Fire in the Sky: The Destruction of the Orange Free State, 1899-1902/The Great Escape of the Boer Pimpernel, Christiaan de Wet: The Making of a Legend

Owen Coetzer. Fire in the Sky: The Destruction of the Orange Free State, 1899-1902. Weltevreden Park, South Africa: Covos-Day Books, 2000. xvi + 338 pp. Photographs. Map. Appendixes. Bibliography. Index. R120.00. Paper.

Fransjohan Pretorius. The Great Escape of the Boer Pimpernel, Christiaan de Wet: The Making of a Legend. Translated and adapted by Stephen Hofstätter, assisted by Wilhelm Snyman. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 2001. xvi + 240 pp. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Bibliography. Index. $29.95. Cloth.

These two works are examples of the Janus face of war in turn-of-the-century South Africa, reflecting the pity (Coetzer) and glory (Pretorius) of the Second Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. With the centenary of that war, there has been a revived interest in the conflict, expressed in a spate of academic conferences reevaluating previous interpretations, in battle reenactments, in the restoration of monuments and battlefields, and in the recognition of the many bit players in that war whose contributions have hitherto been ignored or marginalized. As Anna-Karin Evaldsson and André Wessels of the University of the Free State have pointed out ("The Anglo-Boer War Centennial: A Critical Evaluation," Journal for Contemporary History [Bloemfontein] 27, no. 3 [December 2002]: 124-44), all the participating groups in that war have been accorded full recognition except for those Afrikaners from the two republics (the South African Republic [Transvaal] and the Orange Free State) who bolted from the cause by surrendering early in the war (the "hands-uppers") and those who joined forces with the British ("the joiners"). In the same article, the authors estimate, incidentally, that the centenary generated in the neighborhood of two hundred books and one hundred academic essays.

Owen Coetzer, a seasoned South African journalist, has attempted to deal with the sad, and long-remembered, part of the war in the Orange Free State. The scorched earth and population resettlement policies of the British military forces can be considered components of counterinsurgency warfare against a tactically skilled and tenacious enemy. Although the British were roundly condemned in many circles for what Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, a prominent Liberal and future prime minister, called (in his speech of June 14, 1901, to the National Reform Union in London) "methods of barbarism," it was not the first time these methods had been applied. Indeed, Coetzer points out that President William McKinley, in his message to Congress in 1898, excoriated the Spanish general Weyland for his forced relocation and scorched earth policies in Cuba as an antidote to guerrilla warfare. The same charge could be applied to the U. S. Army in its campaign against the Navajos, as depicted in Lynn R. Bailey's The Long Walk: A History of the Navajo War, 1846-68 (Westernlore Press, 1988). Indeed, Bailey uses the terms "scorched earth" (165) and "concentration camp" (226) in his narrative. Visitors to the Canyon de Chelly National Monument in the Arizona portion of the tristate Navajo reservation are tactfully reminded by their Navajo guides of that lamentable part of history, a history that has striking parallels with the Afrikaners' experiences in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.

What is so unusual about Coetzer's book, which revisits old topics in a fresh manner, is the way in which he quotes at considerable length from official British command papers (presented to Parliament) and then proffers comments and observations drawn from less well-known sources to corroborate or refute the claims in these published documents. Many of the sources he utilizes are testimonials by Afrikaners who lived in the various relocation centers (commonly termed "concentration camps" but without the pejorative meaning that the term subsequently acquired in the German Third Reich). He has availed himself of the original Afrikaans sources, many of which are located in the Museum of the Boer Republics in Bloemfontein, translated them, and placed them within the context of the more readily available official published British sources.

Like the Navajos of Canyon de Chelly, he feels compelled to revisit the past, with all its shame and horrors, and he points to the work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as preparing the ground for the painful journey through the history of the Orange Free State. Coetzer postulates a direct causal link between the British scorched earth and concentration camp policies and the recrudescence of Afrikaner nationalism which, in turn, led into the noxious apartheid policy. If nothing else, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has underscored the importance of the politics of memory, which may, under remarkable circumstances, be tempered by formal and informal acts of expiation and forgiveness. Coetzer pays careful attention to the efforts of Emily Hobhouse, a Briton who worked tirelessly to ease the burden of internment for the women and children of the British camps, often in opposition to the rigidity of the British military authorities in South Africa. Her widely acknowledged and appreciated work illustrates the significance of what might now be termed humanitarian NGOs in attenuating the sufferings of noncombatants in war. Hobhouse was assisted by a group of British women, termed the Concentration Camp Commission, who represented more of an establishment position; Coetzer deftly juxtaposes their somewhat jejune reports on the condition of the camps and the pungent ones of Hobhouse. Nevertheless, a total of nearly twenty-eight thousand Afrikaner women and children, along with large numbers of Africans, perished in these camps. Particularly helpful are Coetzer's appendixes, which provide detailed accounts of living and sanitary conditions in many of the concentration camps in the Orange Free State, as well as his personal observations about the relics and sites of the war in that formerly independent Boer republic. The index is adequate, but the bibliography is somewhat skimpy, occasionally omitting important details, and there is only one map in the entire book. Even though the forty-eight photographs are very apposite-and sometimes chilling-more detailed maps as well as a chronology would have been of inestimable help to the novice.