Peace

The Boers had rejected an offer of peace from the British in March 1901, in part because it required that the Boers recognize the British annexation of their republics. Fighting continued until the Boers finally accepted the loss of their independence with the Peace of Vereeniging in May 1902. In the end, pragmatic Boer leaders such as Louis Botha and General Smuts trumped the will of the bittereinders and opted to negotiate for peace on the basis of British suzerainty, promises of local self-government, the swift restoration and efficient management of the gold mines, and, crucially, the alliance of Boers and Britons against Black Africans.

Assessment

In terms of human life, nearly 100,000 lives were lost, including those of more than 20,000 British troops and 14,000 Boer troops. Noncombatant deaths include the more than 26,000 Boer women and children estimated to have died in the concentration camps from malnutrition and disease; the total number of African deaths in the concentration camps was not recorded, but estimates range from 13,000 to 20,000.

On both sides the war produced heights of national enthusiasm of a type that marked the era and culminated in frenetic British celebrations after the relief of the Siege of Mafeking in May 1900. (The word mafficking, meaning wild rejoicing, originated from these celebrations.) Despite attempts at rapid healing of the wounds after 1902 and a willingness to cooperate for the purpose of uniting against Black Africans, relations between Boers (or Afrikaners, as they became known) and English-speaking South Africans were to remain frigid for many decades. Internationally, the war helped poison the atmosphere between Europe’s great powers, as Britain found that most countries sympathized with the Boers.

Reflective of the discriminatory climate that permeated South Africa during much of the 20th century, it was not until the 1980s that studies of the war’s impact on Africa’s Black peoples were made. In addition to the thousands who died in the concentration camps, innumerable Black Africans were caught up in the sieges, lost their jobs (for example, when the gold mines were closed down during the conflict), or were evicted from their land in areas overrun by war. Both sides recruited Black Africans, though various euphemisms were sometimes used for “Black soldier.” On the other hand, some segments of the Black African population benefitted from the conflict by some measure. Black farmers in some areas prospered, owing to the wartime demand for food. In some regions, such as the western Transvaal, Black Africans took advantage of the war and reoccupied lands previously seized from them by white settlers. Swaziland, which had previously been administered by the SAR, was taken by the British during the war and administered by them afterward; this is why it would be excluded from the Union of South Africa in 1910.

The most astonishing aspect of the war, perhaps, is that it was a war between groups of white peoples in a subcontinent with a largely Black African population that both sides generally sought to exclude from the fighting, although research in the later decades of the 20th century indicated that Black Africans became heavily involved in the war both as combatants and as victims of the armies. During the conflict the British hinted and sometimes promised that in return for support, or at least neutrality, Black Africans would be rewarded with political rights after the war. Nevertheless, the Treaty of Vereeniging specifically excluded Black Africans from having political rights in a reorganized South Africa as the British and Boers cooperated toward a common goal of white minority rule.