Three days had passed, but Deneys Reitz was still distraught. It was 16 December 1900, Dingane’s Day, the commemoration of the Boer triumph over the Zulus at Blood River. At last there was something to celebrate. They had won a victory at Nooitgedacht, but he was still tormented by the image of a British soldier with half of his head blown off. The memory continued to haunt him. It had been his bullet, his dum-dum. In Warmbaths he had put a few of them in a separate slot in his cartridge belt to use for shooting game. But this had slipped his mind, and in the heat of battle he had unwittingly loaded one. And this was exactly where General Beyers and Dominee Kriel were intending to erect a new monument. Everyone was to lay a single stone to form a large cairn of remembrance, like the one in Paardekraal, which Roberts had later removed. Reitz didn’t care for the idea.
The victory at Nooitgedacht had been a memorable one. The Boers had launched an attack for the first time in almost a year. While they had been unsuccessful at Platrand, south of Ladysmith, on 6 January 1900, this time they pressed on. Beyers’s commando, among them Reitz and the rest of the Afrikander Cavalry, had forced the decision. It had been uphill, on top of it, in the half-light of dawn, storming the entrenched Northumberland Fusiliers, screaming and shooting, deflecting bayonets with the butts of their rifles. They suffered heavy casualties, around 20 dead and 60 wounded. The British lost almost 100, with the same number captured.
After seizing the British fortifications, Beyers had sent Krause and his Afrikander Cavalry to comb the mountain ridge. Reitz had been with them, of course. They had run into a division of Imperial Yeomanry making their way up, and wiped out the entire unit of 20 or 30 men—including that solitary soldier, who had suddenly appeared a short distance away.
Then they had returned to the top. It was seven o’clock in the morning, the battle at Nooitgedacht was as good as decided. Beforehand, the generals in charge—De la Rey, Smuts and Beyers—had planned to launch surprise attacks on the British army camp at the foot of the mountain and the reinforced positions on the slopes simultaneously. They had failed at the camp, because the Boers’ advance guard had been detected too soon, but the success of Beyers and his men had made up for it. Having eliminated their adversaries, they now opened fire on the army camp below, leaving the officer in command, Major-General R.A.P. Clements, no option but to beat a hasty retreat.
At that point, Beyers’s men began to descend as well. On the way down, Reitz came upon the soldier he had shot at close range. Only then did he see the damage his bullet had caused. He was speechless with horror. He grabbed his cartridge belt, found a few more dum-dums and flung them into the river. It was red with blood. He turned and fled downhill.
On his path he met two wounded British officers. It was like stepping onto another planet. They casually struck up a conversation with him. Did he speak English? Good. Then could he explain why the Boers were still fighting the war when it was clear that they would lose? As if he had rehearsed it, a passage from David Copperfield flashed through Reitz’s mind. ‘Oh, well, you see, we’re like Mr. Micawber, we are waiting for something to turn up.’ The officers laughed heartily. ‘Didn’t I tell you this is a funny country, and now here’s your typical young Boer quoting Dickens.’
The British army camp offered more distractions. Beyers had ordered his commandos to pursue Clements’s retreating troops, but they thought otherwise. The spoils were better than anything they had seen in a long time and the temptation was too great. Besides, what were they to do with even more prisoners? They were in any case always released after a few days. Reitz saw no harm in plundering; it was pure necessity, they had to replenish their provisions. Both he and his brother Arend found plenty among the camp’s abundant supplies: two extra horses with saddles and halters, a new Lee-Metford rifle each, with ammunition, to replace their battered Mausers, as well as tea, coffee, salt, sugar, food, clothing and books, all of which had become luxuries.
Still, his conscience was troubling him. Reitz decided not to attend the ceremony on Dingane’s Day. De la Rey, Smuts and Beyers addressed the gathering of burghers. The first two recalled the Battle of Blood River in 1838 and the Voortrekkers’ pledge before their victory over the Zulus. Beyers talked about the importance of commemorating the event, especially now, when the Boers were being put to the test and it was all too easy to succumb to weakness. The pledge was repeated in a ceremony led by Dominee Kriel, and everyone laid stones to form a cairn.
Except Deneys Reitz. How could he have stood there and quoted Dickens as if nothing was wrong? He had thought long and hard about what he had done. It hadn’t been intentional, but he needed to justify it. What difference did it make if you shot someone with an explosive bullet or blew them to smithereens with a lyddite shell, as people were doing all the time in this war? Dead is dead, Master Copperfield. Even so, he wouldn’t feel comfortable laying a stone.42
Piet de Wet thought it was time to do more. It was 11 December 1900, more than four months had passed since he surrendered, and the situation had only deteriorated. There was wholesale destruction, complete districts had been razed, the country was falling to pieces. The guerrilla raids had to stop. From Durban, where he had been living in self-imposed exile, he requested and obtained Kitchener’s permission to return to Kroonstad. He had an idea for a peace initiative. On the way, he stopped off in Johannesburg. It had come to his knowledge that his sister-in-law Cornelia was staying there. Perhaps he could reason with her and she could persuade Christiaan to abandon the struggle. The very thought was naive. Cornelia showed him the door and asked the military commandant to order her brother-in-law to ‘refrain from further visits in the future’. In that case, he would have to deal with the problem himself head-on.
Piet de Wet wasn’t the only one who wanted to see the war over and done with. Many others had tried to intervene in the preceding months, and in December 1900 they began to form organised groups. In several towns and cities prominent hensoppers, including former members of the Volksraad, were forming peace committees. Piet de Wet became the chairman of the local committee in Kroonstad. Meyer de Kock was the leading light in the Transvaal Colony. Kitchener refused to negotiate with them. Britain had no intention of abandoning the struggle and there was no chance of foreign intervention: that’s what they could tell the Boer fighters in the field. And they did. In late December the committees sent out scores of representatives to try to persuade them to lay down their arms.43
They spread the same message through newspapers and pamphlets. Piet de Wet, for instance, wrote to his brother Christiaan on 11 January 1901. Soon afterwards, his letter appeared in the Bloemfontein Post, and subsequently as a pamphlet called Brother to Brother. The introduction said it all. ‘Dear Brother, I have heard that you are angry and would kill me because you believe me to be guilty of treason.’ He proceeded to discuss the accusation that he had been bought off by the British, and replied quite simply, ‘God will judge righteously.’ But he also had something to say in reply. If his brother and Steyn continued the war, the people would be ‘impoverished, as many already are’. They would ultimately become ‘the country’s labouring class and disappear as a nation’. And what for? ‘Are you blind?’ Was Christiaan really unable to see that he was ‘being deceived by the Transvaal generals and burghers’? They had not ‘fought a tenth of the battle that we Free Staters are fighting. The Transvaal is nowhere near as ravaged as the Free State.’ And the Transvaal generals had long been wanting to surrender, ‘but are waiting to see what you do. They will give up the moment you surrender, fall or are captured. I beg you to consider this all before you go any further.’44
His heartfelt appeal didn’t have the effect he had hoped for. Christiaan de Wet ignored the letter, in any event publicly. He is said to have threatened to shoot his younger brother if he came anywhere near him. Piet de Wet didn’t lose hope. He directed his efforts to like-minded people in the Cape Colony. The high commissioner, Milner, expected little to come of them, but gave his consent. In February 1901 De Wet went to Cape Town, accompanied by members of several other peace committees in the Orange River Colony. First he spoke to T.P. Theron, the president of the Afrikaner Bond, and subsequently to influential church ministers, but all to no avail.
The party also visited the prisoner-of-war camp in Green Point, an encounter that did bear fruit. For one thing, it sowed unrest among the Boer prisoners. Some reviled Piet de Wet and his companions, others were more receptive to their message of peace. At any rate, that is how it seemed, though few dared to speak openly. Moreover, De Wet noted, there were Boers among them who had voluntarily laid down their arms and who could therefore not be deemed prisoners of war. After the visit he urged Milner to establish a second camp in order to separate the ‘good’ prisoners from the ‘bad’. Milner was in favour and proceeded to do so, notwithstanding Kitchener’s reservation. A ‘peace camp’ was opened in Simonstown in March 1901, to which 800 prisoners—those who had accepted British rule—were transferred. Those who refused to do so could be sent to camps overseas.45
So Piet de Wet did achieve something, which was more than the other peacemakers could say. Even the venerable Marthinus Pretorius had got nowhere. The 81-year-old former president of both republics, and founder (in 1855) of Pretoria (named after his Voortrekker father, Andries), visited Louis Botha in January 1901, at his own initiative, according to Kitchener. He left empty-handed, with the message that Botha wasn’t prepared to talk to intermediaries. If Kitchener had something to say, he should say it himself, in writing.
But at least the elderly Pretorius returned safely from his mission. A few others were less fortunate. Johannes Morgendaal and his father-inlaw, Andries Wessels, were prosperous Free State Boers. Morgendaal was a justice of the peace and a scribe for the Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk. Wessels was a member of the Volksraad. These were men of standing in Kroonstad and its environs. Having lost faith in further resistance, they set off for Christiaan de Wet’s camp towards the end of December 1900. On the way, they were arrested and tried. A court martial under General Stoffel Froneman referred their case to a higher court. Pending their hearing, they were taken along with Christiaan de Wet’s commando, as prisoners. Froneman had been instructed to keep them under close watch.
On 9 January 1901 things went wrong. Early in the morning a scout reported—mistakenly, as it later transpired—that the British were approaching. Froneman ordered Morgendaal to help span the oxen. Morgendaal took no notice. ‘I’m not a Hottentot,’ he said. Froneman set on him with his sjambok. Morgendaal managed to wrest the whip from his hands and a fight ensued. Christiaan de Wet, watching from a distance, yelled ‘Shoot the motherfucker’, or words to that effect. Froneman fired, and fatally wounded Morgendaal. The following day the court martial convened to try his father-in-law. The 15 officers, chaired by De Wet, pronounced Wessels guilty of treason and sentenced him to death. He owed his life to President Steyn, who commuted the penalty.
Schalk Burger, the acting president of the Transvaal, was less lenient in the case of Meyer de Kock, who was arrested on 23 January 1901 and brought to trial a week later. He was tried on four counts: evasion of commando duties and surrendering arms to the enemy, conspiring with the enemy, possession of incriminating documents belonging to the peace committee he chaired, and attempting to incite civilians to surrender. He, too, was found guilty of treason. The difference was that Burger refused to grant clemency and signed the court judgment. On 12 February De Kock was executed by firing squad.46
Methodical. If there was one quality by which Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, the British commander-in-chief in South Africa, wanted to distinguish himself from his predecessor, it was his rigorous pursuit of his objectives. Obsessively rigorous, critics said, and ultimately self-defeating, as when, on a previous occasion, he had centralised the transport system and earned himself the nickname K of Chaos.47
Kitchener saw things differently. The problem was the way orders were being carried out, and that could only be solved by more stringent measures. The same applied to the way they were dealing with guerrilla fighters. This, too, needed to be more systematic. Lord Roberts had issued one proclamation after another and provided for appropriate reprisals, but it had still ended up in random acts of terror. It all had to be more efficient, like clockwork.
On 7 December 1900, at the end of his first week in office, he gave the first sign of what was to come. He issued a memorandum with new instructions for columns crossing the highveld. It wasn’t about destroying farms or other property so much as ‘denuding the country of supplies and livestock’. This served two purposes. It enabled the columns to provide for their needs and it deprived the enemy of all means of subsistence. So the first step was to remove or destroy livestock and food supplies.
Two weeks later Kitchener announced the second step: people. On 21 December he sent a confidential circular to all high-ranking officers. In order to end the guerrilla war all non-combatant civilians were to be removed from areas where Boer commandos were active. This would prevent anyone from assisting or communicating with the fighting men, whether by choice or under coercion. They would be left to fend for themselves, without logistical or moral support.
The uprooted communities were to be housed in camps in their own district, in the vicinity of a railway line to facilitate supply transports. In the process, they were to be divided into two categories: firstly, those who had voluntarily laid down their arms, along with their families, and secondly, the families of men who were still active in the struggle. It went without saying that the first category were to receive preferential treatment in the camps. Their property rights were to be respected and they were to be given priority, if necessary, when it came to accommodation and rations: better tents and more food.
A separate section of the circular dealt with the black population. The aim was not ‘to clear kaffir locations’ as such. But Africans living on Boer properties, as servants or otherwise, were also to be removed, along with their livestock. They could keep their possessions, if at all practicable. In the camps they were to be given adequate protection. They could also be employed to perform any necessary work, at the prevailing ‘tariff for natives’.48
This was all to be carried out systematically: depopulating the region by obliterating all signs of life and returning the earth to a state of barren wilderness. This was Kitchener’s policy resolution for the year 1901, his Christmas greeting for the twentieth century. The operation began in the eastern Transvaal at the end of January. Eight columns, more than 20,000 troops, set off under Major-General French to flush out Botha and his commandos and strip the whole region of humans, animals and crops. The commanding officers were to keep records of the ‘proceeds’, or what Kitchener called ‘bags’.
Deneys Reitz was still serving with General Beyers’s commando but they had left the Magaliesberg and were heading east. Botha had summoned them to Ermelo. One day he saw the assembled British columns approaching, filling the horizon as far as the eye could see. It came as a terrible shock. Beyers divided his men into two groups. The first went off to locate the enemy’s left flank. The other, which included Deneys and his brother Arend, were to delay their advance.
They saw at once how the British went about their task. Pillars of smoke rose up behind them. From fleeing women he heard that the British were destroying everything in their path and arresting everyone they encountered. Crops too rain-sodden to burn were trampled by cattle. The following day brought a stampede of people fleeing from the columns. ‘The plain was alive with wagons, carts, and vehicles of all descriptions, laden with women and children.’ Horses, cattle and sheep were being ‘hurried onward by native herdboys’, with farms and haystacks burning behind them. Botha directed the refugees to Swaziland, across the border, to escape from the British.
In the meantime, the Boer fighters were recovering from their initial shock. They noticed that the British were unable to maintain a continuous front. ‘The troops were left groping about after the elusive Boer forces, which easily evaded the lumbering columns plodding through the mud far in the rear.’ The army’s new strategy of obliterating everything in their path did little to dent the morale of the Boers in the field, Deneys Reitz noted. On the contrary, it only strengthened their resolve to keep fighting.49
Emily Hobhouse enjoyed the train journey through the Karoo more than Willem and Louise Leyds had done in their day, or Winston Churchill just over a year before.50 And this in spite of its not being the best time of year. Sandstorms and thunderstorms followed one another in a seemingly endless cycle. The sandstorms were the worst. Even with the doors and windows closed, her coupé was covered in a layer of red dust. It penetrated her eyes, her ears, her hair; it covered everything like a tablecloth. Yet there was something extraordinary about this pristine wilderness—the wide open spaces, the flowing lines, the infinite sky. The following stretch, from Colesberg, was bleaker. Formerly the Orange Free State, it was now the Orange River Colony. Well, this really was a desolate, depressing landscape. It had once flourished, as anyone could see, but now it was deserted and lifeless, strewn with the corpses of horses and cattle, burned and abandoned farms, litter everywhere, no one tending the land. And no Boer commandos to be seen, unfortunately. There wasn’t a soul on the entire journey except bored British soldiers, cadging for newspapers and books.
The soldiers were everywhere. She had found them disquieting when she arrived in Bloemfontein on 24 January 1901. You couldn’t move an inch without their permission; identity checks were carried out on every street corner. It was oppressive and she could imagine how the locals must have felt. It was a good thing that she had the letter of introduction from Milner. The town’s military governor, Major-General G.T. Pretyman, knew she was coming and granted her permission to visit the women’s camp whenever it suited her.
Hobhouse couldn’t wait. The next day she was standing at the entrance. It was a tent camp only a few kilometres from Bloemfontein, out in the veld, just like that. Not a tree, no shade at all anywhere for the 2000 women and children, plus a handful of men—hensoppers. Where to begin? The sister of a woman she had met in Cape Town was said to be here, a Mrs Botha. She would look her up first. She found her sweltering in one of the thin canvas tents, with her five children and a native servant. Each had a blanket, nothing more, no beds, no chairs, no table, only a small chest to store food.
Other women came to the tent, with more shocking details. When it rained, the tents flooded. Many children were ill. There was a separate tent for people with measles. More and more were dying. As they were speaking, Hobhouse noticed a snake slither into the tent, a puffadder, the women said, quite poisonous. While they went for help, Hobhouse attacked it with her parasol. Just imagine that happening at night, when everyone was asleep on the ground. Hobhouse wasn’t able to drive it away, but the women returned with a man, who killed the snake with a hammer.
Hobhouse had seen and heard enough to form a first impression. What a disgrace! She would talk to the person in charge of the camps, Major R.B. Cray. As they spoke, their roles were reversed and in the end it was Cray who complained to her. He had no resources: no money, no equipment, no transport. He was at his wits’ end. Perhaps she had connections who would be willing to help. She did at least have her trucks half-filled with food supplies and clothing. But it was a drop in the ocean. Far more was needed. In the first place, a separate tent for the deceased awaiting burial, who at present were left in their living quarters. More clean water—the water obtained from the Modder River contained typhoid bacteria. Insufficient wood was available to boil it. Milk and soap were in short supply. Schooling for the hundreds of children in the camp. Protection for the women: many soldiers were present in the camp. A bilingual woman director.
Cray appreciated her recommendations. However, he took ill a few days later, leaving the camp without a commander. His temporary replacement, Captain Hume, was indifferent to the suffering of his charges. He was not the kind of man Hobhouse could work with.
Hobhouse described the conditions in a lengthy letter to her aunt Mary, which was delivered by an acquaintance in order to bypass the censors. The camps were ‘murder to the children’. Fifty people, mostly children, had died in the preceding six or seven weeks. If nothing was done, the mortality rate would increase. And this was only one of the camps. As far as she knew, tens of thousands of Boer women and children were incarcerated. And they weren’t refugees who were there for their own safety, as the authorities claimed. They were prisoners, she said, detained against their will. Indeed, the whole of Bloemfontein was a prison of sorts. She had seen Mrs Steyn, the president’s wife, in the street on several occasions, always tailed by a soldier with a bayonet on his rifle. She had also heard about a separate camp for Africans, which evidently held about 500 prisoners.
Couldn’t her aunt write a letter to The Times? Lord Hobhouse, a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, was a man of high standing and Lady Hobhouse was influential in her own right. Could they make an appeal to the conscience of the British people? The lives of women and children were at stake. Word had it that Kitchener was intending to denude the whole of the highveld. They had already started in the Transvaal. Many more women and children would be sent to the camps as a result. Whether it was true or not, she couldn’t say. Nor could she confirm the rumour that Christiaan de Wet, apparently heading south with 4000 men, had passed within 25 kilometres of Bloemfontein on the night of 31 January 1901. In any event, 7000 soldiers had been sent to pursue them. Hopefully he would escape this time, too.51
De Wet was indeed on his way to the Cape Colony again, not with 4000 but 3000 men. The rest of the account was true. It was also true that the British columns were close on his heels, as usual, and as usual they had arrived just too late. He had gone his own way again, regardless of Botha and Smuts’s plans. They had wanted to discuss the possibility of a joint action with De Wet, but he hadn’t responded to their invitation. He had more faith in the letters that had come in from his own officers. Assistant Chief Commandant Hertzog, Commandant Kritzinger and Captain Scheepers had been operating in the Cape since December 1900 and were optimistic about the mood among the Afrikaners. De Wet just needed to appear in person, they said, to unleash a mass uprising. In addition, the recent wave of destruction carried out by British troops demanded some form of reprisal, and President Steyn would like to see something done on or around 14 February 1901, exactly a year after Roberts’s invasion of the Orange Free State.
This encouraged De Wet to try again. The main problem was that the British knew about his plan and were desperate to stop him. Kitchener had even withdrawn two columns from his ‘dragnet operation’ in the eastern Transvaal to go after him, while extra troops were being transferred by train to the border area in order to apprehend him there. His only advantage was that no one knew where he was planning to cross the Orange, whether he was on the east or the west side of the Bloemfontein–Cape Town railway line. He had made his previous attempt in the east, in November 1900, and he was heading in the same direction again. Or, rather, he had sent out his generals, Froneman and Fourie, with large contingents of men to give the British that impression. The ruse was successful. De Wet and a smaller unit, which included Steyn and the rest of the government, set off in the opposite direction. On 10 February 1901 they crossed the Orange at Sand Drift, about 60 kilometres west of the railway. He had finally reached the Cape Colony.
But what to do now? They had covered more than 400 kilometres since leaving the northern Orange Free State and the journey had taken its toll. Hundreds of men, afraid of what was to come, had dropped out on the way. All told, there weren’t many more than 2000 men left. They had lost some of their horses, and those that remained were worn out. And good grazing turned out to be scarce in the Cape. Locusts had eaten the grass. It rained incessantly, but that didn’t solve the problem. In the circumstances, De Wet decided it would be wise to wait for those who had remained behind, particularly Fourie’s men.
It was a huge gamble, because the area they were in was cut off by railway lines on three sides. If the British acted quickly, they could destroy the advantage that De Wet’s diversionary tactic had given them. And that is exactly what happened. Combat troops brought in by train blocked De Wet’s route. He couldn’t continue south and penetrate deeper into the Cape Colony. Only a small contingent of about 50 men led by Lieutenant Wynand Malan managed to get through. De Wet and his main force had no option but to go west. There, too, a railway line obstructed their path, but they managed to cross it under cover of darkness. It meant riding or, more accurately, struggling all through the night: the last stretch was marshland. It was hard enough to negotiate in normal conditions, but after the downpours of the preceding few days it was gruelling. The water came up to their saddles, the mud to their knees. Their horses were exhausted and could hardly move. The men had to dismount and lead them by their reins—and leave behind the many that collapsed. Getting the wagons through was almost impossible. They managed to transport the few guns they had with them, using up to 50 oxen for each one. The wagons with munitions and maize meal were, however, hopelessly stranded. Even the invincible De Wet was close to despair. He left Fourie behind with 100 men to make a last attempt to save their supplies. If they didn’t succeed, they were to blow them up before the British arrived. He and his main force continued on their way.
By first light—it was 15 February—they crossed the railway line. A few kilometres further, they found grass for the horses and sheep for the men to slaughter. It was a relief after their ordeal in the night. But it hadn’t really been worthwhile. Covered in mud, the men looked like scarecrows. More than 200 horses had died, and they had heard gunfire in the distance. They had lost their wagons and supplies as well. There was little time to catch their breath. The British were on their way. The following day De Wet decided to press on, leaving the 300 men on foot to make their way back to the Free State on their own. However, their pursuers were approaching rapidly, so they continued walking with the rest, carrying their rifles, saddles and blankets over their shoulders. The route south was still obstructed, so De Wet veered off to the north-west.
On 19 February he found himself back at the Orange, at the point where the Brak River joins it from the south. He had been in a similar situation before. They would have to cross the Brak to go further into the Cape, or the Orange in order to return. But the torrential rains had swollen both rivers and flooded the drifts, and the British were right behind him. The fact was inescapable: De Wet was marooned. With a heavy heart, he decided to call off the mission and at least try to save their lives. Under cover of darkness he followed the Orange upstream, leading his men past their British pursuers, hoping to find an opportunity to cross the river to the Orange Free State.
It was almost impossible. All the drifts they passed were still too deep. They spent more than a week trudging along the south bank of the Orange. Even Sand Drift, where they had entered the Cape Colony, was impassable. There, however, they met both Fourie’s and Hertzog’s commandos, which had been active in the western Cape since mid-December. The reinforcement was welcome, as the British had not yet given up hope of surrounding De Wet. On 16 February Kitchener had come to De Aar in person, to coordinate the operation. No fewer than 12 columns had assembled in the vicinity of Colesberg. But De Wet was in luck. The fifteenth drift they reached—Botha’s Drift—was shallow enough for them to cross. This time the name was auspicious. On 28 February 1901 the Free State commandos crossed the Orange. The men were overjoyed to be back on their own territory. The British troops continued to hunt them down, driven by frustration more than by anything else. On 11 March they were forced to acknowledge that they had failed yet again. For the third time, Christiaan de Wet had eluded a massive manhunt.
Another miraculous escape earned him a reputation as the elusive Boer Pimpernel—and rightly so. De Wet was a brilliant tactician, a master of the unexpected manoeuvre, a wizard at taking his adversaries by surprise. As a strategist, he was a loose cannon. His actions had done nothing to improve the chances of the Boers successfully invading the Cape Colony and a subsequent uprising among the Afrikaners living there. On the contrary, through his wilfulness, his impatience and his failure to make adequate preparations, he not only shot himself in the foot, but Botha and Smuts as well.
This is not to say that a joint action by Transvalers and Free Staters—the Cyferfontein variant, carefully planned and executed—would have accomplished what they wanted. But it would definitely have made things more difficult for the British. The way things had gone now, their limited incursions had given the British ample opportunity to take precautions. By declaring martial law and requisitioning arms, munitions, horses and food supplies in the sensitive regions, the British had deprived the invading Boers and their potential supporters of vital resources. The uprising in the Cape Colony, the great ambition for the Boers and the worst nightmare for the British, had been forestalled for the time being.52