Boer History1902 in South Africa: Vereeniging, Botha, the Camps, and Sargant’s Schools
Smuts to Kruger, Frozen Meat, and Circular 107 — January 1902
War between Britain and the two Boer republics — the South African Republic and the Orange Free State — was in its third year. Britain held the Cape Colony and Natal. Lord Kitchener still held the British command. The camps into which Boer families had been brought since 1900 still stood. Louis Botha was still commandant-general of the South African Republic, in the field. What hung on January was whether the ration would change, whether the teachers still at sea when 1901 closed would land at Capetown, and whether the death-rate that had peaked in the black October of that year would fall before any peace was signed. [6]
On the 4th of January 1902 Smuts wrote from Vanrhynsdorp to President Kruger. Smuts was then in the western Cape with a republican commando. Kruger was no longer at Pretoria: he had left for Europe in 1900, and the letter had to reach him there. The report mattered because it was a field general’s account, sent to the absent president, of what the camps had done to the families left behind. No pen, Smuts wrote, would describe what the heroines of the people had suffered since the spring of 1900. They had fled the enemy in the woods and mountains of Rustenburg, Waterberg, Zoutpansberg, Lydenburg, Swaziland, and Zululand, where many a white bone now called to heaven against barbarous Bantu and still more barbarous Briton; they had hidden with their little ones knee-deep in the water in the thick reeds of Schoonspruit and the Mooi river, from which, as with the wife and children of Commandant Wolmarans of Potchefstroom, they had been shot out with Lee-Metford and Maxim and driven on toward the towns; and after months of vain flight they had at last arrived in the prison-camps of the enemy, where they, themselves sick unto death, carried their little dear ones to the grave; hungering because they could not eat the bad meat and the still worse meal and had no firewood to cook it; week after week, month after month, year after year sitting there to ponder, to long, to trouble over the man and the sons perhaps already fallen. Was a scene of more terrible suffering ever unrolled before the world? The life of the men in the field, however hard, was glorious compared with this steady death of their captive dear ones. [6]
De la Rey reported that when fleeing women’s laagers caught sight of the enemy they began to flee, far from welcoming their protectors, and were then pursued, with artillery as well as small-arms directed on the women. Even where the people had not fled, the dwellings were fired on before they were stormed and destroyed; houses that had served as Boer hospitals, with Red Cross flags flying, were not spared. Some English officers and soldiers had the greatest aversion to the work they had to carry out, and tried to execute the orders of destruction and concentration as humanely as they could; some even shared their own rations with hungry prisoners on the road to the camps. The chief mark of the transport of the women and children remained the suffering it caused. That suffering still stood when 1902 opened. [6]
On the 13th of January the general superintendent of the Transvaal camps, W. K. Tucker, announced to all Transvaal superintendents, by circular 107, a revised ration scale. A committee of medical men had drawn it after the Ladies Committee’s recommendations and the advice of camp doctors. The same month it came into force not only in the Transvaal but in the Free State camps. The Ladies Committee was the group of British women sent out in 1901 after Emily Hobhouse’s reports had forced the war office to look at the camps. The circular mattered because the old scales had left infants without enough milk and fighting burghers’ families on half-rations. For children under 2 years, weekly: milk 14 quarts, 2 bottles a day; flour, Boer meal or oatmeal 2/5 of a pound; sugar 6 ounces; syrup 6 ounces; butter 4 ounces; salt 2 ounces; soap 8 ounces; soup and vegetables as supplied by the camp matron. For children over 2 and under 5: milk 14 quarts; syrup 6 ounces; flour, Boer meal or oatmeal 3.5 pounds; sugar 6 ounces; butter 4 ounces; salt 2 ounces; soap 8 ounces; meat and soup 2 pounds. For children over 5 and under 12: milk 7 quarts, 1 bottle a day; flour, Boer meal or oatmeal 5 pounds; sugar 6 ounces; syrup 6 ounces; rice, beans or samp 8 ounces; salt 4 ounces; butter 4 ounces; coffee 4 ounces; meat 3 pounds; soap 8 ounces; vegetables 24 ounces. For adults: flour or Boer meal 7 pounds; sugar 12 ounces; coffee 7 ounces; meat 4 pounds; salt 4 ounces; milk 1 tin; samp, rice or beans 1 pound; vegetables 24 ounces; soap 8 ounces. That scale remained the basis of rations to the end of the camp period. [6]
At the end of January the chief superintendent of the Transvaal camps reported that frozen meat was being supplied as far as possible to all the camps and was greatly appreciated by the inmates; in the same breath he had to concede that, from transport difficulties, delivery of this meat was uncertain and irregular at present. For want of the needful facilities frozen meat could not be stored in the camps; if it was not to be had, captured livestock still had to be fallen back on, and tinned meat was kept in stock and issued when fresh or frozen meat was unobtainable in time. The military governor at Pretoria, J. G. Maxwell, wrote that the frozen Australian meat now being issued contained plenty of fat, and that even the condition of livestock supplied was now good; he trusted frozen meat would have its effect in strengthening the constitutions of the inmates — a tacit admission that the weak meat of the previous months had undermined resistance. On the 22nd of January Milner wrote to Chamberlain of Sargant’s teachers. On the 23rd of January Tucker wrote to Maxwell of the new nurses. On the 28th of January Maxwell wrote to Milner of the medical distribution. [6]
Camps Named in 1902, Overcrowding, and Merebank — January–March 1902
The map of the camps had been filling since 1900. In the Transvaal the camps of that year had been Barberton, Heidelberg, Johannesburg, Irene, Klerksdorp, Krugersdorp, Mafeking, Potchefstroom, Standerton, and Vereeniging; in 1901 there had been added Balmoral, Belfast, De Jagersdrift, Middelburg, Nylstroom, Pietersburg, Van der Hovensdrift, Volksrust, and Vryburg. In 1902 there was added Meintjeskop, on the rise north of Pretoria. In the Orange River Colony the camps of 1900 had been Bloemfontein, Heilbron, Kroonstad, Norvalspont, and Vredefort Road; those of 1901 Aliwal North, Bethulie, Brandfort, Harrismith, Kromellenboog, Kimberley, Ladybrand, Orange River, Springfontein, and Winburg. In Natal, Pietermaritzburg of 1900 and Howick, Isipingo, and Merebank of 1901 were followed in 1902 by Colenso, Eshowe, Jacobs, Ladysmith, Mooi River, Pinetown, and Wentworth. In the Cape, Port Elizabeth still stood from 1900; in 1902 there rose Kabusi, East London, and Uitenhage. From September 1900 these had no longer been refugee camps: the people brought there had been forced. The new names mattered because they showed that the system was still spreading in the last months of the war, not shrinking. [6]
Against the end of the war there was only 1 refugee camp left in South Africa, namely the camp at Meintjeskop, founded in 1902 for the housing of families of burghers serving the British as scouts. Those scouts were the National Scouts: burghers who had taken service against their own commandos. On the 30th of April 2 of the Natal camps stood at 3019 and 2962 souls. In January some of the great camps still stood far above the Ladies Committee’s liberal norm of at most 3000: Potchefstroom 7126, Volksrust 5173, Middelburg 5058, Irene 4067, Krugersdorp 4629, Mafeking 4312. Maxwell had claimed by the end of October 1901 to have succeeded in systematically reducing numbers in densely populated camps; the liberal norm was not reached. [6]
In March 1902, after the British government had claimed that almost all the recommendations of the Ladies Committee had been carried out, many of the camps’ numbers still stood even over the 4000 mark — among them Irene, Middelburg, Mafeking, Potchefstroom, Aliwal North, Bloemfontein, and Bethulie. The Opposition lamented it, and through Sir Walter Foster on the 4th of March attacked the government over camps that had remained uncontrollably large. Lord Milner, Foster said, had stated that disease was just as likely to break out in a camp of 500 as in a camp of 3000; the point was that in a camp of 3000 the danger was all the greater. Some of the camps were located where the soil was saturated with disease-producing products, and 5000 or 6000 people were gathered together. These camps should be broken up in small units; if the numbers could be reduced even to 1500 or 2000 per unit, the death-rate would at once decrease. The British Medical Journal pleaded that the camps should be broken up into separated smaller camps so as to make the numbers smaller on each area. If the camp inspectors and even the Ladies Committee had fallen on deaf ears, it was not to be expected that the Opposition and even the Medical Journal would exert any notable influence. [6]
Humphreys-Owen told the House on the same 4th of March that Trollope, superintendent of the Free State camps, had held that not more than 4 or 5 persons per tent ought to be allowed. On the 10th of February Milner telegraphed Chamberlain that all the recommendations of the Ladies Committee had been carried out except that concerning the removal of the Merebank camp. Merebank sat on low ground near Durban. Chamberlain, Milner, McCallum the governor of Natal, and the rest had had the reports before them, but would not concede that the Merebank ground was unserviceable. A commission of 3, of whom 2 had originally been responsible for choosing the site, had sat the ground on the 21st of December 1901 and, though they found a part saturated with water, had branded the Ladies Committee’s assertions highly coloured. No change was made. In February R. L. McCowat was appointed camp superintendent at a camp that also sat under the Transvaal administration. What hung on Merebank was whether a site condemned by the Ladies Committee would still be held after the government had claimed that almost every recommendation had been carried out. [6]
The Revised Ration, Frozen Meat, and Food from February — 1902
In this scale, which to the end of the camp period formed the basis of rations, a greater variety of food-kinds was included than in all the previous scales. Though well balanced, the quantities were nevertheless less than the Ladies Committee had recommended. Despite that, no camp-dweller could complain that the food supply since February 1902 was not efficient and sufficient. Resistance to disease sharpened, and was reflected in the lower death-rates of the last months of the camps’ existence. These measures were taken only in the last few months of the camps’ existence. They were taken not from pity of the British authorities for the Boers, but to protect the good name of Great Britain, whose dealing with the feeding of the camp-dwellers up to that time had been a flagrant breach of the principles of civilised warfare as laid down in the Hague Convention of 1899. That convention bound an occupying power to protect the lives of non-combatants. The camps had been filled under Kitchener’s clean-sweep of 21 December 1900: families taken off the farms were prisoners of war in all but name, and the convention was why the ration of 1902 could not be treated as a mere administrative detail. [6]
It was a breach because the prisoners of war had been issued not only insufficient rations but food of so inferior a nature and quality that it had sometimes been branded by the British camp authorities themselves as unfit for human use. The concentration camps will in history always be thought of in the first place as hunger-camps: where only very scanty means were provided for the feeding of adults; where it was expected that babies and small children should live not on milk, vegetables, fruit and the like — things that as luxury articles were not supplied at all, or only in absolutely insufficient measure — but on bully beef or extremely lean mutton, black coffee, bad meal for the baking of bread or the making of porridge, and bad sugar, without butter, jam, or syrup; where the women and children of fighting burghers did not even receive a full ration of those scanty foodstuffs, but were fobbed off with half-rations, in order to induce their husbands to lay down their arms. As such the way in which the captive greybeards, women, and children in the camps were fed until the end of 1901 became the stuff of the fierce criticism everywhere exercised on Great Britain in this regard. On the 4th of March Channing told the House that it was not a ration of meat but of skin and bone. [6]
The Ladies Committee’s recommendation to replace tinned meat by frozen had not fallen wholly on deaf ears. Tucker had on the 19th of December 1901 been able to report that increased railway facilities had made it possible to arrange for frozen meat to be supplied instead of tinned; it was still only a number of camps that sat that favoured position. Maxwell had written to Milner on the 23rd of December that arrangements had also been made for the supply of frozen Australian meat at camps where the army supply of fresh meat failed. A month later he reported plenty of fat in the Australian issue. By the end of January the Transvaal camps had the frozen ration as far as possible, yet irregular; tinned meat still sat the stock for days when fresh or frozen did not arrive in time. Johanna van Warmelo would find at Irene, on the 27th of April, enough frozen meat that the people had no complaint in that respect. The change mattered because the lean mutton of 1901 — carcasses of 15 or 16 pounds, half bone — had been the ration on which measles and pneumonia had done their work. [6]
Goold-Adams wrote to the high commissioner on the 10th of January of the Free State camps. Trollope wrote to the secretary of the Orange River Colony administration on the same 10th of January. Tucker’s report for 12 months ending the 31st of January, dated the 22nd of February, gave the Transvaal chest: 639 deaths from a population of 55297, that is 139 per thousand a year. The Crown prosecutor’s office in the Orange River Colony drafted a letter to the legal adviser on the 4th of January. The blue books of this year already began to thicken: Cd. 903 in January, further correspondence relating to the affairs in South Africa; Cd. 906 in February, correspondence with the Netherlands government regarding the war; Cd. 933 in February, a letter from assistant-commandant-general Tobias Smuts to commandant-general Botha; Cd. 934 in February, further papers relating to the working of the refugee camps; Cd. 936 in March; Cd. 939 in April, statistics of the refugee camps; Cd. 942 in May; Cd. 893, the Ladies Committee’s report on the camps in Natal, the Orange River Colony, and the Transvaal. Those papers were how London was made to see the camps in print. [6]
Mortality’s Fall, the Weak Died Out, and May’s Close — January–May 1902
The British efforts to meet the mortality were not fruitless. Though the December rate of 1901 had still been very high — 342.8 per thousand a year in the Free State camps and 219 in the Transvaal — it was already clear that a turn had come. Only in 1 camp was child mortality still more than 1000 per thousand a year, namely Bethulie; and though in several Free State camps — Kroonstad, Heilbron, and Harrismith — a high death-rate still prevailed, the authorities could clap themselves on the shoulder that their efforts to reduce the mortality drastically had certainly been wholesome. The doctors, matrons, and other medical staff sent from England after the disillusion of black October had taken service in the various camps during December; before the end of that month the ideal had been realised of at least 1 doctor and more or less 2 nurses for every 1000 camp-dwellers. What hung on that staffing was whether the October peak would prove a turning-point or only a pause. [6]
The mortality in the Transvaal and Free State camps then fell continuously and sharply. In January 1902 it fell to the rate of 139 per thousand in Transvaal camps and 212.9 per thousand a year in the Free State camps; in February to 71 per thousand a year in the Transvaal and 84 in the Free State; in March still further to 44 in the Transvaal and 52 in the Free State; in April to only 28 in the Transvaal and 32 in the Free State. In May, the last month of the official existence of the camps under strict war conditions, it was almost normal, namely 19.5 per thousand a year in the Transvaal and 24 in the Free State, and so it remained until the camps were broken up. Against March the rate was already called normal. The fighting generals and burghers in the field did not know of this sharp decrease, and the camps in the end served the military purpose for which they had been founded. That ignorance mattered because a general who still believed the camps were killing at the October rate would weigh peace differently from one who knew the May figures. [6]
This fall must be ascribed to several factors. First, the steps taken by the British authorities to drive the mortality down, and first among those the provision to the camps of a much more efficient medical service: about 1 doctor and 2 trained nurses for every 1000 persons, appointed not on the ground of loyalty to the British war effort but of professional competence. Tucker wrote in lyric transport of the new nurses on the 23rd of January: they had created a very favourable impression, being physically strong and attractive, and presenting by ocular demonstration, to the inmates of the camps, examples of British womanhood; the moral effect of the association of these earnest noble-minded and cultivated ladies with the people of the veld could not fail to be productive of much good, especially in softening the bitter feelings of enmity inborn in so many of the Boer women against the British name. From “being physically strong” to the end of that quotation was omitted from the British blue book. At the end of December Bethulie, where enteric had reigned hard among 4255 inhabitants, had had 6 medical men, 7 nurses, 2 dispensers, and 3 matrons; Bloemfontein, with 6049, 6 medical men, 13 nurses, 4 matrons, and 2 dispensers. Better housing was provided in the hospitals, properly equipped with the needful apparatus. [6]
In the second place the lower mortality in the Transvaal and Free State camps was to be ascribed to the fact that several of the greater camps had been made smaller by the removal of a large number of the prisoners to camps in Natal and the Cape Colony. The chief mark of the camps nearer the coast in Natal and the Cape was a low death-rate, owing to the smaller size of the camps, which made better control possible; their situation near various harbours, by which they could easily be supplied; the warmer climate, especially in the winter months; and the fact that the grounds chosen for the camps were much more suitable than those on which the camps in the Transvaal and Free State had been raised. Milner, despite the opposition of Mrs Fawcett of the Ladies Committee, therefore removed great numbers of the prisoners in the Transvaal and Free State to those camps near the coast. The removal had its disadvantages: the Natal camps now grew larger, with the result that the death-rate there during December had risen to about 158 per thousand a year; Merebank, on a badly chosen ground, had had the greatest number of deaths. A third reason was the reforms that followed the Ladies Committee: better and more food, enough firewood, soup-kitchens, camp matrons, housing by iron huts, frame houses, and brick rooms and the issue of more serviceable and roomier tents, latrines reformed, water-supply improved — in other words, what ought to have been done at the founding of the camps to prevent the people falling sick and dying on a great scale. [6]
A last very important reason for the decrease of the mortality is not to be ascribed to the work of the administration but to the fact that — in the words used by the general superintendent of the Transvaal camps in an official report — the weak and emaciated have largely died out. Since the beginning of 1902 there were, for understandable reasons, very few babies under the age of 1 year in the camps — and it was precisely among that group of little inhabitants that the mortality in the preceding months had been highest — while the persons with the least resistance in the age-groups above 1 year had also died out. The persons then still in the camps were of that calibre strong enough to have lived through the hardships of camp life during the months of the worst neglect; with the reduced demands that after the metamorphosis in the camps were made on their resistance, they had no trouble remaining alive. Tucker had on the 19th of December 1901 frankly admitted that the circumstances under which camps had been raised, the difficulties that had had to be overcome to bring about improvements, and the long time it had taken, must to a high degree be held responsible for the mortality; he had concluded that the formation of the concentration camps should be regarded as an evil, adding as a scrap of conscience-comfort that in all probability pestilence and famine would have more than decimated the people if they had been left on the devastated farms. [6]
On the 4th of March Pratt Yule, in a report that was never made public, stated that 1 in every 8 children had died during August in the Free State camps. Despite all this the fact still stands that the efforts to improve conditions in the camps were applied only after thousands of Afrikaans mothers and little children had died in the camps and such deep wounds had been struck that scarcely any deed of sacrifice on the side of the conqueror could wipe them out. The efforts of Great Britain to relieve conditions in the camps made no impression whatever on the Boer people. In March it was predicted that when the tales of battles during the three years’ war had long been forgotten, the memory of the destruction of thousands of children’s lives in the concentration camps would still be remembered as a black and indelible stain on the British name. Between a quarter and a fifth of those brought to the camps died in the space of some 8 months, May to December 1901. 26251 women and children died there, besides 1676 men above 16 years — mostly greybeards. That fear still sat with the leaders among the fighting burghers when this year opened; it was among the chief considerations that on the Boer side led to the signing of the peace of Vereeniging. [6]
Sanitation, Wilkens, and Irene in April — 1902
Only then did the camp system and the sanitary organisation that went with it gradually improve. Incompetent and careless superintendents were dismissed; latrines were drastically improved and properly disinfected; night-soil was regularly removed. Pratt Yule held that the improvement in the condition was not so much due to the Ladies Committee as to the fact that the camp inhabitants, by education, had got rid of their dirty habits: owing to the habits of the Boers, which are to some extent the outcome of living under South African conditions of climate, the camps were at first dirty in appearance, but the refugees have been gradually schooled into tidiness, at least in so far as the cleanliness of the camp is concerned, and the camps will now compare favourably with similar military establishments. That report of the 4th of March was not published. The unpublished report mattered because it showed how the administration still preferred to put the dirt on the inmates rather than on the sites and the latrines. [6]
In his April report 1902 the successor of Trollope, Colonel J. S. Wilkens, published particularly favourable remarks on the sanitation of the camps. He even referred to instructions that camp kitchens must be made fly-proof by means of gauze, since enteric could easily be spread by flies and dust. Orders to boil drinking-water and milk in the camps before use were also carried out. Goold-Adams wrote to the high commissioner on the 9th of April. It would nevertheless be wrong to assume that the camps, as a result of improvements recommended by the Ladies Committee, had been transformed into hygienic institutions. Drastic improvements had indeed been brought, yet from the May report of the general superintendent it is clear that when the peace of Vereeniging was as good as signed, the sanitary arrangements had not yet reached the highest rung of efficiency in the Orange River Colony. The general superintendent added that he was already busy saving on sanitation, since he wished the sanitary work to be taken over by the camp inhabitants themselves. That idea suited the British government particularly well, while a gradual depopulation of the camps took place from June 1902. [6]
Conditions in the Transvaal camps were in general similar to those in the Free State. Sanitary conditions in Transvaal and Free State camps did in time also improve markedly, thanks to the reports and exertions of Emily Hobhouse, the Ladies Committee, inspectors such as Kendal Franks and Pratt Yule, and especially the champions of the Boers in the British parliament. But these improvements took place only toward the end of 1901 and were, when the war was ended on the 31st of May 1902, still only partially carried out. So far as hygienic matters were concerned, the camps were thus for almost the whole period of their existence inefficiently arranged — indeed places where disease-germs had to thrive luxuriantly, with terrible consequences for the camp-dwellers and especially the child population. That the British government and its subordinates in South Africa so long neglected to take efficient measures to remedy those conditions can be ascribed to nothing else than mere indifference toward a brave enemy; and that that authority still dared to place the responsibility for that condition on the shoulders of the prisoners by holding them up to the world as dirty, uncivilised, and uneducated, is a crime that gives that indifference the colour of intent. [6]
The camps underwent a complete metamorphosis, so that Johanna van Warmelo on the 27th of April 1902, after a visit to the Irene camp, could note with joy that the camp-dwellers had had the whole summer an abundance of vegetables and received milk and syrup, good flour and enough frozen meat, so that they had nothing to complain of in that respect. Irene sat on the highveld south of Pretoria; van Warmelo had nursed there through the worst months. The children in their turn received daily a plate of good soup and more sterilised milk than they could use. The spread of disease-germs was opposed by careful control of general sanitary conditions, the supply of decent and sufficient cleansing means such as water, soap, and the like, the provision of facilities for the boiling of milk and drinking-water before use, and the supply of proper hospital facilities and an adequate medical service. That the mortality, after all the reforms, fell so quickly and so low at once irrefutably refutes the accusation so often raised — even after 1901 — that the inhabitants of the camps themselves were responsible for the mortality because they were then so dirty and unclean by nature. Wilkens wrote to the high commissioner on the 13th of May. Hobhouse in January wrote of the photograph of Lizzie van Zyl. [6]
Pratt Yule drew up for camp medical men a syllabus of lectures to train Afrikaans ladies in elementary nursing; the syllabus was so thorough that it was even thought to issue certificates to the pupils after they had gone through the course, so that they might practise nursing as a profession. Particular precautions were taken to prevent a repetition of the mortality of 1901. The question may rightly be put: whether the steps that were at last taken to improve conditions were taken so much because the British government indeed cared anything for the prisoners of war, or whether it was to try to rehabilitate the good name of Great Britain before the world, which had sharply condemned it for its concentration policy. The only camps that formed an exception in this respect were those in Natal and near the Cape coast — save Merebank, which had drawn a good deal of criticism. Goold-Adams wrote to the high commissioner on the 16th of January; Milner telegraphed Chamberlain on the 7th of February. [6]
Vereeniging, the Camps Broken, and the Generals’ Appeal — May–November 1902
The war was ended on the 31st of May 1902. Vereeniging was a Transvaal town on the Vaal, where the republican delegates sat; the terms were signed at Pretoria the same night. Botha signed for the South African Republic; De Wet and the Free State delegates signed with him; Kitchener and Milner signed for Britain. The dying there of 26251 women and children besides 1676 men above 16 years had softened the resistance of the Boers in the field. The fear had gradually seized the leaders among the fighting burghers that if no end were made of the concentration camps the whole Afrikaans people would die out. The chief considerations that on the Boer side led to the signing of the peace of Vereeniging were then also: that the war policy followed by the British military authorities had led to the entire destruction of the territory of both Republics, with the burning of places and towns, the destruction of all means of existence and the exhaustion of all resources needful for the maintenance of our families, the existence of our armies, and the continuation of the war; and that the placing of our captive families in the concentration camps had led to an unheard-of condition of suffering and sickness, so that in a comparatively short time about 20000 of our dear ones had died there and the hideous prospect had arisen that with the continuation of the war our whole race might in that way die out. The concentration-camp system thus answered the purpose for which the British military authorities had introduced it. It brought the second war of independence to a favourable end for Great Britain. To gain this immediate advantage Great Britain nevertheless inflicted on itself irreparable damage. In its history the concentration-camp system will always shine — as Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman put it — as an offence against civilisation. [6]
By the methods of Roberts and Kitchener, who had wished to break Boer resistance by the destruction of all possibilities of existence for burghers in the field as well as for their families left behind, the two Republics had been transformed into a howling wilderness — as an Irish member of parliament had put it. It had not had the desired effect. A number of persons, lured by the British proclamations and eager to save their little goods, had laid down the weapon, but the flower of two Republics had fought on, and still harder than ever before. It had been clear that other means had to be taken in hand to bring the war to an end. The camps had been that other means. From June 1902 a gradual depopulation of the camps took place. With the breaking-up of the camps from June the British ideals of Englishing the children went up in mist. The peace mattered for the camps because once the commandos had laid down their arms there was no longer a military reason to hold the families. [6]
After the war Botha, De Wet, and De la Rey, on their journey in Europe, made an appeal to the civilised world. They went to raise funds for the ruined farms and to put the devastation on record. In consequence of that appeal Chamberlain on the 1st of October 1902 telegraphed to the governor at Johannesburg for information in connection with certain assertions of the Boer generals which he apparently wished to refute. The assertion with regard to the destruction of 30000 dwellings was also included for comment. On the 27th of October the governor furnished a complete answer, and on the question of the destruction of dwellings answered: a very large number of houses in both colonies have no doubt been destroyed or seriously damaged; total of both classes may amount to as much as 30000. Of these received particulars Chamberlain made use in a letter which he addressed to general Botha on the 6th of November. In it certain particulars in the Boer generals’ above-mentioned appeal were disputed. The colonial secretary denied that the devastation was as comprehensive as had been asserted, but withheld a denial of the statistics on the number of destroyed dwellings. Against that a long list of towns in the Transvaal and Free State was named which were practically untouched. [6]
Ramsay MacDonald, who was in South Africa in September and October, referred to this letter of Chamberlain and repeated all the names of towns that had been named. He then continued: it is ridiculous; I was in 10 of those places, and while those that had been made headquarters of the army, such as Bloemfontein, were not to the eye badly damaged, even furniture had been destroyed, books burned, and movable property that had any value taken away. The Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant of the 25th of September printed the appeal; the British white book Cd. 1329 of November printed the correspondence relating to the appeal of the Boer generals to the civilised world. Cd. 979 of this year returned farm buildings and so on in Cape Colony and Natal destroyed by the Boers. Cd. 1161 sat further statistics of the refugee camps. [6]
On the 12th of November 1902 general Botha named in a letter to Chamberlain the following towns that had been destroyed in the Transvaal: Ermelo, Bethal, Carolina, Amsterdam, Amersfoort, Piet Retief, Paulpietersburg, Dullstroom, Roossenekal, Schweizer-Reneke, Hartebeestfontein, Geysdorp, Wolmaransstad. In the Free State: Vredefort, Villiers, Parys, Lindley, Bothaville, Ventersburg. The following were partly destroyed: Lichtenburg, Lydenburg, Vrede. Cd. 524 in 1901 had tried to create the impression that during the whole war to January 1901 only 634 dwellings had been destroyed; the government of the South African Republic on the 22nd of November of that year had counted at least 30000. The governor on the 27th of October of this year now conceded that the total destroyed or seriously damaged might amount to as much as 30000, while Chamberlain on the 6th of November still denied that the devastation was as comprehensive as asserted, and named towns practically untouched. Botha’s list of the 12th of November stood against that naming. What hung on the list was whether the peace would be followed by an honest account of the burnt towns, or by a colonial-office denial. [6]
Sargant’s Teachers, English Schools, and the Close — 1902
The first group of teachers landed at Capetown on the 5th of January 1902, where they were fetched by W. A. Russell and Dr W. A. Macfadyen. Those ships were the sequel to Chamberlain’s telegram of the 13th of December 1901 that 22 teachers would leave by the Arundel Castle and 28 by the Galeka. 10 teachers, destined for the Free State camps, remained behind in Bloemfontein, while the remaining 12, under the lead of Miss Firks, head of the Bloemfontein Normal School, left for the Transvaal. At Elandsfontein (Germiston) Sargant himself met the group and took them to Irene camp, where they were housed in tents. Sargant had been invited from Canada by Milner in 1900 to organise education in the new colonies; the camp schools were the machine through which English was to be taught to Boer children while their fathers were still in the field. Mr Munro took the 6 Scottish ladies in the company — Mickie, McLeod, Kinnoch, Kerr, McKenzie, and Kirkwood — to the Belfast camp school, while the 6 English ladies remained in Irene camp. Sargant wrote to the secretaries of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony administrations on the 13th of January. A second group of teachers, 28 in all, stepped ashore at Capetown from England toward mid-January. 12 of these ladies remained in Bloemfontein, while 16 left for Irene camp. The day after their arrival they were taken to the Irene camp school and seemed to have been much delighted with the teaching that they saw and also with the earnestness and docility of the Dutch children. At Irene the inspectors of the various divisions met the teachers and saw to transport to the various destinations, even as far as Natal. Sargant wrote on the 21st of January. [6]
The third and fourth groups of English teachers, consisting of 25 each, set foot ashore at Capetown on the 4th and the 10th of February respectively. The third group came by the Briton and the fourth by the Avondale Castle. Just as the previous two groups these teachers were scattered everywhere in the camps in the Transvaal, the Free State, the Cape Colony, and Natal. Sargant wrote of them on the 7th of March. During March another 50 English teachers arrived, and during April a further 50. Before the signing of peace there were therefore 200 teachers from England and Scotland in service. In June 1902 another 40 teachers from Canada and 20 from New Zealand landed, and in August a further 40 from Australia. The numbers mattered because they were the staff with which Sargant and Milner meant to make English the language of the next generation. [6]
In all the camps the English language was by far the principal subject, and to it by far the most attention and time were devoted. At inspections and transfers it weighed the heaviest. Indeed at an inspectors’ conference of the 18th of March 1902 it was minuted that it appeared that all the inspectors classified the children primarily in respect of their knowledge of English; the director approved of this plan, and said that he wished an examination of the children as to proficiency in English in the first place, and as to proficiency in other subjects in the second place, to be held during the ensuing term. At the fifth inspectors’ conference in the Transvaal, in February, Sargant strongly emphasised the importance of oral work, as it improved the English knowledge of the children rapidly; the plan was to teach almost entirely through the teacher and the blackboard, and not by book, and to have plenty of pictures to interest the children and make them talk about them in English. On the sixth conference in the Transvaal, held on the same 18th of March, inspectors still freely and divergently debated the subject of benches. Mr Bangley said that one of the carpenters at Potchefstroom camp had made a model school desk to seat 7 or 8 children, the seat and desk all being made in one; Mr White objected to a desk and seat made in one, and the other inspectors were of the same opinion. There was never uniformity with regard to school benches. [6]
Meanwhile education in the Free State flowed fairly. From May 1901 the number of school-going children in both Free State and Transvaal camps had increased with rapid strides, from 1293 in Transvaal and 1370 in Free State camps on the 30th of April 1901 to 17213 in Transvaal and 12066 in Free State camps on the 31st of May 1902. The teaching staff had grown as fast: at the end of May 1901 there had been in 8 Transvaal camps no fewer than 54 teachers, and 47 in the Free State; against the end of May 1902 these numbers had risen to about 1000 in the two colonies. The Education Gazette for the Transvaal and Orange River Colony of the 1st of July gave the names of 1046 teachers in Transvaal, Free State, and Natal camps. For the inspectors in the Transvaal district Sargant had from the 13th of August 1901 to the 18th of March 1902 arranged no fewer than 6 conferences at Pretoria. He had also organised 2 general congresses for both Transvaal and Free State inspectors on the 18th and 19th of December 1901 at Bloemfontein, and on the 2nd to the 4th of April 1902 at Johannesburg. In July he arranged a much more extensive teachers’ congress at Johannesburg, attended by some 750 teachers. [6]
The attempt of the British authorities to English the Boer children in the concentration camps could in the end bear no fruit: for that the time was too short and the people after the experience of the camps too embittered to swallow the pro-British propaganda as sweet cake. With the breaking-up of the camps from June 1902 the British ideals in that regard went up in mist. At first the British authorities still cherished the thought of keeping the camp schools in flourishing motion by housing children in camp lodging-houses while parents rebuilt the farms, but the thought found no favour with the parents; those who were best able to judge thought that the mothers would never consent to this. The numbers of children in camp schools fell from 29279 in May to 14438 in August and finally to 1816 in December 1902, when the last camp schools were closed. The school had to follow the Boer to the farm, and the camp teacher who wished to remain in service had also to turn his steps thither or teach in the small towns. Sargant advised his camp teachers to go to the farm schools, but the great majority preferred to give education at town schools, and the Anglicising dreams of Sargant and Milner had therefore necessarily to come to nothing. The British concentration-camp schools completely missed the purpose for which they had been instituted, namely to English the Boer child. In so far they worked for good that many children were kept constructively busy, while they would otherwise have remained relatively idle. An elementary knowledge of basic subjects such as writing, reading, arithmetic, and even of other subjects such as geography and hygiene was brought to the children. An influence of lasting significance these schools did not exercise and could not exercise, because they had at longest functioned only a year. [6]