BRITISH COMPENSATION to BOERS was a PALTRY £9 ……….
The Anglo-Boer War Concentration Camps – a new tread ………… After what that retarded British politician, Jacob Rees-Mogg said in a previous thread – where he claimed that the British Concentration camps were justified, and not so bad, and for their own good……
NOW, a NEW THREAD: ANYBODY who knows ANYTHING about the “Boer/Afrikaans” nation will KNOW that, DESPITE the fact that their husbands were away on Commando – Boer women were perfectly able and capable to run their farms, to use firearms, and to sustain and protect themselves ON THEIR FARMS. BUT, what these women could NOT DO, was to exist / subsist on their farms after the ROBERTS / KITCHENER “SCORCHED EARTH POLICY” took effect over the length and breadth of the Boer territories.
The BRITISH ARMY killed all Boer livestock and farm animals; they burnt all crops; they poisoned water wells; they set fire to the farm houses, homesteads and buildings, and burnt and destroyed all Boer furniture, belongings, heirlooms and antiques.
A British officer who witnessed the burning of a Boer farm homestead noted: “The women, in a little group, cling together, comforting each other or hiding their faces in each other’s laps”. A Boer woman declared: “There I stood, surrounded by my small children, while the cruel soldiers plundered my property. Furniture, clothing, food, everything was thrown in a heap and set alight……. Despite my pleas that I might be allowed to retain a few antiques and heirlooms, they refused to listen.”
“Over the length and breadth of our Republic they raised everything to the ground. Horses, cattle and sheep were bayoneted to death. The bellowing of the cattle, the sad bleating of the sheep and all the blood is something that we shall never forget”
THEN, as we have seen, as many of these Boer women and children as could be found and rounded up, were sent in cattle trucks, to the CONCENTRATION CAMPS – where, as we know, about 28,000 of them died. Not to mention a further 15,000 (approx. – figures vary) Blacks who ALSO died in their separate Camps. The “Scorched Earth” policy, first started by Lord Roberts, and later continued by General Kitchener, had caused the (by now) homeless Boer women and children, – i.e. those who had not yet been herded into concentration camps – to wander the open veld for the entire duration of the war, often seeking shelter in kloofs and caves, and even in the hills, without any support at all. In the Transvaal alone, by 1902, some 10,000 women and children suffered this pitiful existence. In October, 1902 Lord Alfred Milner admitted that 30,000 Boer houses had been destroyed during the war. But it was not only the farms which the British attacked. The British partially or completely destroyed at least 40 Boer towns in the two Boer republics.
AND NOW – whilst NOBODY can condone what the British did – in the name of getting their hands on the Transvaal goldfields, we must consider the BOER NATION AFTER the WAR. With most of their farms destroyed, many villages and towns damaged and destroyed, and their major cities and capitals occupied, WHAT DID THE BRITISH, as the all-conquering “victors”, DO FOR THE TWO BOER NATIONS ????? VIRTUALLY NOTHING !!!!!
After the war, the Boers made 63,000 separate claims for their losses. Britain granted the Boer Republics the sum of only £3 million as compensation for the three years of war waged against them. If one considers that the Boer population by June, 1902 was in the order of 330,000 people, then the ‘compensation’ which the British gave the Boers amounted to a paltry £9 for each man, woman and child (at least what was left of them) – hardly equitable considering their material losses, if not the total losses they suffered, as a nation. And this calculation does not even begin to have account for the Black population of the two Republics.
HOW CAN THIS BE JUSTIFIED AND EQUITABLE ?????????? NEVER !!!!!!
PS: This article and some of the figures are a small, partial extract from my research PAPER entitled: “The Anglo – Boer War, 1899 – 1902: In Numbers” by David R. Bennett © 2012. I am a South African, with 3/8th BOER Ancestry, and with a large Afrikaans family, well versed with the BOER nation, of which I am part. PHOTOS: Some photos of young VICTIMS at the hands of the British; Boer orphaned children just after the War, and the JACOBS, Durban Boer Concentration Camp Memorial – NOTE the AGES of most of the BOER CHILDREN who DIED in this camp – and it was the same for ALL the camps ……. Nothing more need be said.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AngloBoerWar/permalink/10157070415499182/