Episode 30 - Black & White Man’s war and scouting the place of stones

It’s April 1900, the new century is four months old. Lord Roberts has halted after seizing the Orange Free State Republic capital Bloemfontein, and General Buller had finally liberated Ladysmith in Natal. In the North West of South Africa is this small town called Mafeking. Its there that the Colonel Baden-Powell is unable to move, hemmed in by really a small group of Boers of around 1700 or so. But this was April - earlier things were very different around the small desert town and creative measures were required in order to shore up the defences. One of these was the introduction of black troops. Thomas Pakenham has an excellent quote which I must use here from General Cronje to Colonel Baden-Powell in October 1899 as the Anglo-Boer war began: “It is understood that you have armed Bastards, Fingos and Baralongs against us - in this you have committed an enormous act of wickedness .. reconsider the matter .. even if it cost you the loss of Mafeking .. disarm your blacks and thereby act the part of a white man in a white man’s war….” But of course, that’s rubbish. This was not a white man’s war. Both sides pretended at first that this was the case, yet the Boers were using techniques, strategies and tactics perfected during two centuries and more of warfare against Africans. The Boers were using African tactics against a European army. Furthermore, both sides had armed black South Africans and both sides used Blacks as sappers - or engineers - building trenches and bulwarks, laying traps and others scouting and spying.