This is not a history lesson but I had to read a great deal about the South African wars in order to understand what the newspapers were telling me, so I′ve given the following, purely, as a background to those reports.
Throughout the whole of the nineteenth century, all the Old World Nations, fought to gain dominance in South Africa. In a continuing period of empire building, there was a rush to control as much of the world, the world′s trade, and all important trade routes.
In 1806, the British Empire, pushed the Dutch out and settled in two colonies – Cape Colony, in the south, and Natal, in the south-east.
The Dutch settlers who remained moved away from the coast and set up two republics further inland – the republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The British tried to oust these "Boers", as the Dutch settlers were known, but they failed in the war of 1881.
However, an Englishman, a fervent imperialist, very rich, and a diamond merchant, by the name of Cecil Rhodes, had other ideas. He seized the land to the north of the Transvaal, in the name of Britain – this land was, later, to become known as Rhodesia, and, later still, Zimbabwe.
The Boers now had the British to the north and to the south – there was nowhere for them to go to escape the British influence.
Gold was then discovered in the district of Witwatersrand - the word, in Afrikaans, meaning "the ridge of white waters". As can be expected, there was a rush of immigrant gold prospectors, and others, from all over the world, but especially from Britain and the English-speaking nations.
While the Transvaal Government welcomed the "Uitlanders" (foreigners) they avoided granting them any rights to vote for fear that British rule might, one day, be chosen over that of the Boers. This made the gold-miners, and such, second-class citizens, which they didn′t like and protested strongly to a point where revolution seemed inevitable.
The situation may have, eventually, calmed down but, while there were people in England who didn′t want war, there were people who saw it as a means to an end.
People, such as Sir Cecil Rhodes and the High Commissioner of Cape Colony in South Africa, Alfred Milner; both imagined a British Empire Africa, with colonies stretching from Cairo to the Cape; a corridor down which any Briton could walk, freely and unmolested, from north to south of the African Continent, without leaving British owned territory.
The British Government and local politicians were fearful that a war might be precipitated by any show of military force but felt that the Northern border between them and the Transvaal Republic needed defending so a certain Colonel Baden-Powell was sent to raise a force in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to defend that border. The raising of the force had to be done secretly so could not be done in the Cape Colony as this would have alerted the Boers and the Dutch living there.
Baden-Powell, for supply and strategical reasons, chose the small town of Mafeking, not far from the border and close to the main railway.
He began to build defences around the town on 19th September 1899 but many of these defences were, in fact, fake because he had a shortage of men, weapons, and materials. He dug trenches around the town and ordered his men to walk between them as though they were avoiding barbed wire so that any Boer spies would get the impression that the trenches were better protected than they actually were. He made an apparent searchlight from an acetylene torch and a biscuit tin. Fake mines were made from metal boxes filled with sand and the townspeople were used to carefully carry these to various places around the town where they were planted. Neither the townsfolk nor any spies knew what these really were but word got out about the dangerous minefields laid around the outskirts of the town.
In the town, the boys formed themselves into what were called the "Mafeking Cadet Corps" and, by acting as lookouts, helping in the hospitals, carrying messages back and forth, and doing many such other duties, relieved the men thus enabling them to concentrate on military duties.
They wore a simple uniform to make themselves easily recognisable; basically a military uniform cut down to size and a Glengarry cap (a peak-less, boat-shaped cap, that can be easily folded flat – most commonly seen, with a diced band around the outside, being worn to-day by Scottish soldiers).
Baden-Powell was very impressed with the way that this Cadet Corps behaved and how the boys made themselves useful at a time when they were needed – later, as a result of what he saw, he formed what was to become the "Boy Scouts".
The tricks worked and the Boers never attempted to make a full-frontal attack on the town.
On May 17th, 1900, British Troops arrived and freed the town. "The Relief of Mafeking" was reported in the British newspapers and towns and villages celebrated this event.
It was believed, by the British, that if we could take the Boers′ capital, Pretoria, they would admit defeat and the war would come to and end. Unfortunately, it didn′t; but the people, back home, as is ever the case, were only told what those in power wanted them to think, so, the taking of Pretoria was heralded as a magnificent blow for the Empire and parties were arranged to celebrate the good news, when it was, finally, taken.
The war continued, with the British army being heavily reinforced by contingents of mounted soldiers from Britain, and the British colonists, like the Boers, basically farmers, provided more reinforcements.
This vast army of men, soldiers and farmers, pushed the Boers back, invaded their republics taking their goldmines and capturing their capital cities.
A point was reached where the war seemed to have been won so Lord Roberts, the British commander, handed over, what he looked upon as no more than a police action, to his chief of staff, Lord Kitchener, and went home, in triumph, as did many of those who had been fighting.
The Boers hadn′t finished, however, and turned to guerrilla tactics, forming small groups of "commandos", which carried out skirmishes; ambushed the enemy and blew up trains, wherever they could.
Lord Kitchener, faced with a war that hadn′t, as thought, burned out and where the embers were threatening to re-ignite, called for reinforcements from Britain and from the colonies. He organised powerful mounted columns, which swept the countryside, seizing supplies, burning farms, and imprisoning women and children. His methods began to cause disillusionment among his soldiers and provoked protest back home, but they worked; they wore down the Boer resistance, to a point where peace was, finally, declared when a Peace Treaty was signed at Melrose House, Pretoria, at five past eleven on the evening of Saturday 31st May. 1902.
It wasn′t, as far as the Boers were concerned, just the fighting that lost them the battle but many other considerations. These people were farmers and had families but food and clothing were getting more and more difficult to come by. The "army" of the Boers wore "uniforms" about which there was nothing uniform at all; the clothes being patched with anything that they could find and would do the job. All clothing, including boots became a prize beyond price. For those occasions when a British soldier had been taken prisoner, the only words that a Boer needed to have learned (well, almost learned!), were, "Out boots, out trousers, out jacket", basically, meaning, "Take those off, I want them".
Another major problem had been that, during the war, black tribes had occupied and settled large areas of the Dutch South African Republic and thus restricted the movement of the Boer commandos, who had been able to attack and run at will but now they had to avoid running into these tribesmen. The Boers had become, more-or-less, nomadic, and large, armed, black groups had begun to attack not only the Boer commandos but their families - their women and children.
