SEARCHING FOR SAREL
Pieter Liebenberg visits a monument to the 1 737 souls — including his great-uncle — who died in a British concentration camp during the Anglo-Boer war
Pieter Smartryk Theron, my grandfather and namesake, was a year old when he was forced, together with his mother and siblings, to move to the British concentration camp at Bethulie in April 1901, during the Anglo-Boer war. What always fascinated me was that Pieter Smartryk survived but his elder brother Sarel Adriaan Theron, who was two years old, did not. Sarel contracted measles and died on August 31 1901. He was buried in the original camp graveyard. As there was a possibility that this area would be flooded as a result of the construction of Lake Gariep, the 1 737 bodies were exhumed in 1996 and moved to a mass grave further north.
According to bethulie.co.za, the present graveyard is about 3km from the town and the original cairn and two monuments can still be seen.
So we set off on a road trip from Joburg to Bethulie early last November to find Sarel’s resting place.
Our first stop was Beaufort West, mostly considered to be a convenient stopover on the N1 between Joburg and Cape Town. However, we discovered a vibrant town with enough to see and do for two entire days.
First on our agenda was fossil hunting in the Karoo National Park with the bonus of sighting various buck species, baboons, zebra, tortoise, warthog, aardvark and bird species.
The town has many historical buildings and a museum complex dedicated to Prof Chris Barnard and his brother Marius. The house that they grew up in and Chris’s grave are open to the public.
The area is an outdoor enthusiast’s paradise, with many hiking, cycling and horse trails. Birding is also big in the Karoo town, as is stargazing.
REMEMBERING THE DEAD
Travelling north, we made our way to Gariep Dam, passing many desolate little towns. But our next stop was Bethulie.
The new concentration camp monument, Kamp Kerkhof, and mass grave is on a hill above the town. The names of the dead are inscribed on a large piece of marble, including that of Sarel Adriaan Theron.
MALNOURISHED & COLD
Conditions in the camp, formed in April 1901, were atrocious. It closed on January 10 1903 — after 1 737 people had died there, 1 311 of whom were under 18 months old.
Sarel was one of the casualties spoken of in a British telegraph in August 1901, reporting “a large number of sick … Measles had struck the camp (and) malnutrition and the cold weather were a fatal combination.”
The rest of the family survived the war and returned to their small farm near Waterkloof, Philippolis.
Ironically, my grandfather died in WW2 while serving in the South African Army, on the side of Britain. He was only 40 years old.
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