Episode 87 - The sad story of Gert Bezuidenhout (12)& Deneys Reitz starts his Quixotic Cape Quest

This week we spend some time with Johanna van Warmelo and Deneys Reitz, the former who starts a new position as a nurse in a Concentration Camp at Irene outside Pretoria, and the the latter who has just convinced his German fellow travellers that an invasion into the Cape is feasible. Its mid-May 1901. President Steyn of the Free State and his Transvaal colleagues have had a disagreement about the possibility of a cease fire, but that has not stopped General Louis Botha who is in the Eastern Transvaal sending a note to British Army commander Lord Kitchener asking for permission to send an emissary to the Netherlands. Botha want’s to ask President Paul Kruger’s permission to embark on peace talks as he’s growing more certain that the Boers can’t defeat the British in South Africa. The Free State leadership are more intransigent and prefer to fight to the death, led by their fiery leader General Christiaan de Wet. The stage is set for more confrontations between the supposed allies, but as they grind their teeth, in Pretoria Johanna van Warmelo is now determined to assist her Boer sisters and their children who are squeezed into the nearby Concentration Camp. They are beginning to die in large numbers and with the temperature dropping, its bodes ill for the coming winter. Remember in Episode 83 I explained how Johanna and her mother were working as secret agents for the Boers from their strategic base at SunnySide farm on the outskirts of Pretoria. The British did not believe they were involved in spying, but that’s exactly what they were doing. We also heard how Johanna was keeping three separate diaries - one her open diary, the second her secret love diary, and the third her top secret war diary. Historian Jackie Grobler published a book in 2007 called "The war Diary of Johanna Brandt" which combined all three. She was still a van Warmelo during the war, and in May 1901 arrived at Irene Concentration Camp having volunteered as a nurse. Her initial job was to walk around the huge camp looking for sick Boer women and children and then bring these to the attention of the camp doctor. There were six Boer nurses in a camp of 5000 and by early May 3 people were dying a day. Far to the West, somewhere in the vicinity of Harts River, Deneys Reitz and his four German friends were holed up having been left behind by the Commando under the leadership of Mayer. General Koos de la Rey had ordered that the Boers return to their homes for the meantime as the cold weather drew in and the movement around the veld became more difficult. But Reitz was so isolated along with his colleagues that he had decided to take matters into his own hands. Remember last week I explained how Reitz had convinced his fellow travellers that instead of heading back to the north, they should try to enter the Cape Colony. “After I had explained my views…” he writes in his book Commando “…and had pictured the Cape to them as a land of beer for the taking at every wayside inn, they became eager converts, and we agreed to start without delay…”