress the rebellion that had erupted the previous year. The Cuban rebels had looted buildings, burnt houses, destroyed tobacco plantations and sugar mills, wrecked trains and blown up bridges. Weyler tried to control the revolt by limiting the number of conflict areas, and he divided the island into sectors and fortified them. The rebels may have wreaked havoc, but Weyler retaliated with even more destruction.
Weyler’s most controversial measure was to move all non-combatants into concentration camps,
