Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
SA’s bloodiest conflict, the Anglo Boer War, begins
Some key events from this week in history are reflected in the following reports taken from the archives of the Argus’s 160-year-old titles
THERE had been no fighting yet but, recognising it was bound to come, The Star newspaper in Johannesburg shut up shop on October 12, 1899, for the time being, it was at pains to insist. In its final telegraph to the Cape, the newspaper said: “For weeks past, a gradually diminishing staff has kept the well-known (for
uitlander eigner) organ going in spite of threats and dangers… Lately the staff had dwindled to three, with a mere handful of men in the printing department. Yesterday they were compelled to bow to the inevitable.”
South Africa’s bloodiest conflict, the Anglo Boer War, had begun.
The Star, however, was not posting an “obituary notice”.
“Very soon, in the good days that are coming, The Star will again be seen end to end of the reef…” This was true enough in the long term, but, for all the “frantic enthusiasm” of the cheering send-off given to troops bound for the Cape from Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other places in October 1899, it soon became clear that the war against the Boer republics was not going to be the short, chastising scrap many in Britain, or Johannesburg, had fondly anticipated.
The 450 000-strong Imperial force eventually deployed in South Africa would be the largest army sent abroad in British history.
The £ 200 million conflict, which Rudyard Kipling believed had taught Britain “no end of a lesson”, cost the British more than 22 000 men, of whom more than half died from disease. Of the 88 000 Boer guerrillas, 6 000 died in the field and several thousand more in concentration camps. About 27 900 Boer internees and 14 000, possibly as many as 20 000 Africans, died in the camps.
On October 11, 1899, Cape readers learned of the South African Republic’s final demands – “Boer Ultimatum, couched in offensive terms – ‘Take away the troops by five pm or fight’ “– and of Britain’s reply, cockily expressed in the headline: “‘So, no more at present from yours truly, JB.’ ”
JB – John Bull – would, it might have seemed, given the insolent “petty state” a hiding for its temerity in “issuing an ultimatum dictating as to the number of troops Great Britain may maintain in her own Colonies, and thus destroying the last hopes of peace”.
The “Transvaal Rulers”, one report that day declaimed, “not waiting for Great Britain’s last word, have declared war and must pay the penalty”.
On the same day, the missive by the republic’s state secretary, FW Reitz, to Whitehall was printed in full, ending with the three key demands: that “the troops on the borders of this Republic shall be instantly withdrawn; all reinforcements of troops which have arrived in South Africa since the 1st June, 1899, shall be removed from South Africa within a reasonable time… (and) that Her Majesty’s troops which are now on the high seas shall not be landed in any port of South Africa”.
Reitz went on: “In the event of no satisfactory answer being received [by 5pm on October 11], the South African Republic will with great regret be compelled to regard the action of Her Majesty’s Government as a formal declaration of war…”
By October 14, the empire was girding its loins.
Reports in special editions that day describe events in London. “General ( Redvers) Buller and staff sail for the Cape tomorrow. Other passengers include Earl De la Warr (later wounded near Vryheid) and Mr Winston Churchill (who was captured in Natal, but later escaped from internment in Pretoria).”
Another, headlined “Confounded impudence”, records: “All controversy here has ended. The nation unitedly accepts the Boer challenge. The Lord Mayor of London announces his intention to converse their feelings at the ‘confounded impudence’ of the Boer demands.”
More troopships arrived at the Cape.
From elsewhere across the region, news of the gathering of forces began to trickle in.
A report from Durban stated: “The Boers have not yet occupied Newcastle, although authentic information was received this morning that a body fully 3 000 strong was encamped about 15 miles (24km) away on the Ingogo battlefield.
“News from Ladysmith native scouts report that a body of Free State Boers, with a number of guns and an endless string of wagons, are entering Natal via Tintwa Pass which is south of Van Reenens…
“The Upper Tugela Magistracy has been completely exhausted. The Magistrate and had police have gone to Escourt and took the prisoners with them… all the wires between Ladysmith and the Upper Tugela have been cut.”
There was news of “the few remaining people in Newcastle” being warned to leave, and of a “strong force of Boers near Schuim’s Hoogte”. “A special train is now in readiness to start from Newcastle Station.
“The telegraph office is dismantled, and the telegraph and post officials are going southward by the special train.”
A day later, it was reported that Boer commandos “have occupied Spitzkop, and will probably be in Newcastle tonight” and that another commando “is reported to be marching from Vryheid to Dundee”.
A flood of refugees headed for the Cape on trains, many having to be “content with open trucks, in which they were packed in like herrings in a barrel”.
“Transvaal officials at Vereeniging insisted on searching every single passenger and every particle of luggage. This entailed the detention of the train for fully four hours.”
There were claims of robbery and one man was shot in the leg. Some consolation was that “the journey through the Free State was without incident”, where, despite the presence of large Boer commandos, “the burghers came with the intention to see the refugees through, but their conduct was good-humoured”.
In a report from Herschel, east of Aliwal North, it was reported that “natives are arriving in large numbers from the Republics, and complain generally of ill-treatment at the hands of the Boers”.
Not surprisingly, the report added: “The natives are clamouring for arms, and wish to be prepared for emergency.”
And it was an emergency for all residents of South Africa.
For black South Africans – many of whom played a part, on both sides, or lost their lives in the conflict – the deeper and more lasting cost came with the peace in 1902 and the fixation in the decade that followed, with sustaining amity among whites at the expense of the larger question of South African citizenship.
The resulting consolidation of black exclusion would take almost a century to undo.