The War at Home. Helen Bradford
the camps or forced to find refuge there. Roberts indicated on 30 September 1900 that commanders could use their discretion when housing individuals in the Bloemfontein camp and it was not necessarily intended for surrendered burghers only. In October, wives and children of loyal republican burghers were forced to go to Bloemfontein and by 15 November 1900 there were 519 people in this camp.
There was, therefore, no difference between the protection camps (for burghers who had surrendered) and concentration camps (for the wives and children of loyal burghers who were compelled to be there). The British also described the camps as refugee camps, but this term is misleading because it implies that the women went voluntarily as refugees, while in reality the British had forced them off their farms and into the camps.
It can be argued that the policy of extensive concentration camps that was developed later can be traced back to these efforts to protect the surrendered burghers. In this way, these burghers contributed to the genesis of the concentration-camp system, albeit indirectly and inadvertently.
There is another link between the camps and the burghers who laid down their arms. Burgher peace committees, consisting of surrendered burghers, were established in co-operation with the British authorities in an attempt to compel those who were still on commando to surrender because the cause was lost. Their efforts were largely fruitless. Several republican leaders and, later, historians, believed that the peace committees actually gave the idea of concentration camps to Horatio Lord Kitchener, Roberts’s successor. It was believed that Meyer de Kock, a burgher from Belfast who acted as peace envoy and later died for this cause, persuaded the British to use this method. However, there is no conclusive evidence to support this, and Kitchener had already given serious consideration to the expansion of the camps even before he met with the burgher peace committees. Nevertheless, it is clear that some surrendered burghers supported the establishment of camps.
The scorched-earth policy and the camps
In addition to managing the surrendered burghers, the British began to apply drastic war measures as Boer leaders turned to guerrilla warfare. As early as March 1900, Lord Roberts had ordered that Boer farmhouses could be burnt as a punitive measure for continued resistance. The intention had been to burn farmhouses that the commandos used to hide in and launch attacks on the British.
Under Kitchener’s command, homesteads were destroyed indiscriminately from January 1901 – no attempt was made to determine whether they had been used for military purposes. Kitchener’s subordinates were randomly destructive. Approximately 30 000 homesteads were burnt and almost 40 towns destroyed. The underlying strategy was to ensure that there was no refuge for burghers who were still in the field.
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One of the hundreds of farm houses that were destroyed by scorched-earth warfare. |
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Far left: The wrecked church in Lindley in the Orange Free State Left: British soldiers depart from a farm left in ruins |
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Far left: a dwelling reduced to a shell Left: grain bags are set ablaze |
In general, the policy was carried out ruthlessly by soldiers who considered it their professional duty to do so and sometimes even derived sadistic pleasure from the task. A British soldier wrote: ‘You should have seen the Royal Irish on the loot. They helped the people out with their stuff by heaving heavy bureaus bodily through the windows, putting pickaxes through melodeons and such like wantonness. I heard one yell, “Begory Jim, here is a nice carpet ... Oi’ll take it home for the ould woman. Lend a hand here!” R-r-r-rip! Up came a handsome pole carpet in strips. And so the work went on, the officers standing by laughing at the costly fun their men were having.’[4]
This vandalism left a deep impression on the Boer women who witnessed it. One of them declared, ‘There I stood, surrounded by my little children, while the cruel soldiers plundered my property. Furniture, clothes, food, everything was thrown in a heap and set alight ... No matter how much I pleaded with them to save a few heirlooms, they refused to listen.’[5] Incidences like this occurred regularly in the two republics, and the humiliation that these experiences engendered would, in later years, provide a fertile breeding ground among Afrikaners for collective agonising and resentment towards ‘the English’.
The British side has argued that the change in the war after the Boers began using guerrilla warfare forced the supreme command to take the women into their care on humanitarian grounds, rather than leaving them defenceless in the veld. But this argument is misleading. The British forces used arson as a military measure because they could not conquer the commandos in the field. The establishment of concentration camps made it possible for the British authorities to remove white and black civilians (mainly women and children) from the farms for military reasons. In this way, the centre of gravity of the war, which had lain solely in the conduct of military operations, shifted to include civilians as well. Therefore it was British war tactics, not humanitarian considerations, that necessitated the camps.
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Men for whom the fight is over join women and children in enduring a war that continues. The Bloemfontein camp contained comparatively younger men who might have surrendered to British forces or taken the oath of allegiance. The aim of the first concentration camps was the protection through confinement of such surrendered burghers. |
Another contributing factor was the British perception of the relationships between the Boers and their wives. The British authorities hoped that the internment of the women in the camps would persuade burghers to desert their commandos to join their wives. Some British imperialists believed that, as well as being strongly attached to their families, the Boers were also unsophisticated, sensual creatures who found it difficult to abstain from sex. They believed that indigenous population groups – for them this included the Boers – had exceptionally high libidos and assumed that retaining the women in the camps would engender vigorous lust in their husbands. There is an example of a homesick Boer early in the war who subtly described how his wife became ‘more beautiful’ to him every day but, in reality, the Boers’ lustfulness was not as great as the presumptuousness of some Britons.[6]
This form of sexual politics did not have its intended effect and the internment of their wives and children did not entice the Boers to leave their commandos. On the contrary, the Boers’ farms had already been destroyed and they believed that the British forces were caring for their families. Therefore, they were encouraged to continue fighting; after all, they had less to lose. In this respect, the camps had the effect of prolonging the war rather than shortening it.
Although Kitchener was not responsible for the establishment of the first camps, he played a large part in the expansion of the camp system during 1901. Many historical accounts accurately associate Kitchener with the concentration-camp policy. The motivation for this policy lay in the military situation, but Kitchener’s personality also played a role. In general he had a low opinion of the Boer population, describing them as ‘savages with only a thin white veneer’.[7] He saw bittereinder women, who adopted a defiant and recalcitrant attitude towards military authorities, as further proof of backwardness and barbarism. He believed Boers led an isolated rural lifestyle far from the reach of