Saturday, October 9, 1999 Published at 13:15 GMT 14:15 UK
World: Africa
'Britain's shame over Boer
War'
The black fighters of Mafikeng played a key role
Britain's Duke of Kent has launched the 100th
anniversary commemorations of the Boer War in South
Africa by acknowledging what he called his country's
dreadful abuses.
The Duke, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth, was touring
Boer and black cemeteries around the city of
Bloemfontein in Brandfort, 190 miles south of
Johannesburg, with the South African President Thabo
Mbeki.
"Let us all agree on one thing: never
again war in South Africa; never again
the rightly criticized policies of (British
commander Lord Horatio) Kitchener
and never again the dreadful abuses
caused by the camps," said the
Duke.
"Never again the disregard of the rights of black South
Africans that took place during the war," he said.
The Duke was referring to concentration camps run by
the British, in which thousands of Afrikaners and black
soldiers died.
"No one who has read the history of the time could fail to
be moved and shocked by the shameful neglect,
particularly of women and children, that occurred in
those places," said the Duke.
The commemorations of the conflict, which was fought
between British Empire and Boer settlers for control over
lucrative Transvaal gold and diamond mines, focus on
the role played by black people.
'Shameful neglect'
Almost 70,000 lives were lost in the war, which began on
11 October 1899 and raged for more than three years,
until the British eventually wore down the Boer
resistance.
It was the biggest deployment of
British troops since the Crimea,
involving half a million soldiers,
including volunteers from Canada,
Australia and New Zealand.
Only now are the thousands of black
people, who were forcibly enlisted on
either side, being properly remembered in what was
known as the "white man's war".
"Looking back after a hundred years, it was a war that
involved all people in South Africa," Leo Barnard, a
professor of history at the University of the Free State
said.
"Now we can take a really objective view of what
happened."
'Black fighters of Mafikeng'
One such acknowledgment is the key role played by
the black fighters of Mafikeng in repelling a Boer assault
in May 1900.
At least 12,000 black people died in so-called
concentration camps and thousands more were
massacred. Their bones largely lie in unmarked graves.
On Friday, a Boer War exhibition close to Brandfort
reopened to include the participation of black people in
the conflict. It had previously only looked at the conflict
from a Boer perspective.
"This will signify that the war actually affected every
South African. That's contrary to the views widely held at
that time that it was a white man's war," said Musa
Xunu, who heads the centennial commemorations.
'No end of a lesson'
Correspondents say the fact that black people are being
honored is part of the rewriting of the nation's past now
that the centuries of white rule has ended.
The 1994 all race elections brought the African National
Congress and the overwhelming black majority to power.
The Boer War was proclaimed a great victory for the
British but, in the words of the imperial poet Rudyard
Kipling, the British Empire was taught "no end of a
lesson".
source bbc
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