MORE UNTOLD STORIES OF THE ANGLO-BOER WAR

Emeritus Professor Mike de Jongh, research fellow, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, UNISA

When the Boers occupied Colesberg in the Cape Colony on 14 November 1899, and again when the British took over the town on 28 February 1900, conflict enveloped the local people. Documentation from that time – diaries,letters, local newspapers and family oral tradition – offer fascinating insights into the way war touched the lives of ordinary people, both Boer and Brit, soldier and civilian, loyalist and ‘rebel’, who were caught up in extraordinary circumstances. This course returns to the ‘forgotten front’ and tells the stories that lie behind the events in the Anglo-Boer War in the Karoo, including several humiliating British defeats, usually referred to in despatches as ‘reversals’. Depending on the context of the people involved, or of a particular situation or incident, their human and humane qualities, and even the humorous, constantly come to the fore.

Recommended reading

De Jongh, M. and Gordon, B.  2018. The Forgotten Front: Untold Stories of the Anglo-Boer War in the Karoo. The Watermark Press.