Centenary celebrations for the Anglo-Boer War will be held next month, reports Aaron Nicodemus
Cynics say the winners rewrite history. Can changing the name of the Anglo-Boer War give blacks their rightful place in a white man’s war?
The government will officially rename the war “The Anglo-Boer South African War” at a ceremony in the Free State next month. The renaming comes at the beginning of centennial remembrances, for which most monuments and activities are focused on the role of whites.
The new name was created in the spirit of inclusivity, and to remind the country of blacks’ involvement in the conflict. More than 100 0000 blacks participated in the war, including up to 19 000 who died in concentration camps and thousands more who died on battlefields.
On October 10, Deputy President Jacob Zuma will lay a wreath on 60 recently discovered graves of blacks who died during the war. The ceremony, which will take place outside Brandfort, is part of the government’s “strategic intervention” to focus attention on blacks’ forgotten role, and to prevent right-wing Afrikaner groups from monopolising commemorations of the war’s 100th anniversary.
“We’re attempting to redress the entire spectrum of history and heritage, especially in those areas that have been forgotten or ignored,” says Professor Musa Xulu, deputy director of the Ministry of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. The ministry is building an information centre and walkway outside Brandfort to remember 4 000 blacks interred in a concentration camp nearby.
“This is not government trying to rewrite history. It was a war that affected everybody in South Africa, and should be remembered that way,” Xulu says.
Even 100 years later, the war produces passion on all sides. While “The Anglo- Boer War” has long been its established name, it has taken on others. Some Afrikaners refer to the conflict simply as “The Boer War”. Black South Africans have called it “The South African War”. Among Afrikaners in the northern Transvaal, the war has been dubbed “The Second War of Independence”.
“It’s quite an awkward name,” says historian Luli Callinicos. “But the established name doesn’t resonate well with black people, who view this as a war between two white settler groups over land that didn’t belong to them anyway.”
Professor Fransjohan Pretorius of the University of Pretoria says no name will satisfy everyone. “Practically, it’s a long name. None of these names is really a solution, but we have to recognise Africans’ role in the war. We’re really no closer to a solution to what the name should be, nor will we ever be.”
Pretorius wrote a book on the war in 1986 called The Anglo-Boer War. When the book was republished last year, he proposed renaming it The South African War. But his publishers balked, saying a book so named would not sell. “I’m not sure if it was money, or simply the practical situation, that talked,” he said. “And calling it The Three Years’ War just won’t sell.”
History Professor Jabu Maphalala of the University of Zululand calls the new name “a compromise that has nothing much to do with history”. He says it is important to note the price blacks paid in a war that was supposed to be between “civilised” white combatants, without involving “savages and kaffirs”. But in its execution, the war involved everyone. “I think under the present circumstances of nation building, it is the best way to go,” Maphalala says.
Those involved with the centennial preparations are less willing to sing the new name’s praises.
“If the government says it’s the name, it’s their function to do that,” says Leon de Beer, executive director of the Anglo-Boer War Foundation. “I’m not a historian or academic, and I don’t pretend to be.”
War Museum director Colonel Kurt Jacobs says The Anglo-Boer War is the accepted academic name, and that’s the one he prefers. “But the new name certainly is more inclusive, and that has been something we have tried to promote,” he says. Blacks are “certainly a neglected part of the war’s history”, and if renaming the war serves to include their sacrifices, Jacobs says: “I’m not going to take up argument with it.”
The ceremony outside Brandfort will be part of a three-day commemoration of blacks’ role in the war, including the unveiling of a map of all the concentration camps, black and Afrikaner, in the area. Zuma will also preside over a function the following day in Mafikeng, where black heroes of the siege will be remembered.
The ceremony itself is controversial. Black concentration camps have been largely ignored in the war’s history. Many Afrikaners resent the idea that their ancestors’ suffering in the camps could have been matched or even surpassed by blacks. The new information centre’s location is also being questioned, as some in Brandfort say the black graves hold labourers who died in the two decades following the war.
Historians studying British war documents have found evidence of a large black concentration camp several kilometres away from the site for the information centre. But those involved with the building of the centre say its exact location is not important. Its location is surrounded by evidence of black suffering in the war, Xulu says.
“We’re starting to redress the entire spectrum of history and heritage, but this is just the beginning,” he says. “We’re highlighting that black people died, and that’s what is important.”