Out of Ashes: The Boers' Struggle for Freedom Through The English 1899-1902

As the driver cracked the whip over the short team of oxen, they swayed rhythmically to the left and then again to the right, straining vigorously at the yokes, unearthing topsoil with a single-shared plow behind them. They seemed to have gotten the message from the driver that they were racing against time. They ripped the share faster and faster through the soil throwing it in a neat, crumbly bank to the right. In the fresh furrow, behind the plow, Jacob Storm, walking in the newly created furrow , steadied its course, pressing on the two handles with both hands to keep the sharp-nosed share deep enough under the soil.

It was the end of September 1899. He was plowing to sow maize. It was early to sow maize. October 15 might have been a better time to do so. Frost might kill the young plants, if they should come up too soon. But he had to sow early this spring, or perhaps, not at all. He might be called to war-any day now.

***

Roberts' supply lines were in constant danger. Kitchener was able to restore communications severed by de Wet, but the movement of troops and supplies were constantly being harassed by Boer forces along the way. No sooner had the task of restoration been completed or de Wet came from the west and cut the transportation line in several places.

Frustrated by his failure to have the Boers come to terms with the fall of their capitals, and irked at their continuous harassment, Roberts unfortunately fell back on a barbarous policy that had worked well for him in dealing with primitive people whose habitats he burnt down to force them into submission.

Christiaan de Wet had already caused him a great deal of embarrassment, not to mention heavy losses. Unsportsmanlike, to say the least, he singled out de Wet's farm and burned it to the ground. So began a policy of scorched earth, although limited in scope initially. As homes and barns went up in flames, terror spread through the countryside.

The Boer's farm was not only his source of supply, but also his castle, much more so than his capital and towns. A scorched earth policy stung the Boer's very heart. It set in motion a chain reaction of resentment that would bring the women into the picture, a force that could not be subdued with rifles or flames. It is worth the surmise that the war might have come to a speedier conclusion, had such barbaric measures not been employed.

Obviously filled with bitterness, de Wet attacked. He slammed into the railway line, severed it again in several places, and captured yet another convoy.

***

Homeless women and children were ordered on wagons and carted off to concentration camps. These camps held no lure for the Boer women. The British army in South Africa was notorious for its lack of care, facilities, and medicine even for its own sick and disabled. As the war dragged on the number of British soldiers that died of disease far exceeded the casualties suffered on the battlefield. Small wonder that reports from the concentration camps already in existence told of poor administration, unsanitary conditions, disease, and death. In addition to fear for the camps, the Boer women harbored an historic aversion of being under protective British custody.

By far the majority of women, children, and old men on the farms had no choice but to obey the orders of the Tommies. With their homes in flames and reduced to ashes before them, they had nowhere to go.

Men, who by nature are more likely to plunder and burn in war, could more readily understand and forgive such deeds of violence, perpetrated by an enemy. But women, by nature more gentle, could not comprehend and tolerate such barbarism, much less forgive and let go with impunity. They became the conscience for justice and a powerful voice for revenge, not to yield, but to fight on.

The trekking spirit that had sent former generations into the interior and to new frontiers was still alive in many. They decided to flee for as long as they could, rather than be interned.

***

The camps, originally started by Roberts as so-called 'Refugee Camps' had degenerated into horror camps, especially when Roberts' successor, Kitchner, a ruthless man, succeeded him. Wherever these camps were found, and there were fifty of them throughout the two republics, the reports were the same. Women and children became emaciated, with little or no resistance to infection and disease. Epidemics of whooping cough, measles, and gastric fever swept the inmates. Mothers were afraid to send their children to the camp hospitals, for it was almost invariable a last journey preceding the grave. As a consequence, every tent became a little infirmary, and often a morgue as well.

In the end there were 136,000 in the camps. The staggering numbers posed impossible problems of logistics. The British war machine in South Africa was not prepared to cope with it, and did not seem to care.

***

With a burst of gold the sun rose from behind the Dragon Mountains in the east. As the shadows decreased before the rising sun, hundreds of weary feet were crunching over the winding, dusty roads leading from Ladybrand to distant places in the Orange Free State. A cattle train loaded with Boer prisoners of war returning from Ceylon, had puffed up from the coast a few days earlier. They would be discharged at the railway terminal somewhere near Ficksburg. It is not clear how they came to Ladybrand, for it is uncertain whether it had been connected by rail at that time. Perhaps they were taken there by ox wagon, and from there they would be on their own to reach home, or what they used to call home. For Jacob Storm this was finally the end of his exile. With him on the road were his brothers Hendrik and Stephanus, a nephew, Henry J. Storm, and his brother-in-law, Johannes de Villiers. According to a letter by Henry J. Storm they had sailed from Ceylon on December 23, 1902, almost seven months after peace had been concluded. It was now February 23, 1903.

As soon as possible they took to the road on foot for the town of Ficksburg about thirty miles to the northeast of Ladybrand. The few possessions they had were carried behind their backs in bundles attached to sticks and flung over their shoulders.

***
O! Land of hope for millions in the past, Quilted in customs and beliefs so vast, Woven o'er vale, plain, mountain, and city, Beloved land, w're pledged to harmony; Contrast of all creation's wonderment, Our destiny one nation and one land.