I need to take you back to 1652 that is
the year in which the Dutch East India Company arrived on the Southern most point to the African continent. The spices in the East would have to
come around Africa in order to get to those spices. The people who had been
brought out to farm those huge tracts of land had been brought out from the
Netherlands.They were joined later by French Huguenot refugees, they were
joined by German people, they were joined by English-speaking people and those
various nationalities were then going to marry across the nationalities and give
birth to the people we refer to as Afrikaners. If you stop and ask yourself about that blood mix you'll find that it's a very resilient people. If you have a resilient people and you bind them together with one very common thread and
that is a deep-rooted belief in the Bible and you teach them a Calvinistic
religion and you inform them that everything has been ordained and it's
for them and you keep them in the Old Testament and you don't pull them
through through the New Testament they're going to grow up believing that
they are God's chosen people. When Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Dutch
monarchy, when that happened Britain for the first time, she was starting to
embark on her empire building. It was going to take control of the Cape. She
didn't hold on to it for too long she only held on until 1802
when she gave it to Batavia. Batavia was being ruled from the Netherlands which
meant it was back in the hands of the Dutch but only until such time as
Britain and France looked as though they were going to go to war. When that
happened there was a battle at Bloubergstrand. Down in the Cape money changed
hands and British rule came to stay in the Cape. With that rule came change, in
1807 Britain abolished the trading in slaves. In 1820 she brought out some
4,000 settlers who were going to be known as the 1820 settlers. Those
settlers had been chosen for the intrapreneurial skill and in a fairly
short space of time the economy of the Cape was going to be in the hands of the
English. In 1834 Britain released the slaves and then started to talk about
treating them as equals. At the same time she removed
Dutch as the official language in the law courts and replaced it with English.
That was too much for the real Calvinists amongst those people and they
then approached the authority with a view to moving away from the Cape and
moving into the interior of South Africa for which Britain had no use. What had
happened in the interior was that the Nguni people, all the black people that
you see in this part of Africa, come from the very north of Africa, from Central
Africa, over a period of about 4,000 years they moved as the deserts
of Central Africa grew ever bigger they moved further and further south,
reluctant to come this far south because it actually gets too cold down here.
Having fought huge battles to establish their kingdoms many hundreds of
thousands of Nguni people had died as a result of those Wars. When the Western
people came about 150 years later they brought with them diseases that this
part of the world had never known and many of the in Nguni people had died as
a result of those diseases. The only indigenous people of South Africa when
the Nguni people arrived, as well as the Western people, where people referred
to as the Khoi people. You had two groups of Khoi: the Khoikhoi and the Khoi San. The
Khoikhoi was referred to as a Hottentot and lived on the southernmost part of
the African continent and the Khoi San was referred to as a Bushman and lived
pretty much in this area that we're in today. Those people were highly
intelligent they only took from this planet what the planet had to offer. They
understood what plants were medicinal and they understood what poisoned. If they
killed a wild animal that was considered sacred, if they took an eland for
instance they'd be able to sustain a family of up to 30 on an eland for over
three months. Not one single solitary portion of that animal would ever go to
waste. If you can imagine that they were using the hides as clothing, the
stomach's as water carriers, the horns as quivers for their arrows right down to
sharping bones so that they would have arrow points for the next kill
and the great difference between them and the Nguni people and the Western people was that
they never measured their wealth by possessions. Unfortunately, for them the
people of the time felt that those Khoi people who had started taking the
domesticated animals from people who measured their wealth by possessions and
knowing that it's easier to take domesticated animals than it is to take
wild animals a bounty was put on their heads and they were hunted almost into
extinction. We have pockets of them left in this part of the world and
down in the Kalahari and Namibia and up in Botswana but they cannot hold a candle
to their fore-bearers. It's a very sad indictment from the
people of the time but it didn't only happen in Africa, it happened to the Red
Indians of America, it happened to the Aborigines of Australia and we don't
seem to learn as humans on this planet. One of the great tragedies
is that we don't ever seem to learn from history. Winston Churchill once on the
subject of history said that the only thing we learn from history is that we
learn nothing from history. And if you take that and you realize
that today we continue to do the same thing in the South American jungles and
in the jungles of Africa one wonders when we will ever learn. The Nguni people
when they fought their huge battles, amongst them the most dominant of all
were the Zulus, the Zulus and their king by the name of Shaka had risen a great
army. The Voortrekkers not being happy with what had happened in the Cape
approached the authorities with a view to moving into the interior of South
Africa for which Britain had no use, and after some negotiation they were assured
that if they could get themselves beyond the Orange River and beyond the Vaal
River they would be free to govern themselves. And so began one of the most
incredible journeys ever undertaken by modern man. If you can imagine today when
we drive around in fancy vehicles and we can get around places very quickly, if
you can imagine an ox drawn wagon where you take your worldly possessions, you
load them onto that wagon, and you begin a journey. The first mighty obstacle you
encounter in the journey are the mountains of the Cape. You have to stop
the wagon, you have to carry your positions over the mountains, you then
have to go back for the wagon. You have to disassemble the wagon and carry it
over the mountains piece by piece, it's only once you've got it on the other
side of the mountain that you can actually then reassemble it, reload it
and continue the journey. The elderly amongst you are going to start dying, women
are going to be giving birth to children. it doesn't only get hot in Africa it
snows on our mountains. You cannot help but admire the sheer determination, the
courage and the steel will of those people to embark on that incredible
journey in search of their freedom. After they had been travelling for about four
years they arrived in this section of the Drakensberg mountains. There's something
unusual and and difficult about humans they appear to have an inability to
get on with one another and after they'd been traveling for about four years the
journey started to split. One leader suggested that they should be going west
another one wanted to go north another decided to come east. This is a
country of huge complexities, in order to understand some of those complexities
and how there should be any antagonism between the Nguni people and Western
people I'd like to relate a short story to you. When Pete Retief arrived in this
section of the mountains he looked down on the Natal and announced to his people
that they were looking at their promised land. What he hadn't taken into account
was the fact that the Zulus had got here first. When Peter Retief knew he would have
to meet with the king of the Zulus he said to his people I want you to wait up
in the mountains until I come back from this meeting with the king. At the time
that Piet Retief got here the king of the Zulus was a man by the name of Dingaan.
Dingaan must have been a tyrant he had killed his half-brother Shaka in order
to take over the kingdom and when Piet Retief got to meet Dingaan he was a very
grumpy man, he'd had all his cattle stolen he thought the cattle had been stolen by the Voortrekkers.
Retief said he'd had no use for the cattle but while he was journeying he
had seen the cattle and he was happy to retrieve them for the king provided he
could get land for his people, and so Retief and his men went off rounded up the
cattle, brought them back to the king who then was overjoyed at the fact that he'd
got his cattle back. At the conclusion of the feast
Dingaan says to Piet Retief can you match the kind of celebration you've just
witnessed and the Retief says to his men look the Zulus have never seen guns,
they've never seen horses, if we ride our horses through and fire a few shots in
the air we'll be able to impress this king. Well he's duly impressed and he says to
Retief tomorrow when you come to negotiate the land issues do not bring
those guns and horses with you. When Retief and his men went through to
negotiate Dingaan ordered their execution.
They were taken on to execution Hill and were executed. Unfortunately, for a
biblical people they were never afforded a proper burial and that is the first
friction between Western people Nguni people. Unfortunately, the people who
had been told to wait up in the mountains had thought better of it. They
came down out of the mountains and not far from here going east is the river
known as the Bloukrans River. They started settling miles apart from one
another along the Bloukrans River anxious to get as much land as they
could. When the Zulus saw what was happening they started murdering the
families which led to a battle at Bloukrans, that in turn, led to the murder
of the Voortrekker woman and children which was the final straw that broke the
camel's back and the Voortrekkers then decided to challenge the Zulus for the
territory, if we can defeat the Zulu army this would be ours.
That is when on the 16th of December 1838, the Voortrekkers set up a laager
of wagons against the river known as the Ncome and a very deep ditch
that runs into the river. By setting the laager in that way it
meant that the Zulus would be forced to come on a frontal attack. Zulus don't
fight like that. In those days they used what they termed the horns of the
buffalo. By coming on a frontal attack were spears and assegais and shields
against cannons and rifles. There was probably only going to be one victor.
They prayed to the Almighty to give them the strength that
day to defeat their enemy, if they did that they would keep the day holy for
the rest of time and on the 16th of December 1838 the Voortrekkers defeated
the Zulus at what was to become known as the Battle of Blood River. From that
day to this day, it has always been a public holiday in South Africa and I
believe to the great credit to the current governors of this country
they've retained it as a public holiday. Now no longer referred to it as 'The Day
of The Vow' but as 'The Day of Reconciliation' and that's a huge step we
have taken since 1994. Once the Voortrekkers defeated the Zulus they set
up a republic known as the Republic of Natalia. Britain wasn't happy with us. She
was flying the Union Jack in Durban. The Voortrekkers in Natalia had not kept their
side of the bargain, they hadn't got beyond the Orange and Vaal rivers and
that is when the Voortrekkers decided that rather than stay under British rule they
would cross the Drakensberg even if they were snow capped as the one lady said in
the statute to her that sits today at Retief Klip. Once the Voortrekkers had
crossed the Orange and Vaal rivers they were free. In 1852 the Orange Free State
became a republic. In 1854 the Transvaal became a republic. You then had the two Boer republics. Tough life but a happy life. A free life, that's what they wanted,
that's what they had achieved but there was going to be a twist. In 1871 two
little children who had been playing around on a farm just outside of a town
known as Hope Town were going to find a strange-looking stone.
By the time the stone got to Cape Town it was identified as the Hope Diamond it
was 21 and a half carats in size. The authority took one look at the potential
riches within the soil and said we had better annex this area. So they annexed
the area. They turned it into a separate crown colony which they named Griqualand,
and they then changed the name of Hope Town to Kimberly, and Kimberly was
the name of the Colonial Secretary who'd been governing in the Cape at the time,
so that was a little like rubbing some salt in the wound, but what could you do
you were up against the Empire, it was bigger than you. What were you going to do
about there was nothing you could do. They took it on the chin and they moved
to the next day. The next huge watershed year for South Africa came in 1879 when
Britain having brought a lot of her subjects to farm alongside the Buffalo
River, which was the divide between Natal and Zululand, found that the Zulus were
crossing the Buffalo River and raiding the farms on the Natal side, that was
considered to be an ill discipline. How are you going to sort that out?
Well, the best thing to do would be to annex them because then you could
instill your disciplines. That is when Britain went to
war against the Zulus. Those famous battles: the Battle of Isandlwana,
later that night the Battle of Rorke's Drift and the final battle of Ulundi
when the Zulus were eventually annexed. The next big watershed year for South
Africa came in 1881 when Britain had told the Voortrekkers who'd moved into the
Transvaal that they would need to get what they termed in those days 'Native
Affairs' properly under control and given that those Voortrekkers by now had started
discovering alluvial gold, Britain decided that as a result of the 'Native
Affairs' not been a properly under control she was going to have to annex
the Transvaal in order to instill her disciplines; and given that her mighty
Victorian army had just defeated the Zulus she then decides to annex the
Transvaal. To annex men who carry guns and know how to use them is quite
different to annexing Zulus who were carrying pears and assegais and
shields. And what turns out to be a very short war, The Transvaal war of
Independence, it only lasts three months. One of the most famous battles to come
out of that war was fought on the top of a mountain known as Majuba. At that
battle the commanding chief of the British forces, a man by the name of
Colley, was killed and that meant that the Voortrekkers were now able to go to
the negotiating table to negotiate a peace on their terms, and Britain then
said to them they were free to govern themselves, she would never interfere
with their governance again. The only policy she would rather they did not
determine for themselves was international policy - Foreign Affairs.
Well, who would have bothered with that. They were now free living in this
territory that was theirs and battling to get on, but happy to be free. The one
thing they did not have was a port so they were not able to trade with the
international community and they decided to build a railway line from Pretoria to
Delagoa Bay. Delagoa Bay today is Maputo in Mozambique. In those days
Portuguese East African territory. So difficult and so expensive had that
railway line become to build that by 1887 the Voortrekkers who'd moved
into the Transvaal were on the verge of bankruptcy when they discovered an
enormous deposit of gold in Johannesburg. That deposit was referred to as the Witwatersrand.
If you stop and do a translation Witwater means white water.
What did they find? They found a seam of gold lying on the
surface of the ground that looked like a white river flowing and that led to the
greatest gold rush the world has ever known. Men and women from every walk of
life came to seek their fortunes in Johannesburg, and a young boy who just
happened to be 10 years old when that great journey from the Cape began, is now
the president of the Transvaal and his name is Paul Kruger, and Paul Kruger sees
all these foreigners coming into that part of South Africa as a threat to his
governance. He sees them coming in much bigger numbers than he's going to have
of his own people and he refers to those foreigners as Uitlanders. He says "you
Uitlanders, you can come here, you can dig as much gold as you like, you will
have to pay tax but you will never be allowed to vote". Well, who would have
worried about the vote, there was gold in the ground, there was sun in the sky,
vote no problem, we will sort that out another day, but the twist came as
the gold became more difficult to dig. So the men who had bought up the gold
claims started to sell them off. Who was buying them? The men who had made all the
money in the diamond mines. Cecil John Rhodes, Barney Barnato are the biters, all
the big money men at the time. And what were they doing? Forming gold mining
conglomerates. It's one thing to dig gold for yourself and pay tax,
you're now digging it for someone else and you're still paying tax and where
Mr. Kruger seriously appears to have lost the plot ..... he's not been fair with
the distribution of the wealth. That is a recipe for disaster. It doesn't
matter where you do it you will find that most of the hiccups that we have on
this planet is where governments, we as humans who allow ourselves to be
governed, find that the people who are governing us are not been fair with the
distribution of the wealth. There's one fact about humans on this planet as I've
already suggested, not one nation as ever got to the top more than once and
no nation has ever stayed there more than for a certain length of time.
Minorities cannot rule majorities more than for a certain length of time and
exactly the same way as majorities cannot rule minorities more than a
certain length of time, and the hiccup always comes when people have been or
governments are being unfair with the distribution of the wealth. It's a huge
lesson that we don't appear to have learned yet. With Paul Kruger being
unfair with the distribution of wealth, Cecil John Rhodes, who is prime minister of the
Cape, has a really good friend by the name of Doctor Starr Jameson, he says "Doctor Jameson
I think the time has come to overthrow this Kruger government. I want you to go
to Rhodesia. Go and get yourself some men in Rhodesia bring them into the Transvaal and when I tell you the timing is right I want you to launch a raid into Johannesburg". And what Rhodes sensed was that the miners were ready to rise
and revolt. He could get the miners to revolt, he could launch the raid, topple
Kruger and put in the government of choice. Jameson launches the raid prematurely
it's a huge failure and a great embarrassment to the people of Britain.
The men responsible for the raid are taken to trial in Pretoria. Penalty for
treason in those days is exactly the same as the penalty for treason
today.... it's death they had their sentences commuted to fines. Jameson had
been extradited to the United Kingdom for trial he'd been sentenced to menial
term of 15 months in prison. It infuriated Kruger and his people to such
an extent that they then started to arm the Transvaal with the most
sophisticated weapons the world had to offer and Britain was powerless to stop
the build-up of those weapons because they were coming straight into the
Transvaal through Portuguese East African territory. The railway line to
the Delagoa Bay by now had been built and Kruger was buying these hugely
sophisticated weapons from the Germans, from the French and even from the
British. You've got enough money and you got a war you can buy weapons from your
opponents. It was quite clear now that there was going to be conflict and
Rhodes who had to resign his position as Prime Minister of the Cape after the
Jameson raid, who still has really good friends in the corridors of power, says
to the people back home "you need to send send someone to Africa who can sort out
our problem" and they then sent a man by the name of Alfred Milner. Alfred Milner
had this vision for South Africa he wanted to see it unionized if he could
unionize it that meant Britain would hand over all control. The territories would
be left to govern themselves that would please the territories and that would
please Britain. Alfred Milner met with Kruger and said to Mr. Kruger that
everywhere in the Western world if they had lived in a country for five years
they would get the vote. Kruger said that was far too short he thought it should
be closer to ten. With the two of them not being able to agree the president of the
Orange Free State, a man by the name of Stein, realizing that he would be pulled
into any conflict situation called a conference on neutral territory in Bloemfontein.
Kruger is reputed to have moved into that meeting with tears streaming down
his cheeks he says to Alfred Milner "it's not the vote you want he says it's the
country, in order to get this country he says it's going to take 14 years, you may
not vote for the president until you reach the age of 40 nor may you stand
for Parliament until you've reached that age", and given that the life expectancy
of a male 108 years ago was 47 you were a bit old before you were going to have any
say in the affairs. And it was quite clear now that there was going to be
conflict. Alfred Milner says to Paul Kruger "if you
don't understand Mr. Kruger important it is that these people be
given the vote, we're going to take it by force and we will be there after
Christmas". Kruger thought no, I'm not leaving this initiative to them I'll
have an ultimatum drawn up and he had an ultimatum drawn up by F.W. Rates. F. W
Rates was told to tell the British authority that if they did not take
every British soldier that they had landed on ZAR soil since the 1st of June
out of that territory, if they did not stop moving peacekeeping forces up
towards their borders and if they didn't stop diverting their ships that were
carrying their troops home from India to South Africa by the 12th of October 1899
they'd go to war. Britain replied on the 11th and said that she could not accept the
conditions within that ultimatum and believed that the countries were at war,
and so on the 12th of October 1899 South Africa goes to war against the British Empire. On the 12th October 1899 South Africa went to war
against the British Empire, 69 thousand South Africans volunteered to fight. This
was not just a white man's war it was a war that was fought by all the people of
this country black, white or indifferent and many loyal black servants were going to
take arms with their masters. For far too long now we've had a one-sided history
where we've suggested that it was merely the Boers who went to war against the
British Empire. Once those 69 thousand men had volunteered,
they could have been conscripted if they were between the ages of 16 and 60,
but with 69 thousand men having volunteered that was as many as they
were going to get. Those men had huge advantages. They were in their own
country, they understood the heights of the hills and the widths of the valleys,
the depths of the rivers, they had brought up an immunity to the African
diseases, they were riding horses and best suited to the African conditions.
They could move around quickly, they didn't need a lot to sustain themselves
and they put biltong in their saddlebags and rusks, coffee and off they would go into
the veld. Their leadership realizing that the British would be in pursuit of them
and not them in pursuit of them the British suggested that they should dig
trenches on the reverse slopes of mountains and hills, they were to dig
them so deep that they could stand in them and use the front of the trench as
a dead rest for the rifle. Given that a Boer could shoot a wild animal over a
distance of a thousand yards, between three and four hundred yards it's a
point-blank range shot. They had no ammunition to waste and therefore every
shot would have to count. Any army of men at war would have to have a supply
column. In the case of the Boers it was their homes. They needed a good night's
sleep and a good meal and a fresh horse and a servant they would go home and
they would continually be on the front as refreshed soldiers. The only men who wore
uniforms amongst them were the gunners who'd been taught how to use the guns by
the countries from which they'd purchased them. With the huge earnings
from the gold they were able to purchase hugely sophisticated weapons for the time.
This war was referred to in the history books as the first of the modern wars,
it's the last of the gentlemen's wars. You can ask yourself what you think is
gentlemanly about war in this particular case you didn't fight after dark, you
didn't fight on the Sabbath and every day after a battle was a truce day so
you could see two wounded and bury your dead. First of the modern wars the Boers
through that gold earning were able to buy hugely sophisticated weapons. From
the British they'd bought Maxim Norfield guns, from the Germans they'd
bought Krupp guns. Krupp by now had invented a gun that could shoot a
projectile out of it with a timing device on the nosecone, the timing device
designed to burst in midair, the shell would break into pieces of shrapnel and if it
piece of shrapnel hit you it would probably kill you. From the French they
had bought cruiser guns, that gun was going to be named a Long Tom, it was
able to fire a shell out of it over a distance of ten kilometers which meant
it was going to out range the British guns by eight kilometers that's an
advantage. They had purchased smokeless gunpowder. Smokless gunpowder meant that
they could hide behind obstacles and one wasn't going to be able to detect their
positions as there was no puff of smoke coming out from behind the position they
had occupied. Their leadership realizing that the British would be in pursuit of
them and not them in pursuit of the British, ordered the men to dig trenches
on the reverse slopes of hills. They would to dig them so deep that they
could use the front of the trench as a dead rest for the rifle.
Given that a Boer could shoot a wild animal over a distance of a thousand
yards as every soldier came over the skyline no more than two or three
hundred yards away that was a point-blank range shot and given that
they had no ammunition to waste they were to make sure that every shot counted. They had assembled in Pretoria and were
told that they needed to get to the coast as quickly as they could. The whole
idea was to challenge the British forces as they came off the ships. However, on
their route to the coast they encountered British peacekeeping forces
who were moving up towards the Free State and Transvaal borders. They met for
the first time just outside of Dundee on the hill at Talana
where the first battle of the war was fought. At that battle the commanding
chief of the British forces, a man by the name of Penn Simons, had been killed.
General Sir George White then said to his men he wanted them to regroup in
order to do that he suggested that they were to move back into Ladysmith. If you can
imagine the scenario Ladymith had a population, a civilian population, of some
3,000 people. Thirteen and a half thousand British forces moved back into the town.
When they were in the town the Boers laid siege to it. They laid siege to Ladysmith
believing that they could make conditions in the town so difficult that
they would get the British to capitulate and go to the negotiating table. On
General Buller's arrival at Cape Town he was informed that the towns of Kimberley,
Mafeking and Ladysmith were under siege. He believed that the most important town
for relief was going to be Ladysmith. He then moved from Cape Town to Durban
where he then disembarked with some 30,000 troops.The railway line between
Durban and Johannesburg by now had been completed and those men were put onto
the rail lines and brought up towards Ladysmith. He'd been informed that the
Boers would challenge his advance at the Tugela River. Having realised that, he
was to stop short of the Tugela River and set up a huge camp at an area known
as Frere. Once he had set up the camp, he needed to decide whether he was going to
go east over the Tugela Heights, which was a daunting prospect, or whether he
was going to move west to Spearman's farm. The most obvious route for him to use would have been the route through
Colenso because the only point across the river where there were bridges
a hundred years ago, was at Colenso. Having made his mind up to go to Colenso
Louis Botha, long before Buller had got there, believed that that was the option
he would take. Louis Botha had said to his men what I want you to do on our
side of the river is to build stone walls on the high ground. I want you to
leave apertures in the walls to put trunks of trees through to look like
guns, smaller ones to put branches through to look like rifles I want you
to make it look as though they're more of us here than they really are
but what I need you to do is dig yourselves into the riverbanks and not
to fire a single shot until you can see the the white of the British soldiers
eyes. And on the 15th of December 1899 the day after General Buller's birthday,
sixtieth birthday, Buller sent 12 artillery pieces up
towards the river. The Inniskillings of Ireland had been sent on a left
flanking movement, on the left flank that Tugela river has a huge loop in it, and
they had drawn a tributary that goes into the loop on the wrong side. When the
Inniskillings got there it was in spate and believing that it was the river
they crossed over the river into the loop and the Boers waiting on the
opposite side were going to see to it that the whole left flank was going to fail.
The 12 guns that had been sent up to the bridges was now bombarding the high
ground and they were getting no retaliatory shots.
Buller believing that the Boers had moved deeper into the hills, then sent
his infantry in front of the artillery. As the infantry got close enough to the
river banks so the Boers came out of their hiding places and inflicted a huge
number of casualties on the British. In one battle that make up three battles,
that makes up a week referred to in the history books as Black Week: Stormberg,
Magersfontein, Colenso. In each battle the British had lost in excess of a
thousand men, and had the propaganda not been such, that they wouldn't let the
people of Britain know the full extent of what was happening in this country
that would probably have brought the war to a close. The people of Britain were anti
this war. They were out on the streets demonstrating. They didn't want a war in
Africa. Queen Victoria was on the throne very upset that her country was at war,
was going to die while her country was a war and bring the entire Victorian era
to a close. Not only did the British lose that
number of men at the Battle of Colenso but the Boers managed to capture ten
of the twelve guns that had been taken up to the river. In an attempt to save
those guns a young man by the name of Freddie Roberts was killed, he was
awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously for his bravery. He happened to be the
only surviving son of Field Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar.
General Buller has suffered such a reverse of the battle of Colenso that
he's wired London to say that he's not going to be able to relieve Ladysmith.
The War Office came straight back, and he was going to tell General Sir George
White to surrender at his discretion. The War Office came straight back to Buller
and said to him, General Buller we are leaving you in charge of the Natal Field Force,
the overall command is now with Field Marshal Lord Roberts. You will take your
orders from him. And given that Lord Roberts son had been killed at the
Battle of Spion Kop, he then says to 'Buller you will relieve Ladysmith'. Buller
then had to make a decision was he going to go east over the Tugela Heights or
was he going to move west to where the river becomes fordable. If he was to go
east over the Tugela Heights it's a daunting prospect. He makes a decision to
move west. In order for General Buller to move from Colenso to Spearman's farm,
where we are now. He used 640 supply wagons. Each supply
wagon weighed between five and six tons and was being pulled with between
sixteen and twenty eight oxen. He had 64 artillery pieces with him,
each artillery piece was being pulled by ten mules. If you could have measured his
column from top to tail it would have measured some 17 miles. If he was lucky
he could move one mile a day. If you were to now try and imagine what has happened
to the rah-rah of the British soldiers there's no longer a rah-rah.They starting to
witness funerals on a daily basis. There's no penicillin in this war. If you
get an external wound they amputate that part of your body, if you've got an
internal wound you are going to die. The men are now marching through the African
veld. They've left the railway lines behind and they are coming across
stagnant pools of rainwater. They don't have sufficient water, they are drinking it,
they are contracting dysentery as a result. They've been in their uniforms for over
three weeks. They tell you in their diaries they can see the lice in the
seams of their uniforms.They are taking their cigarette butts and
to burn the lice off. It's really difficult stuff. And when Generla Buller arrived on this hill known as Mount Alice he was met by the Earl of Dundonald, and the
Earl of Dundonald informed him that on the opposite side of this river there
were some 6,000 Boers who'd entrenched themselves from Vaal Krantz to Bastion
Hill. So General Buller having found that the Boers are stretched over this
distance and that the majority of the Boers are waiting at Brakfontein.
The Boers realizing of course that Bullers easiest route to Ladysmith would
be to cross the river at Pogieter's Drift, and if he was to cross it at Pogieter's
Drift he would go out between the Twin Peaks and Brakfontein. When Buller learns
that the Boers are gathered in such huge numbers there, he
then decides to split his force and he says to General Sir Charles Warren 'I
want you to move upstream with 14,000 men go and build yourself a bridge
across the Tugela River at the Trichardt's Drift area'. He says it will have
the effect of pulling the Boers on Brakfontein in reinforcement. Once he's
pulled sufficient of them in reinforcements,
Littleton can break through at Brakfontein. Warren has to get around Bastion
Hill and together they are to go into Ladysmith. Unfortunately, one doesn't mean
any disrespect when one says this but it comes at a time when social class in the
United Kingdom is it is at an all-time high and these imperialistic generals
who have either purchased commissions or they've come from aristocracy
aren't necessarily the best men for the job and instead of listening to the
colonials when General Sir Charles Warren got to the Trichardt's Drift crosssing
he built the pontoon bridge. He's then met by the Earl of Dundonald,
a colonial, who says to him 'General Warren if you act quickly sir you can
get around Bastion Hill. There are approximately 400 Boers on the entire
Tabanyama range' and Warren replies to Dundonald with these words, and they
come from the Royal Commission of Inquiry. He says to Dundonald 'you're
not a member of my council' he says 'I haven't invited your
opinion' he says 'we're going to rehearse on this area even if it costs us a
little bit of blood', and instead of getting around the Bastion Hill, Warren
decides to try and go over the Tabanyama Range and as I've already suggested
to you the Boers, one of their tactics was to dig trenches on the reverse
slopes of the hills, and so having dug their trenches deep enough to stand in
them and use the front of the trench as a dead rest for the rifle. Every time any
of the British soldiers got anywhere near the top of the Tabanyama Range
they were just repulsed and after four days of that on the Tabayama Range,
Buller became quite irritated. Got on his horse, rode across met Warren on the
other side of the river and suggested to him that he retires the force back
across the river. Warren says' I don't think that's the right thing to do,
we're now on the northern side of the river we should take the dominant high
feature, we should take Spion Kop'. If we can take Spion Kop we can put guns up there.
Once we've got guns up we can afford the men safe passage to Ladysmith and with
what really appears to be insufficient reconnaissance Buller comes back to this
position and leaves Warren to get on with it.
Warren calls on a general by the name of Woodgate and he says to general Woodgate
I want you to lead 1,700 British soldiers onto the top of Spion Kop
tonight the 23rd of January. He said you'll be shown the way to the top by
Alec Thornycroft. Alec Thornycroft is a hugely interesting
man in this war. He's huge six foot four, two hundred and eighty
pounds of him. One of the few men ever to have had an infantry named after
him, Thornycroft's Mountain Infantry, and Alec Thornycroft
standing on the western side of Spion Kop drew the only Ridge possible that
the British could have climbed because the whole of Spion Kop on the British
side of the mountain is so precipitous that there's only one route up.
General Warren has now moved across the river set up his headquarters over
Three Tree Hill. He's tried to get over the Tabanyama range. After four days
of procrastination Buller has met him here and he's told General Warren that he wants
him to return the force back across the river.
Warren's disagreed with that, he believes that they should take Spion Kop. If
they can take Spion Kop they've got this dominant high ground. With what
appears to be insufficient reconnaissance Buller goes back to his
headquarters and leaves it to Warren. And Warren then called on a general by the
name of Woodgate, and asked him to lead 1,700 men onto the top of Spion Kop. On
the night of the 23rd of January they were to be shown the way to the top by
Alec Thorneycroft. Alec Thorneycroft had taken a sketchpad; standing on the other
side of this valley he draws the only Ridge possible that the British could
have climbed in order to get onto the top. It starts down in the valley where the sunlight is, up onto this first big plateau topped hill then narrows down
and wraps around onto the top. Alec Thornycroft sketch showed the top of the
mountain as been flat, that was going to lead to confusion. The British soldiers
were going to arrive on the top of Spion Kop at 3 o'clock in the morning. At
three o'clock in the morning there was going to be a mist up here that was so
thick that if you look at a British Tommy's diary you will find that
it's so thick they cannot see their hands in front of their faces. Of the
1,700 men who were climbing, amongst them were the Royal Engineers. The Royal
Engineers were carry picks and shovels and crowbars. Their job once on the top,
was to fortify a position. The fact of the matter up here is that approximately
18 inches below the surface rock is a shelf of dolorite. They weren't going
to get any deeper than that but because it had been raining for three days and
it was quite slippery when they were making their way up here, they were told
that they could discard some of those implements if they so wished. By
the time they got to the top they didn't have sufficient to implements for the
job at hand. The other problem for the British
soldiers is that at the base of the mountain there was an issue of empty
sandbags but because they had left in the dark and no one had given them the
instruction to collect those sandbags they left them behind; if they brought
the sandbags with them clearly they could have loaded the sandbags with
whatever they could find up here and then build up a defensive position.
Unfortunately that doesn't happen. I think one of the greatest question marks
over the entire battle is the fact that general Warren has told Buller that he
wants to take Spion Kop with the express purpose of putting guns up here.
Now the only way you can get a gun onto a mountain is to call on the assistance
of the mountain battery. The mountain batteries came out from India, they had
specially constructed guns. They would disassemble the gun each piece of the
gun is put on a mule, the mule carries it on to the top and once it gets it onto
the top they can reassemble the gun ready for use. The mountain battery was
sitting 20 hours away from here and hadn't been notified that they were
taking Spion Kop on the night of the 23rd. Had the infantry been followed by
artillery you may just have had a different outcome. So in order for us to
make any sense of what really happens from this position on we need to go to
where the British soldiers arrived on the top and I'll pick up the rest of the
story from there. We're pretty much now where the British soldiers arrived at 3
o'clock in the morning remembering now that they climbing in single file and
complete silence. Alec Thornycroft having drawn the top of the mountain has been
flat, senses that when he gets into this area the steep climb is over, it's
flattened out and he believes they've reached the top. He then says to general
Woodgate we've reached the top, whereupon Woodgate says to the men I now want you
to form columns and fix your bayonets; and in the forming of the columns and
the fixing of the bayonets they woke up 15 Vryheid commandos who are on sentry
duty in this area. The commandos knew full well that if the British were going
to come up here there was only one route they could use. They were under their
blankets and fast asleep because all they were waiting for was the dawn
so they could go and report to Louis Botha, their general, what movements the
British soldiers had made overnight. When the forming of the columns and the
fixing of the bayonets took place it woke these soldiers up, the the Vryheid
commandos, and there was a scream out here... who's there? Shots are fired.
The British soldiers are taught to lie flat on the ground wait for the shots to
go over the top of you. When the Boers start realigning their rifles
that's when you get up with your bayonets and you charge. One Boer gets
mortally wounded here and the other 14 go fleeing over the mountain to tell Louis
Botha that the British have arrived on the top of Spion Kop. There's pandemonium
and disbelief down in the Boer camp, not believing for one moment that the
British would come up here and the British really had no intention of
coming up here. Louis Botha says to his men whatever you do you make sure you
hold on to that ground. General Woodgate had been sent up here with an oil
burning lamp, the idea was that he was to signal Warren's headquarters once he had
arrived on the top to notify him that they had reached the summit.
Unfortunately, in a mist with the top of the mountain having been shrouded in a
mist, they were unable to use that form of communication. So Woodgate asked
the men to come together and he gets them to chant
hip-hip-hooray and the sound carries down to the men, down to Warren's
headquarters. Whereupon Warren says to the men I want you to open fire over the
top of Spion Kop. What was going to happen then, was he was going to get the Boers
to disperse on the other side of the mountain. The two effects the British having
arrived on the top trying to disperse them on the other side, but Louis Botha's
leadership is too strong for that and Louis Botha says to his men you've
got to hold on to that mountain no matter what happens, and Louis Botha
starts to rally his men. Woodgate now says to the men that they should start
preparing their positions and they then started to pile stones one on top of the
other up here so as to build up a defensive position but, at around about
six o'clock that morning, the mist that had been hanging over
the mountain lifted momentarily and it was just enough for General Woodgate to
realize that he hadn't in fact reached the summit. So he says to his men I want
you to move on to the summit and prepare your positions there. Now had they had
the benefit of daylight they would have realized of course that only 60 paces
off the area that they were entrenching was the northeastern crest line that's
where you want to be because you want to be looking down on anyone who's trying
to climb the mountain but, the British soldiers end up digging their trenches
in the worst possible position. To make sense of that we actually need to get to
where the battle took place and I'll be able to describe to you what happened
when we get to that position. We're now able to see the features on the eastern
side of Spion Kop. The Twin Peaks are going away from us over there you can
just see the smaller of the two behind the one in front of us, this feature
closest to us with the radio mast coming out of the top of it is known as Aloe Knoll.
Louis Botha once he realizes that the British had been digging in on the summit is
going to send sharpshooters on to Aloe Knoll,
between Aloe Knoll and the Twin Peaks he's going to position a Maxim Norfield
gun and on the bigger of the Twin Peaks a howitzer, and we're going to be able to
move up into where the actual battle took place now and I'll be able to
describe to you how these guns come into play while the battle is taking place. We
can now see where the British soldiers dug in on the summit. Where those
crosses you can see that there is not a cross there that's bigger than a
man. You need to realize of course that at this stage there's still this very
heavy mist over the top of the mountain The Boers are creeping up into this
position that we're in now. They taking up their positions behind these rocks
and the scene is set for this battle to begin but it cannot begin until such
time as the mist on the mountain has lifted and around 8 o'clock that morning
to the great detriment of the British soldiers
as the mist starts to lift off the top of the mountain they find themselves
looking straight out into the east into the rising morning sun and the glare
through the the cloud is so blinding. The Boers in this position have their backs to the sun and they're able to open a deadly fire from this
position on to that position and we know that over seventy of the British
soldiers up there were shot through the right temple suggesting that they were
turning their heads away from the rising sun, getting themselves shot and at the
same time Winston Churchill informs us that up to seven bombs a minute were now
landing on the top of the mountain. He said that there were massive clouds of
orange lydite bursting into the sky and that the men in the trenches were being
blown to atoms. Well what do you do? You're actually in a catch-22 situation,
you can retreat or you can advance. It's not like the British to retreat, we all
know that. What do they do? They call on their 14 year old boys. You'll see the
names of bugler's on that obelisk when we get to it later on. Men blow your
bugles it's the only way to get a sound above the din of the gunfire that's the
order for the British soldiers to fix their bayonets and storm the Boer
position. Now on a downward slope, bayonets fixed,
the British are storming this position and the Boers here are terrified of the
the bayonet charge. They have no bayonets of their own. They
are resorting now to take in their rifles by the barrel and using the butt
as a club and you end up with hand-to-hand combat fighting taking
place on the slope. Superior British numbers, they're able to occupy the
stress line and they are now in control of the battle only to find that on the
Aloe Knoll feature there was a young Boer by the name of Louis Botma and from
his position he could see each gun and he signals to the guns the British are
no longer on the summit they're on the crest line retrain your sights; and with
almost pinpoint accuracy they blast the British of this position back up into
the British position up on the summit. It's then that General Woodgate, who had
brought them onto the top of the mountain, is mortally wounded. He's taken
off the battle ground and the most senior officer
after him, a man by the name of Crofton, says to a semaphore signaler, I want you to
go and semaphore Warren tell him that the general is dead and that we require
reinforcements. The man goes off in he signals general dead, reinforcements
required or all is lost. He wasn't asked to put that into the
message 'the all is lost part' of the message put doubt in the minds of the
senior officers. Do we send men into a lost situation. The decision now to send
reinforcements is delayed. Buller for his part over on the high ground there,
through his telescope can see that the battle is broken on the northeastern
slope of the mountain he orders his naval guns to open fire from Mount Alice
onto Aloe Knoll and the Twin Peaks which he does with some accuracy only to be told
by the unsighted General Warren that he should stop firing. Buller believing that
Warren was closer to the battle then he was obviously knowing what was going on
any support now that they were going to get from their guns has been shut down.
In the meantime the Imperial Light Infantry have been sent up as
reinforcements along with the Scottish rifles. When they arrived on the top of
the mountain their most senior officer was a fella by the name of Cook. Cook
being senior to Crofton believed he was in charge but Crofton not knowing that
Cook was here, there's going to be confusion now because these two men now
believing they're in charge of the battle, but what makes it worse is the
fact that general Warren now has sent a general to the top of Spion Kop to
take over by the name of general Talbot Koch. Talbot Koch had broken his leg in a
horse riding accident, he had only recently had it taken out of plaster, he
was limping quite badly and he never got on to the summit but started making
decisions for what was happening on the summit. When Buller sees the confusion
once again through his telescope from Mount Alice, he is in telegraphic
communication with Warren and he says to General Warren who is in charge at Spion
Kop? Warren replies Talbot Koch
to which Buller says to Warren you will never win the battle with that man
you need a fighting person I suggest you put Alec Thorneycroft in charge and I
now promote him to the rank of Brigadier, and there for the first time you see a
colonial being put in charge of a battle being given this huge promotion by an
imperialistic general. By the middle of the day it was a little too late for
that, if you pick up any British Tommy's diary on the subject of this battle you
will find that once the cloud or the mist had started to lift that morning for
the rest of the day there wasn't a cloud in the sky, they say there wasn't a
breath of air. In the month of January the temperatures up here can be anywhere
in the region of 34 to 36 degrees. They can't get water to the men. The donkey
carts that are carrying the water can't get
past the sandstone cliffs. They are putting water into biscuit tins. By the time they
get the biscuit tins to the trenches it's all leaked out. They say that
the stench of the dead is no longer bearable. Blood has been spilled in such
quantities that it's starting to attract flies in their swarms and the men really have reached the end of their tether. The
fellows in the right hand flank started to rise and surrender to the Boers and
the Boers then started moving forward to take their prisoners but the projectory
of the mountain is unfortunate, if you're in the left hand flank you cannot see
what's happening on the right hand flank the fellas in the left hand flank see
the Boers coming forward who weren't under the the the white flag,
fire at the Boers and push them back into the battle. It alerts Alec Thornycroft to
the fact that he's men are surrendering and Alec Thornycroft moved into that
trenched area up there and he screamed at his men on the top of his voice
there will be no surrender, he says I'm in charge and pointing across to the
Boer side he screams and you sir can take your men to hell. He's talking
to general Prinsloo of the Boers, and no one describes this better than Deneys
Reitz who wrote the book 'Commando'. A young 17 year old Afrikaner boy
who'd had an excellent education wrote his book in English and he tells us that
as he made his way up into this battle every one of his tent mates had been
shot and killed and was lying dead on the side of the mountain and they
believed that the Boers were bearing the brunt of the battle, and with that huge
man screaming his head off up there these Boers in this position decided the
best thing to do was to get out of it. Not all of them, but the majority started
to leave and that is when Louis Botha got on his horse, he rode out off to his
men and after he gathered them together in probably the most impassioned plea of
his career he says to the men 'do you know who you're fighting'? He says 'the men
you're fighting have come 7,000 miles he says 'they are fighting for a queen', he
says 'you're fighting for your homes, your farms, your families',
he says 'you're fighting for your country', and he reminds them of their victory on
Majuba in 1881 and that was enough to bring the Boers back into the battle; and
back into the battle they came and this battle then continued to rage for the
rest of the day. In the meantime Robert Buchanan Riddell, whose grave you saw over
at Mount Alice, is making his way up the Twin Peaks.
He's absolutely convinced that if he can silence the guns on the Twin Peaks he'll
be able to turn this battle. When General Buller saw the Kings Royal rifles were
taken to the Twin Peaks he sent a written order it read: get off
the Twin Peaks you are endangering your men. Buchanan Riddle took one look at
this order showed it to his second-in-command, said that he could not
accept it because he felt the generals were making too many mistakes, and at
around 5:15 that afternoon the Boers rather than lose their guns to the
British on the Twin Peaks raced them down the northern face to go and hide
them behind Brakfontein and that was the turning point in the battle. As those
guns started to leave those features so all the Boer laager started to break
up on this flat ground below us and the Boers started to ride away from Spion
Kop. It was over and there from the jaws of victory comes defeat. A second order
from General Buller to Buchanan Riddle to get off the Twin Peaks, the King's
Royal rifles start retreating Alec Thornycroft can see the retreat from
up here and thinks to himself I'll never hold this mountain for the
night if I can't get reinforcements. It's now starting to get dark, he can't get
any more messages back from Warren's headquarters, he can't communicate with him. He
calls a council of the most senior officers on the top of the mountain with
a view to retreating and the decision is made to retreat and there's the futility
of this battle. The Boers in retreat that way, the British are in retreat that way
and all the men who've lost their lives on the top of this mountain have lost
their lives for naught. It's considered to be a Boer victory. It might be
acknowledged as such, purely because of what it led to. It led to General Buller
ordering Warren to retire the force back across the river which is what he wanted
prior to the Battle of Spion Kop. They then went and fought the Battle of Vaal
Krantz which was the scene of a three-day battle 5th, 6th and 7th of
February. They still failed to get through at the Vaal Krantz ridge and
Buller then ordered his men back across the river and they went back to
Ladysmith. The hills on the horizon over there are referred to as the Tugela
Heights. In a two-week battle on the - Tugela Heights the British eventually
managed to break through the Boer lines and relieve Ladysmith a hundred and
eighteen days after it had been sieged; and by then conditions in the town was
such that it really was quite an appalling situation. People were dying of
disease, they had eaten all the horses, the rats had been eaten. It was really just
in the neck of time that they managed to get there. You may be interested there's
one fascinating fact about Spion Kop. On the 24th of January 1900 there were
three men on this mountain and had a stray bullet hit any one of the three of them
you can ask yourself what you think might have happened to the course of
world history, that is not to take anything away from the men who did die,
but the men I'm referring to are firstly Louis Botha who was going to go on to
become the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, Winston Churchill
heaven knows what would have happened had he not been around during the Second
World War and then thirdly Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi was on Spion Kop and
was on this mountain on that day that he got his first feelings for passive
resistance he said that he could see what the human race was capable of doing
to one another but he needed to know in the name of what. The area we're in now
is referred to in the history books as the acre of massacre it remains the
smallest piece of ground on which more men lost their lives in a single battle
than any battle fought anywhere in the world up to current time. The white
stones mark the brief position that was dug between six o'clock and eight
o'clock in the morning. Little did these men realize but they were digging their
own graves. At the conclusion of this battle the
sides were built up the way you see them now. They then gathered all the little
stones that they could from around the top of the mountain to place on top of
the bodies so as to afford them a proper burial.
You probably realized by now that the British are getting a serious pounding
in this war. They've had a bloody nose at every major battle, whether it was at the
Battle of Colenso or Spion Kop Vaal Kranz, Paardeberg, Magersfontein and
unfortunately men don't go to war to lose that's the tragedy and given that
Field Marshal Lord Robert's son had been killed at the battle of Colenso and
Field Marshal Lord Roberts had taken over from Genera Buller and was about to
retire his commission in South Africa. His second-in-command was Lord Kitchener,
he says to Lord Kitchener if you want to defeat them there's a way to do it. Well
you wouldn't have to be a rocket scientist to work out the
way to defeat them would be to cut them off from their supplies. Any army of men
who are at war need a supply. In the case of the Boers it was their homes. So the
order was given to burn the farms, burn the livestock, take the women and
children place them into camps. Unfortunately they
never gave enough consideration to the conditions that would prevail within
those camps and disease started to move through those camps like wildfire, 29,000
Arikaner men women and children died in the camps. Of the 29,000 - 22,000
were woman of the 22,000 - 19,000 were below the age of 16. Whole generations
were wiped out as a result of that decision. It's not a commonly known fact but over
20,000 black people died in those camps. And what did it breed? It bred men who were going to become known in this part of the world as Bittereinders.
There could be no nothing more dangerous to contend with on this planet than a
man who's got nothing to lose and those Bittereinders then took this war into a
gorilla phase and through one of the coldest winters ever recorded in South
African history they then continued to fight and for Britain to bring those Bittereinders to heal she then built over 8,000 block houses
throughout South Africa. She ran more than 4,000 miles of barbed
wire fencing between the block houses and eventually forced the Bittereinders
into a corner and got them to surrender in March 1902 and the war then came to a
close. Those Bittereinders had to swear an allegiance to the king of England and
they were disarmed. If they weren't prepared to swear the allegiance they
went into exile. Some were given money so that they could restart their lives and
the war then comes to a conclusion.
