The Commemoration of the Vow in Perspective.

There are a few misconceptions in the West about the Day of the Vow & the battle which occurred at Ncome River. First one must remember that this battle did not occur in a vacuum as the Zulus of Dingaan first massacred the Boers including young children at Bloukrans & Saailaager after Dingaan killed Piet Retief & his delegation earlier. [1] The battle at Ncome River of December 16 is sometimes called a "massacre" but this is a rather odd term to employ when considering the fact that the local Boers were under attack therefore: what occurred was an act of war & if the Boers sat back & did nothing to defend themselves then they would have certainly been massacred themselves.

Those who commemorate this day are not commemorating the battle itself as much as they are commemorating the Vow they took prior for protection. When about 15 000 Zulus under Dingaan decided to attack the Boers numbering less than 500 camped [2] in Natal: there was no choice left to the Boers but to defend themselves.

This battle was even avoidable because Pretorius sent back some captured Zulus & told Dingaan that he was prepared to enter into negotiations [3] for peace with Dingaan if he were to restore the vacant land south of the Tugela River that he had intially offered to Piet Retief before killing him & his delegation then later the civilians at Bloukrans & Saailaager. The King's response was in the form of the now famous attack on December 16 at Ncome River.

The Great Boer Trek. From: Stephen Crane.

Quote: [ The church in Pietermaritzburg and the annual celebration of Dingaan's bear witness that they kept their pledge. They were not fighting for revenge. On three occasions the scouts brought in some captured Zulus, and Pretorius sent them back to Dingaan to say that if he would restore the land he had granted Retief he would enter into negotiations for peace. ]

Therefore: the battle at Ncome River MUST be viewed in proper context.

The point of the battle was not about "massacring" or "defeating" or conquering the proud Zulu nation. Because the Boers would have defended themselves in exactly the same way if they were being attacked by the British / German or Spanish power. Furthermore: the Boers allowed the Zulus to govern themselves in Zululand after the battle & entered into an alliance with the new Zulu King Mpande for quite some time afterwards. The Zulus were not conquered until the British came & conquered them in 1879. Long after the establishment of the major Boer Republics.

Remember also that the Boers & Zulus had reconciled & in 1840 exchanged rocks of peace in commemoration of this reconciliation. The Boers & the Zulus also later stacked rocks as a symbol of peace in 1866 at Ncome River.

Pieter Mulder noted this fact as well in an Address in Parliament. On Feb 16 2005.

Quote: [ Go and read about the relationship between the [ Boers ] and the Zulus in Natal. How, after the battle of Blood river in 1840 they handed rocks of peace to each other and in 1866 came together at Blood river and stacked rocks as a symbol of peace. How Cetswayo gave land to the Boers after they helped and protected him. The Republic of Vryheid dates from that period. ]

The Boers might have been settlers to this specific region [ in Natal ] but they were not settlers to Africa as the Boers are a homegrown / indigenous people who were formed on the Cape frontier [4] & who are a distinct entity even from the Afrikaans speakers of the Western Cape. [5] The Boers did not have an "unfair advantage" because of their weapons as they were greatly outnumbered by the Zulu warriors. It was indeed a miracle that they survived even with the crude rifles they had because one must remember that they were no where near as effective as modern day rifles. The Zulus chose to attack at a most bizarre time of day & as such miscalculated thereby giving the Boers a slight fair advantage. Fair because they still had to fight for their survival against staggering odds.

The Apartheid regime did not start the holiday of commemorating the Vow as the South African regime only STOLE / usurped & co-opted this date because the ZAR [ Transvaal Republic ] declared it a holiday back in 1865. Long before the rise of the Apartheid regime. After a time of waning commemoration of the date: the later future President Paul Kruger - as part of a Triumvirate government - restarted the commemoration of this date in 1880 when the Boers were fighting to regain their independence from Britain & when the ZAR was re-declared as an independent Boer Republic leading to the first Anglo-Boer War.

The date of the battle at Ncome River was always commemorated by the descendents of those who participated in the battle then later adopted as a public holiday in the ZAR but it was not politicized until the 20th cent when the Cape Dutch were using it as a tool to co-opt the Boers into their agenda as a British appointed surrogate ruling power of the macro State the British created with an act of legislation in the British Parliament [6] which robbed the Boers of their republics & forced them into an artificial macro State which lumped all of the region's diverse national groups under a single administration for the first time ever.

I should also point out that this was a battle which involved the Boers camped in Natal & not "Afrikaners" as the bulk of the yet to be named Afrikaners of the Western Cape had previously taunted the Boers with impending doom of their trek & with exactly the sort of scenario that they ultimately faced at Ncome River -only the Cape Dutch thought that the Boers would all die off. It is also interesting to note that not all Boers made the vow [7] for fear of the consequences should their descendents break the promise. It appears that a few Boers had some insight into what could happen if one were to later take lightly a vow made to God. Which in fact is what one did see among many about 150 years later.

While the Zulus did at times appear as a military threat again: it is important to remember that the Boers were on friendly terms with the Zulus of the Northern Natal & King Dinizulu gave a large part of northern Natal to the Boers as payment for services the Boers offered the King upon his request when he was facing trouble from a British backed Zulu segment creating disorder in his region. The Vryheid Republic of 1884 was later established there in a portion of northern Natal until its south eastern half was annexed by the British & its north western portion was absorbed into the ZAR. or Transvaal Republic. None other than Louis Botha - one of the founders of the Vryheid Republic & Boer General & Statesman & later British puppet Prime Minster - was life long friends with King Dinizulu & released him from prison after the latter was found guilty of participating in the Bambtha Rebellion.

Notes.

1. The Bloukrans Massacre.

Quote: [ At about midnight on 16-17 February 1838 the Zulus began their assault on the Trekker encampments over a 9 km front along the Bloukrans River. The Zulus fell upon the sleeping Liebenbergs, Besters and de Beers near the confluence of the Umlaas River (also called the Little Murder Spruit) and the Bloukrantz Rivers. ]

2. The Battle of Blood River.

Quote: [ On the morning of the 16th December 1838, some fifteen thousand Zulu warriors charged the 460 Voortrekkers, and charged again, and again for a third time but were repulsed. ]

3. The Great Boer Trek. From: Stephen Crane.

Quote: [ The church in Pietermaritzburg and the annual celebration of Dingaan's bear witness that they kept their pledge. They were not fighting for revenge. On three occasions the scouts brought in some captured Zulus, and Pretorius sent them back to Dingaan to say that if he would restore the land he had granted Retief he would enter into negotiations for peace. ]

4. The Boers in East Africa: Ethnicity and Identity. Brian M. Du Toit. Page 1.

Quote: [ The Boers had a tradition of trekking. Boer society was born on the frontiers of white settlement and on the outskirts of civilization. As members of a frontier society they always had a hinterland, open spaces to conquer, territory to occupy. Their ancestors had moved away from the limiting confines of Cape society to settle the eastern frontier. In time this location became too restricted, and individuals and families moved north across the Orange River. ]

5. The Great Trek. Wallace Mills.

Quote: [ Trekboers certainly recognised the differences in language, religion, etc. between themselves and the British. They had certainly developed a way-of-life and a set of values that were distinctive, but they were also significantly different from people of Dutch descent in the western province areas of the Cape. The latter regarded the Trekboers as rather wild, semi-barbarous frontiersmen and the sense of common identity was limited and incomplete. ]

6. The Republic of South Africa Electoral System.

Quote: [ The South Africa Act passed by the British Parliament in 1909 merged the self-governing British colonies of the Cape, Natal, Orange River and the Transvaal into the Union of South Africa, a dominion within the British Commonwealth. ]

7. The Great Trek. Oliver Ransford. Chapter 9.

Quote: [ It is interesting to note that Alexander Biggar and the other Englishmen in the commando joined in making the vow, but that five Boers abstained for fear of God's vengeance on their descendants if in years to come they broke the promise. ]

Post Script. Due to the fact that this event is often not well understood in the West: it is often distorted & used to infer that the Boers were conquerors when in fact under Piet Retief: they had initially negotiated a peace treaty with Dingaan for the use of vacant land which he had already promised to the British prior.

Correct Term: Boer Nationalist Not Right Winger.

The Boer Republicans / Boer Nationalists / Boer Irredentists & other modern era Boers who are working towards & struggling to regain the self determination which was stripped from them after the Anglo-Boer War & were further marginalized after 1994 are often recklessly & erroneously labeled as Right Wingers despite the fact that the Boer Nation is a volk / people & not an organization therefore as such is not a political element of a contrived one dimensional political spectrum or a special interest group.

Please note that the correct term is "Boer nationalists" and not "rightwingers". We are not an (extremist) element on the spectrum of the South African professional party-political comedy. We wish to be no part of this "rainbow spectrum". We do not consider ourselves bound in conscience by a constitution, laws, rules and statutes made on our behalf without any form of consultation with us or consent by us. If and when we do obey these oppressive laws, we do it out of a higher conscience, and out of respect for the semblance of the order of things. We have a right to resist an oppressive constitution and oppressive laws. Actions borne from coercion can never be interpreted as the giving of consent.

From an open letter Professor Tobias Louw addressed to the Institute for Security Studies dated September 16 2003.

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After their arrest and conviction for illegal armed occupation, their khaki-clad leader, Willem Ratte, wrote furiously from gaol to contest his English press depiction as some right wing anachronism. what outweighed this was a First Anglo-Boer War antecedent. In his torrential and powerful manifesto, Ratte insisted:

Were the Boers of 1880 called right-wingers, for resisting the imperialist British occupation? Then, as now, you had an alien regime lording it in Pretoria over our people, whose gutless president had betrayed and handed over his sovereign state.

Then, as now, the new (neo) colonialist administration pretended to be God's gift to the supposedly "dirty and dumb dutchmen", and tried its beast to smear the pro-independence party as only a few backward "Don Quixote's tilting at windmills". Our struggle has nothing to do with right or left ... this being incidental, like religion in the Irish-British conflict, but everything to do with a nation having an inherent right to be free.

From: The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration. Page: 121.
Chapter 3. The South African War / Anglo-Boer War 1899 - 1902. and political memory in South Africa. Bill Nasson.

The one dimensional / nebulous & reckless term Right Wing therefore does not accurately describe nor does justice to the centuries old just struggle of Boer self determination as the mass use of the term even post dates the first Boer freedom struggle & was not even used to describe to the Boer Commandos of the Anglo-Boer War.   

Verwoerd Was Not a Friend of the Boer Nation.

During an interview with the Right Perspective radio program: Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio noted that the Dutch born architect of the Separate Development phase of the Apartheid laws: Hendrik Verwoerd was not a friend of the Boer Nation as he was interested in amalgamating the region under an economic sphere & scuppered the restoration of the Boer Republics.

Hendrik Verwoerd was a traitor to the Boerevolk. He was not a friend of the Boer Nation. He was there to amalgamate everything in one under an economic sphere. Hendrik Verwoerd did great damage to the Boer Nation. He gave a false pretense that here is a republic so that the Boers could feel okay. It's the same with Malan. Malan was a traitor to the Boer Nation. The Boers stood up [ at ] 500 000 when they had the OB. The Ossewa Brandwag. Or the Oxwagen band of people - Guard in the 1940s to 48. When Malan came to power. Him & Jan Smuts organized & they broke this down to nothing.

Where the Boers would have had the Boer Republics soon after that because the Boers were shouting - all these people were shouting: "back to the republics - back to the republics". What republics were they talking about? If you talk to people today who are politically motivated or are involved in politics: they've got no idea what you're talking about. They think about Hendrik Verwoerd's republic.

Hendrik Verwoerd's republic came fifteen years later - or twelve years later. After - the only person - the was only one person ever: J G Strijdom - he was pro Boer - he was a Boer himself. We believe strongly that he was killed. Because when he started talking- when he became Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa & they found out that he was starting to say: "let's reinstate the Boer Republics: it's the only solution to the southern tip's problems" we're sure that that is when he was poisoned. Because he suddenly became ill - but one day forensics will find out no matter when. Unless they destroy his remains. But we hope not. So we have a problem Frank we have a tremendous problem. A lot of people blame us & say there's is so much infighting. There's no infighting amongst the Boers. The infighting is between the Boer & Afrikaner.

The above is an excerpt from the interview Theuns Cloete did on December 7 2007 & can be heard here starting at 59 minutes. Few Westerners appear to understand the political intricacies which went on often conflating the Boers with the Afrikaners & Afrikaner Nationalism which in fact worked against the interest of the Boers as Afrikaner Nationalism was in many ways just an extension of British Imperialism but with a Cape Afrikaans face aiming at controlling the macro State which subjugated the Boers in the process due to their smaller numbers in the face of the larger Afrikaner population.

The Boers Are Not Europeans.

From time to time the Boers are sometimes referred to as Europeans when in fact the European connection is a distant one as they were formed in Africa as a distinct group having cut their ties to Europe quite early on & have been there ever since. The Boers have ancestors which go back 355 years in Africa & most of them have never even been to Europe. Just as it is not accurate to call White people in Europe "Asian" & Amerindians in America "Asian" just because their ancestors originally came from Asia: so too it is not accurate to call Boers European just because most of their distant ancestors were originally from the European continent.

A given culture can only be part of the continent on which they were formed as it makes little sense to label them as being part of a distant continent in which their distant ancestors were from long ago before forming a new people & culture on the continent they are now found.

The following are excerpts noting this fact.

Naturally, order amongst the different nations, forced together into one unnatural state, had to be maintained by unnatural measures - apartheid! Had the English not interfered, had the English not created this unnatural state, had the English not disregarded the ethnic identity of every previously free and self-governing people in Southern Africa, and had the English not erected signs saying "Europeans" and "Non-Europeans" the various nations of Southern Africa could have been spared ethnic friction and its resulting misery!

From: Fritz Meyer.

Open Letter to the Office of the British High Commissioner Pretoria.

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The British system of apartheid, which they applied all over the world (for instance also in India, Australia and New-Zealand), had to be imported to control the mixed population. The first manifestation of this were signs reading "Europeans" and "Non-Europeans". No Boer ever regarded himself as a "European". Apartheid invoked racial friction and even racial hatred which has in no means abated to this very day, and the bitter irony is that the Boerevolk, who had not been in power since 1902 and who also suffered severely under apartheid in the sense that apartheid robbed them of their land and their work-ethics, are being blamed for apartheid.

From: Hennie Barnard.

The Concentration Camps.

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Is George W Bush of Irish descent(?) not an American in the same vein as Chief Sitting Bull in Arizona? Why then are Whites in South Africa not referred to as Africans!!! The Whites, and then the Afrikaans-speaking Whites are nothing other than a people (= Volk) similar to the Venda, Xhosa and Griqua peoples. The difference being language and ethnicity.

From: C J Kruger.

From the Transvaal Agricultural Union site.

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The trend among some to inaccurately label which continent the Boers are associated with has the effect of implying that the Boers are not part of the continent they were formed on & have been associated with for well over 3 centuries now.

The Boers Were Not Colonials.

Westerners who are new to researching Southern Africa often have the initial erroneous presumption that the Boers were Colonials due to their Caucasian / ethnic European appearance but the fact of the matter is that they never were as the Boers are the result of a homegrown culture which sprang up on African soil out of the diverse groups the VOC brought to the Cape starting in the mid 1650s. The original White arrivals were brought out from northern Europe as servants of the Dutch East India Co. / the VOC - a semi private company which set up a victualing station at the Cape for passing ships & founded Cape Town. Those first arrivals were by & large of German & Frisian ethnic origin -most of whom were flooded out of their homes by the VOC & later forced to accompany Jan Van Riebeeck to the Cape- as well as smaller numbers of Dutch. Then about 35 years later large numbers of French Huguenot refugees escaping political & religious persecution in France were sent to the Cape were they would within the next generation amalgamate with the other arrivals & shape the emerging homegrown language which would later be called Afrikaans. Though the Boers often called - & still often do call - their dialect the taal or the language which was a different dialect even from the dialect spoken by the White proto Afrikaans speakers of the Western Cape who would go on later to label the language Afrikaans.

Starting in the late 1600s & throughout the 1700s significant numbers of the poorer proto Afrikaans speaking members of the Cape began to trek out of the Western Cape & inland becoming pastoralists in an attempt at escaping the autocratic rule of the VOC & to find better grazing land. The term Trekboer was used to describe these nomadic frontier folk as they were essentially migrating or trekking farmers who began occupying the northern & eastern Cape frontiers & were already quite distinct from the urbane inhabitants of the Western Cape who were often referred to as the Cape Dutch. Over time the term Trekboer was shortened to Boer to describe the frontier folk who were markedly independence oriented & would later have their first freedom struggle against the Dutch power in 1795.

The Boer people & culture therefore did not develop in Europe then suddenly transplant itself later in the Cape as the Boers developed in Africa & are a combination of many diverse origins. While most of their ancestors did in fact arrive from Europe: it is important to remember that they did not come as Colonists on behalf of a European power but in fact as servants of the Dutch East India Co. Later many were let go & became free citizens in an attempt by the VOC to cut costs. When about 300 French Huguenots arrived in the Cape as refugees -escaping religious persecution in France- from 1671 until 1707 (one family as late as 1726): the basis of the Boer nation was formed as these French Huguenot refugees viewed Africa as their new home & shaped the emerging Afrikaans language. Numerous other German Protestants also came as political & religious refugees as well. The basis of the Boer people / nation therefore was the amalgamation of the Dutch & Frisian settlers with the French Huguenot refugees & German Protestant refugees.

Further dispelling the erroneous colonial notion of their origins: The Boers have even been referred as the " White tribe of Africa" in the past & some Bantu groups did in fact recognize them as a tribe during the era of the Great Trek.

The nascent Boer nation broke their ties to Europe early on most notably during the late 1600s & throughout the 1700s when they began trekking eastward & inland in order to escape the authoritarian rule of the Dutch East India Co. Therefore: when uninformed or ill-informed Westerners assert that the Boers are " White colonials" they betray their total lack of knowledge on the matter. While many of those who remained in the Western Cape could certainly be considered colonials to a certain extent -the Trekboers & by extension the Boers can not honestly be considered as such since they promptly broke away from European domination & viewed themselves as being African & developed their own dialect which was classified as Eastern Border Afrikaans after the expanding border regions of the eastern Cape frontier where the Boers developed.

The Voortrekkers -who would later go on to found the more successful & various other Boer Republics- were of Trekboer descent. Furthermore: the Boers developed into a nation / people long before their first encounter with a Black (Bantu) group. Their first encounter with a Bantu group was with the Xhosas during around 1777. 125 years after the first arrivals of their European ancestors at the Cape. This is a very significant point as it moots any ignorant notion opposing their presence in their own land of birth. While their ancestors did encounter indigenous people in the Western Cape: they were the Khoisan peoples (a yellow-brown skinned people with Oriental looking features) who were once native to & hence the aboriginals of much of the southern & eastern half of Africa before being displaced & annihilated by migrating darker skinned Bantu groups. The Khoisan groups are now only found in the Northern Cape & Namibia (mainly the San / Bushmen) while the remaining Khoi were absorbed into the emerging Cape Coloured population.

The Voortrekker leaders were a unique blend of European style General & African Chief & the Voortrekkers trekked / migrated in clans following a specific elected leader & were descended from a long line of semi nomadic people who had a rather long historical record of trekking.

The Boers Were Not Interested In Gold.

The Boers were in fact not interested in & were even against the extraction of the gold in the region as they knew that the foreign interest & influx this would generate would spell the end of their independence & of course this is precisely what did happen later.

The actual discovery of gold in the Transvaal territory is credited to a German named Mauch, who travelled through that part of the country early in the century. He returned to Berlin with wonderful reports of the gold he had found, and attempted to enlist capital to work the mines. Whether his reports were not credited, or whether the Germans feared the natives, is not recorded, but Mauch is not heard of again in connection with the later history of the country. In 1854 a Dutchman named Jan Marais, who had a short time before returned from the Australian gold fields, prospected in the Transvaal, and found many evidences of gold. The Boers, fearing that their land would be overrun with gold-seekers, paid five hundred pounds to Marais, and sent him home after extracting a promise that he would not reveal his secret to any one.

From: Chapter 3. The Johannesburg Gold Fields. Oom Paul's People. Howard C Hillegas.

It is a strange anomaly that the Boers, a pastoral people exclusively, should have settled in a section of the earth where Nature has two of her richest storehouses. Both the Kimberley diamond mines and the Witwatersrandt gold mines, each the richest deposit of its kind discovered thus far, were found where the Boers were accustomed to graze their herds and flocks. It would seem as if Nature had influenced the Boers to settle above her treasures, and protect them from the attacks of nations and men who are not satisfied with the products of the earth's surface, but must delve below.

From: Chapter 1. South Africa of the Present Time. Oom Paul's People. Howard C Hillegas. Published: 1900.

Small traces of gold had been found in the Transvaal before Burgers took over but, far from exploiting this discovery to relieve their state's near penury, the Transvaalers, believing that no good could come of it, did their best to hush it up.

From: The Anglo-Boer Wars by Micheal Barthorp. Page 12.

The discovery and exploitation of mineral wealth (diamonds and gold) is undoubtedly the biggest factor in the creation of modern South Africa, but Trekboers had little role in that; in fact, they often wanted to impede that development.

From: The Great Trek. by Canadian Professor Wallace Mills.

Therefore contrary to what some uniformed folks might claim: the Boers were not fighting for the gold because they never even wanted it to be extracted in the first place - valuing their hard won independence much more & also realizing the severe consequences of mining it. Those concerns proved valid later as the discovery of gold was one of the main reasons for the British drive to war against the republics. The other compelling reason being that the British did not want to have powerful Boer Republics scuppering their Colonial agenda in the region.

The Concentration Camps Were Death Camps.

The concentration camps the British used to round up Boer civilians during the second Anglo-Boer War in fact soon turned into death camps resulting in the death of 27 000 of which 24 000 were children under the age of sixteen which represented the death of close to 50 % of the total Boer child population.

The establishment of these camps is often glossed over in modern times without realizing the horrors which occurred within them nor the understanding of how significant an event this was to the Boerevolk whose numbers were greatly reduced as a result.

The following is an excerpt from Hennie Barnard entitled: The Concentration Camps. 
 

The English claim of decent actions towards the Boer women and children are further contradicted by the location of the concentration camps. The military authorities, who often had to plan and erect camps for their soldiers, would certainly have been well aware of the essential requirements for such camps. Yet the concentration camps were established in the most unsuitable locations possible.

At Standerton the camp was erected on both banks of the Vaal River. It was on the Highveld, which ensured that it was extremely cold in winter and infested with mosquitoes in summer. The fact that Standerton had turf soil and a high rainfall, ensured that the camp was one big mud bath in summer, even inside the tents.

The same circumstances were experienced in camps such as Brandfort, Springfontein and Orange River. At Pretoria, the Irene Camp was located at the chilly southern side of the town, while the northern side had a much more favourable climate. Balmoral, Middelburg and other camps were also located on the south-eastern hangs of the hills to ensure that the inhabitants were exposed to the icy south easterly winds.

Merebank camp was located in a swamp where there was an abundance of various kinds of insects. Water oozed out of the ground, ensuring that everything was constantly wet and slimy.

By October 1900 there were already 58 883 people in concentration camps in Transvaal and 45 306 in the Free State.

The amenities in the camps were clearly planned to kill as many of the women and children as possible. They were accommodated in tattered reject tents which offered no protection against the elements.

Emily Hobhouse, the Cornish lady who campaigned for better conditions for the Boer women, wrote: "Throughout the night there was a downpour. Puddles of water were everywhere. They tried to get themselves and their possessions dry on the soaked ground."

(Hobhouse: Brunt of the War, page 169.)

Dr Kendal Franks reports on the Irene Camp: "In one of the tents there were three families; parents and children, a total of 14 people and all were suffering from measles."

In Springfontein camp, 19 to 20 people where crammed into one tent.

There were neither beds nor mattresses and nearly the whole camp population had to sleep on the bare ground, which was damp most of the time.

One person wrote the following plea for aid to the New York Herald: "In the name of small children who have to sleep in open tents without fire, with barely any clothes, I plea for help."

3.4. Let them die of hunger.

According to a British journalist, WT Stead, the concentration camps were nothing more than a cruel torture machine. He writes: "Every one of these children who died as a result of the halving of their rations, thereby exerting pressure onto their family still on the battle-field, was purposefully murdered. The system of half rations stands exposed and stark and unshamefully as a cold-blooded deed of state policy employed with the purpose of ensuring the surrender of people whom we were not able to defeat on the battlefield."

The detainees received no fruit or vegetables; not even milk for the babies.

The meat and flour issued were crawling with maggots. Emily Hobhouse writes: "I have in my possession coffee and sugar which were described as follows by a London analyst: In the case of the first, 66% imitation, and in the case of the second, sweepings from a warehouse."

In her book, Met die Boere in die Veld (With the Boers in the field), Sara Raal states that "there were poisonous sulphate of copper, grounded glass, fishhooks, and razor blades in the rations." The evidence given on this fact is so overwhelming that it must be regarded as a historical fact.

3.5. No hygiene.

The outbreak of disease and epidemics in the camps were further promoted by, inter alia, the lack of sanitary conveniences. Bloemfontein camp had only 13 toilets for more than 3 500 people. Aliwal North camp had one toilet for every 170 people.

A British physician, Dr Henry Becker, writes: "First, they chose an ill-suited site for the camp. Then they supplied so little water that the people could neither wash themselves nor their clothes. Furthermore, they made no provision for sufficient waste removal. And lastly, they did not provide enough toilets for the overpopulation they had crammed into the camps."

A report on a Ladies' Committee's visit to Bloemfontein camp stated: "They saw how the women tried to wash clothes in small puddles of water and sometimes had to use the water more than once."

3.6. Hospitals of homicide.

Ill and healthy people were crammed together into unventilated areas conducive to the spreading of disease and epidemics. At first there were no medical amenities whatsoever in the camps.

Later doctors were appointed, but too few. In Johannesburg there was one doctor for every 4 000 afflicted patients.

A report on the Irene camp states that, out of a population of 1325 detainees, 154 were ill and 20 had died during the previous week. Still this camp had only one doctor and no hospital.

In some camps matters were even worse. The large Bloemfontein camp did not have a single doctor; only one nurse who could not possibly cope with the conditions. During a visit to Norvalspont camp Emily Hobhouse could not even find a trained nurse.

The later appointment of medical personnel did not improve the conditions. They were appointed for their loyalty towards the British invasion; not for their medical capability. They maltreated the Boere.

Emily Hobhouse tells the story of the young Lizzie van Zyl who died in the Bloemfontein concentration camp: "She was a frail, weak little child in desperate need of good care. Yet, because her mother was one of the 'undesirables' due to the fact that her father neither surrendered nor betrayed his people, Lizzie was placed on the lowest rations and so perished with hunger that, after a month in the camp, she was transferred to the new small hospital. Here she was treated harshly. The English disposed doctor and his nurses did not understand her language and, as she could not speak English, labelled her an idiot although she was mentally fit and normal. One day she dejectedly started calling:

Mother! Mother! I want to go to my mother! One Mrs Botha walked over to her to console her. She was just telling the child that she would soon see her mother again, when she was brusquely interrupted by one of the nurses who told her not to interfere with the child as she was a nuisance." Shortly afterwards, Lizzie van Zyl died.

Treu, a medical assistant in the Johannesburg concentration camp, stated that patients were bullied and even lashed with a strap.

Ill people who were taken to the camp hospitals were as good as dead. One woman declared: "We fear the hospitals more than death."

The following two reports should give an idea of the inefficiency of the camp hospitals: "Often people suffering from a minor ailment were violently removed from the tents of protesting mothers or family members to be taken to hospital. After a few days they were more often than not carried to the grave."

"Should a child leave the hospital alive, it was simply a miracle."

(Both quotations from Stemme uit die Verlede - a collection of sworn statements by women who were detained in the concentration camps during the Second War of Independence.)

3.7. The highest sacrifice.

In total 27 000 women and children made the highest sacrifice in the British hell camps during the struggle for the freedom of the Boerevolk.

Mrs Helen Harris, who paid a visit to the Potchefstroom concentration camp, stated: "Imagine a one year old baby who receives no milk; who has to drink water or coffee - there is no doubt that this is the cause of the poor health of the children."

Should one take note of the fact that it were the English who killed the Boers' cattle with bayonets, thereby depriving the children of their food sources, then the high fatality rate does not seem to be incidental.

Despite shocking fatality figures in the concentration camps, the English did nothing to improve the situation, and the English public remained deaf to the lamentations in the concentration camps as thousands of people, especially children, were carried to their graves.

The Welshman, Lloyd George, stated: "The fatality rate of our soldiers on the battlefields, who were exposed to all the risks of war, was 52 per thousand per year, while the fatalities of women and children in the camps were 450 per thousand per year. We have no right to put women and children into such a position."

An Irishman, Dillon, said: "I can produce and endless succession of confirmations that the conditions in most of the camps are appalling and brutal. To my opinion the fatality rate is nothing less than cold-blooded murder."

One European had the following comment on England's conduct with the concentration camps: "Great Britain cannot win her battles without resorting to the despicable cowardice of the most loathsome cure on earth - the act of striking at a brave man's heart through his wife's honour and his child's life."

The barbarousness of the English is strongly evidenced by the way in which they unceremoniously threw the corpses of children in heaps on mule carts to be transported to the cemeteries. The mourning mothers had to follow on foot. Due to illness or fatigue many of them could not follow fast enough and had to miss the funerals of their children.

According to PF Bruwer, author of Vir Volk en Vryheid, all the facts point out that the concentration camps, also known as the hell camps, were a calculated and deliberate effort by England to commit a holocaust on the Boerevolk.

The above was an excerpt from The Concentration Camps from Hennie Barnard.

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