[Music]
the boer war took the world into the
20th century
and taught britain a resounding lesson
the greatest empire ever needed nearly
three years to beat a boer army smaller
than the population of brighton
it became the first modern conflict
a guerrilla war
of scorched earth
concentration camps
[Music]
blacks were both victims and
protagonists
and were condemned by the war to nearly
a hundred years of oppression
[Music]
it has cast a long shadow across the
century
the bull war was dominated by the land
over which it was fought a war which
began with a simple seemingly innocent
aim
net force for next honesty
it's about freedom nothing else it's not
about hating anyone
you just want your place in the sun
you want your rights
that's all it's about
[Music]
in 1836 hundreds of farmers or boars
tricked from the british cape colony
deep into south africa
[Music]
of mostly dutch descent devout and
determined they sought new lands to
settle and farm
as far from british rule as possible
[Music]
look out hill
they gazed across fertile country
believing they had an absolute right to
it
as do their descendants
was lawfully bought from the zulu people
we never annexed any land
people got land or farms
which were empty
but somebody was there first
the land of the bled people
came and found blacks here
on the 16th of december 1838
twelve thousand zulus attacked four
hundred and seventy bores at blood river
the boers formed their wagons into a
defensive ring
commemorated in this bronze replica
[Music]
the boers had guns and cannon
the zulus had spears and
shields that day the boers killed three
thousand zulus
[Music]
i think that the idea of the
people
was born at the battle of blood river
us say
we say that god was with us at the
battle of blood river
we prayed and said you must help us
because we will then dedicate this
victory to you this is almost out we're
full
the boar victory at blood river became
the foundation stone of their belief not
only in god
but in themselves as the natural rulers
of the land
and of its black peoples
so since
the boys saw us blacks as stupid people
we were not meant to own land
that is why they took the land from us
the boys considered us as fools
the great trek had been partly triggered
by britain abolishing slavery in its
territories including the cape colony
[Music]
the boers were determined to keep their
slaves
as they took more land
their labor force grew
they paid the blacks a pittance or just
provided food shelter and sometimes
alcohol
in the 1850s the boers founded their own
republics the transvaal and orange free
state
but this brought conflict with britain
africa was of key strategic importance
on the sea route to india
a vital piece in the imperial jigsaw
if you were to take any school maps at
that time you'd find the predominant
color there was red
pinkish red really and that covered
places like india
canada australia
and we were extending our powers all the
time
but we were
what should i say it was a kind of
beneficent theft
the transvaal had briefly been a british
colony
but broke free after the boers won a
short war against britain in 1881
so this was unfinished business
driving british ambitions in africa was
cecil rhodes
as prime minister of the cape colony he
had grand schemes for a modern empire
he planned to build a railway from the
cape to cairo
and to control the lands and their
wealth between
the transvaal and orange free state were
of little interest as long as they just
produced sheep and corn
but the discovery of gold changed
everything
the transvaal became the richest and
potentially most powerful state in
southern africa
[Music]
britain now saw it as a political threat
and an economic resource right for
exploitation
that's
[Music]
blacks were brought in from across
southern africa to work the mines
forced to live without their families in
compounds
[Music]
their annual death rate was 20
they had no rights
in the british cape colony wealthier and
educated blacks who owned land had the
right to vote
many saw britain as likelier than the
boers to extend their rights
but in the boer republics blacks weren't
even allowed to walk on the pavement
the boys wanted us to work for them
they wanted to turn us into their slaves
they just made us suffer
they only wanted us to work
they made us suffer from our labors
forgetting that we are human beings too
the president of the transvaal was paul
kruger veteran of the great trek
he believed god had put blacks on earth
to serve the boers
blacks did not need political rights
but what about the hundred thousand
white english and europeans
drawn by gold to the transvaal
their labors had turned johannesburg
into a rich cosmopolitan city
they paid their taxes but had no vote
my father said they should let them vote
they can't let them pay all the rates
and taxes and not vote
paul kruger was afraid they'd vote him
out of office
so he didn't give them the vote
johannesburg as it now is was built by
us yet you pass iniquitous laws denying
us the only rights of citizenship mr
president
we are here now seeking redress by
constitutional methods
that if you persist in your attitude of
blank refusal
you try us beyond endurance
johannes paul kruger is my name
johannesborg is my own town
and i feel towards it like a father
whose daughter has been debauched by
robes and thieves
the interview is at an end
cecil rhodes as usual had a plan
nothing less than to take the transvaal
by force
by the end of december 1895
he had 600 men led by swashbuckling
sidekick dr leander star jameson
and in london he had the ever so secret
blessing of the british colonial
secretary himself joseph chamberlain
[Music]
but kruger knew about the jameson raid
in advance and waited till it set off
before striking
[Music]
messes over the wires mr president
jameson has started he's marching
towards the border
i have my white horse brought to the
door
[Music]
i'll be back in a few days
fetch my boots
if you want to kill a tortoise krueger
said
you must wait until it puts its head out
jameson was ambushed and never reached
johannesburg
he lost 65 men
was led off weeping to prison
it became an international scandal
london pretended the jameson raid was a
rogue operation
but the boers were not fooled
they used their gold to purchase an
arsenal of the latest weapons from
europe
crook field guns and mauser rifles from
germany
cruzo siege guns from france
in june 1899 peace talks failed
kruger felt increasingly threatened but
refused to compromise his country's
independence
and britain's negotiator with kruger
wouldn't have accepted a compromise
anyway
sir alfred milner wanted the transvaal
rested away from stubborn conservative
poors like kruger and placed firmly
within the modern british empire
with british troops at his border kruger
decided to strike first
he said
you do not want voting rights you want
my country
that is what the war was all about they
wanted
on the 11th of october 1899
the boers declared war on great britain
and promptly besieged the towns of
mafiking kimberly and ladysmith in the
british natal and cape colonies
then it became real war it had just been
trouble brewing before that
and when the real war came
the boss
shut up
or they surrounded those towns
and
wanted to starve them out
well
not being as highly civilized as we were
in their more
rough way
when they got angry they got a bit cruel
using their new siege guns
the boers shelled the towns
hitting hospitals
killing women and children
if british people
are in trouble
the country's got to help them out
and if the british start a war
they've got to win
[Music]
at 47 000 men the british force wasn't
huge
but they weren't expecting a huge war
among the journalists was 24 year old
winston churchill
he was said to be both clever and
bumptious
[Music]
in command was general sir edward's
bulla vc
veteran of the zulu war i hear the bugle
[Applause]
he was filmed boarding ship in a tall
hat shaking hands
he said he hoped he wouldn't be away
long
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
at last we have arrived
we sighted land at 8 am
the harbour was crowded with great
transports crowded with soldiers
there were five thousand while we were
there and i don't know how many horses
and the wharves and sheds are piled with
boxes of ammunition biscuits stores and
hay
in fact you have no idea of britain's
greatness till you see a place like this
[Music]
we had five miles to walk through cape
town
and it fairly took the starch out of
some of us
from their open trucks the ordinary
soldiers or tommies looked out at the
strange land unfolding and wrote home
about it
corporal harold armstrong of the
kensingtons began to sense how hostile
the environment was and how it favored
the boers we're plagued by beetles flies
and fleas
frightful country for marching
the hills bristle with mounds of stone
which would afford splendid shelter for
marksmen
but at first many officers treated the
war as a hunting party
the boers would be caught like pheasants
in drives
camouflage was unsporting
it would be a pushover like wars they'd
won against primitive tribesmen
they didn't think that it was going to
last very long
they knew that the boys were virtually
farmers without any military training or
anything like that
and that they wouldn't be very much
opposition
and as a result when the army arrived in
south africa according to what my father
told me
there was very little reconnaissance
very often i remember him saying that
several officers would get together and
they'd say see that copy over there
let's go and see if there's any balls up
there i tell you what i'll race you
there and they'd charge off on their
horses you know if the boys happened to
be there well then of course
they got casualties then they realized
that uh
there's more to the pause than they'd
thought
[Music]
from each district
[Music]
the call to arms
[Music]
the idea was to defeat the british
garrisons on the borders
many set out full of courage with
slogans on their hats
cape town or bust off
and britain will be willing to give us
back our independence
it was an army quite unlike the british
the boers were bound by common cause but
not by discipline
[Music]
the men elected their officers
and didn't have to obey them
[Music]
men
then 50 men would go and take the hill
the other 100 would go home put their
feet up make coffee cook a meal saying
we'll catch up with you later
it was quite clear in the beginning of
the war i will make war but on my turn
the boers declared it a white man's war
and promptly took their black servants
with them
perhaps twelve thousand in all
some went willingly
others like paulie mcquinn's father
weren't given an option
was not a man who liked a black person
telling him what to do
he wanted to be the one to tell the
black man
if he told you to go with him you
couldn't say no
my father took his boss's horse when it
was tired
and rested
he had to remove the saddles and polish
and prepare
where the boss went
he had to carry his gun for him and
follow him to the front where the
fighting was
that's how mr kuzrat went to war
the british agreed it was a white man's
war
and then employed tens of thousands of
blacks
as ox drivers laborers scouts and spies
my father joined the british forces
because he could be paid
he didn't have that political
affiliations one way or the other
the boys didn't have the money
to pay them
and the english had the money to pay
them
and there were also
supplies of food and all the rest of it
they were treated like soldiers even
though they were not soldiers
six thousand miles from the war
eight-year-old arthur whitlock kept up
with the british army's progress across
south africa
i was able to follow the war more
closely because the daily mail they
brought out a map
and you had little flags with pins on
them and you pin them showing the
position of the various troops
arthur followed the movement of lord
methuen with eight thousand men to
relieve kimberly and mafiking encircled
by the boars
general bulla with fifteen thousand
was off to relieve lady smith
but in their way stood the boers helped
by the volunteer irish brigade
they leapt at the chance to strike a
blow for the rights of small nations
against the british oppressor
what they learned detonating railway
lines in south africa would later be put
to use with the ira
as well as blowing up bridges
the boers ambushed trains and armored
trains in particular
[Music]
on the 15th of november 1899 winston
churchill took a ride in one
the guardian correspondent refused to go
saying church would either see too
little or too much
the boers derailed the train here at the
foot of this hill
my grandfather was the medical officer
on the armored train
during this derailment they came under
fire from the ridge west of the railway
line
and the fire was pretty heavy and
they were wounded almost from the first
and winston churchill was on that
armored train
i can remember my grandfather saying
that
he remembered winston churchill turning
to his batman and saying pass me my
heavy revolver
churchill switched abruptly from
journalist to leader of men
an intense fight followed resulting in
four dead
14 wounded and 58 taken prisoner
including winston churchill
[Music]
and then on his way to prison in
pretoria churchill was treated to a
lecture by his boer guard which suddenly
made him see why the boers opposed them
so bitterly
they fear that the british in victory
would give full equal rights to the
blacks
fancy letting the black filth walk on
the pavement
educate a cavern
ah that's you english all over we
educate them with a stick
they were put here by the god almighty
to work for us
insist on their proper treatment will
you we'll settle whether you english are
to interfere with us before this war is
over
10th of december 1899
british artillery pounded poor positions
in the hills around the besieged towns
hills like margus fontaine near kimberly
after the heavy bombardment it showed no
signs of bore life
so three and a half thousand men of the
highland brigade prepared to capture
it it was a night attack in a
thunderstorm
there had been no reconnaissance
near the foot of the hill they were hit
by a tremendous volley of bullets
some were killed
others panicked and ran
most stuck it out
for the whole of the next day the
highlanders lay on the plane without
shelter from long-range mausers or
baking sun
but where were the boys shooting from
to answer that question lord methuen
ordered an aerial reconnoiter
while the battle raged below
captain jones went up to look for the
enemy
filled balloon titanium made a sense for
observing purposes for several hours
saw kimberly in the distance
but the boer position was so well taken
up
that it was almost impossible to locate
but captain jones was looking in the
wrong place
the boers weren't on the hill at all
they were secure in a trench at its foot
the trench is still there
a century ago michael heifer's father
louis lay behind it picking off the
highland brigade
after a day of slaughter a truce was
called
michael remembers his father's words
at the shelves
i was very moved to see these young men
the reason was because there wasn't one
old man there they were all kids
my father saw an old scottish minister
walking amongst them reading from a
bible
my father said it touched him deeply to
see all the dead people even though it
was a big victory
[Music]
there were over 900 british casualties
the black watch and seaforths bore the
brunt
one highlander said they had been taken
into a butcher shop and left there
[Music]
a private and the black watch dictated a
poem from his hospital bed
why weren't we told of the trenches
why weren't we told of the wire
why attack in the quarter column
they tommy atkins inquire
why were no scouts sent forward
why were no scouts on our flank
why were we matched up in column
who made the mistake
give his
rank do they know his name in old
england
do they know his incompetence yet
tommy has learned to his sorrow
and tommy will never forget
[Music]
they called it black week in britain
there had been two other defeats in five
days at stormberg and calenso
[Music]
i realized by the actual news in the
paper that uh things weren't going too
well it was probably due to the lack of
supplies and they're
fighting
in an unknown country where those on the
spot were very familiar with it
it was humiliating
no one alive in 1899 could remember a
time when the british had been beaten so
resoundingly
a century of certainty overturned by a
bunch of foreign farmers
lord woolsey commander-in-chief of the
british army was appalled
we are face to face with a serious
national crisis and unless we meet it
boldly it will lead to dangerous
complications with foreign powers
but the foreigners first instinct was to
laugh
queen victoria had her own reply
we are not interested in the
possibilities of defeat
but bohr response to trouncing britain
was strangely subdued
by los afrai valerie
foreign volunteers fighting with the
boers were astounded that the boers were
not elated about these victories
but it was just part of god's plan
what's up
so they accepted the victories and all
was well
but there was no chance of peace
an atmosphere of defiant jingoism now
ruled in britain
while queen victoria cheered up the
soldiers already in south africa with a
tin of chocolates each for christmas
lord woolsey decided to double the army
[Applause]
[Music]
the imperial volunteers were formed with
gentlemen for the first time serving in
the ranks
[Applause]
people now spoke of it as a national war
[Applause]
[Music]
and after the failures of bullar and
methuen new leaders were called for
enter field marshal lord roberts of
kandahar and lord kitchener of khartoum
himself
i remember they used to sing a song
lord robertson kitchener
general buller and white
four of the bravest generals that ever
went out to fight
and then it went on
and when the war is over how happy will
be for i love rosie o'grady and rosie oh
great he loves me
on the 10th of january 1900 roberts
landed in cape town as
commander-in-chief over general bulla
in contrast with the patriotic optimism
back home
roberts had deep misgivings about the
campaign
his only son freddie had just been
killed
during bulla's failed bid to relieve
ladysmith
bulla was now just 16 miles from lady
smith
wary of chalking up another defeat
he put general warren in temporary
command
in between warren and lady smith was a
formidable range of hills
british mounted infantry scouting on the
left flank
stumbled on a clear route round the
hills to ladysmith
this would have averted the bloodiest
battle of the whole war
but the british army of 1900 was no
place for initiative
warren ordered these men back and
decided to force straight through the
hills
that meant capturing spion cop the same
vantage point from which the voir
trekkers had looked out 60 years before
one of the officers taking part in the
operation was lieutenant colonel
alexander thornycroft
it was to be a surprise attack at night
up this valley to spion [ __ ] beyond
but thornycroft realized they would get
hopelessly lost in the darkness
so he sat here at dusk
a noting the landmarks ahead
drew a sketch map to guide them
a century on thornycroft's family brings
a copy of the map back to spionkop
right
it's wonderful they show it to their
guide gilbert torlage
shelf down the side here which is
visible
the map enabled the assault force of 1
hundred men to make their way ups beyond
cop
pitch dark knight
but how many boys are here
have they got artillery with them
no one knows
orders were that they were to be
absolutely silent no talking
no smoking no lights
no firing
and slowly slowly slowly they made their
way
up that spur
private matthew kelly recalled the links
they went to to ensure silence
all the dogs which are following us are
destroyed
after marching for two or three hours we
are told quietly that we have passed the
enemy centuries and are in their lines
[Music]
speon cop itself was in fact only
lightly guarded by the boers
[Music]
but they had reinforcements including
artillery close at hand
and the british having failed to
recognize us beyond
didn't know that just beyond it lay a
semi-circle of hills
perfect positions for the boers to
bombard speed on cop itself
a little after three in the morning the
british reached the grassy plateau which
rises gradually to form the summit
probably when there was somewhere in
this area suddenly out of the darkness
came a tremendous challenge of be star
getting no response
the boys opened fire
the british charge forward
and they catch one of those boys bane at
him and killer
the rest of the boys ran away and with
that the british then gave three hurrahs
to indicate to everybody
that spienkop had fallen into british
hands
the british now dug themselves in
this row of stones marks the line of the
trench
but the ground was rocky and many picks
and shovels had been abandoned on the
long walk up
the trench was barely 18 inches deep
enveloped in fog
the exhausted soldiers now snatched some
rest
it wasn't until dawn that they realized
just how dangerously close the boer
front line was
[Music]
about 7am the sun breaks through the
clouds and we see a long grassy ridge
about a thousand yards in front but
commanding our ridge
[Music]
[Applause]
about eight am the boars open a terrific
fire from every place except our extreme
rear
we take the best cover we can get
captain birch gets shot in the head just
above the eye the fire is terrible
ever so much heavier than what he had
seen before or since
boar reinforcements now hurried up this
slope behind the bore lines
one of the newcomers was
seventeen-year-old denise rates
denise wrote an account of his war which
has been translated by his grandson
michael
the mountain rose above us as steep as a
wall
and it was no easy climb
passing a trail of corpses on the way
halfway to the top i found robbie
reneker lying dead
when i reached the top of spionkop i
discovered that the burgers had advanced
no further than the first line of rocks
right on the rim of the plateau
and that the rest of the flat summit was
still in the hands of the enemy
the nearest english were behind a long
low stone wall
no more than 30 yards away
from where they kept up a vicious fire
on us with their lee metfords
the boers now used a signaler on spion
cop to direct their artillery fire
precisely onto the british trench
the accuracy of the boer gunners was
devastating
around nine in the morning general
woodgate the british officer commanding
spion cop was mortally wounded
a doom laden message was sent by
heliograph
reinforce at once or all lost general
dead
general buller sensed the rising panic
and sent an order to warren
unless you put some really good hard
fighting man in command on the top you
will lose the hill i suggest thornycroft
but it took hours for the message to
reach thornycroft pinned down in this
trench
no one knew who was in command
and the situation was deteriorating
by about one o'clock the suffering the
losses was awful
it was hot hot hot people were thirsty
people were tired
and there were still many many hours of
daylight ahead behind here lay many dead
many wounded and
there was no end in sight
this was a fatal spear on cop
and the sun pouring down
the shells dropping everywhere
you can see the poor chaps shot down
like skittle pins
the most awful scene of carnage
men blown to atoms
joints torn asunder
headless bodies trunks of bodies
awful
copy of letter from colonel forneycraft
spear and cop
to sir charles warren
2 30 p.m
24th of january 1900
we are badly in need of water
there are many killed and wounded
if you really wish to make a certainty
of the hill for the night you must send
more infantry and attack enemies guns
but general warren two miles away in his
camp had no idea where exactly on
speonkop his troops
were fearing the british might get hit
by their own artillery he did not shell
the enemy's guns
for their part
the boers on spion cop were under such
intense fire from thornicroft's men that
ironically they too felt they were
losing the battle
the original burgers who had attacked
early that morning were holding onto the
barren rock perimeter all the while in
the burning sun
under severe fire and unable to advance
further
as a result their carriage started to
weaken and imperceptibly many began to
slip down the hill
meanwhile relentless bur artillery
destroyed the british signaling position
here smashing the heliograph
no one had remembered to bring oil for
the signal lamp
thornycroft felt increasingly abandoned
while the generals dithered below
by sunset the british were on their last
legs
regret to report that i have been
obliged to abandon spear and cop
as the position has become untenable
i have withdrawn the troops in regular
order
and will come to report as soon as
possible
alex thornecroft lieutenant colonel
so he had taken an awesome
responsibility
but i think he really had very little
option
he knew he was going to get criticized
because he wrote his brother that's why
and he said i i'm writing this letter in
case anything happens to me
so you'll know exactly what happens and
he goes through all the reasons why he
he decided to do it yeah so he knew he
was going to get flagged
as darkness fell
the british and buzz retreated down
their sides of the hill each believing
the battle lost
but one man was actually climbing spion
cop
winston churchill had daringly escaped
from prison and joined the army
he was sent off
[Music]
[Applause]
britain had suffered a run of defeats in
the opening months of the boer war
as 1900 progressed the tides seemed to
turn in their favor
but the war was changing not ending
it was increasingly a war against
civilians
[Music]
britain had gone to war in october 1899
to beat the boars and secure south
africa for the empire
it was now the largest army to leave
britain's shores since edging court
the aim was to sweep up from the cape
overrun the orange free state capital of
bloomfontaine
and then into the transvaal to pretoria
but from the start the birds had
besieged british garrisons in kimberley
ladysmith and mafiking
now the british army was split up and
bogged down
trying to break through to the besieged
towns
south london schoolboy arthur whitlock
followed the war closely
these sieges of the three main towns
they impressed me very much by the way
in which they were so stubborn
getting short of food
other supplies
and
they stood it out
against all odds really
and i thought that was a marvelous
tribute to our british nature
beyond the outer british lines of
defense with the boers
dug in on hill and felt
their huge siege guns lobbed shells into
the towns
lookouts watched for telltale puffs of
smoke on the hills beyond and warned the
inhabitants to take cover
[Applause]
women and children fell victim to boer
shelling and rifle fire
the boers were told the exact positions
of the women's encampment convent and
hospital in mafiking so they could avoid
them
but they were hit too often for it to be
an accident
the boers became known as women's
slayers
colonel robert baden powell was in
charge at mafiking
he sent an official complaint to the
board general which prophetically
anticipated the course the war was to
take
you have altered the usual conditions of
war
you are making it one of people against
people in which women are considered as
belligerents
i warn you that the consequence of this
may shortly be very serious to your own
people
one of the dangers the british faced in
the besieged towns was low morale
during the siege people were cooped up
all the time
but it was a gentleman's war because
they had
a truce on sunday they didn't fight on
sunday
and
so on those sundays
they used to have cricket matches
and tent pegging but
in the masonic lodge
my mother said that they used to do all
the gilbert son of an operas
[Music]
is
[Music]
very good at that sort of thing
and those people had very good voices
singing all their old songs
but that has how they of course he was
very good at putting on a turn himself
this man of many bots
he was a master of bluff
he had to be because
his
defenders of maviking
were very few and they had very little
equipment
and one of the stories that is told is
the defense around their thoughts wasn't
very good so they had the bright idea of
putting up
bobwhile fences which didn't exist they
planted some poles and everybody who
approached had to step over the barbed
wire which they did solemnly stepping
over nothing
all my military knowledge going potty
and eventually has only been brought
down to the beginning of the century but
still it matters vegetable and ever the
middle i have the very model of
[Music]
i think there's that sort of inner
resilience amongst the british people
and when we're in time of trouble and
such like we can very often laugh
ourselves out of it where other nations
they can't understand that we're
laughing at ourselves and saying well
we're a dog's body but let's get on with
it
and eventually we fight our way through
baden-powell's strict censorship and
relentless self-publicity have conspired
to give an impression that the sieges
were an exclusively white experience
depending on bulldog grit and
resourcefulness
[Music]
in fact blacks outnumbered whites by
five to one here in mafiking
in kimberly ten thousand black diamond
workers were penned up in compounds
there were several thousand indians in
lady smith
all caught up in a war not of their
making and suffering for it
very few had bomb shelters
[Music]
my grandmother and my mother had no
protection
shelter for them meant leaving their
houses
and hiding behind the mound of earth or
under trees
the leaf fled on the ground my mother
with a baby on her back and the shells
flew over their heads and landed on
their house
one of the best chroniclers of the siege
lived here in the heart of mafiking's
black
community he was a member of the
barolong people
23 years old he spoke eight languages
and worked as the court interpreter
his name was sol plaque
later a founding father of the african
national congress he kept a diary from
which his grandson reads
it's now thursday the 7th of december
1899. the first cell of this morning
burst
near one of the railway cottages
and killed a young fellow
by blowing off his belly
and pitching his intestines onto the
opposite roof
i have never before realized so keenly
that i am walking on the brink of the
grave
boure schelling killed and maimed more
blacks than whites
because the whites had shelters
which the blacks had to build for them
racial discrimination was a fact of life
then
on the eve of the war a troop called
savage south africa had visited england
to perform scenes from past battles with
britain
oh they were just [ __ ]
we had nothing against them
but they were [ __ ] and we used to say
eeny meeny miny moe cuts a [ __ ] by the
toe if he squeals let him go eeny meeny
miny moe when we wanted to say who had
to be it if you know what being it
is
they re-enacted the defeat of the
matabeli
we didn't mean any harm we were quite
pleased
to think about the [ __ ]
were more than a pleasant thought for
baden powell
desperately short of soldiers in
mafiking he armed the blacks breaking
both aboard and british taboo
food
he felt it would be bad policy to
involve blacks in this war because the
effect on a post-war situation would be
tremendous
with claims for more territory
and for the general right to vote
and for the boers it was a case of
what if it's awesome this is our war it
has nothing to do with the black man
board general pietro
wrote to baden powell in protest
you have committed an enormous act of
wickedness
reconsider the matter
even if it cost you the loss of nothing
disarm your blacks and thereby act the
part of a white man in a white man's war
in fact general cronier himself armed
blacks during the siege of mafiking
blacks also acted as couriers with
messages hidden in their clothes
the penalty of court was death
the british even had a black woman
courier
my grandmother was a brave person
she was well known for her bravery
that's why the english chosen to carry
secret messages
she carried a letter soon inside her
dress
to an english outpost
[Music]
the blacks fought the boars and raided
their cattle
they took the land share of the risks
the whites got the land share of the
food
ironically much of the food belonged to
the blacks in the first place
baden powell commandeered it and then
sold it back to them as rations
[Music]
the natives are getting a little
suspicious of us
they want to know why we are trying to
take all the grain from them
a man in mafiking is sentenced to death
for stealing a goat
under baden powell
blacks were flogged for the first two
offenses and executed for the third
standing at the back
the court interpreter sol plaque
[Music]
we have very great difficulty in feeding
the natives
i saw horseflash for the first time
being treated as human foodstuff
it looked like meat with nothing unusual
about it
but when they found that there was no
more meat left
and brought the heads and feet i was
moved to see their long ears and bold
heads
and those were the things the people are
to feed on
the recipients however
were all very pleased to get these heads
and they ate them nearly wrong
horse was a key ingredient in the black
soup kitchens
azina cow noted in her diary
[Music]
an old horse is slaughtered skinned and
thrown into a huge boiler with some
villainous mealy meal and salt
and is doled out at thrippance a pint
j.e neely of the palm al gazette
described the queues of blacks
five or six hundred of both sexes and
all ages
a waiting turn to crawl painfully up to
the soup kitchen
it was one of the most heart-rending
sites
i've ever witnessed
[Music]
as they lost
weight their eyes bulged out of their
sockets
my grandmother said that
to supplement this soup
they went to the river
and ate mud
to give them something more in the
stomach
my mother said they had a little fox
terrier
her name was vicky she was a miniature
foxteria which they used to have to hide
because as food got scarce and scarcer
if
the africans particularly
got hold of a dog i mean it didn't last
very long they killed it to eat so
everybody was always looking after vicky
and hiding her so nobody would take it
to eat
[Music]
to make the food last
baden powell had one more trick
expel all blacks not essential to
mafiking's defense
stocks at present will last to june the
12th
but by forcing natives away we can get
their share for whites
tonight no fewer than 750 natives have
to walk 100 miles through boer lines
our outposts have orders to shoot at
them if they return
it does seem hard
when a start was made from the river
there are cries of mama mama
children shouting after their mothers
and women after their children
the boers caught stripped and flogged
many of the women
some they killed
those who got past the boers faced a
slower death
as jay nealy witnessed
i saw them lie where they had fallen
too weak to go on their way
mostly little boys
probably hundreds died from starvation
or the diseases that always accompany
famine
[Music]
the british army had been inching closer
to the three besieged towns
on the 15th of february 1900 kimberly
was relieved
the breakthrough had begun
poor general pietr cronier with 5000 men
fell back in retreat from kimberly
they had huge ox trains heavily
dependent on black labor
the main trade that the men undertook at
the time
was to transport with their beautiful
wagons
and my father
was a teenager
and his job was to be
two-layer
that is the man who leads the oxen
and it is this wagon which was chosen to
carry
the wife of general quinjee
accompanied her husband
they were attacked by the british
shots were coming from all sides
and
down they would hit the oxen in their
run
and says the way you would know that an
ox has been hit
would be when it fell on its knees
and it made the sound ah
and fell down
and his uncle would come with a sharp
knife
and
cut off the straw that is the
the leather cord
that holds the yoke to the neck
and they would leave the ox there and
run on
until the next one is hit
and the same thing would happen
and that is how my father
contributed to the parole to the world
war
saved general crunchy's
wife
he never told us that the crunches
came to say thank you for that
but mrs cronier was only safe for a
moment
instead of fleeing to the north her
husband decided to dig his five thousand
men in along the banks of the river
modder at paderberg
but fifteen thousand british soldiers
were hard on his heels
it was now the burr's turn to be
surrounded
board general christian devette implored
cronier to break out
but he was too encumbered with baggage
weapons and families to risk it
renovillian's father was with david
my father said that my father told us
they'd sent a message to crony telling
him that they were going to drive a safe
corridor through the english lines
and the minute they'd done that
crony and his men must flee downing
he shouldn't take any wagons with him
just troops on horseback and they had to
move as fast as possible
didn't react
when the safe passage was created he
just stayed
because the whole commander of the
orange free state was captured there
and after that the board troops were
very disheartened
[Music]
surrendered to field marshal lord
roberts on the 27th of february 1900
it was the first major british victory
and a turning point in the war
over four thousand boers were taken
prisoner a devastating blow
[Music]
taking him into captivity
[Music]
with his wife and army cronier was
exiled to the island of setolina
following in napoleon's footsteps
[Music]
punch showed him greeting napoleon's
ghost with the words
same enemies sire same result
cronie and hester lived out the war on
saint helena
they then went to america where he
reenacted the battle of paderburg at the
1904 louis world fair
he died hated by his people
the british breakthrough gathered
momentum
in natal they relieved lady smith
they pushed the boers back at
drifontaine on the western front
when the british reached this final
ridge they saw the boers fleeing on
horseback on the way clear to
bloomfontaine capital of the orange free
state
the city fell without a fight on the
13th of march 1900
yet a thousand would die here
but not from poor guns
and the seeds of the tragedy were sown
weeks
even months before
[Music]
i know my father said that some of the
water that he had to drink during the
campaign would be absolutely horrified
contaminated by dead animals and
all that sort of thing
disease was a major problem
they were having to drink
untreated water virtually from day to
day
and from stream to stream so it was
never the same water
and hence there was a far greater
chance of picking up something from the
water
typhoid is one of the
gastrointestinal diseases it is an
organism that affects the gut
it is characteristic of large standing
armies
spread
by water by food by dust by flies
of which there were millions
for months thousands of british troops
had been living along the river modder
swimming in it
washing in it
drinking it
at paderberg a thousand dead horses and
cattle had been carried away down it
the water was alive with typhoid
warnings were given
and ignored
it's hot
it's dry
it's dusty
it's very hot
and they've marched
are they thirsty
who now has the inclination
to
ladle out a bit of water boil it
have it cooled and then drink it
just doesn't happen
so that by the time
they move
that army
is incubating typhoid
they come as victors into blue fondant
and then the typhoid strikes them
and they die
miserably
they really did
feverish
dehydrated
diarrhea
delirious it was not pleasant
it is not a kind disease
george graham survived a bout of typhoid
then called in taric and wrote home
about conditions in hospital
some of the men have great blowflies a
light upon them
and these rapidly turn into maggots
and one poor fella was unlikely to
recover
for he had nearly a pail full taken away
from him
they laid their eggs upon our blankets
and you can tell the rest
there were severe shortages
but general kitchener told one doctor
you want pills and i want bullets and
bullets come first
there was indifference at the top and
bureaucracy in the middle
so the men died
nurse kate driver worked in ladysmith
where the death toll reached four
hundred
he lay quietly in great pain oh my
little mercy i'm a goner he said
i could see too that he was a goner
i tried to persuade him otherwise and
tried to get knowledge of his relations
in case i kicked the bucket he said
looking at me
i could not tell him yes
two-thirds of the british soldiers who
lost their lives in the boer war
died not of wounds but disease
[Music]
four days after bloomfontaine fell
the boar leaders met to work out a new
way forward
the ideas of younger generals like
christian devette cousteau ray and louis
borta now emerged
[Music]
no more fighting the british head-on in
pitched battles
no more cumbersome baggage trains
the future lay in mobile units
raiding behind british lines
a guerrilla war
fresh life was breathed into the poor
struggle inspiring a new generation of
officers like marnie moritz
the general my father spoke most about
was
he always said to me
if i had to name a great warrior it
would be general de la ray
he used to go into battle with this
great nose hooked like an eagle speak
and his beard blowing in the wind
he could inspire any man to go to war
the trouble was disillusioned had been
drifting home
following the recent run of defeats
and many more accepted a british offer
of amnesty as long as they swore
allegiance to the crown and gave up
their weapons
johannes swanepool did just that and was
branded a traitor
or joiner as his nephew recalls
my uncle became a joiner and you can
understand it from his point of view
he saw they had no hope of winning the
war once the english had conquered our
capital bloomfield
he and others came to the conclusion
that it was time to end the war that's
why he became a joiner
he also wanted to return to his farm he
didn't want to fight anymore
general david realized he had to sort
out the committed from the waivers in
his ranks
the vets
only the ones who really wanted to fight
would return
to 500 and that was precisely what
happened
on the 25th of march the vet was
rejoined by a group of burgers with the
real courage to go home
who aren't interested in defending their
own freedoms
[Music]
on the 24th of april 1900 hms powerful
brought the survivors of the lady smith
siege home to a hero's welcome
as these various places were relieved
there was a great response of the people
here but i think most of all it was when
we came to the final one of mafikin
when there was a tremendous outcry of
joy amongst the people there
early from african oh that was a happy
night in glasgow my mother said the
whole theater then that night just
emptied at once and these everybody run
to the public house for a drink
they were that happy to know that that
there would be some men come home from
mafikan
it was a time of very great rejoicing
and we thought we'd turn the corner then
the british army now rolled into the
transvaal
beckoned by its twin prizes
the capital pretoria and the gold mines
of johannesburg
crossing 300 miles of felt was tough on
men and their mouths
but the infantrymen or tommy's had the
worst of it
kipling
uh brought out a poem and that had
particular reference to the marching and
you came on the lines of boots boats
boots boots moving up and down again
there's no discharge in the wall
[Music]
the ordinary soldiers won the respective
officers like captain march phillips
sit down by this group of tommies by the
waterhole in the midday halt
they're tired and hungry
you thought you were roughing it
but look at these men
look at their unaffected cheeriness
[Music]
up and down again
[Music]
the british army
like a plague of locusts left a trail of
devastation across south africa
on one level it was a simple case of
hungry troops coming across well-stocked
farmhouses
if they went into a farm and the farm
was empty things like there was chickens
and ducks and animals and things round
about and then they would help
themselves to that
but there was nobody else to help
themselves to that i mean if they didn't
somebody else would have it and it
wasn't just the officers it was i mean
everybody
but it went beyond stealing poultry as
captain phillips observed
looting is one of tommy's perpetual joys
not merely looting for profit
though i have seen tommy's take
possession of the most ridiculous things
with a vague idea of carting them home
somehow
but looting for the sheer fun of the
destruction
from early 1900s they burned farmhouses
particularly those owned by fighting
boars
lord roberts of kandahar was not unduly
concerned about this kind of behavior
people who are fighting against us
cannot expect that their property will
be altogether respected
scorched earth and reprisals were
standard weapons of colonial warfare
in recent british conflicts commanded by
lord roberts and lord kitchener afghan
villages had been burned
the sudan plundered
people starved into submission
the british started to treat the boers
as just another kind of savage tribesmen
to be brought to heal
[Music]
on the fifth of june 1900 the british
moved unopposed into pretoria
capital of the transvaal
[Music]
amid the rejoicing captain march
phillips smelt a rat
it is generally considered rather a coup
in war i believe to take the enemy's
capital isn't it
we keep on taking capitals but i can't
say it seems to make much difference
the boers go on fighting after their
loss just as if nothing had happened
indeed roberts made it easier for the
boers to carry on by giving their army
24 hours to get clear if the boers left
the johannesburg gold mines intact
so the boers escaped ticking the last
boxes of gold mined on the ram
punch magazine showed paul kruger
fleeing from pretoria with a fortune in
his saddlebag
rumors about kruger's gold persist to
the present day
the british wanted our gold and land
and paul's money
he went off with it
i know where
retreated into the mountains of the
eastern transvaal
fighting a series of rearguard actions
against the advancing british
kruger was spirited over the border into
portuguese east africa and safety
[Music]
he next showed up on a whistle-stop tour
of european capital cities
drumming up moral support for the boers
the interference
the intervention they wanted was
we're not asking for military aid from
france or germany or anywhere
we just want you to send britain a
diplomatic note saying
please give this bunch of booze their
freedom back that's what they really
want
kruger got little more than cheers and
sympathy
but the boar cause was seen as
increasingly fashionable in europe
images of brave bores were used to sell
meat sauce
underwear
fizzy water
coco
[Music]
by mid 1900 some boers were fighting a
guerrilla war
christian duvet destroyed lines of
communication
hit british columns then escaped into
thin air
he frustrated the british in south
africa and fascinated them at home
school boys in england collected
cigarette cards of the boar commandants
they prized one above all others
to wet to my mind was a a flyby night
type of fear and for that reason young
as i was i admired him although he was
an enemy
and as i say he flinched from place to
place
causing damage to our troops in a way
before we could retaliate
[Music]
shot on a hillside in lancashire
david found himself trapped in the
transvaal with 250 men
behind him the british in full pursuit
across this plane
in front of him the mahalisburg
mountains a barrier of rock between
defect and freedom
well here we are on the terrain where
general david performed one of his most
famous escapes during the world war
it was the 21st of august 1900 and it's
not too far away from historians france
johan pretorius and ian copley pick up
david's trail at the deceptively easy
foot of the slope
where the vet performed this escape
they take two horses with them
a century ago de vet and his men had
250.
the only way out
was to go over the mountains so de vet
approached an african and this was one
of the most famous conversations of the
anglo world war and he said to him
is there a path over here the man said
no master there's no path he said but
people gone here before he said long ago
and the vet asked him but is it the road
the path of the baboons
the man said yes for boons but not
people
and david said to his men come on men
where baboons can pass we can pass too
we've got to force otherwise we'll be
caught
devette gave his horses their last drink
here
there is no more water until the far
side of the mountain
now we get into the top of the tree line
it gets more rough and sternier than
ever yeah
it's actually from here that they
got off their horses
and started climbing the mountain
you can see how difficult it is at this
even at this stage
of the climb
that the horses
are quite
having a struggle
come on come on come on let's go back to
the free state come on come on come on
the horses didn't want to go any further
their counterparts a century ago weren't
given the choice
de vet was a hard taskmaster
but the popular depictions of his
escapes made it look like magic
five o'clock on a winter's afternoon
almost dark and they reached the top
you know the vet said he had climbed
many mountains but never before had it
been so tired
that
the exhaustion was
was rewarded by
the lovely panorama that he had here to
the south
that's an incredible view yes and
the best of it all there was no british
soldier in sight
there's this lovely story of this
young boy selling picture postcards of
general duvet in london
and they were all in envelopes
and everybody was buying and this one
fellow came back and said but look my
envelope is empty there's nothing inside
the boy said oh general vet must have
escaped again
the british response to boer guerrilla
tactics went far beyond legitimate
countermeasures
from june 1900 destruction of boer
property was widespread and ruthless
general kelly kenny had used the
expression lay waste in an order and was
asked to define it
destroy what you cannot eat
burn all farmhouses
search for hidden stores of ammunition
and destroy what you find
as far as the options were concerned
something that keeps on rising in all
these conversations about the scotch
scorched earth policy
it was a war it was a total war
there was no
option
i'm not concerned here with the morality
of the war he was to blame and who
wasn't
but what i'm concerned about is if you
look at it from a military historian's
point of view
it was a war the aim was to win it
captain march phillips was with
remington's tigers
they scouted ahead of the main army
plundering and destroying
our course through the country is marked
as in prehistoric ages by pillars of
smoke by day and fire by night
we usually burn from six to a dozen
farms a day
if the bores have used the farm
if the owner is on commander
if the line within a certain distance
has been blown up
we find that one reason or other
generally covers pretty nearly every
farm we come to
and so to save trouble we burn a lot
blacks fighting with the british were an
integral part of these operations
my father did in fact join shall i say
parties that burned houses
and
robbed farms and all this of it
that's why investors was lucrative
business
to join and forage in this farmhouse and
on
and set them on fire and all that it was
part of the game as it were we take the
balls and pen the houses as simple as
that
you collect whatever you can
and then
start holding on fire because the idea
was to avoid this was having a place
where to hide
that was amending it was part of the war
strategy
many british like captain bromley
davenport felt little sympathy for the
boers
i burnt the farm in revenge
there was a woman there very fat and
unpardonably ugly
i had no pity for her at all
the women here are worse than the men
and should be made to suffer with them
[Music]
but captain march phillips felt
distinctly uncomfortable
the worst moment is when you come to the
house
the people thought we had called for
refreshments and one of the women went
to get milk
then we had to tell them we had come to
burn the place down
i simply did not know which way to look
the old grandmother was very angry
she told me that though i was making a
fine blaze now it was nothing compared
to the flames that i myself should be
consumed in hereafter
the women cried and the children stood
by holding onto them
and looking with large frightened eyes
at the burning house
they won't forget that sight how bitter
sovereign
not even when they grow up
christina nianaba hasn't forgotten
though a hundred years have passed
with us
the little piglets they just chopped in
half
killed some chickens and chased the
others around and two
um
and then they set the house alight
oh you already invited us i almost
forgot that's what they
my mother said i was still in the house
when they started to burn it was nothing
else so she ran to go and grab me
my hair was singed by then it was clean
i was small
then we went to the wagon with all our
stuff
she could not climb up quickly enough
so the officer said
take your nose
my mother
my mother said turn around i'll kick you
in your eyes i'm sorry lady i didn't
know you could speak english
and then my mother got into the wagon
and we went off to the camp too
roberts had started to sweep the
families of boers still fighting off the
vote into concentration camps
the deaths in these camps would
reverberate around the world to
britain's shame
but that's delay in the future
roberts thought the war was as good as
over
someone else could mop up
in december 1900 he went home to an
earldom promotion and a hundred thousand
pounds in cash
[Music]
troops also returned
the city imperial volunteers were
welcomed as victors
there was a mass exodus 2 of war
correspondents racing back to publish
their boer war bestsellers
but the boers weren't writing their
memoirs yet
a young woman johanna brunt overheard an
exhausted british soldier saying thank
god the war is over
she replied
tommy atkins the war has just begun
the man chosen to mop up in south africa
was kitchener whose hard-line methods
only stiffened the resolve of those poor
men and women prepared to fight to the
end
before
how much innocent blood flowed here how
much
[Music]
next week on the boar war
the british heard bore families into the
first concentration camps of the 20th
century
thousands mostly children die
and the boers take the guerilla war into
the cape martyring the black leader
abraham esau
[Music]
i think the guerrilla war started in an
attempt by the world leaders
to cause as much unpleasantness to the
british forces they possibly could in
the hope
that they would eventually get fed up
with it all and there'd be some sort of
a peace i think that was really what was
behind it
and then of course lord kitchener
decided on his scorched church earth
policy and the concentration camps and
all that sort of thing
which has left a bad taste ever since
the mortuary at croonstadt camp
the piles of coffins
the bereaved women
i don't know how many funerals there
were a day they're clean damn
people said that if you put all the
mothers tears together you'd have enough
to fill a dam
i can remember me saying that
[Music]
by 1901 with set-piece battles a thing
of the past
the question was how to win the war
[Music]
britain's answer was to fill south
africa with barbed wire and
concentration camps
[Music]
the british outnumbered the boers ten to
one
but beyond the cities which the british
controlled it seemed like bandit country
captain march phillips described the
predicament in a letter home
it is bad country for our business
to us mountain ranges are not fine
scenery but strong positions
rocks and crags are not picturesque but
merely good cover
we always serve out extra ammunition
when we come to a pretty bit of scenery
the british struggled across barren
landscapes
they clung to defensive positions
they felt uneasy
and impotent
the velt is a void to us
the enemy are watching us now from a
rise a few miles away
waiting for our next move
our passage makes no impression
and
plenty of traces
[Music]
control
the whole british army depended for its
supply on a fragile railway network
[Music]
in january 1901 kitchener began a
building scheme to protect lines and
junctions from boar attack
[Music]
they were the last english castles
a chain of block houses across the
landscape
one inside of the next
fenced between with barbed wire
the usual garrison was an nco and six
infantrymen
plus armed blacks
much used for century duty at night
it became a system not just for
protecting the railway but for catching
bores
mobile columns would sweep the velt
driving the bores towards the blockhouse
lines where armored trains would
administer the death blow
that at any rate was the theory
the board general christian de vet
called it the block head system
the english were so busy building block
houses that they had no time to fight us
and it was all money thrown away
a dark knight a bit of ingenuity and a
pair of wire cutters were all to vet
needed to beat the system
will saxon served in block houses near
harry smith
he found time to sketch and write home
to his sweetheart mary
the block houses are placed on eminences
with from one to three miles distance
between them
we are pretty safe here
we have open country in front
we have ammunition and biscuits and
bully beef enough to withstand a month
or more
i gotta power some of tobacco from you
last week
tonight we shall have mosquitoes by the
million
[ __ ] patrol the barbed wire
entanglements between block houses
they will do anything for a white man
it is 10 o'clock
four of the garrison are playing west
for their rum rations
some are asleep
one is studying geometry
give my regards to your mother
i am yours till lights out and after
will
will saxon survived the war
returning home to marry mary
but lives were lost in the blockhouses
successful as they became at reducing
boer sabotage
haute crawl stasi in the flatlands of
the orange free state
a cluster of graves near the site of an
old block house
almost certainly those of fourteen black
soldiers
killed by the boers while guarding the
block house for britain
british frustration grew as the boers
moved freely across the veld supported
by civilians on farms
to eat
obviously something had to be done about
it because
the boys are being supplied by their
families and things like that on the
farms
and
[Music]
the idea of the concentration camp is
get all of
all the farm folk
families
into an area where they couldn't
assist their
husbands who were fighting the british
commander in chief lord roberts had
started clearing the boers into
concentration camps in 1900
borrowing an idea first used by spain in
1896
to crush rebellion in cuba
roberts's successor in south africa lord
kitchener stepped up the policy
all possible means shall be taken to
stop the present guerrilla warfare
one that has lately been successfully
tried on a small scale
is the removal of all men women and
children and natives from the districts
which the enemy bands persistently
occupy
the women and children brought in should
be camped near the railway for supply
purposes
the ordnance will supply the necessary
tents
and the district commissioner will look
after the food
a farm in the orange free state
burned by the british in nineteen
hundred
one of perhaps thirty thousand destroyed
in the process of clearing the vault
boar families watched as all they had
worked for was put to the torch
then to the camps
a miserable journey made a century ago
by christina nianabe
they chased everyone to the camp
people couldn't stay in their houses
their houses had all been burned
many many people were in the camps
who will my mom live no
if only my mother were alive
she'd tell you
they were crammed into tents
giving little protection against south
africa's extreme climate
not all the camps were fenced in
but the people weren't free to leave
this helped the bores who couldn't look
after their families and fight a
guerrilla war
in some camps the sanitation was dire
the food appalling
christina near naba was here in
potchiff's room
she said once a week we got a little
piece of meat which they then had to
cook outside
of course there were no stoves
she just had to make a fire
this is how we lived
this is how we got our food and stuff
the children got sick and five children
died
my sister died my brother died
miserable about her children
yeah
oh my heart
[Music]
the site today of christina's
concentration camp at potsheff's room
[Music]
the names of her sister maria
and brother christian
are inscribed on the death row
[Music]
10 of their population
died in britain's white concentration
camps in south africa
[Music]
i think one must look upon the camps and
i'm not going to try to justify anything
one way or the other
as a manifestation of the
frustration
felt by the british high command
the war would not come to an end
they had no answer
for guerrilla warfare
none of the things they knew
worked
they saw the farms as
sources of food of shelter for these
roving commanders
so
put them in caps
but the people who do that
have no idea
of how you organize a civilian camp
how closely do you group people together
how do you see to the drainage of the
soil
the trees
of the water supply
unfortunately with a large number of
people in
small area
and i imagine probably not an awful lot
of
medicines available
uh things got out of hand and they just
the medical authorities just couldn't
cope with the amount of disease which
was
prevalent
in the concentration camps at that
particular time
hopelessly overwhelmed camp hospitals
suddenly faced epidemics of measles
pneumonia dysentery typhoid
diseases unknown to most bores out on
the vault
they have lived in isolation now for
virtually a hundred years
healthy people but a people in isolation
and when they are exposed suddenly to
a large influx of people from outside
they come into contact
with
the organisms that carry the disease
particularly
measles
it is a devastating disease for an
unexposed community
[Music]
my
[Music]
in my heart
[Music]
it
when the authorities learned there was a
sick child in your tent
they took that child to a hospital
hospital
and the bull women strongly believed
that within three days that child would
be dead
so if a child became ill you just hit
him in the tent and kept him there so
that when they inspected the tents they
would not know that there was a sick
child there
north concentration camp by the cry
river in the orange free state
546 children would perish here
as death rates rose
some poor mothers began to fear that the
british were trying to kill them
a gulf of suspicion opened up
the british doctors told the boars to
keep their tents well ventilated
and they restricted the diet of
dysentery and typhoid sufferers
but the boys thought they were being
frozen and starved to death
rumors abounded
of infected meat
of poison in the medicine
ground glass in the flour and sugar
the concentration
the concentration camps were regarded by
the nation as genocide
may 8 don't
my own aunt who was in the camp with my
father
told me that every day they'd strain
their flower through a very fine gauze
sieve to remove bits of glass from the
flowers
whether these things were orchestrated
from the top
or whether it was unfavorable conditions
is not for me to say
i only know that a lot of research is
done on it today and there are very
strong theories that a form of genocide
went hand in hand with the terrifyingly
high mortality rate in the camps
there were some exceptionally good ones
there were some that were very badly run
there were some that were grotesquely
inefficient
but
to say that this was a policy of
genocide which
some people have claimed is
well i was going to use a root word i'll
just say trap
ultimate of dialects tell that
we must state clearly that the aim of
the concentration camps was not genocide
what happened there was just poor
administration
but particularly poor administration by
the british army authorities
the british had shown scant regard for
the health of their own men
thousands of thomas had already died of
disease
the welfare of the enemy was an even
lower priority
kitchen are fogged off inquiries about
the camps saying the inmates were happy
and conditions improving
but in mid 1901 the truth leaked out
and the whistleblower was neither an
outraged bore
nor an intrepid journalist but a
well-connected liberal from cornwall
emily hobhouse
the lady from england had arrived called
emily hobhouse
he saw her and she was dressed
beautifully
and you know they were ashamed of their
mothers who were so neglected in their
old tattered clothes and their faces
uncared for
their hair uncomfortable
she had a gentle face and she spoke to
them in english which she didn't really
understand
and now after she left things improved
in the country
emily hobhouse had heard unconfirmed
reports about farm burnings and the
plight of poor women and children
a campaigner for social welfare she
reached south africa in january 1901
nearly a century ago she walked down
this path to meet annie strauss
the local boar woman who would guide her
around spring fontaine concentration
camp
jennifer hobhouse balm follows in her
great aunt's footsteps
her guide is annie strauss's great
granddaughter suzanne
i know
you must be susanne i am and you must be
jennifer pleased to meet you welcome
here
emily hobhow sat here with suzanne's
great-grandmother annie
distributing clothes to the women from
springfontaine camp next door
she had visited other camps but nowhere
else had she seen such extreme poverty
a few months after emily's visit
annie strauss and her family were
themselves moved into the camp
a precious memento has survived from
that time
and this little doll
it was the present
yes for my grandma when she was in the
refugee camp yes you see
there is her name and to create yeah
it's the old little body yes
refugee camp springfield
june 1901
well i think this is the same one that
uh later on there was a quite a fuss
about a
child called lizzie banzai
and emily had given
her the doll and you can just see the
doll in the picture
lizzie vanzal was one of a number of
children emily saw in varying stages of
emaciation
the controversy arose because this
photograph inspired a newspaper campaign
in england blaming the boers for their
own misfortune
the
theory put around was that
the people
were bad mothers
and they weren't clean
and
of course they neglected their children
and they
used dutch medicines which were
folk medicines and that was what she had
to answer
and emily felt it was extremely unfair
to try and blame it on the
mothers
suzanne takes jennifer across the field
once crowded with tents and people
down to the wash place by the railway
with water in short supply it was hard
to keep clean
and the british controlled the access
it's the women concentration camp
and the
stones where they could wash their
clothes and the bell that they used
to call the people
for their turn it looks like a bit of
old
railway line this was the piece the bell
that they used you see how many a time
they used it and they
there was no soap in the restrooms when
emily came out here well it was all
right for the women who could buy things
but
a lot of them had no money and
they they were completely reliant on the
rations that they
were given and that was a tragedy
well each tent had a tragedy
[Music]
the more camps emily visited
the more aware she became of the scale
of the dying
i began to compare a parish i had known
at home of 2 000 people where a funeral
was an event
[Music]
here some 20 to 25 were carried away
daily
the full realization of the position
dawned upon me
it was a death rate such as had never
been known except in the times of the
great plagues
[Music]
the whole talk was of death
who died yesterday who lay dying today
who would be dead tomorrow
another child had died in the night
and i found all three little corpses
being photographed for the absent
fathers to see someday
emily was devastated by the death rates
amongst the
especially amongst the children she
loved children
she
felt they were completely innocent
the women might support their husbands
but the
children were rarely
the brunt of the wars
on them
emily saw for herself how families
suffered even before reaching the camps
on springfontaine railway station she
found 600 people
huddled under trucks and makeshift
canopies
such a shelter i was called to see a
sick baby
the mother sat on her little trunk
with the child across her knee
she had nothing to give it and the child
was sinking fast i thought a few drops
of brandy might save it but though i had
money there was none to be had
i thought of the superintendent of the
camp a mile off and sent a hasty message
to ask him to let me have some bird sick
child but the reply was that his
supplies were only for his camp
there was nothing to be done and we
watched the child draw its last breath
in reverent silence
the mother neither moved nor wept it was
her only child
dry eyed but destly white she sat there
motionless looking not at the child but
far far away
into the depths of grief beyond all
tears
[Music]
this description of emily's was to
inspire the tableau at the heart of the
women's memorial in bloomfontaine
[Music]
she returned to england and wrote a
report describing the camps
urging reform if not abolition of the
whole system but her views were not
welcome
many people
thought that emily was a traitor
so they were very rude to emily a lot of
people in the drawing rooms of london
they
if she was introduced they'd turn their
back
and
they just weren't prepared to listen
but the liberal opposition leader
listened
drawing on emily's information sir henry
campbell bannerman publicly denounced
the methods of barbarism being used
against the boers
the daily news gave a full page to
emily's report on the camps
including her description of the misery
she witnessed at spring fontaine
a vociferous minority in britain opposed
the boer war
someone moral others on political
grounds
emily's revelations came as a godsend
but anti-war speakers like the young
liberal mp david lloyd george had great
difficulty getting their views across
as a silent feature film showed
the crowd branded him a traitor and
rioted
the tory establishment also went on the
attack exemplified by a contributor to
the times
the boar women have proved themselves to
be very dangerous enemies
we may admire their courage but they
have forfeited the right to be
considered non-belligerents
but british high commissioner in south
africa lord milner had no illusions in
private about where the responsibility
lay
while a hundred explanations may be
offered
and a hundred excuses made
they do not really add up to an adequate
defense
the children will all be dead by the
spring of 1903
only i shall not be there to see
as the continuance of the present state
of affairs will undoubtedly blow us all
out of the water
by autumn 1901
britain's concentration camps in south
africa were an international scandal
[Music]
the european press reveled in britain's
shame
[Music]
edward vii deserved to hang for his
country's crimes
kitchener was a bloodthirsty monster
[Music]
but not every poor woman and child fell
into his clutches
some women like elizabeth vandenberg
took drastic steps
as she told her daughter ada
sweden
it was vital for them to hide themselves
as well as possible
they were scared of the concentration
camps
my mother had heard about lots of people
especially children dying in the camps
ada prinsloo's mother escaped with a
group of women into the mountains of the
eastern free state
[Music]
this cave was one of many hiding places
women used in the boer wall
my
sister is
dar
my oldest sister was born in the cave
seven babies in all were born in the
cave
because they did not have water to bathe
the children with they smeared goat fat
on her body to clean her up
one morning aunt martha said that if she
didn't get a cup of coffee she'd die
the other women said uh please the
mountain's crawling with english we
can't make a fire
but she said
english or no english today i'm having
coffee
she got some water and she gathered some
back droppings to make a fire
and the smoke had barely left the cave
when guns
just before the women reached the
concentration camp they were rescued by
a boar commando
mummy said that they just fled from one
place to the next
the karana mountains are high and there
are quite a few places to hide
black loyalties were split
some sided with the british
others remained loyal to the boer
families for whom they worked
paulie mcquenna's mother went into
hiding with her white mistress
that
when the food was finished my mother
would go down to the village
when she had found some
she would take it back to them
she took it to the woman living in the
cave in the mountains
[Music]
he used to smear the woman with
something like dye or paint or oil
to
[Music]
keeping one jump ahead of british mobile
columns
the traditional subservient role of
women in boer society was changing
responsibility for their families
survival on the belt and their defiant
stoicism in the camps gave poor women
new authority
new commitment
[Music]
in many ways they had made the bull
cause their own
like to be photographed holding guns
a handful actually went to war
helena herbst wagner dressed in her
husband's clothes and spent five months
fighting alongside men
before they realized her true identity
and there were others
as an example
she was in the springfontaine
concentration camp
interestingly enough from her memoirs
one never learns if she had ever shot
for taking up arms
[Music]
foreign
[Music]
while their families bore the brunt of
the war
the boers took the fight across the
orange river into the british cape
colony
[Music]
the aim was to stir up their fellow
afrikaners in the cave into rebellion
[Music]
britain's high commissioner lord milner
was terrified of an uprising so troops
patrolled the colony hunting down the
invading boers and rebel afrikaners
[Music]
the war in the cape was fragmented
isolated skirmishes punctuating the
constant hunt for supplies
[Music]
the boers lived off the land
appearing to some as heroic freedom
fighters
to others as murderous thugs
[Music]
in august 1901
boer rebels arrived at a loyal british
farmhouse in the eastern cape
nora featherston was 11.
in old age she recorded her memories of
that day
they rushed into the house they said we
want breakfast for 15 please
we didn't have one thing left in that
house that eaten up everything
and
they said the mother we're very sorry
but you've had orders to burn your house
and your furniture
they then said if you can produce your
husband
we will not burn the furniture
or the house
so my grandmother said it's quite
impossible
she didn't tell them but my grandfather
was with gorange's flying column hunting
those very boys
they then said well we will not burn the
furniture
they carried out every single thing and
all the grass doors were smashed
they had the most glorious funny robbing
and jumping about
they had ransacked
every room
and they had stolen my grandmother's
diamond ring and
one of them went into aunt violet's room
and put on her evening frog
the one had the evening dress on
and i am miss barrett and he was dancing
on the floor
he was dancing
and the family were very upset
they then set fire to the house
we washed it in what the poor room
falling in let us be really very sad
there's no being being crossed what is a
good thing across
you see that makes matters worse
the boar officer in charge had long been
hunted by the british
gideon escapers was apprehended by the
killstream guards
for shooting
some local colored people in the area
who he reckoned had been spying for the
british which may be quite true or not i
don't know
amongst these colored people but a young
a young girl who was pregnant
and she was tied to the
uh
the wheel of wagon
and thrashed until she gave birth under
the dash
he was court-martialed
in the courthouse here
and then he was subsequently taken up to
crawfordnet
where he was executed by a fighting
squad
my father was actually present
when he was executed
marjory stook his grandmother had
testified against gideon skippers at his
trial
a century on local loyalties are still
divided
well i prefer not to say anything about
him because i have to live in this town
and the leader of this
lot who burnt the house is a hero in
this town
[Music]
part of the boer's heroic image comes
from their tenacity in the face of great
hardship
[Music]
hungry and with clothes and tatters they
were chased into the mountains of the
cape
survival depended on hit and run attacks
on isolated british units
general smutz's commander was on its
last legs when it stumbled on 200 men of
the 17th lancers
a crack british regiment nicknamed the
death or glory boys
hugely outnumbered a small group of
exhausted boers saw their chance
they came after the lancers mainly
because they needed provisions and
horses then denise and and the guys they
haven't got too much ammunition either
yeah so they've got to be pretty careful
who they shooting it
guide steve lunderstead shows michael
rates around the battlefield
michael's grandfather denise rates was
in the thick of the boar attack on the
lancers
they've been here
three or four days i think the 17th
lancers brought in as one of the stop
groups yeah to try and catch
smats's commander
and it certainly looks to me like a bit
of a holiday camp
no pickets
no centuries out
in a valley lovely house where the
officers could sleep
relax yes nice river nearby yeah reading
the daily newspaper perhaps
but
certainly totally unawares the first the
camp would have known of it
is when this little bit of shooting
started just yeah
the boers had approached the camp down
this road
they stormed the startle lancers on
rough ground just above the farm
the action only lasted minutes
michael has brought with him his
grandfather's diary of the war
he and steve tie in the account of the
attack on the lancers a century ago
to the actual location today
we shot the one englishman after the
other through the head as they peered
over the rocks to fire
they're now peering over the rocks to
fire yeah
he goes on to say a certain lieutenant
sheridan stuck his head up right in
front of jan boris who instantly put a
bullet through it
his hat jumped as much as a couple of
feet into the air and we all shouted out
with great jubilation in english funnily
enough good shot uncle jack
this is a nightmare come true you know
that
yeah
for the british
they they won't at this stage believe
this has happened
it's total turmoil right you've got this
little group of poors because they were
a little group of bulls that have
captured this entire rocky outcrop which
is the key to the battle
anyone who controls this is controlling
everything
[Applause]
they all put up their hands and called
we surrender for god's sake stop it we
surrender
we took their rifles and hurled these
aside then without attending to the
prisoners we burst into the camp
and this is your main memorial
for the death or glory boys
you've got your
gunners who were killed on the ridge
just behind us
with that gun
in fact denise killed all four of them i
think
you remember correctly
but this is mostly your your men who
died
in the action the officers all have the
own separate
memorials you've got old
lieutenant russell
all lancers
lieutenant robert moritz
and old
lieutenant richard sheridan
winston churchill's cousin
lieutenant 17th lancers
death or glory boy is one of 38 brits to
die
and only one bore
absolute disaster for the british army
and completely the opposite for the
boers
it was salvation for them
they arrived here on their last legs and
the death of these people meant
that they could re-equip themselves and
fight on and in fact my grandfather rode
away from here on sheridan's horse
but the poors were not content just to
survive
[Music]
some tried to impose boer control in the
northern cape
across the arid wastes of the great kuru
here british colonial rule was stretched
thin
[Music]
the poor's hated the fact that the
colored people in settlements like
calvinia sided with the british against
them
the english were nearer to the colored
people they will come into your home and
they will talk to you they will eat from
your plate
and
whereas the buddha will never ever have
done that
and also the english people
they will let you come in by their front
door
and at the buddha you have to go and
knock at the kitchen door you may not
come in
at the front door
[Music]
rachel smith's great uncle abraham esau
led coloured resistance against the
boers
living on in folk memory as a hero
[Music]
[Laughter]
[Music]
he spied on the board
petitioned lord milner unsuccessfully
for guns
he organized the women and children to
defend the town
in january 1901 poor's captured calvinia
and declared martial law
the buddha saw abram iso as a traitor a
rebel
they looked at him he's making trouble
and
they is trying to
to to encourage the rest of the colored
community to rise against the buddha
a martyr remembered
during the anglo-world war
tens of thousands of african and
coloured people
aligned themselves with the british
cause
prominent amongst them was the village
blacksmith abram eso
eso and his compatriots
had joined the fight to protect what
fuel rights they had under imperial rule
in january of 1901
calfinia was captured by free state
commandos
eso was amongst those who were arrested
the buddha caught up
with abram iso
and they brought him
to the town where he was killed they was
he was dragged
between two horses that my mother told
me
and then he was shot
they told us
the children sometimes when we went
there
that
they cut out his tongue and they cut out
abram's eso's eyes they took the eyes
out
the next day some of the people went to
put
flowers
where his blood was spilled
they put some flowers there
[Music]
me
[Music]
next week in the boer war
the british concentration camps for
blacks
a tragedy long covered up
the atrocities spiral in the final
months
the boers take the war to the bitter end
and the settlement paves the way for
nearly a century of rancor and
oppression
[Music]
the coming of the english
and
the world war
was a great tragedy
that affected not only the boers
but even the black people
they both suffered materially
spiritually
and otherwise
and the scars of that suffering are
still there on both sides
[Music]
by 1902 after two years of fighting
a quarter of a million british troops
were finally gaining the upper hand over
twenty thousand bores
the dying months of the war were the
cruelest
[Music]
capture death and desertion had whittled
down poor numbers
but the whole empire had answered
britain's call
australia sent over 16 000 and they were
all volunteers
new zealand
seen six and a half thousand men
the same number of horses which was some
of the best horses in the country and a
fair number of field pieces canada had
nearly 8 000 volunteers here
so you've got these huge numbers of
colonial volunteers
fighting on the british side and
distinguishing themselves very much so
sometimes i think very much to the
discomfort of the british generals
difficult people as australians
[Music]
this was less a war of pitched battles
than of isolated guerrilla skirmishes
one task was to clear the felt of
civilians
to cut off support for the boers
walker thompson of the bushman's corps
wrote to his brother about the scorched
earth policy
we burned hundreds of homes and had to
turn the women and children out
it's a job i can't stand
we came over to fight men not women and
children
colonial troops were often used at the
hard margins of the war
on the toughest terrain against diehard
boer commandos
they earned a reputation for
ruthlessness
the bushfield carboneeres was an
irregular outfit of australians
loyal south africans british and others
raised to mop up in the wilds of the
northern transvaal
[Music]
several carboneers were caught
marshalled for shooting dead eight bores
after they had surrendered
their defense was they had orders to
take no prisoners
two australian officers lieutenants
breaker morant and hancock were shot by
firing squad
for a practice that some got away with
as walker thompson
witnessed the monster fusiliers thought
it would be easier to mine corpses than
live men
so they bayoneted about 30 of the boars
lay down
and had a good sleep
[Music]
the burs too increasingly committed
atrocities against blacks fighting for
the british
poor general marnie moritz and his men
operated behind the lines in the british
cape colony
in january 1902 they reached the
settlement of lelifontain
the story has passed down the
generations
this was a rich area
it had food
it had grain it had sheep it had cattle
and it had horses
my child
the bush came
and they destroyed everything
they bankrupted everyone
and they planted poverty in our soil
the people of lillyfontaine were
fiercely loyal to britain
they served as scouts and spies
but marnie maritz wasn't having any of
it
[Music]
it is
this business of you supporting the
english we don't want it
we won't bother you but we don't want
you coming out with all that [ __ ] here
we're giving you a proclamation which
will tell you the terms under which you
may live here
and he read it aloud to them
and when you got to the point where it
said
i do not want to find you in this war
fighting for the queen of england
barnabas link said
you bastard don't you speak that way
about my queen
and he hit my father over the head with
a knob carrier
i admit this audrey
it was with a knob kiri like this that
he hit maritz
and that blow caused all the trouble
right there and then
and then vengeance came into the war
the story is that
they used to say that general maritz
could use this as well as any cowboy
used his gun
if you look at it you can see that it
had a range of a thousand meters
it was an unusual revolver and that you
could add this arm
and then you'd shoot with it butted up
against your shoulder
this
boers then retreated through this pass
where they were ambushed by the people
of lelifontain
who rolled boulders down onto them
killing 30 bores
moritz and his men wiped out leli
fontaine
strewing bodies across the church garden
46 killed and a hundred wounded
the survivors shackled as slaves
the women folk had to bury those who
were shot
my child it was a sad story our old
people told us
boars like moritz were determined that
nothing must threaten white supremacy in
south africa
but the people of lelifontain had no
compunction about taking on the boars
they like many other non-whites in south
africa were active players in this war
[Music]
across the country there was
considerable variation in allegiance
[Music]
most basutos sided with britain
but some believe their best hopes lay
with the boers
and weren't afraid to strike out on
their own
he means that as well
it gives you a good beating
you know where you are
people started hating my grandfather
because he continued to like them
[Music]
the boers always needed fresh supplies
they increasingly relied on sympathetic
blacks like etienne mafutsunyana's
grandfather
he had a house not far from here
during the night he flew a flag at his
house
so the wars wouldn't get lost
he would hide them in his house
while he went
and he would do the same all over again
[Music]
the boys did not find all blacks so
helpful
those who tried to stop the boers common
during their food paid a heavy price as
dora ramotibi remembers
the poor criminals
hey
[Music]
the british also torched black homes to
deny support to the boers
will saxon of the manchester regiment
wrote home about these operations
[Music]
as far as i could see in every direction
crawls were burning
[Music]
i feel sorry for the black woman
the tears rolled down their cheeks and
the pikanins cluster around them
i always think of a wounded stag when i
see them
staring at their burning hoods
[Music]
the british herded over 120 000 blacks
into a network of 75 concentration camps
[Music]
little known about during the war the
black camps have been all but forgotten
since
they initially seemed like sanctuary
after the dangers of living on the felt
[Music]
anna molokan has never forgotten her
first sight of the scottish soldiers
they weren't wearing ordinary clothes
they were wearing red skirts
they had fringed belts across their
chests
you would see them sashaying along
their berets on their heads and their
clothes
make them look nothing like booze
this is how they walked
but conditions in the camps were
appalling
disease was rife
all save the poorest blacks had to pay
for their food
the only way to earn money was to work
for the british a form of forced labor
if you didn't have a man in your family
working for the army you were charged
double for rations
our grain is used to gather low cost for
us to
we used to eat those worms and also
roots from the ground
just to survive
the war was heavy going
[Music]
if the inmates wanted shelter from south
africa's extreme climate
the british weren't about to provide it
the superintendent of brentfort camp was
given strict orders
tents allotted to you are only for white
camps
on no account must these be given to
natives
the blacks lived as third class citizens
and that's how they died
it was bad in those days
we didn't all get out of the camp alive
a lot of people died
all women couldn't take it
[Music]
the reverend w h r brown was one of very
few to visit a black camp
[Music]
they have lost everything
and there being no political party
interested in their destiny
they go to the wall
as the weakest are bound to
[Music]
the boys still fighting for independence
called themselves bitter enders
[Music]
but the tougher the struggle became and
the likelier british victory looked
the more boers changed
[Music]
sides by the final months a quarter of
all boars in the field were joiners
fighting for the british
[Music]
my father was not nearly as opposed to
the english as he was to the joinery
a unit of the 600 strong farmers guard
at bloomfontaine
they sided with the british to protect
their farms against their fellow bores
hence their motto
what we have we hold inscribed in
bullets over the british crown
joiners helped the british track down
boars and burn their farms
there were reports of boers castrating
joiners they managed to capture
there were joiners in the camps put
there for their own protection
often in positions of petty authority
to join us at buyer
the joiners treated the people in the
camps much worse than the english did
alfred
they thought they were the bee's knees
they mocked them
your husbands are fighting you're dying
of hunger and we've got piles of food
many of the camps were run by renegade
burs
and you get the small
miserable interaction
between people who are too close
together
and have no love
and i think this is what happens and
this is why in south africa
in that war the one had the elements of
a civil war
the boers troubles were mounting
they had relied on the british to house
their families in the white
concentration camps awful as they were
[Music]
by 1902
following the visit and report of the
fawcett commission
death rates fell and conditions improved
as poor general louis butter confirmed
one is only too thankful nowadays to
know that our wives are under english
protection
but lord kitchener decided to leave the
boar women and children on the veld
let their men folk look after them
[Music]
but the velt was now a very dangerous
place
white women black women
all were vulnerable
maruti setiloani recalls a story told
him by an eyewitness
there came this troupe of english
soldiers on horseback
and there was this woman there
who was gathering cow dung dry cow dung
to go and make fire
and as they came on
there she was
obviously naturally like soldiers like
men who had been away from home they
were sex staffed
they came
and they pushed her off
and they raped her
and he tells about how she lay there and
one would go into her and go over and
another one would come into her and go
over and every time when somebody should
leave with their arms open like that
they would take a note
with the queen's head and put it on her
hand
that is
the fairness of the british you've got
to pay for what you get
my father and others
they would assault these sexual assault
these
boy girls and you see the point was this
it's not easy to always find a white
woman around anywhere where i grew up on
the farm
a woman was sacrificing a white one was
sacrosanct
here was an open sesame situation
where you can take these girls and they
can't refuse they can't defend
themselves and very often things like
that did in fact take place
european propaganda blamed the british
for giving blacks power over white women
the boers had their own response
my master's thief
my mother's step brother planted them in
homes
when they caught a hot and top molesting
women on the farms they would plant him
like a pole in the ground
alive
they planted them so deep that they
couldn't get out
some boars now fear that the blacks were
threatening the established racial order
in south africa
a lookout point known as grenadier hill
in the northern cape
the soldiers wild away the time by
carving their names
next to the tommies are the names of
their three black comrades in arms ali
sixpence and john
the boer war had given the blacks an
enhanced status alongside englishmen
and a taste of power over the bores
my father had a uniform and a gun
and he had the protection of the english
and
wherever the english were and they were
there my father was there
and the attack against the boss he saw
the balls ran away
you know saw the boys run away
the balls were frightened of the
soldiers the car keys it was a bit of
sensational pleasure
to see them run away
it seemed to the cape politician john x
merriman that the genie was out of the
bottle these people will have been armed
and set on to fight and harry white men
it will be difficult to get the arms
from them and to teach them to unlearn
the lesson
the boar's knee-jerk reaction was to
slaughter blacks they caught fighting
against them
a british soldier summed it up
johnny ball
he used to shoot [ __ ] like you'd
shoot a dog
[Music]
had warned the burgers still on the
battlefield
not to execute
because the consequences could be very
bad for future relationships
[Music]
in thinking about the post-war order
clearly saw the end approaching
they could hardly move for the maze of
british block houses and barbed wire
they could scarcely find food in a land
devastated by the british
the birds were outgunned and outnumbered
[Music]
my mother saw these overwhelming hordes
of english soldiers
she often told us that when they marched
towards the burs it looked as if the
earth was trembling
in a sword
and when an english soldier fell dead in
battle
the others simply climbed over him and
kept on coming and coming
it was really a hopeless task for the
burs
[Music]
the 11th of april 1902
bour commandant potketa lay dead on the
felt after the last formal battle of the
boer war
hostilities seemed to fizzle out and the
boers agreed to peace talks
board delegates met on the 15th of may
south of pretoria at verinegan
[Music]
the more they talked the clearer the
calamity became
[Music]
men spoke of a dire lack of food and
horses
of the treachery of joiners
but of their family's plight on the felt
they'd always believed god would never
let them be defeated
the will of god was very important to
the burgers
and when the talks were held at
him some people said
what if god is not on our side
or what if god wants us to lay down our
weapons and submit to the inevitable to
the fact that we have lost our
independence
peace negotiations with the british took
place in this pavilion
the boers were offered guarantees of
personal freedom and property rights
the right to use their language in
school and courtroom
a three million pound compensation fund
for farmers
on the promise of future political
autonomy
but would there be any extension of
rights to the blacks
as suggested a year before by colonial
secretary joseph chamberlain
we cannot consent to purchase a shameful
peace
by leaving the colored population in the
position in which they stood before the
war
but now the priority was to reconcile
british and poor interests
earlier advice of lord milner pointed
the way forward
you only have to sacrifice the [ __ ]
absolutely
and the game is easy
britain ensured white dominance and
black subjugation
by leaving it to the boers to decide
whether to give voting rights to the
blacks
thus condemning them to nearly a century
of exclusion and oppression
when the peace treaty was being
negotiated at franklin
people were not there
the black people were not there
not only were the blacks not there
but even the interests of blacks
were not taken in and we were easy to be
got rid of
some black peoples like the bachatler in
the western transvaal had seen the war
as a chance to regain land the boers
took from them long before
to settle old schools
the hutler had fought valiantly on the
british side
they believed that come victory their
loyalty would be rewarded
we hope the talks would lead to us
getting our land back
but we were not allowed to take part in
the discussions
they didn't keep us in the picture
we were just ignored
we had fought in the war to recover our
land
if we didn't get that what was the point
of us fighting
but then the whites buried the hatchet
and closed ranks against us
they became like brothers dividing our
land between themselves
and we were left with nothing
on the 31st of may 1902
the boers signed the surrender terms
ensuring their eventual supremacy in
south africa
but at the time they felt their world
had caved in
my power was in the street
my father was in torment they say that
that morning he got onto his horse and
rode around like a man possessed
a bus
the thought of peace terrified him and
he did
because the people did not want peace
they said the only thing that should
come between a man and his freedom
is death
marnie maritz's men were actually
photographed surrendering
but moritz was far away
he and others had chosen exile rather
than life under british rule
the boers now had to go through the
humiliating formalities
signing the oath of allegiance to the
crown
giving up their weapons
it was very difficult for him to bid
farewell to his gun because it had been
his friend for three long years
three difficult bitterly difficult years
there was one gun daddy did not give up
his mouser rifle
that one
[Music]
my father was heartbroken that the boys
had lost
they lost their country
they lost everything
many lost their wives and children
so they were bitter and very unhappy
but under the circumstances they could
not carry on anymore
and other leaders went around the white
camps explaining the peace deal to the
inmates
some women had wanted the war to
continue
saying
i can get a new husband but i can't get
a new transvaal
but others asked
what is the independence of my country
to me
when my man is dead
and then
the leaving of the camps as christina
ninaba remembers
get your things together we'll drop you
in johannesburg
everyone got on the wagons
some women were weeping some laughing
and some singing
singing for the dead children they were
leaving behind
the british had incarcerated boer
prisoners of war on the island of saint
helena and in salon and bermuda
now these men came home
and went in search of their families
some men arrived at the camps only to
find no one in their family alive
no child no wife nobody
the man would stand there with his hat
on his head and his horse at his arm and
he'd ask where are they
and the reply would come
they're over there in the cemetery
recognizing your own father could be a
problem
my father came home
i was small and silly
we're slenders
my father sat there
and my mother said say hello to your
father
i said that's not my father
my father doesn't have hair around his
face
that's a baboon
the group of women on the station
embraced their husbands and cried and it
was a terrible scene
but my grandmother was a tiger of a
woman and she said to my grandfather
gideon don't just stand there blubbing
there's work to be done on the farm
[Music]
horses
[Music]
the joiners profited little from
collaboration
many returned to ruined farms
and the undying hatred of their boar
neighbors
everything they owned was destroyed
alice is
if you set fire to my fields the wind
will blow the flames across to theirs
they thought they'd get cakes and ale
but they only got swords
[Music]
the british tommy had secured south
africa and her mineral wealth for the
empire
now he too was going home
[Music]
a dmob parade in preston
a scene repeated across britain
[Music]
mary liversead remembers that day
when the soldiers came home we went to
see them return they were in this dull
car
and they
marched round the town hall
and then they stood and the bonfire was
lit and they watched the bonfire and
looking back i can picture them now
and i think they looked
embarrassed more than happy with me
home
quite embarrassed standing with this
bonfire as their reward for coming back
[Music]
[Applause]
the war had different endings for each
of the participants
[Music]
britain and her colonies left over 22
000 behind in south africa
buried in cemeteries and on the felt
over a hundred thousand dead and wounded
as rudyard kipling wrote
we have had no end of a lesson
it will do us no end of good
[Music]
the boer war established a pattern of
empire solidarity which would include
south africa
repeated in conflicts down the century
[Music]
it gave more than a taste of wars to
come
against freedom fighting guerrillas and
against civilians
colonial strife and total war
battles like speon cop were curtain
raisers for the slaughter on the song
[Music]
in time the boer war receded from
britain's memory
eclipsed by two world wars
it had ushered in the modern age but no
longer seemed part of it
the imperial lighthouse memorial bears a
fitting epitaph
tell england he who passed this monument
we who died serving her
rest here content
but the blacks were not content
most had to give their guns back to the
british and land back to the boers
they faced poverty and famine
by the end of the war there were more
blacks fighting than boars
but they got almost no compensation and
even less recognition
they had defended mafiking with their
lives
but baden powell fibbed to the royal
commission on the war
saying they had run away at the first
shots
a memorial was put up to mafiking's
gallant white defenders
the blacks were a grudging afterthought
the tens of thousands of blacks who
supported the boers and fought alongside
them
fared even worse
what gets one really worked up today
is when the africana wants to make as if
he is the only one who lost
in the world war
and forgets that
the black man shared as much
of his riches
of his livelihood and even of his blood
i say i lost my two uncles
in the blue world
there is this bitterness against the
book for not having remembered them
and that is the reason why
when the the the whole question of the
celebration of the buu broadway in south
africa came
we said rubbish
how can you come and celebrate
in an african country in a country that
has become free
the ignominy that has been suffered by
the black men at the hands of the
africana
who at the borough
used us
[Music]
[Laughter]
[Music]
but the boers had their own agenda
to set themselves apart from and above
all other peoples in south
africa the white concentration camps
would play a key role in that process
[Music]
orange river station camp is one of the
very few untouched since the inmates
left a century ago
[Music]
10 of their population
perished in the camps
from disease and neglect
[Music]
the experience scarred the survivors and
their families for life
there was so much
sadness in those songs
it has stayed with me my whole life
[Music]
[Laughter]
foreign
[Music]
my grandma would start singing with her
tiny squeaky little voice
it was like
i asked my father why aren't grandpa and
grandma so sad
for me my father told me it was because
of the concentration camps
oh grandpa and grandma never ever got
over it
the twin girls who died and the other
little children
grandpa never recovered
but private grief and bitter personal
memories like these
were exploited to underpin white
supremacy
the first moves had come in 1913
when the boers by now self-governing
met at bloomfontaine to honor those who
died in the white concentration camps
the suffering and deaths of the women
and children in the concentration camps
was an important cornerstone in the
establishment of africana nationalism in
the 20th century
the white concentration camps were
elevated to the only concentration camps
in existence
to represent the suffering and to unite
the africana people
the argument went
we are a people purified by adversity
we alone have suffered like this
we alone are fit to rule in south africa
history that didn't fit was obliterated
even the black maids who accompanied
their poor mistresses into the white
camps were quickly forgotten
the camps were built over with somber
memorials to the white dead
the black servants who died there were
buried some distance away in unmarked
graves
as for the black concentration camps
over the years their very existence was
expunged from south africa's history
the white concentration camps became
everything and yet the suffering in the
black concentration camps was as bad
a very neglected aspect of the war
is that we did not utilize the common
ground that we had with the blacks in
this country
i'm speaking now from an afrikaner's
point of view
that we did not make more of the black
concentration camps
but rather to emphasize the common
suffering which is the most important
potential unifying factor
between us and the blacks
a century of silence and cover-up has
made the black camps very hard to find
today
an old map shows one in the free state
near aleman's siding
there is no record of the camp's exact
location
but there are graves on a nearby
hillside
not one or two
but many
hermanus pitsu the black farm worker who
found the graves
shows them to local historian johann
look
[Music]
they are watched by the owner of the
land andre hayes
her family wasn't here during the boer
war
and she had no idea there were graves on
her farm
[Music]
foreign
some of these graves contain more than
one body
current estimates put black deaths in
the camps at eighteen thousand
[Music]
but new discoveries are pushing the
figures upwards
[Music]
it's possible that as many people died
in the black concentration camps as in
the white
[Music]
foreign
[Music]
[Applause]
shadow across the century
only since black majority rule can its
lost history
shared by blacks and whites be recovered
[Music]
you