Maverick Africans. Hermann Giliomee
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to endure baffled the men, both Boer and British. They hid in mountains, forests or reed-infested rivers, or wandered across the land in so-called vrouwen laagers, all to avoid capture and being sent to the concentration camps. Most insisted that their husbands and sons had to continue fighting, even to the death. Soldiers setting their houses on fire did not cow them. Some candidly declared that they preferred their houses to burn down than to see their husbands surrender. A British officer noted after two months of farm burning that, without exception, the women said that they would not give in.75
As early as March 1900 the historian G.M. Theal, who had written extensively about South African history, warned that Eurocentric gender stereotypes did not apply in South Africa: ‘The women are the fiercest advocates of war to the bitter end. For independence the Boer women will send husbands and son after son to fight to the last.’76 General Kitchener, commander-in-chief of the British forces, wrote just after assuming his post in November 1900: ‘There is no doubt the women are keeping up the war and are far more bitter than the men.’77
Women scorned men who had given up the fight. After the British had overrun the Orange Free State in mid-1900, a Boer woman noted: ‘[We] think the men should be on commando instead of meekly giving up their arms to, and getting passes from, the English.’78 In one camp the British authorities considered separating hendsoppers (Boers who had surrendered) and women. A British officer wrote: ‘The feelings between the families of men still on commando and those who have surrendered appear to be very bitter … and the men of the latter class have to put up with a great deal of abuse … from the women who call them slaves of the British and “handsoppers”.’ In another camp a hendsopper wrote of being ‘unmercifully persecuted by the anti-British sex’.79
J.R. MacDonald, a British visitor, concluded: ‘It was the vrouw who kept the war going on so long. It was in her heart that patriotism flamed into an all-consuming heat. She it is who returns, forgiving nothing and forgetting nothing.’80 For many women and children, the camp was a searing experience that stayed with them for the rest of their lives. When an English woman exhorted Boer children at Maria Fischer’s camp to develop a spirit of forgiveness and love for one’s enemy, Fischer grimly commented: ‘To my mind it is not only impossible but also undesirable.’81
Defeat in war also made women cling tenaciously to their culture. Indignation about British war methods prompted a Bloemfontein woman to wonder aloud whether she should continue letting her children speak the English language. Reflecting on what separated her from the English, another Free State woman came up with an answer: republicanism, history, the taal (language) and ‘hatred of the [British] race’.82
In the early stages of the war the British high commissioner, Alfred Milner, remarked that the Boers loved their property more than they hated the British and would never fight for a political system; but the bittereinder stage of the war changed the course of South African history. At stake were the character of the Boer people, their republican commitment, and their willingness to pay the highest price for their freedom. It was the valour of the bittereinders and, above all, the grim determination of the Afrikaner women to persevere until the bitter end that won the Boers universal respect as freedom fighters. Smuts and General Kitchener observed that this stand had made a vital difference. It meant, as Smuts pointed out, that ‘every child to be born in South Africa was to have a proud self-respect and a more erect carriage before the nations of the world’.83
The Women’s Monument erected outside Bloemfontein is virtually unique in paying tribute to the sacrifice of women in war, particularly the deaths in the concentration camps. It seems particularly inappropriate to consider the monument as a symbol of female subservience. It was rather the manifestation of a deep sense of indebtedness on the part of the Boer leaders, who erected it after consultation with women like R.I. (Tibbie) Steyn, the wife of former President Steyn.84
The women’s resistance during the bittereinder phase is such an extraordinary event that the search for an adequate explanation will continue.85 Here one can only note that it cannot be understood without giving full weight to the extraordinary position Afrikaner women enjoyed in the household as a result of Roman-Dutch law, their partnership with their husbands in running the farms, and the development of what Jan Smuts called ‘the Boers [as] an intensely domestic people’.86 The violation of their domestic space and the wilful destruction of the farms made it impossible for women to conceive of defeat and subordination to British rule.
Women’s political activism did not subside after the peace treaty had been signed. When Union was formed in 1910 the nationalist leader J.B.M. (Barry) Hertzog noticed the large number of Afrikaner women in his audiences. He concluded: ‘They stood firm in maintaining language, life, morals and traditions.’ They ‘feel more than the men’, he remarked.87
After the Rebellion of 1914–15, Afrikaner women marched in protest against the jail sentence passed on General C.R. de Wet and other leaders of the rebellion and the stiff fines that were imposed on many of their followers. Prominent Afrikaner women had initiated the protest, including Hendrina Joubert, wife of Commandant-General Piet Joubert, and F.G. (Nettie) Eloff, a grandchild of President Paul Kruger. They called on ‘mothers and sisters’ to assemble in Church Square in Pretoria. Some 4 000 women marched to the Union Buildings, where they presented a petition to Lord Buxton, the governor-general.88 After the rebellion Hertzog declared: ‘Perhaps they were the greatest rebels.’ He concluded with a warning: ‘If one ignores the voice of Afrikaner women, one would land this country in a political hell.’89
Women and modernisation
South Africa entered its period of industrialisation with the discovery of minerals in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. There was a rapid growth of towns and cities, an expansion of trade and industry, and the modernisation of the education system. By the early 1870s three distinct categories of Afrikaner women could be discerned. The first were girls and women in affluent families who were educated in English and were increasingly using English in their correspondence. The second category included poorly educated women in towns who were unable to read or write properly in either English or Dutch. Thirdly, there were the large majority of women, living mainly on subsistence farms, who had little schooling and spoke only Afrikaans.
Afrikaner women were all profoundly affected by developments between the 1870s, when modernisation began to accelerate, and 1930, when white women received the vote. The most important was a change in the law of inheritance in order to promote the stability of landownership and capital accumulation. In 1874 the Cape government abolished partible inheritance, based on the rule of equal shares, and replaced it with primogeniture. Alfred Milner introduced primogeniture in the ex-republics after the Anglo-Boer War, despite considerable opposition.90 Although the convention of equal shares persisted for some time, it was no longer obligatory to have children equally share half the estate. Invariably the result was that the daughters received a smaller share than had been the case under Roman-Dutch law. Increasingly they had to move to the towns and cities in search of a livelihood.
Another development was the modernisation of education. Until the early 1870s the level of education provided to Afrikaner girls was very low, while that of boys, with the exception of two or three schools, was not much better. The leading figures in the Dutch Reformed Church interested in educational reform believed that an English-medium education was the only realistic option. Insisting that girls had a right to a proper education, N.J. Hofmeyr, professor of the Theological School at Stellenbosch, in 1874 pleaded for government assistance in view of the fact that ‘the civilisation of a people depends more upon the culture of the women than the men’.91
The leading reformer of education was the British-born Andrew Murray, moderator of the DRC and minister of the Wellington congregation, who attracted excellent American teachers to the private schools for Afrikaans girls belonging to his church. He also helped to found the Huguenot Seminary which opened in Wellington in 1874. This institution would later establish Bloemhof High School for girls in Stellenbosch and would also acquire a girls’ high school in Paarl, later called La Rochelle, as a branch institution.
The Afrikaans journalist and writer MER, who was in high school in the early 1890s, argued that there was a clear difference between the British and the American female teachers sent out to teach in South Africa. American