Episode 66 - Lord Kitchener perfects the Concentration Camp & Boers begin shooting traitors

It’s approaching Christmas 1900, but there’s no champagne for Broadwood who is based in Rustenburg west of Pretoria. That’s because the Boers first ransacked his supply convoy then attacked General Clements in the Magaliesberg. General Koos de la Rey was largely responsible for both upsets, along with Smuts and Beyers. The battle at Nooitgedacht had been short and brutal, with hand-to-hand combat on the side of a mountain over a thousand feet high. By the end, more than 100 British casualties were reported, two hundred more were prisoners and General Clements had retreated to Pretoria. As the long sunny days of Summer in South Africa approached 25th December, in Cape Town the High Commissioner Alfred Milner was growing concerned about what he called .. the Screamers. These were the liberals who were mobilising sentiment against the British actions in South Africa, with the first reports beginning to filter across the globe about the treatment of Boer women and children. We’re going to see how first stories garnered sympathy - and eventually by mid-1901, full-scale criticism of British policy. The bitterness that this era evokes to this day is extraordinary, but understandable. I’ll return to this in the months to come, but this podcast as a pre-Christmas special, begins with Milner, sitting in Cape Town. Four nights after the disaster we heard about last week at Nooitgedacht in the Magaliesberg mountains west of Pretoria, Milner was sleeping outside. He was caught by the notorious Cape Town wind called the Cape Doctor which blasts in from the South East in Summer, and can blow people off their feet. It was the 16th December when the doctor arrived in Cape Town, bullying the palm trees, rolling pebbles across Milner's grass tennis court, causing his roof to drum like the devils fingers were running along the slates. Lord Milner was a great believer in the stiff-upper lip - and when word came of the terrible defeat by General Clements he dutifully stiffened. He had already been thrown somewhat by the other reports reaching him earlier in December about two separate Boer commandos which had invaded the Cape. While we’ve heard about General Christiaan de Wet’s attempt to enter the Cape and how that was botched by bad weather - the wily general had achieved part of his aim. Remember I explained how he’d moved north, away from the Orange River which is the boundary between the Orange Free State and the Cape, hoping that two other two Boer divisions he’d sent South would be free to move. That was because the British were infatuated with de Wet, and wanted him out of the way. So they duly marched and rode north chasing their nemisis, thus leaving the area to the south open for General Kritzinger and Judge Hertzog.