scholarly journals Spirituality and the memorialisation of the dead of the Durban Concentration Camps during the South African War (1899-1902) – a micro history

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Wassermann
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
New South ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
The South ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
South African War ◽  
The Dead

In this article, the spirituality and the memorialisation of the dead of the Durban Concentration Camps during the South African War (1899-1902) are analysed diachronically. As a study in micro-history, primary and secondary sources were used. Four clear memorialisation events were recognised: external British Imperial memorisation by means of obelisks that spiritually honoured Empire; Afrikaner Christian Nationalist memorisation that celebrated symbolic victory over the British Empire; rededication of the memorials in the inclusive spirit of the ‘new’ South Africa; and the partial abandonment of physical memorisation for remembering and honouring the dead in a virtual world. Each of these events offered its own seen and unseen forms of spirituality and understanding.

scholarly journals Putting it into Practice: Using Feminist Fractured Foundationalism in Researching Children in the Concentration Camps of the South African War

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Stanley ◽  
Sue Wise
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Writing Process ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
The South ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Joint Research ◽  
South African War ◽  
Joint Research Project ◽  
Official Records

Feminist fractured foundationalism has been developed over a series of collaborative writings as a combined epistemology and methodology, although it has mainly been discussed in epistemological terms. It was operationalised as a methodology in a joint research project in South Africa concerned with investigating two important ways that the experiences of children in the South African War 1899-1902, in particular in the concentration camps established during its commando and ‘scorched earth’ phase, were represented contemporaneously: in the official records, and in photography. The details of the research and writing process involved are provided around discussion of the nine strategies that compose feminist fractured foundationalism and its strengths and limitations in methodological terms are reviewed.

An Imperfect Occupation

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Boje
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
The South ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Black Africans ◽  
Sensitive Analysis ◽  
British Occupation ◽  
South African War ◽  
The Will

The South African War (1899–1902), also called the Boer War and Anglo-Boer War, began as a conventional conflict. It escalated into a savage irregular war fought between the two Boer republics and a British imperial force that adopted a scorched-earth policy and used concentration camps to break the will of Afrikaner patriots and Boer guerrillas. This book delves into the agonizing choices faced by Winburg district residents during the British occupation. Afrikaner men fought or evaded combat or collaborated; Afrikaner women fled over the veld or submitted to life in the camps; and black Africans weighed the life or death consequences of taking sides. The book’s sensitive analysis showcases the motives, actions, and reactions of Boers and Africans alike as initial British accommodation gave way to ruthlessness. Challenging notions of Boer unity and homogeneity, the book illustrates the precarious tightrope of resistance, neutrality, and collaboration walked by people on all sides. It also reveals how the repercussions of the War’s transformative effect on Afrikaner identity plays out in today’s South Africa. The book provides a dramatic account of the often overlooked aspects of one of the first “modern” wars.

New South African Review 3: The second phase – tragedy or farce? (John Daniel, Prishani Naidoo, Devan Pillay and Roger Southall, eds)

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Kotzé
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
New South ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
The South ◽  
Negotiated Settlement ◽  
The Third ◽  
Direct Competition

As the title indicates this publication is the third issue in a series of reviews. The first issue was subtitled 2010: Development or decline? (2010) and the second was New paths, old promises? (2011). These publications are edited in the Department of Sociology at Wits University as part of its Strategic Planning and Allocation of Resources Committee (SPARC) Programme. The series is intended to be a revival of the South African Review edited by the South African Research Service and published by Ravan Press in the 1980s and early 1990s. Arguably one of the best known of these series was issue seven edited by Steven Friedman and Doreen Atkinson, The Small Miracle: South Africa's negotiated settlement (1994). The latest publication should also be seen as direct competition for the Human Sciences Research Council's (HSRC) regular publication, State of the Nation. The New South African Review 3 is organised into four parts, namely Party, Power and Class; Ecology, Economy and Labour; Public Policy and Social Practice; and South Africa at Large. The four editors introduce each of the sections, consisting of 16 chapters in total. Thebook's format appears to be that of a yearbook but it is not linked to a specific year. It is therefore not in the same category as for example the South African Institute of Race Relations' annual South Africa Survey. The Review is organised around a theme, albeit very general in its formulation, and in the case of the third issue it is also not applicable to all its chapters. At the same time, though, it is not a yearbook as the choice of chapters and their foci are on the latest developments. 

South Africa and Scotland in the First World War

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hyslop
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
British Empire ◽  
The South ◽  
Political Identities ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Battle Of The Somme ◽  
First World

This chapter discusses the powerful and long-lasting impact Scottish military symbolism on the formation of military culture in South Africa. Drawing on the work of John MacKenzie and Jonathan Hyslop’s notion of ‘military Scottishness’, this chapter analyses how Scottish identity both interacted with the formation of political identities in South Africa, and ‘looped back’ to connect with changing forms of national identity in Scotland itself. In particular, it addresses how the South Africans’ heroic role at Delville Wood, during the Battle of the Somme, became a putative symbol of this racialised ‘South Africanism’. The South African Brigade included a battalion of so-called ‘South African Scottish’ which reflected the phenomenon of military Scottishness. Overall, the chapter looks at the way in which the representations of the role of the South African troops involved an interplay between British empire loyalism, white South African political identities, and Scottishness.

scholarly journals ‘We are having a very enjoyable game’: Britain, sport and the South African War, 1899–1902

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Donaldson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Military Personnel ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
The South ◽  
South African War ◽  
The Military ◽  
War Stories ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Military Tradition

This article explores the relationship between sport and war in Britain during the South African War, 1899–1902. Through extensive press coverage, as well as a spate of memoirs and novels, the British public was fed a regular diet of war stories and reportage in which athletic endeavour and organized games featured prominently. This contemporary literary material sheds light on the role sport was perceived to have played in the lives and work of the military personnel deployed in South Africa. It also, however, reveals a growing unease over an amateur-military tradition which equated sporting achievement with military prowess.

White Man’s War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Boje
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
The South ◽  
South African War ◽  
Black Resistance ◽  
Racist Attitude

This chapter examines the Boers’ involvement in, and labors during, the South African War. It first considers the Boer–black relations, citing the Boers’ racist attitude toward blacks before and during the South African War. It then looks at blacks in Boer service; black resistance to Boer hegemony fostered by Ethiopianism and manifested in the activities of armed gangs; and blacks’ service with the British troops, particularly Bergh’s Scouts. It also discusses the black concentration camps and concludes with an analysis of the claims that blacks murdered and mutilated whites, contextualized in the colonial mythology of black savagery and recontextualized in terms of a general descent into murderous brutality.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Boje
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
Military Occupation ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Racial Oppression ◽  
The South ◽  
South African War

This book concludes with a discussion of three critical variables that determine the success of any military occupation and whether they were all met in the case of Winsburg after the end of the South African War: the total devastation of a country that compels it to acknowledge its need for help in reconstruction; the perception of a common threat to both parties; and credible guarantees of the occupying power’s intention to withdraw. If an occupying power adds an ideological element to its primary concern of establishing a dispensation that poses no threat to its interests, occupation is prolonged and nationalism is stimulated. This conclusion also shows that blacks continued to suffer after the war, with the Boers and British both blocking any suggestion of advance. Finally, it considers the evolution of a system of racial oppression in South Africa that was to bedevil the country for much of the twentieth century, lending credence to the notion that Britain’s occupation of Winsburg was an imperfect one.

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