The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is to visit South Africa. 

Last year the Queen of Britain apologized to the Moaris in New Zealand for the treatment that Nonwhite group received at the hands of the British: and bearing this in mind, it is pertinent to remind ourselves of the Great Boer Holocaust, which occurred in the British built concentration camps in South Africa from 1900 to 1902.

Who knows, perhaps Tony Blair can get it over his heart to issue an apology for the Boer Holocaust while he is in South Africa, but, dear readers, do not hold your breath for it.

By mid 1900, the Second Anglo-Boer War had been raging for well over a year: the overwhelming British force had occupied all the major towns and centers of the Boer Republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, and the Boers had been forced to resort to hit and run guerrilla tactics in the open veld.

The Boers continued to inflict defeats upon the British in this way: so much so that eventually the war was to cost the British government £191 000 000 (191 million Pounds - a fortune by 1901 standards, and many hundreds that amount today). 

In addition to this, the British were to deploy some 500,000 British troops and support personnel in South Africa - all this to put down a total Boer population -men, women and children all included - of just on 100,000 people.

By mid 1900, however, the British had become exasperated with the military situation: the Boers seemed to be able operate with impunity in the veld: a new course of action was decided upon.

In the last months of 1900, the British began to build what eventually became 45 separate concentration camps, established to systematically remove women and children from their farms to prevent them aiding and supplying the Boer soldiers ("burgers") in the field. 

How did the British justify rounding up thousands of women and children? It was after all war against civilians, something unprecedented before in any other war which the British Empire had fought.

The answer came in a memorandum issued by the British commander, General Kitchener, on 21 December 1900. In the memorandum issued at his headquarters in Pretoria, Kitchener explained the rounding up of the women was to protect them from the Blacks (!), stating that "seeing the unprotected state of women now living in the districts, this course is desirable to assure their not being insulted or molested by natives." (Circular Memorandum No. 29, from the archives of the Military Governor, Pretoria; as quoted in "To the Bitter End: A Photographic History of the Boer War 1899 - 1902," Emanoel Lee, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1985; page 163 )

Kitchener was very clear that this was a war against the White Boers, and not the Blacks. The exact language he used in the 21 December 1900 memorandum may seem antiquated, but it reflects not only the style of the time but also the deliberate policy of causing as much damage as possible to the Whites and as little damage as possible to the Blacks:

"With regard to the natives, it is not intended to clear Kaffir locations but only such Kaffirs and their stock as are on Boer farms. Every endeavor should be made to cause as little loss as possible to the natives removed and to give them protection when brought in. They will be available for any works undertaken, for which they will receive pay at native rates." (Circular Memorandum No. 29, from the archives of the Military Governor, Pretoria; as quoted in "To the Bitter End: A Photographic History of the Boer War 1899 - 1902," Emanoel Lee, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1985; page 163 ).

So it was that the British started not only rounding up as many Boer women and children as they could, but also destroying the farms, their only source of survival. The evacuation of the farms was accompanied by the burning and dynamiting of all farm houses and buildings. Poultry, sheep and cattle were slaughtered, the houses looted and all fruit trees, grain or other crops burned down.

This is not to say that all the British undertook this task with relish: many ordinary British soldiers were themselves appalled at what they were ordered to do. This revealing insight into how the farms were cleared comes from a soldier who took part in such an operation:

". . . (O)nly the women are left. Of these, there are often three or four generations: grandmother, mother and family of girls. The boys over thirteen or fourteen are usually fighting with their papas. The people are disconcertingly like the English, especially the girls and the children - fair and big and healthy looking. These folk we invite out into the veldt or into the little garden in the front, where they huddle together in their cotton frocks and big sunbonnets, while our men set fire to the house . . . Sometimes they entreat that it may be spared, and once or twice in an agony of rage they have invoked curses on our heads. But this is quite the exception, as a rule they make no sign, and simply look on and say nothing. One young women at the farm yesterday . . . went into a fit of hysterics when she saw the flames breaking out, and finally fainted away.
 

"I wish I had my camera. Unfortunately it got damaged and I have not been able to take any photographs. These farms would make a good subject. They are dry and burn well. The fire bursts out of windows and doors with a loud roaring, and black volumes of smoke roll overhead. The women, in a little group, cling together, comforting each other or holding their faces in each others' laps. . . . while on the top of the nearest high ground, a party of men, rifles in hand, guard against a surprise from the enemy, a few of whom can generally be seen in the distance watching the destruction of their homes." (LW Phillips, "With Rimmington", Edward Arnold, London, 1902)

> From the victims' point of view, the removals were bewildering and terrifying. This extract from the diary of Alie Badenhorst, translated by Emily Hobhouse, reveals the panic and fear which accompanied these removals: 

"I packed, and took bedding and tried to pack that also, but I was so crushed I did not know what I was doing, and they (the British) kept saying 'quick, quick' so I gathered a few necessities together and thus was I driven forth from my home. It was the 15th April 1901 never to be forgotten. My children cried; the two youngest boys were pale as death and held me fast; the little one kept crying for his chickens. I had to give him courage; and so we were carried, all of us, away." (Alida Badenhorst, translated E, Hobhouse, "Tant Alie of Transvaal: Her Diary 1880-1902", George Allen and Unwin, London, 1923).

Filson Young of the Manchester Guardian wrote an account of the actions as follows:

"…(T)he burning of the houses that has gone on this afternoon has been a most unpleasant business . . . in the course of about ten miles we have burned no fewer than six farmhouses. . . . in one melancholy case the wife of an insurgent, who was lying sick in a friend's farm, watched from her sick husband's bedside during the burning of her home 100 yards away. I cannot think what punishment need take this wild form; it seems as though a kind of domestic murder were being committed while one watches the roof and furniture of a house blazing . . . I stood till late last night before the red blaze and saw the flames lick around each piece of furniture - the chairs and tables, the baby's cradle, the chest of drawers containing a world of treasure; and when I saw the poor housewife's face pressed against the window of the neighboring house, my own heart burned with a sense of outrage." (F Young, "The Relief of Mafeking", Methuen, London, 1900).

Transported in open wagons, and sometimes in open flatbed trains, the Boer women and children so evacuated were taken to the camps which were scattered all over the country, from Howick in Natal through to Kroonstad in the Orange Free State.

The terrain upon which the camps had been built was poorly chosen: exposed to the elements and undersupplied. Too many people were assembled in too short a time without adequate preparation. The administrative personnel and medical services were inadequate, the rations unsatisfactory; there were dishonest contractors and inefficient officials who were unable to cope with the epidemic of measles and pneumonia which broke out.

The wave of evacuees soon overwhelmed the inadequate preparations the British had taken. In December 1900, Milner, the Governor general of the Cape Colony, wrote:

:"We were suddenly confronted with a problem . . . which it was beyond our power to properly grapple, and no doubt its vastness was not realized soon enough. The first of the suffering resulted from inadequate accommodation, it was originally meant to house the refugees in wooden shelters, but there was not sufficient material for enough of them to be made." (SB Spies, "Roberts and Kitchener and Civilians in the Boer Republics, January 1900 to May 1902", D.Phil. thesis, University of the Wtwatersrand, 1973, as quoted in "To The Bitter End: A Photographic History of Boer War 1899 - 1902", Emaneol Lee, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1985; page 177).

Internee Alie Badenhorst described the conditions in the camps so:

"…(O)ne had to make little fireplaces in front of the tents - tents that must serve as sitting room, pantry, bedroom and dining room in one, and they were of a size that were but one small bed and a table therein, there was no room to turn; and then there were a number of children as well! Most of the poor women had not even brought a bedstead with them because they were seized in such haste.

"When we came, the women received eatables three times a week. Tuesday, meat; Wednesday, meal, sugar coffee, salt; and on Saturday, again meat. The food stores were not near the camp, quite ten minutes walk, and they had to carry it all.

"For each person there was 7lbs of meal a week, no green food and no variety; the sugar was that black stuff we would have given our horses on the farm to stop worms . . . the coffee was some mixture, no-one could rightly say what coffee it was, some said acorns, others dried peas - but it was all a very sore trial for us to bear, we, who were so used to good food, vegetables, milk and mealies." (Alida Badenhorst, translated E. Hobhouse, "Tant Alie of Transvaal: Her Diary 1880-1902", George Allen and Unwin, London, 1923).

The winter of 1901 was particularly severe: even British troops in the field froze to death. In the camps, the damp and cold conditions played havoc amongst the tents: sickness began to spread amongst the children, and soon reached the adults. The death toll began to mount dramatically: the camp at Brandfort had the highest death rate during the worst months.

Alie Badenhorst wrote:

"Worst of all, because of the poor food, and having only one kind of food without vegetables, there came a sort of scurvy amongst our people. They got a sore mouth, and a dreadful smell with it; in some cases the palate fell out and the teeth, and some of the children were full of holes or sores in the mouth. And then they died . . . the mothers could never get them anything . . . there were vegetables to be bought outside, but the head of the camp was strict and did not allow them to go out of the camp . . .

"For it was this day, the 1st December, that old Tant Hannie died . . . I never thought with my eyes to see such misery . . . tents emptied by death. I went one day to the hospital and there lay a child of nine years to wrestle alone with death. I asked where could I find the child's mother. The answer was that the mother died a week before, and the father is in Ceylon (a prisoner of war) and that very morning her sister of 11 died. I pitied the poor little sufferer as I looked upon her . . . there was not even a tear in my own eyes, for weep I could no more. I stood beside her and watched until a stupefying grief overwhelmed my soul . . . O God, be merciful and wipe us not from the face of the earth." (Alida Badenhorst, translated E. Hobhouse, "Tant Alie of Transvaal: Her Diary 1880-1902", George Allen and Unwin, London, 1923).

Up to October 1901 the number of inmates in the 45 camps increased to 118 000 Whites and 43 000 Nonwhites. The death rate was 344 per thousand amongst the Whites; at one stage in the Kroonstad camp the death rate was 878 per thousand.

Eventually 27 927 Boers died in the camps, of whom 4 177 were adult women and 22 074 were children under the age of 16. Since the entire Boer population in both republics was just less than 100 000, the mortality rate meant that just under 30 percent of the entire Boer population was wiped out. Such a figure is of genocidal proportions.

These figures are even more revealing when the actual combat fatalities are reviewed: some 7 091 British soldiers died, while on the Boer side some 3 990 burgers were killed, with a further 1 081 dying of disease or accident in the veld.

Twelve percent of Boer deaths were battle related; six percent died from other causes while on commando; 17 percent were adults in the camps and 65 percent were children under the age of 16 years.

While no-one will seriously hold any White British person responsible for the actions of a century ago, would it be too much for Tony Blair to make even a symbolic gesture of forgiveness or reconciliation? 

Or is that courtesy reserved exclusively for Nonwhites such as the Moaris?
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