Why the Battle of Dimawe was a turning point: Remarks by Dr Jeff Ramsay at the Dimawe Cultural Festival (23/2/2024) (original) (raw)
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The Batswana-Boer War of 1852-53: How the Batswana Achieved Victory
Botswana Notes and Records, 1991
The Batswana-Boer War of 1852-53 was the seminal event in Botswana's birth as a nation-state. During the war, the Batswana communities (merafe) settled west of the Madikwe and Limpopo rivers formed an alliance against the Transvaal Boers. Although the Boers began the hostilities, by invading south-eastern Botswana, it was they who, nonetheless, soon found themselves on the defensive. After being besieged in their laagers for five months, they sued for peace. For the next quarter of a century, until the imposition of colonial rule, local Batswana-Boer relations remained peaceful. Today few Batswana are aware of the decisive outcome of the Batswana-Boer War of 1852-53. This is because its events have been generally seen as either an episode in the career of David Livingstone or a minor incident in the early history of the Transvaal. Botswana's most important armed struggle has thus been reduced to a footnote in the annals of others. And so, instead of learning about their own ancestors' a great victory, local students are still miseducated to believe that their nation was spared Boer rule by British "protection".
THE SOUTH AFRICAN BOER WAR (SECOND BOER WAR
The South African Boer War begins between the British Empire and the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State. The Boers, also known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original Dutch settlers of southern Africa. Britain took possession of the Dutch Cape colony in 1806 during the Napoleonic wars, sparking resistance from the independence-minded Boers, who resented the Anglicization of South Africa and Britain's anti-slavery policies. In 1833, the Boers began an exodus into African tribal territory, where they founded the republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The two new republics lived peaceably with their British neighbors until 1867, when the discovery of diamonds and gold in the region made conflict between the Boer states and Britain inevitable. Minor fighting with Britain began in the 1890s, and in October 1899 full-scale war ensured. By mid-June 1900, British forces had captured most major Boer cities and formally annexed their territories, but the Boers launched a guerrilla war that frustrated the British occupiers. Beginning in 1901, the British began a strategy of systematically searching out and destroying these guerrilla units, while herding the families of the Boer soldiers into concentration camps. By 1902, the British had crushed the Boer resistance, and on May 31 of that year the Peace of
Was it really worth it for the British to fight for the supremacy of South Africa in 1899? Did the Boers favor more politically after the war than they had prior to it? These questions have been disputed and finally answered. This paper examines why the Boer War was fought in the first place and the greater effects it had on South Africa after the war.
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Rewriting the South African War
1969
After a century of racial oppression and apartheid in South Africa, there are few, as Donal Lowry has remarked, who can “remember a time when entire continents seemed to be moved by the Boer ’heroes of liberty.’ ”[1] Nevertheless, the anniversary of the South African, or Anglo-Boer, war of 1899-1902 has witnessed visits to its historiographical as well as to its physical battlegrounds. A slew of books have marked the centenary, including the three collections reviewed here, while it has also evoked a good deal of discussion in South Africa about the nature and nomenclature as well as the place in the new South Africa of what was purported by the major belligerents at the time to be ”a white man’s war.“
The Origins of the South African War, 1899-1902
African Affairs, 1997
conflicts. The publication follows a logical progression from the macro and more general environment of future armed struggle towards the lower end of the spectrum where more specific issues such as features, methods, military systems and the issues of control of the military become the focus.
The Anglo-Boer War in the Borderlands of the Transvaal and Zululand, 1899–1902
Scientia Militaria - South African Journal of Military Studies, 2011
The low intensity warfare in the borderlands of the Transvaal and Zululand during the Anglo-Boer War is, despite lasting for the duration of the war, a neglected area in the historiography of the conflict. This article, which employs the conceptual framework of borderlands, attempts to address this. In doing so, the conflict, the way it transcended the geography of the region and the way it impacted on all the inhabitants of the area, are investigated. In the process, the nature of the conflict, which for the most part centred on the raiding of livestock in addition to attacks and raids on homesteads, farms, isolated shops and outlying military and government posts, is laid bare. The final outcome of the war in this area was the dismantling of the borderlands of the Transvaal and Zululand in favour of the Colony of Natal.
Scientia Militaria - South African Journal of Military Studies, 2014
The early colonial wars on the Cape Colony's eastern borderlands and western Xhosaland, such as the 1799-1803 war, have not received as much attention from military historians as the later wars. This is unexpected since this lengthy conflict was the first time the British army fought indigenous people in southern Africa. This article revisits the 1799-1803 war, examines the surprisingly fluid and convoluted alignments of participants on either side, and analyses how the British became embroiled in a conflict for which they were unprepared and for which they had little appetite. It explores the micro narrative of why the British shifted from military action against rebellious Boers to fighting the Khoikhoi and Xhosa. It argues that in 1799, the British stumbled into war through a miscalculationa mistake which was to have far-reaching consequences on the Cape's eastern frontier and in western Xhosaland for over a century.