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| Second Boer War concentration camps | |
|---|---|
| Part ofSecond Boer War | |
 Tents in theBloemfontein concentration camp | |
| Date | 1899–1902 |
Attack type | Internment |
| Deaths | 42,081 (minimum) to 47,900 (estimated) deaths: |
| Victims | 154,000 interned in British concentration camps |
| Perpetrators | British Empire, particularlyLord Kitchener |
During theSecond Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), the British operatedconcentration camps in theSouth African Republic,Orange Free State, theColony of Natal, and theCape Colony. In February 1900,Lord Kitchener took command of the British forces and implemented controversial tactics that contributed to a British victory.[3]
Using aguerrilla warfare strategy, theBoers lived off the land and used their farms as a source of food, thus making their farms a key item in their many successes at the beginning of the war. When Kitchener realized that a conventional warfare style would not work against the Boers, he began initiating plans to destroy their farms and detain them, which would later cause much controversy among the British public.[4][5]
In early March 1901, Lord Kitchener initiated a series of systematic drives aimed at killing, capturing, or wounding Boers. These were organized similarly to a hunting expedition, with success measured by a weekly "bag" of casualties. Kitchener also sought to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, such as livestock, women, and children. HistorianThomas Pakenham describes the last phases of the war as being dominated by "the clearance of civilians—uprooting a whole nation."[6]
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Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their "Scorched Earth" policy, including the systematic destruction of crops, the slaughtering or removal of livestock, and the burning down of homesteads and farms in order to prevent the Boers from resupplying themselves from a home base.[7][page needed] As this happened, many tens of thousands of men, women, and children were forcibly moved into camps.[8][9] Eventually, authorities built a total of 45 tented camps for Boer internees and 64 additional camps for Black Africans. The vast majority of Boers who remained in the local camps were women and children. Between 18,000 and 26,000 Boers perished in these concentration camps due to diseases.[10]
The camps were very poorly administered from the outset, and they became increasingly overcrowded when Lord Kitchener's troops implemented the internment strategy on a vast scale. Conditions were terrible for the health of the internees, mainly due to neglect, poor hygiene, and bad sanitation.[5] The supply of all items was unreliable, partly because of the constant disruption of communication lines by the Boers. The foodrations were meager, and there was a two-tier allocation policy, whereby families of men still fighting were routinely given smaller rations than others.[11] The inadequate shelter, poor diet, bad hygiene, and overcrowding led to malnutrition and endemic contagious diseases such asmeasles,typhoid, anddysentery, to which the children were particularly vulnerable.[12] Many internees died due to a shortage of up-to-date medical facilities and medical mistreatment.[13]
Although the1900 UK general election, also known as the "Khaki election", had resulted in a victory for theConservative government on the back of recent British victories against the Boers, public support began to slowly wither due to the realization that the war was not won after theBattle of Belfast.[14] Further unease developed following reports filtering back to Britain concerning the treatment of Boer civilians by the British. Public and political opposition to government policies in South Africa regarding Boer civilians was first expressed in Parliament in February 1901 in the form of an attack on the government byLiberal Party MPDavid Lloyd George.[15]
Emily Hobhouse, a delegate of the South African Women and Children's Distress Fund, visited some of the camps in the Orange Free State in January 1901. In May 1901, she returned to England on a ship known as theSaxon.Alfred Milner, High Commissioner in South Africa, also boarded theSaxon for holiday in England, but he dismissed Hobhouse, regarding her as a Boer sympathizer and "trouble maker".[16] On her return, Hobhouse worked to publicize the distress of the camp inmates. She managed to speak to the Liberal opposition Party leader,Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who professed to be outraged but disinclined to press the matter, as his party was split between the imperialists and the pro-Boer factions.[17]
St John Brodrick, the Conservative Secretary of State for War, first defended the government's policy by arguing that the camps were purely "voluntary" and that the interned Boers were "contented and comfortable". Lacking firm statistical evidence to support this assertion, he later argued that all measures being taken were "military necessities" and that everything possible was being done to ensure satisfactory conditions in the camps.[citation needed]
Hobhouse published a report in June 1901[18] that contradicted Brodrick's claim, followed by Lloyd George openly accusing the government of "a policy of extermination" directed against the Boer population. The same month, Campbell-Bannerman gave a speech criticizing British war methods, including the policy of the camps, stating "When is a war, not a war? When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa".[19] The Hobhouse Report caused an uproar both domestically and internationally.[20]
Although the government had comfortably won the parliamentary debate by a margin of 252 to 149, it was made concerned by the escalating public outcry, calling on Kitchener for a detailed report. Complete statistical returns from camps were sent out in July 1901. By August 1901, it was clear to government and opposition alike that Hobhouse's claims were being confirmed – 93,940 Boers and 24,457 black Africans were reported to be in "camps of refuge" and the crisis was becoming a catastrophe as the death rates appeared very high, especially among the children.
The government responded to the growing clamour by appointing an all-women commission headed byMillicent Fawcett to investigate the conditions, which would become known as the Fawcett Commission.[a] Despite being the leader of the women's suffrage movement, Fawcett was aLiberal Unionist and thus a government supporter who was considered a safe pair of hands that would help fend off criticism. Between August and December 1901, the Fawcett Commission conducted its own tour of the camps in South Africa. In the end, it confirmed everything that Hobhouse had said and made even further recommendations; the Commission insisted that rations should be increased and that additional nurses be sent out immediately, along with a long list of other practical measures designed to improve conditions in the camp. Millicent Fawcett expressed that much of the catastrophe was owed to a simple failure to observe elementary rules ofhygiene.
In November 1901, Colonial SecretaryJoseph Chamberlain ordered Alfred Milner to ensure that "all possible steps are being taken to reduce the rate of mortality". The civil authority took over the camps from Kitchener and the British command, and by February 1902, the annual death rate in the concentration camps for white inmates dropped to 6.9 percent and eventually to 2 percent. However, by then the damage had been done. A report after the war concluded that 27,927 Boers, of whom 24,074 were children under 16 (50 percent of the Boer child population), had died in the camps. In all, about one in four of the Boer inmates died, most of them children.
Improvements were much slower in coming to the black camps.[21] It is thought that about 12 percent of black African inmates died (about 14,154), but the precise number of deaths of black Africans in concentration camps is unknown as little attempt was made to keep any records of the 107,000 black Africans who were interned.
The main decisions (or their absence) had been left to the soldiers, to whom the life or death of the 154,000 Boer and African civilians in the camps rated as an abysmally low priority. ... Ten months after the subject had first been raised in Parliament ... the terrible mortality figures were at last declining. In the interval, at least twenty thousand whites and twelve thousand coloured people had died in the concentration camps, the majority from epidemics of measles and typhoid that could have been avoided.[22][b]
SirArthur Conan Doyle had served as a volunteer doctor in the Langman Field Hospital at Bloemfontein between March and June 1900. In his widely distributed and translated pamphlet "The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct", he justified both the reasoning behind the war and handling of the conflict itself. He also pointed out that over 14,000 British soldiers had died of disease during the conflict (as opposed to 8,000 killed in combat), and that at the height of epidemics, he was seeing 50–60 British soldiers dying each day in a single ill-equipped and overwhelmed military hospital.
Scottish historianNiall Ferguson has argued that "this was not a deliberately genocidal policy; rather it was the result of [a] disastrous lack of foresight and rank incompetence on [the] part of the [British] military".[24] He further stated that "Kitchener no more desired the deaths of women and children in the camps than of the woundedDervishes afterOmdurman, or of his own soldiers in the typhoid-stricken hospitals ofBloemfontein."[25]
To Lord Kitchener and British High Command, "the life or death of the 154,000 Boer and African civilians in the camps rated as an abysmally low priority" against military objectives.[citation needed] As the Fawcett Commission was delivering its recommendations, Kitchener wrote toSt John Brodrick defending his policy of sweeps, and emphasised that no new Boer families were being brought in unless they were in danger of facingstarvation. However, the countryside had by then been devastated under the "Scorched Earth" policy, meaning the refusal to allow Boer families into camps would leave them without sustenance. The Fawcett Commission's recommendations stated that "to turn 100,000 people now being held in the concentration camps out on the field to take care of themselves would be cruelty".[citation needed] Now that the New Model counter-insurgency tactics were in full swing, it made little sense to leave Boer families by themselves in desperate conditions in the countryside.[according to whom?]
According to writer S.B. Spies, "at [the Vereeniging negotiations in May 1902] Boer leader Louis Botha asserted that he had tried to send [Boer] families to the British, but they had refused to receive them".[26] A Boer commandant, referring to refugees from the "Scorched Earth" policy, was quoted by Spies as saying, "Our families are in a pitiable condition and the enemy uses those families to force us to surrender .. and there is little doubt that that was indeed the intention of Kitchener when he had issued instructions that no more families were to be brought into the concentration camps".[26]Thomas Pakenham writes of Kitchener's policy change:
No doubt the continued 'hullabaloo' at the death-rate in these concentration camps, and Milner's belated agreement to take over their administration, helped change Kitchener's mind [some time at the end of 1901]. ... By mid-December at any rate, Kitchener was already circulating all column commanders with instructions not to bring in women and children when they cleared the country, but to leave them with the guerrillas. ... Viewed as a gesture to Liberals, on the eve of the new session of Parliament at Westminster, it was a shrewd political move. It also made excellent military sense, as it greatly handicapped the guerrillas, now that the drives were in full swing. ... It was effective precisely because, contrary to the Liberals' convictions, it was less humane than bringing them into camps, though this was of no great concern to Kitchener.[27]
The exact number of incarcerated victims of the concentration camps forAfrikaners is estimated to number around 40,000 by May 1902, the majority of which were women and children.[28][29]The total deaths in camps are officially calculated at 27,927 deaths.[30][31]
| White concentration camps | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Location | Dates | Deaths (total) |
| Aliwal North | Cape Colony | January 1901 – November 1902 | 712 |
| Balmoral | Transvaal Republic | July 1901 – December 1902 | 427 |
| Barberton | Transvaal Republic | February 1901 – December 1902 | 216 |
| Belfast | Transvaal Republic | February 1901 – December 1902 | 247 |
| Bethulie | Orange Free State | April 1901 – January 1902 | 1737 |
| Bloemfontein | Orange Free State | August 1900 – January 1903 | 1695 |
| Brandfort | Orange Free State | January 1901 – March 1903 | 1263 |
| Bronkhorstspruit | Transvaal Republic | c. 1901 | undisclosed |
| Colenso | Natal Colony | January 1902 – April 1902 | undisclosed |
| De Jagersdrift | Natal Colony | May 1901 – ? | undisclosed |
| Douglas | Cape Colony | October 1901 | undisclosed |
| East London | Cape Colony | March 1902 – August 1902 | undisclosed |
| Edenburg | Orange Free State | December 1900 – ? | undisclosed |
| Elandsfontein | Orange Free State | January 1901 – June 1901 | undisclosed |
| Ermelo | Transvaal Republic | undisclosed | undisclosed |
| Eshowe | Natal Colony | October 1901 – April 1902 | undisclosed |
| Harrismith | Orange Free State | November 1900 – May 1902 | 130 |
| Heidelberg | Transvaal Republic | January 1901 – December 1902 | 499 |
| Heilbron | Orange Free State | February 1901 – January 1903 | 602 |
| Howick | Natal Colony | January 1901 – October 1902 | 145 |
| Irene (PTA) | Transvaal Republic | December 1900 – February 1903 | 1179 |
| Isipingo (DBN) | Natal Colony | undisclosed | 22 |
| Jacobs Siding (DBN) | Natal Colony | February 1902 – January 1903 | 65 |
| Turffontein (JHB) | Transvaal Republic | December 1900 – October 1902 | 716 |
| Kabusi | Cape Colony | May 1902 – December 1902 | undisclosed |
| Kimberley | Cape Colony | January 1901 – January 1903 | 531 |
| Klerksdorp | Transvaal Republic | January 1901 – January 1903 | 786 |
| Kromellenboog | Natal Colony | February 1901 – December 1901 | undisclosed |
| Kroonstad | Orange Free State | September 1900 – January 1903 | 2000 |
| Krugersdorp | Transvaal Republic | May 1901 – December 1902 | 766 |
| Ladybrand | Orange Free State | April 1901 – June? 1902 | undisclosed |
| Ladysmith | Natal Colony | February 1902 – September 1902 | undisclosed |
| Lydenburg | Transvaal Republic | 1900 – 1902 | undisclosed |
| Mafeking | Cape Colony | July 1901 – December 1902 | undisclosed |
| Matjiesfontein | Cape Colony | October 1901 – ? | undisclosed |
| Merebank (DBN) | Natal Colony | September 1901 – December 1902 | 471 |
| Middelburg | Transvaal Republic | February 1901 – January 1903 | 1621 |
| Modder River | Cape Colony | June 1901 – ? | undisclosed |
| Mooi River | Natal Colony | Never occupied | N/A |
| Norvalspont | Orange Free State | February 1901 – October 1902 | 366 |
| Nylstroom | Transvaal Republic | May 1901 – March 1902 | 525 |
| Orange River Station (Hopetown/Doornbult) | Orange Free State | April 1901 – November 1902 | 209 |
| Pietermaritzburg | Natal Colony | August 1900 – December 1902 | 213 |
| Pietersburg | Transvaal Republic | May 1901 – January 1903 | undisclosed |
| Pinetown (DBN) | Natal Colony | April 1902 – August 1902 | undisclosed |
| Port Elizabeth | Cape Colony | November 1900 – November 1902 | 14 |
| Potchefstroom | Transvaal Republic | September 1900 – March 1903 | 1085 |
| Meintjieskop (PTA) | Transvaal Republic | January 1902 – December 1902 | undisclosed |
| Pretoria Rest Camp (PTA) | Transvaal Republic | April 1901 – 1902 | undisclosed |
| Reitz | Orange Free State | March 1901 – May 1901 | undisclosed |
| Springfontein | Orange Free State | February 1900 – January 1903 | undisclosed |
| Standerton | Transvaal Republic | December 1900 – January 1903 | 857 |
| Platrand (Standerton) | Transvaal Republic | February 1901 | undisclosed |
| Uitenhage | Cape Colony | April 1902 – October 1902 | 9 |
| Vereeniging | Transvaal Republic | September 1900 – November 1902 | 156 |
| Viljoensdrif | Orange Free State | January 1901 – February 1901 | undisclosed |
| Volksrust | Transvaal Republic | February 1901 – January 1903 | 1009 |
| Vredefortweg | Orange Free State | February 1901 – September 1902 | 800 |
| Vryburg | Cape Colony | July 1901 – December 1902 | 251 |
| Vryheid | Natal Colony | July 1901 – 1902 | undisclosed |
| Warrenton | Cape Colony | March 1901 – July 1902 | undisclosed |
| Walerval Noord | Orange Free State | January 1901 – August 1901 | undisclosed |
| Wentworth (DBN) | Natal Colony | March 1902 – September 1902 | undisclosed |
| Winburg | Orange Free State | January 1901 – January 1903 | 487 |
By May 1902, when TheTreaty of Vereeniging was signed, the total number ofBlack South Africans in concentration was recorded at 115,700.[32]The total Black deaths in camps are officially calculated at a minimum of 14,154.[32]81% of the fatalities were children.[32]
