The department of native refugee camps
THE DEPARTMENT OF NATIVE REFUGEE CAMPS: A Historical Overview
By Garth Benneyworth, August 2006
Initial British military retaliatory strikes against civilians
During the period between the outbreak of war in October 1899 and March 1900, military operations involved pitched battles, fought between the Boer Republican forces and British troops. During February 1900, two British columns broke through to the besieged towns of Ladysmith and Kimberley and forced the Boer armies onto the defensive. During March 1900, Bloemfontein fell to the British, followed by Pretoria in June 1900.
Although outnumbered, the Boer forces were unbroken. They retained control of large areas of the countryside and supplied themselves from their farms and civilian support base. The Boer leadership elected to fight on. Their units, known as commandos, adopted guerilla warfare tactics. They attacked the railway infrastructure, dynamiting bridges and derailing trains; launched hit and run attacks - snapped up isolated British garrisons and military columns, while replenishing their munitions from captured British arsenals.
The British strategy for winning the war hinged on capturing key towns, consolidating their supply lines around South Africa's railway network, reopening the mines, restoring food production, and mopping up any remaining military resistance.
However, confronted by an escalating guerrilla war, the British Field Marshal, Lord Roberts, retaliated by attacking civilians, deemed to be assisting the Boer forces. Homesteads, located near railway infrastructure which had been targeted by the commandos, were dynamited or burnt. Livestock, which formed the capital assets of the rural population, were seized. These reprisals hit the Boer and African families alike - left to fend for themselves on the veld, they faced a bitter winter. Some, driven by desperation, handed themselves over to the British forces, and were accommodated in refugee camps, located near key towns.
Extension of a systematic scorched earth and concentration camp policy
In November 1900, Lord Kitchener succeeded Roberts as Commander in Chief. Kitchener immediately extended Roberts's retaliatory policy to encompass the entire civilian population of the Transvaal and Orange Free State Republics.
In Army Circular 29, Kitchener spelled out, in no uncertain terms, his counter guerrilla warfare strategy:
"Of the various methods suggested for the accomplishment of this object, one that has been strongly recommended, and has lately been successfully tried on a small scale, is the removal of all men, women and children and natives from the districts which the enemy persistently occupy. This course has been pointed out...as the most effective method of limiting the endurance of the Guerillas..."1
Kitchener applied three tactics with which to smash ongoing Boer military resistance.
⢠forced removals and land clearances and the associated destruction of all rural infrastructure
⢠Securing the railway network by constructing at least 8 000 fortifications known as blockhouses and then extending these to 'fence' in the fighting terrain, thus contracting the Boer forces zones of influence
⢠Military operations, using superior numbers of troops, to engage and grind down the weakened Boer forces and through attritional losses, force their surrender or operational ineffectiveness
Homesteads, kraals and crops were destroyed en-mass, livestock rounded up or butchered. Mills, canals, food production equipment and numerous towns and traditional settlements were obliterated. 2 Destruction ruined the rural economy. Forced removals shattered the community fabric. Impoverishment and starvation threatened the rural population. These scorched earth tactics destroyed the taxation base for the Boer governments and undermined their means with which to resist British subjugation.
The displaced and captured civilians were swept up by the military columns and dropped into military controlled zones, which had been secured by British troops. The Refugee Camps, which soon became known as Concentration Camps, were established near towns, mines and railways sidings, and separated, by the British, along racial lines.
African civilians were incarcerated into 'satellite' camps, often located about one mile from the Boer camps. In most cases they were not officially rationed, nor received any medical support and shelter. This was in line with British policy, namely reducing the financial cost of the war, despite the unfolding humanitarian crisis which unfolded.
Official racial preference carried through into British policy. The Boer civilians received a basic, and at times, inadequate British army ration, medical assistance and shelter. The Africans received a less nutritious diet, infrequent medical help and virtually no building materials with which to build shelters.
Refugee numbers grew as the ongoing fighting and Kitchener's scorched earth policy drove increasing numbers of destitute people into the camps. Informal settlements sprung up just beyond the effective rifle range of the British garrisons, where the refugees hoped that their plight might invoke assistance.
Inside the military zones, able bodied African women, men and children exchanged labour for food. Some of the refugees sought work from the British troops and the administrators of the Boer camps. Latrine cleaning and other camp works were rewarded with tinned meat, or discarded scraps.
By early 1901, many Black refugees faced starvation. Death from infectious diseases, exposure and malnutrition in the African 'Refugee Camps' increased.
Formation of the Department of Native Refugees
The British political, military and business alliance had, as one of its objectives, restoring the gold, coal and diamond mining industries. Sir Alfred Milner believed that a resumption of gold mining would further demoralize Boer military resistance. The Witwatersrand Native Labour Association was permitted by the Minister for Native Affairs, to recruit mining labour from the concentration camps, which incarcerated African civilians.
On 4 May 1901, the first gold mine reopened and by July 1901, seven shafts were producing sufficient ore to keep fifty stamps running. Gold production for June reached 19 779 ozs, in July 25 959 ozs and in August 28 474 ozs. 3
Concurrent to the resumption of economic activity was the establishment of the Department of Native Refugees (DNR), which fell under direct British military command. All black refugees were to be administered by this Department, which had, as one of its aims, underwriting the British war effort, reducing the financial cost of the war and funneling labour to the British army and the mines. 4
By July 1901 the Transvaal camps were brought under the control of the newly formed Department of Native Refugees and by 1 August 1901, the Orange Free State camps followed.
Military officers selected the camp sites, with assistance from agricultural specialists attached to the DNR. Camps were positioned on Boer farms which had been cleared, usually no further than two miles from established military garrisons on terrain favourable for natural drainage, near natural water supplies and fertile agricultural ground.
Kitchener's policy was clear; the 20 000 incarcerated black refugees during July 1901 were not only to grow food for themselves and the army departments, but to pay for their food. Should they refuse to co-operate, they were to starve.
This 'work or starve' policy would induce the women, children and elderly to cultivate crops on the Departmental controlled farms. Working inmates and their families were allowed to purchase mealies at ½ d per pound or 7s 6d a bag. 5 However inmates who refused to work had to pay double this amount.
British military policy discouraged Black civilians from bringing foodstuffs into the concentration camps to create a situation of desperation, thus inducing the inmates to work for rations. These women carried their only belongings and foodstuffs on their heads and are being 'shadowed' by a mounted soldier visible on the skyline. Women and children undertook most of the agricultural labour in the concentration camps, later run by the Department of Native Refugees.
Picture (Royal Regiment of Wales)
The Department of Native Refugee camps played an additional role in fragmenting the operational terrain where the Boer commandos operated. Placed along the railway lines, the camps helped to shore up this logistic spine, by augmenting the blockhouse networks; thus making it increasingly difficult for the commandos to cross the railway and maneuver their forces. The inmates, in effect, became the eyes and ears of the British army. They formed an early warning system against Boer attacks against the British military's primary logistic artery - the railway line. 6
It can be argued that this network of approximately 66 Departmental camps also functioned as a surrogate British force.
For example, by the end of the war, the thirty-four Black camps along the central line between Bloemfontein and Pretoria, the eastern line between Pretoria and Volksrust and the western line between Mafeking and Orange River Station contained some 115 700 7 inmates by May 1902. This included many thousands of hectares under agriculture, further reinforcing the British military zones.
How many black civilians died in the camps will, in all likelihood, never be conclusively established.
At least 20 000 women, children and men died from medical neglect, exposure, infectious diseases and malnutrition inside the camps, of which fatalities, at least 81 percent were children.8 Due to incomplete and in many cases non-existent British records and the fact that many civilians died outside of the camps, the final death toll was higher.
DRY HARTS CONCENTRATION CAMP
The concentration camp near Dry Harts railway siding was located 40 kilometers south of Vryburg. The historic terrain was located by G Benneyworth and L Voigt in June 2001.
The camp was officially formed by the Department of Native Refugees during November 1901, although African refugees from Bechuanaland and the Western Transvaal had already assembled near Dry Harts siding by the beginning of September 1901. Other inmates were later railed up from the concentration camps at Taung, Kimberley and Orange River Station when these were closed between September and November 1901. Ongoing arrivals continued until the end of the war. All these later arrivals, comprised mainly of women and children, from farms in the western Orange Free State and the western Transvaal, from the districts of Sweizer Reineke, Bloemhof, Petrusburg, Hoopstad, Luckhoff, Boshoff and Jacobsdal.
Medical care was most times non existent. The appointment of an incompetent Doctor in 1902, only increased the death toll. Rations were inadequate and the maize was contaminated with salmonella. Insufficient firewood prevented the boiling of water, so typhoid fever killed hundreds, as entire families were wiped out. A lack of building materials and tents forced the women to build shelters from brushwood and earth clods, but the harsh climate killed many more from exposure.
Between November 1901 and February 1902, Dry Harts experienced one of the highest death rates out of all the African concentration camps established during the war.9 More than 1500 and perhaps as many as 2500 men, woman and children died between August 1901 and December 1902, when the camp shut down.
This fatality number, as measured by a count of the graves at Dry Harts, far exceeds the incomplete but official British death toll for the camp. This was established through an archeological survey of the burial ground and a comparison of the records by G Benneyworth and L Voigt between 2001 and 2006, which suggests that the British officials under-recorded the death rates, in order to conceal the true horror of the living conditions inside the camp.
Local oral history attributes the inmate deaths to their eating poisoned pap, supplied by the British forces. There may be some truth to this - if the water contained typhoid or the maize was infected with salmonella, as was often the case, then these diseases would have wrought havoc amongst the inmates, and given rise to this surviving memory that the foodstuffs were contaminated.
Sani Dami (1890-1901) died during November 1901. Dami's head stone is one of approximately thirty hand engraved headstones in the Dry Harts Department of Native Refugees concentration camp burial site. During November 1901 the officially recorded camp population stood at 1182 women, 1555 children and 651 men of whom, 167 children, 30 women and 11 men died from various causes.
