Monument to honour Boer women, not Emily Hobhouse

GERALDShaw writes in “The burning anger that helped to fuel Afrikaner nationalism” (Cape Times Insight, May 8) that the National Women’s Memorial in Bloemfontein “was erected to honour Emily Hobhouse’s memory, but she regarded it rather as a memorial to the heroism of the Boer women who died in the camps”. This is incorrect. President MT Steyn, last president of the Republiek van die Oranje Vrijstaat (Republic of the Orange Free State) envisioned this monument while in the veld on commando during the war. It had to be in memory and to the honour of the more that 26 000 Boer women and children who perished in the British concentration camps, he said.

This was written down by the Rev John Daniel Kestell, who was the president’s field chaplain. After the AngloBoer War, Steyn took the lead to have the monument designed and erected to his wishes, which was also the wishes of the survivors of the war and the camps.

The monument was inaugurated on December 16, 1913, this year 100 years ago (a massive Remembrance Day is planned for December 16 in Bloemfontein).

Emily Hobhouse was invited to unveil the monument in 1913 out of gratitude for what she did as welfare officer to better the terrible circumstances in the camps, but she fell ill on the train on the way to Bloemfontein, and had to disembark at Beaufort West and later returned to Cape Town.

Her speech, however, was read at the unveiling and 4 000 copies of it circulated among the gathering. She had these copies printed in Cape Town and sent ahead by train. She actually wanted the monument to be dedicated to all the women of the world, an international symbol for womanhood. She was a fiery candidate for women’s liberation.

Shaw also remarks that “only two academic works” on the British concentration camps were written, but there was “considerable non-scholarly and intense emotion writing on this theme” as well. This is also incorrect. Professor Andries Raath of the University of the Free State, for example, wrote a whole series of academic books on each and every camp, and later compiled this in two massive encyclopedias. There are many other academic scholars who also wrote extensively on the camps. These works are all in Afrikaans.

The latest “monumental” thesis on the camps was done by Celesté Reynolds, archivist and researcher of the Potchefstroom campus of Northwest University. This extensive work is now being published as a hard-cover book to be launched on December 16 in Bloemfontein. She gained her masters degree cum laude with this academic work. Perhaps Shaw is only referring to the two books written in English.