Little information was collected about the camps for the Bantu and Coloureds or for those established for the British refugees who had fled from the Orange Free State and the Transvaal just before the war began. In the early days of the war there had been considerable sympathy for the plight of the British refugees and a Mansion House fund provided aid, but as the war went on, interest in their fate waned and outside funds, when exhausted, were not replenished. Many of those waiting out the war in Natal and Cape Colony became embittered by the preoccupation of the public and government with the conditions in the Boer concentration camps; it was easy for them to believe that they, loyal subjects, were not only neglected but deprived of essentials which were given instead to the families of their enemies.
To this day Doris Heberdon remembers a story often told by her mother—how she once, in search of much-needed cotton cloth, went to a store in Pietermaritzburg and was told that none was available. Standing before her she could see great stacks of cloth as well as tinned meats and jams and other goods in short supply. When she pointed these out she was told that all were destined for the concentration camps.12
Of the separate camps established for the Bantu and Coloureds little is known and reliable statistics are scarce. They were not visited by Emily Hobhouse or the Ladies Committee. The inmates were for the most part servants and farm labourers swept up as part of Kitchener’s policy of “clearing the country.” An estimated 80,000 persons were in these camps, and mortality rates were said to be high, but no one knows exactly how high. Some idea may be obtained from such statistics as exist: in July 1901 there were 23,000 inmates of camps in the Orange Free State, and in this month 256 died (169 of these were children); of the 39,000 Coloureds in Transvaal camps in December 1901, 956 died—one out of 40 in just one month. The Aborigines Protection Society of London suggested that in view of the high mortality rates in the camps a “committee of South African ladies” be appointed to investigate, but the government refused its sanction. A number of Bantu and Coloureds also lived in the concentration camps for the Boers; some were servants and others were employed by the administration for the more disagreeable camp chores, such as emptying latrine buckets.
At first the “native refugee camps” were organised in the same manner as those for the Boers, but as “it was thought undesirable that so large a native population should be fed in idleness”13 the camps were broken up and the former inmates were distributed along the railway lines and given plots of ground on which to raise their own food or put to industrial work.
The concentration camps (which continued in existence for nearly a year after the end of the war), although never intended to inflict punishment or injury or to impose deliberate hardship, nevertheless found themselves the instruments of all three in great measure. Emily Hobhouse saw clearly when she wrote: “Whatever the authorities do—and they are, I believe, doing their best with very limited means—it all is only a miserable patch on a great ill.”14
Milner wrote on 7 December 1901 a remarkably candid appraisal of the camp system:
It was not until six weeks or two months ago that it dawned on me personally (I cannot speak for others), that the enormous mortality was not incidental to the first formation of the camps and the sudden inrush of thousands of people already starving, but was going to continue. The fact that it continues is no doubt a condemnation of the camp system. The whole thing, I think now has been a mistake.15
Yes. It was a mistake. A terrible, a tragic mistake.
42
PRISONERS OF WAR
In striking contrast to the fate of the women and children in the concentration camps was that of the captured burghers sent to prisoner-of-war camps. At first they had been kept on board transports converted into prison ships and anchored in Simon’s Bay, where their health suffered from the close confinement. But the British soon abandoned the prison ships, concluding that the practise was an “expensive, unsatisfactory and troublesome experiment.”1 Conditions were much improved when the prisoners were moved ashore to the sports grounds at Green Point (now a suburb of Cape Town) or to the camp established at Simonstown—although an outbreak of enteric fever there took a number of inmates’ lives and also killed the charming and attractive Mary Kingsley, traveller and ethnologist, who had gone to South Africa to nurse Boer prisoners. In general, however, the captured burgher had a far better chance of surviving the war than did his mother, wife, and children, for the prisoner-of-war camps were in healthy locations and the treatment of the prisoners was wise and humane.
Of the 4,619 prisoners sent to Bermuda, only 35 died, all but one of natural causes. (Prisoner No. 16870, “a persistent escapist,” was shot and killed while making his last attempt.) Seventeen-year-old B. J. du Toit said the “provision supplied was splendid.” Commandant Pieter Ferreira, interviewed in New York after his release at the end of the war, told a reporter: “Really, I do not think we have much to complain about in regard to our treatment. It is certain the British cared for us much better than we could possibly have cared for them had we been in their place.”2
The first overseas prisoner-of-war camp was established on the island of St. Helena when 514 Boers arrived on the Milwaukee on 16 April 1900. Eleven days before its arrival the governor, Robert A. Sterndale, issued a public notice:
His Excellency the Governor expresses the hope that the Inhabitants will treat the Prisoners with that courtesy and consideration which should be extended to all men who have fought bravely in what they considered the cause of their Country and will help in repressing any unseemly demonstration which individuals might exhibit.3
The first prisoners were sent to Deadwood Camp, about 6 miles by road from Jamestown toward the eastern end of the island. An exception was made for Cronjé and his wife (she was the only woman with the prisoners of war), who were allowed to live under guard at Kent Cottage, 3 or 4 miles southwest of Jamestown, and later at Longwood, which had been Napoleon’s home. A second camp was established on the island when quarrels broke out among the prisoners between the irreconcilables and those who were willing to take the oath of allegiance and forget the war. This second camp for the “tame Boers” was known as Deadwood No. 2, or the “Peace Camp.” Then there were further quarrels between Free Staters and Transvaalers and they had to be separated. So a third camp, Broadbottom, was established about 5 miles away.
St. Helena eventually held both the first and the last of the important Boer generals captured by the British, for besides Cronjé it also held General Ben Viljoen, who was ambushed and captured near the end of the war. On 25 February 1902 Viljoen arrived at St. Helena on board the Britannic and recorded his first sight of the island:
“The Rock” rose out of the ocean, bare and rugged, the imprisonment upon it offered a gloomy prospect. No animal was visible, and foliage was wanting. I never saw a less attractive place than Jamestown, the port at which we landed. ... I must confess that the feeling grew upon us that we were to be treated as ordinary criminals, since only murderers and dangerous people are banished to such places to be forgotten by mankind.4
In this mood Viljoen was hardly off the ship when he began a quarrel with Colonel H. S. Price, the commanding officer at Deadwood, a man he called “arrogant, cruel and generally unbearable.” Colonel Price’s offence would seem to have been his refusal immediately to accept Viljoen’s parole or to issue him a pass to leave the prison camp—at least this is the only grievance Viljoen recorded, and he refrained from mentioning that Price had a reason, and a good one, for refusing to allow prisoners to wander about soon after their arrival: all new men were wisely put in quarantine to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. Later the trucu-lant Viljoen was allowed to live in a small house outside the camp, and for the remainder of his brief stay he found it difficult to find fault with his gaolers.
As the number of prisoners increased, other camps were opened in Ceylon, India, and Bermuda, in that order. The Bermuda camps were established on five small islands ranging in
size from 7 to 15 acres. There were eventually six camps in Ceylon, the first and largest being at Diyatalawa, about 140 miles from Colombo, where a Wesleyan mission had for years operated a reformatory. F. G. M. Carver, a prisoner, described the camp in a letter to an uncle in California: “Our camp is ... at an altitude of between four and five thousand feet. It is situated upon the lower hills, within a circle of high and beautiful mountains. The climate is fresh and mild, not unlike that of Johannesburg during the December rains.... We are well housed and amply fed.”5
COLONEL PILCHER’S EXPEDITIONARY FORCE TO DOUGLAS DISTINGUISHED
ITSELF BY CAPTURING FORTY BOER PRISONERS.
Ceylon’s second camp was a convalescent centre opened at Mount Lavinia, a pleasant place by the sea. Ragama was set up as a special camp for troublemakers. “Parole camps” were later established at Urugasman-handiya and Hambantota.
There were thirteen camps established in India (including what is today Pakistan), and all appear to have been well situated in healthy locations. A camp at Ahmednagar, a delightful hill station 2,000 feet above sea level with a dry, healthy climate, recorded one five-month period in which there was not a single death from disease among its 500 prisoners.
To be sent to a prison camp so far from their homeland was a fate much dreaded by the captured. Families, formerly so closely knit, were torn apart and flung over the world. Deneys Reitz had one brother, Hjalmar, in a prison camp in India and another, Joubert, in Bermuda. Even the distance between Simonstown and the Transvaal seemed far to Frikkie Badenhorst when he was a prisoner. He wrote to his wife: “We are separated from the outer world—it is more than a year since I last saw a woman or heard the voice of a child. How often I long to talk to a child. We do not even see much of animals. We smoke—and are more or less getting used to it all.”6
There were heart-rending scenes as prisoners, collected in temporary camps, were moved by trains to Cape Town or Durban, the embarkation points. Mrs. Mostyn Cleaver described the scene at noon on a cold, gusty day in Bloemfontein when prisoners were marched to the railway station and she went to have a last look at her son:
Out of the cottages as we passed, sprang forlorn women and children, weeping and shouting farewells.... Just outside the grounds of the railway a weird throng of dishevelled women stood. All of the poorest class, some without any head covering and with dishevelled looks, they stood lamenting and crying out frantic farewells.7
Harry Fraser obtained permission to visit his brother Gordon (captured in the raid on Reitz, where Steyn had had such a narrow escape) when he was temporarily imprisoned in Pretoria. In a letter to his sister, President Steyn’s wife, he wrote:
His appearance was undoubtedly ragged, but I am glad to say he looked very well and healthy. I gave him a good outfit. Three suits of clothes, pair of boots, couple of hats and a fair supply of underclothing, so that he is fitted out at any rate for some little time.... They have been treated very well and had every consideration shown them. Gordon says he will long remember the kindness of the Seventh Dragoon Guards who captured them.8
Prisoners had few complaints about their treatment while in British hands. Cronjé was always shown great respect while a prisoner. Instructions were issued that he was to be styled “general” and to receive the same courtesies as “a British general not in employ.” En route to St. Helena on HMS Doris Admiral Robert Harris gave up his cabin to Cronjé and his wife. Field Cornet F. G. M. Cleaver wrote to his mother from the Mohawk, which was carrying him to Ceylon: “We are travelling in great comfort. The burghers are forward with the soldiers, and the Krijgsoffi-cieren enjoy the accommodations and privileges of first class passengers, along with the British officers.”9 It was the same when they reached Ceylon, and Cleaver wrote from Diyatalawa camp: “We travelled in nice, roomy carriages to this place.”
Still, it was a sad thing to be sent from one’s homeland, and on board the Montrose bound for Bermuda G. J. van Riet wrote in his diary on leaving Cape Town: “In evening on losing sight of Table Mountain the National Anthems were sung by all the burghers. It was really quite impressive.” Christmas was a sad day, and he wrote:
The sea rough and unpleasant ... not even a photo or letter to remind me of my dear ones. I have just finished my daily search and found 2 lice. The misery of this day I shall never forget. I cannot get a quiet corner to hunt up some consoling words, of which I feel oh, so much in need.... To our surprise we actually got a piece of pudding each for our Xmas dinner.10
Gerhardus Botha, sixteen years old, was sent to Green Point after his capture at Reitz. There he and others attempted to escape by digging a tunnel but were caught in the act and hurriedly put aboard the Catalonia bound for Ceylon. At Diyatalawa Botha fell seriously ill. Tended by a Sinhalese doctor, to whom he felt he owed his life, he recovered and was sent into the hills to recuperate. “I enjoyed my stay immensely,” he said. “On my return the officer in charge, Col. Vincent [Lieutenant Colonel A. C. F. Vincent] of Diyatalawa camp insisted on me continuing with my studies. This was an excellent thing for me.”11
Included among the prisoners of war were several old men (one prisoner in Bermuda was seventy-nine years old) and a considerable number of young boys, some mere children. No one knows how many there were, but in one camp in Bermuda, on Darrell’s Island, there were 113 prisoners under sixteen years of age. Two prisoners, Pieter Cronjé and Johannes van der Veldt, were not yet eight years old when they were captured, and Jan Viljoen was only ten. These youngsters were treated no differently from the men until they reached the camps, where, in at least several places, they were separated and put in schools.
In Bermuda the boys were collected and sent to a special camp on Hinson’s Island, where they were put in what they called the “Khaki School.” Some boys rebelled. One, A. J. Vercuel, recalled sixty years later: “About twenty of us refused to go. After three days, food and water were cut off, well then we had to go.... We found all the other children at Hinson’s and were informed that we were there for schooling and trades.”12 Some of the boys continued to rebel: soldiers one night had to rescue an unfortunate schoolmaster who was dumped in the sea, bed and all.
Older boys were given the opportunity to work and earn a little money. B. J. du Toit was seventeen when on 1 August 1901 he arrived in Bermuda and was put in school: “On and off,” he said, “we were allowed to cut coral bricks at one shilling per day allowing me to buy an english [sic] dictionary for one shilling and six pence.”
Cricket matches were arranged between the boys on Hinson’s Island and the boys of Saltus Grammar School in Hamilton. A number of British residents in Bermuda interested themselves in the young prisoners. Vercuel remembered some of them bringing over a vat of ice cream. “It was amusing to see some of the boys from the back veld eating it, never having seen it before,” he said. Lord Geary, governor of Bermuda, and his wife had lost a son in the war, but they made friends with young Vercuel and corresponded with him for twelve years after the war.
General Anson Mills, the retired American soldier who made his fortune manufacturing cartridge belts, wrote to the American consul in Bermuda in March 1902 and asked him to try to arrange for Jan Viljoen and Pieter Cronjé, then ages eleven and nine respectively, to be sent to him in the United States. General Mills offered to pay their passage and to educate them at his own expense until such time as they could return home.
Some of the adult prisoners organised classes among themselves. In Bermuda Jacob de Villiers, onetime state attorney of the Orange Free State, gave lectures in law. Gordon Fraser studied French and learned shorthand. And, of course, there were religious study groups. Gerhardus Botha, many years later, told of his religious instruction in Ceylon: “During the time I was in camp I was confirmed by the Rev. Papenfus. I found my little Bible, which my mother had given to me when I left for the war, most useful. I still have my confirmation certificate and at the bottom of it is printed ‘Diyatalawa, Ceylon. 11 September 1901.’ ”13
In some camp
s religious services were held twice daily. “I tell you they can pray,” said one of the British soldiers on guard duty in Bermuda. “They pray ... until we outside get tired of it and call out ‘Oh, gag yourselves!’ ”14
Commercial enterprise was not discouraged; there were camp canteens run by prisoners; St. Helena boasted a coffee house; M.J. Slabbert opened the President Café; Carl le Roux operated a brewery; and Henry Cox set himself up as an auctioneer and pawnbroker. In Bermuda R. J. Schutte became a photographer when he was sent an early Ilford camera as a present; on Darrell’s Island a tailor made trousers for one shilling and shirts for one shilling, sixpence. The British made some work available and paid two shillings a day for skilled labour and one shilling a day for unskilled work, but most of the burghers refused to work for the British.
The major prison camp industry on Bermuda was carving. The making of curios became an organised affair when the prisoners on Burt’s Island formed an Industrial Association, and soon every curio shop and tourist spot on the islands sold their souvenirs.
There were recreations too. On St. Helena there was a drama society, and a Hollander named Houtzaager wrote plays that were produced in the camp, J. H. L. Schumann wrote songs and had them published in England, and St. Helena camps could boast of a string quartet, a piano trio, a brass band, a male choir, and a minstrel group as well as a debating society, a German club, an anti-smoking society, and many sports teams. Sometimes there were parties (each man brought his own liquor) where the invariable toasts were to Kruger, Steyn, and “our fighting burghers in the field.” Pranksters abounded. The prisoners on Darrell’s Island in Bermuda made up a life-sized dummy, labelled it “Joe Chamberlain,” and floated it out to sea one night. Searchlights picked it up and a guard ship full of soldiers captured it.
Great Boer War Page 63