Volume 23, Number 12 · July 15, 1976
South Africa's White War
By Neal Ascherson
The Great Anglo-Boer War
by Byron Farwell
Harper & Row, 593 pp., $16.95
The sand of the northern Transvaal is red. It makes easy mining for the ants in the cemetery at Nylstroom, who have sunk hundreds of little crumbringed shafts down between the graves. Their commando columns trot across the veld and descend the shafts to visit the bones of 544 women and children 'who as war victims (wat as slagoffers) lost their lives in the Concentration Camp in the period between 1899 and 1902.' Most of the graves are mere cairns, marked with metal name tags. A few are small slabs of slate, laboriously engraved: 'Anna Sofia Venter: died 24 August 1902, aged two. Dit is de Weg die ons allen is op gelegt' (this is the path that lies before us all). The names are the names of Boer history: Pretorius, Bezuidenhout, Potgieter. The cemetery's black marble monument was unveiled in 1942, when South African troops were fighting the Germans on the distant north shore of the continent. Some of those who now rule South Africa were then detained or under surveillance, as declared admirers of the more perfect 'Konsentrasiekamp' system of the Third Reich.
Review, 2930 words
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