by Adam Cruise
These days the area around Sandfontein and the two crossings, Raman’s Drift and Houm’s Drift, is remote, even by Namibian standards. You will not find Sandfontein on any printed map. Today it is the site of an upmarket game lodge that forms part of the Sandfontein Nature Reserve. At 76 000 hectares, it is the third-largest private reserve in Namibia and is home to some 4 000 animals, including the rare black rhino. Activities include hunting, horse riding, game and scenic drives, rhino tracking, canoeing on the Orange River, and relaxing at the lodge’s twenty-metre swimming pool. It is not a cheap destination. In 2014, a bungalow cost about R3 000 or €200 a night.
Looking up from the lodge towards the koppie today, one can see just how exposed to machine-gun and shell fire the South African troops were. There is precious little shelter from top to bottom. At the foot of the western slope, a shed that looks to be original is dwarfed by a new, large and ostentatious house – apparently a shareholders’ holiday residence. When they dug the foundations for the new building they found a lot of equine bones, most likely those of the horses and mules that were mowed down by the Schütztruppe at the beginning of the battle. The local Nama believe the house is haunted.
Climbing to the top of the koppie, one passes row upon row of redoubts, the very ones that Welby had his men construct. They are the physical monuments, the obvious reminders of the battle. It seems that not a stone has been removed; even the rifle holes are still visible. One can picture South African soldiers hunkering down behind their schanzes, careful to keep their heads low, swarms of bullets whizzing past and pinging into the rocks all around them, then the whine of a shell, an awful explosion, rocks and metal flying about, shouts, screams, cries …
Bits of rusted metal litter the ground. They are mostly old beer cans, presumably left by farm labourers over the decades, but some are the older and much thicker rusty fragments of artillery shells. From the top of the koppie, the view to the north-east is dominated by the high buttress where four of the German artillery guns were positioned, raining hellfire on the hapless defenders. To the east, a dry riverbed sweeps past and joins another heading south towards the Orange. Beyond that, clothed in deep ochre, are the mountain ranges that dominate the position on three sides.
Visible on the wide plain to the west are the white marble gravestones of German soldiers. Fourteen were killed that day, including Major von Rappard, who was commanding the column advancing from the south-west. Exposed on a rocky path that descended to the riverbed, it was they who Grant’s 13-pounders found first. They took a heavy toll. Von Rappard’s death especially was a huge blow to the German military endeavour and would prove to have a negative impact on Germany’s overall defence of the colony. A Prussian aristocrat with a fine military background, he was astute and popular among his men. He was also von Heydebreck’s second in command.
The view from the koppie south of Sandfontein is dramatic. The twisted mountains reveal how difficult it must have been for Berrangé to attempt to relieve Grant. They formed an effective cover for the encircling German force. Although Houm’s Drift is not an official border crossing today, it is often used for illicit cross-border activities. The area on both sides remains remote, making it easy for the illegal flow of alcohol, drugs, weapons and other contraband. These days a different kind of armed invader is attempting to cross into the former German territory: poachers going after Sandfontein’s black rhinos.
4
Insurrection
ON 28 SEPTEMBER, TWO days after the battle at Sandfontein, and probably as a result, Botha personally took over Beyers’ position as commander of the Active Citizen Force, which he then amalgamated with Lukin’s Permanent Force, thus taking overall command of the Union Defence Force as commander in chief and relieving Smuts of the responsibility. Botha also appointed a real soldier, Brigadier General J.J. Collyer, as his chief of staff.
Botha called for more volunteers to bolster his meagre forces along the border, stating that if South Africa did not occupy German South-West Africa, Britain was ready to send in Australian (or worse, Indian) troops to do the job for them. That, he warned, would be in the nation’s worst interests, as it would both tarnish South Africa’s image among the Allies, especially if troops of colour showed them up, and be a lost opportunity for South Africa’s grand designs on the subcontinent.
Among the hundreds of volunteers eager to fight under the wily general was Deneys Reitz. Being from the Free State, where republican feelings ran deepest, Reitz’s decision went against the grain. Most volunteers came from former British territories within the Union – the Cape and Natal provinces – as well as Botha’s own sphere of influence, in the eastern and central Transvaal, where he enjoyed unprecedented Afrikaner support. The western Transvaal, where De la Rey was idolised, and the Orange Free State, from where De Wet hailed, were an entirely different matter.
What made Reitz different? During his self-imposed exile in Madagascar following the Boer War, the young Reitz contracted malaria. On his return to South Africa, he spent a lengthy convalescence in the Smuts household. During this period, he came to understand Botha’s policy of reconciliation and the importance of Britain in the Union’s future. Over time, Reitz, like Smuts, became a loyal Botha supporter, even though his fellow Free Staters held a different opinion.
De Wet publicly berated Reitz for supporting Botha when the two met on the streets of Reitz’s hometown, Heilbron, where De Wet was vociferously campaigning against Botha’s decision to invade.1 Reitz’s father, Francis William Reitz, was a former Free State president and a republican. When hostilities broke out, Reitz senior was president of the senate in Parliament. Although against the invasion, as a parliamentarian he preferred resistance through that democratic medium rather than armed protest. De Wet, being the rabble-rouser he was, accused the younger Reitz of not only turning his back on his country, but his republican heritage as well.
By the end of September 1914, Reitz could sense the growing militancy in the Free State.2 Despite assuring Botha that protests would be peaceful, De Wet was rushing about advocating armed resistance, and thousands of Free Staters were heeding his call. Beyers was apparently doing the same in the western Transvaal, but the prime minister was not overly concerned. It was tradition among Afrikaners to voice their displeasure through ‘armed’ protest. Sabre-rattling was the way the old Boers let off steam and settled their disputes. Besides, Botha remained in close and constant contact with Beyers, De Wet and Kemp, and he knew they had no real intention of firing upon their own brethren. A full insurrection was simply out of the question.
That was until the hulking Manie Maritz waded into the fray. With his replacement, Coen Brits, en route to Upington after the Sandfontein fiasco, Maritz effectively abandoned the Union Defence Force and moved all his forces to Kakamas to be closer to the German border. In early October he made overtures to von Heydebreck, expressing a desire to join forces with South Africa’s enemy. The German commander was somewhat mystified by Maritz’s wish to switch allegiances.3 He was no doubt aware of the anti-invasion sentiment in the Union, but to what extent it would manifest in armed rebellion was, at that stage, still unclear, and von Heydebreck did not want to get mired in the confusion that was South African politics. His mandate was simply to defend the colony, not to go on the offensive in foreign territory.
Militarily, a sound defence was the right thing to do. It was far safer and easier to defend than to stretch his dangerously meagre resources on an offensive, as the South Africans themselves had discovered to their peril at Sandfontein. In any case, von Heydebreck thought Maritz too much of a loose cannon. The German commander correctly assumed Maritz was liable to be more of a hindrance than a help to the German cause.
The veggeneraal, however, was determined to go over to the Germans. At a parade for his troops, he vilified the South African government in a fiery, if somewhat incoherent, rant and gave his men one minute to decide whether or not they were with him in throwing in their lot with the Germans.4
Most of the impressionable young men accepted, but fifty, including Reitz’s brother Joubert, refused and were stripped of their weapons and horses and unceremoniously marched across the border as prisoners of war.5 Maritz then promoted himself to the rank of general, raised the old Transvaal republican flag, the Vierkleur, and declared war on Britain. These eccentric antics would have been dismissed by the South African government had Maritz not also implicated Beyers, Kemp and De Wet in his act of treason.6
In truth, the three had nothing to do with the trouble-maker stuck away in a distant outpost on the Orange River, but Maritz’s claims prompted Smuts, as minister of defence, to declare nationwide martial law. De Wet interpreted Smuts’s action as an open threat of armed suppression of all republicans. Furthermore, martial law meant that defence-force recruitment changed from volunteerism to full conscription. It forced the Free State and Transvaal republicans to openly decide on whose side in the war they stood.7
On 19 October, despite misgivings of prematurity, De Wet, Beyers and Kemp called for republicans to ignore the declaration and consider full rebellion. The response was immediate. Thousands of young men saddled up to ride for the rebel cause, eager to fight with the famous Boer War generals.8 Those Afrikaner republicans already attached to the Union Defence Force prudently resigned their posts. The stalwart generals were now determined to unseat Botha and declare a South African republic, with the Free Stater Hertzog as their president.
Hertzog, however, was keeping uncharacteristically quiet. He voiced neither his support nor his opposition for the republican cause. He preferred to channel his political will peacefully, though vociferously, through Parliament. It was blatantly obvious that the fiery orator was sitting on the fence, possibly awaiting the outcome of the rebellion before he pinned his colours to the mast.
On 26 October, the rebellion was officially proclaimed. The South African public, and the Germans across the border, held their breath as the rebels fanned out from their strongholds in the Free State and Transvaal. Within days, almost the whole of the Orange Free State was under rebel control. Loyalists like Reitz just managed to escape with their lives. He and a handful of others made their way to Pretoria where they learnt that Beyers and Kemp had taken control of large tracts of the western and northern Transvaal.
Maritz, however, was faring badly. Having foisted himself on the Germans, they diffidently bolstered his force with artillery and weapons, but von Heydebreck refused to go further to support the rebel cause and held back on lending Maritz any of his own soldiers, a move that Botha undoubtedly would have regarded as an act of aggression.
Undeterred, Maritz returned to the Union to face government loyalists who had moved opposite him on the river. The loyalists promptly routed his forces and the rebels had to scurry back across the border, to the obvious misgivings of the German command. Maritz realised he was too isolated geographically from the main theatre of the rebellion to be effective, and with loyalists solidly barring the way, there was no hope of linking up with the rebel forces in the Free State and Transvaal.
Despite their initial successes, the rebels were no match for Botha. He had confidently rejected Britain’s offer to supply detachments of Australian troops, cleverly ensuring that his loyalist ranks were made up mainly of Afrikaners. He did not want to strengthen the republican cause by deploying too many English-speaking troops. On 26 October, Botha took to the field accompanied by his bodyguard, which had been formed earlier in the year by Major H.F. Trew, head of the police force in Pretoria, after an assassination plot that implicated Beyers. Although Botha had initially ridiculed the idea of a personal bodyguard, he had since taken a keen interest in it, and it soon became a highly trained crack commando.9
Lieutenant Eric Moore-Ritchie, one of the policemen who had eagerly signed up to Botha’s elite bodyguard, records that they first headed west for Rustenburg, where Beyers and Kemp had established the headquarters of the Transvaal rebels. Within a couple of days, surprised at the speed of Botha’s manoeuvring, both commanders and their men were on the run. They evaded capture, but neither commanded an effective fighting force any longer. As in the Boer War, the two leaders separated and retreated into the hills, resorting to guerrilla tactics.10
In the meantime, Botha returned to Pretoria. He was well accustomed to guerrilla warfare and his men were equally adept at mopping up the scattered units. They successfully divided and isolated the small rebel commandos, and only a few skirmishes followed, including a couple of sharp ones against Major Jopie Fourie, a Union Defence Force officer in charge of a commando that was doggedly resisting capture. It is said that Fourie’s band was responsible for a third of the loyalist casualties in the Transvaal, although they were largely ineffective in the broader scheme of the rebellion and simply prolonged the inevitable. Botha’s bodyguard eventually captured Fourie in December. As he had neglected to resign his defence-force post before changing sides, he was the only rebel to be executed.
On 9 November, Botha turned his attention to the Orange Free State and De Wet. The cantankerous old general had a large force of over 5 000 rebels. On 12 November – incidentally, the same day von Heydebreck was unexpectedly killed in South-West Africa when an experimental grenade launcher he was testing misfired – the prime minister and his forces arrived at the central Free State town of Winburg, which De Wet had vacated the day before. Hoping to obtain intelligence on De Wet’s route out of Winburg, Botha resolved to telephone Smuts at headquarters in Pretoria. As he was about to pick up the receiver at the local post office, the phone rang. An orderly answered and a whispered voice on the other end told him that they were being held prisoner by De Wet on a farm called Mushroom Valley, a day’s march south of Winburg. De Wet had encamped with his entire force on the farm for the night and had locked some hostages in a room, failing to notice the telephone in the room or to cut the telephone lines outside.11 It is rumoured that at the probable time of the call, De Wet himself was casually leaning against a telephone pole smoking a pipe.
True to form, Botha wasted no time. He immediately got in touch via heliograph with Brits, who, after ensuring Maritz’s permanent immobility, had, together with Lukin (then at Steinkopf), raced east to assist the commander-in-chief against the greater threat of the Free State rebels. Botha instructed the two generals to converge on the farm by securing his right flank so as to prevent any possible escapes when he attacked. Even though it was by now nightfall, Botha ordered his forces to mount up. His aim was to surprise De Wet at sunrise. It was not an unexpected move. As Moore-Ritchie notes, ‘General Botha is celebrated amongst fighting men for many things … his night marching is one of them.’
It was a taxing sixty-four-kilometre ride in pitch darkness and freezing temperatures. Moore-Ritchie continues:
During the all-night trek from Winburg to Mushroom Valley I had a first thorough experience of the true horrors of sleep-fighting. It was bitterly cold as the Free State night on the veld knows how to be. And we could not smoke, could not talk above a faint murmur, and nodded in our saddles. The clear stars danced fantastically in the sky ahead of us, and the ground seemed to be falling away from us into vast hollows, then rising to our horses’ noses ready to smash into us like an impalpable wall. After midnight, outspanning in a piercing wind, we formed [a] square; main guard was posted over the General’s car, and those lucky enough to escape turn of duty huddled together under cloaks and dozed fitfully until two-thirty. From two-thirty till sunrise we trekked on.12
At dawn the fruits of the forced march were revealed. Botha’s column was on top of the unsuspecting rebels, who had not even posted sentries. They were literally caught napping. Botha brought up the artillery and opened fire on the sleeping camp. He then advanced and after two hours of fierce fighting the action was over, with Botha the victor.
But De Wet had escaped, thanks to Brits and Lukin who had been quarrelling during the night march and as a result mistimed their advance, leaving a gap for the old general and a few followers
to get through.13 Yet, like Beyers and Kemp, De Wet was now just another fugitive with no army to command. He had abandoned most of his men at Mushroom Valley, along with his transport wagons with all his ammunition and supplies. Twenty-two rebels lay dead and the rest were taken prisoner. It was a resounding, although bittersweet, victory for Botha. It pained him to see so many of his old friends and comrades lying dead or wounded. ‘Life,’ wrote Moore-Ritchie of his leader’s sombre mood after the battle, ‘was not dealing too fairly by him.’14
After Mushroom Valley, Botha concentrated on mopping up the last pockets of resistance throughout the province. Beyers and Kemp were by now in the field somewhere in the Free State, but after De Wet’s defeat the cause was lost. Loyalist troops occupied the towns one by one, the citizens surprised by their Boer composition. Reitz records an incident in which an old Free State woman rushed to view the triumphant loyalist army and, on seeing only Afrikaners, shouted, ‘Waar is die verdomde Engelse?’ Where are the bloody English? To which a young scout replied, in Afrikaans, ‘Old lady, we are the bloody English.’15
On 1 December, De Wet, exhausted and broken, was captured on the fringes of the Kalahari just across the border in British Bechuanaland. Brits had commandeered a number of motor cars and gone after him. Tired from the relentless pursuit and mourning the loss of his son who had been killed just days before the defeat at Mushroom Valley, De Wet’s prodigious fighting spirit was finally extinguished. And so the glittering career of the shrewd general, who had never been defeated by the British, suffered an ignominious end at the hands of his own people. ‘At least the English never captured me,’ he said as he handed over his pistol to Brits’s men.16