Disinformation

At the time, the war propaganda spread disinformation among the fighting Boers and among the civilian population's of Britain and Europe. They were told that the camps were refugee camps where Boer women voluntarily streamed to because they could not take care of themselves with their husbands away on the battlefields. The propaganda said that the women and children are free to leave at any time and that they were are only guarded to protect them from the wild animals.

IMO Britain must also have had its own soldiers disinformed too, because at least some would have resisted to fight on the front lines if they knew what was going on in the concentration camps.

The Boers happily kept on fighting, thinking that their wives & children were safe and being cared for.

Even Arthur Conan Doyle was guilty of these disinformative reports to Europe and Britain, thereby casting a shadow of scepticism over his interpretation of the war in South Africa.

The disinformation kept on long after the war (and continues to this day), e.g. in reports stating that the Boer women & children died from diseases. The fact is that the Boers had lived in that land for 60 years and knew how to treat and cure any disease if they only had access to the plants of the highlands. They would never have had the diseases if they weren't taken from their homes, or if they were allowed to take their own tents, blankets etc.