Did the War End?

When the Boers learned the truth about what was being done to their women and children, they surrendered almost immediately. They knew their victory would be hollow and indeed pointless if they had no-one to share it with. The British Empire had indeed waged war on the helpless civilians of the Transvaal and Orange Free State - with genocidal consequences.

The official hostilities ended in 1902 (or did it?) with the signing of the Peace Treaty of Vereeniging. Britain had now successfully secured the lands of the Boer people for her own enjoyment and her elite few (previously involved with the Jameson Raid - coup attempt) would become even wealthier from her diamond and gold deposits. In return for the peace, the Boervolk received a mere 3 million pounds in compensation.

The British compensation was never going to be enough to even begin to repatriate the removed families (POWs) to their land. Farming for the Boers, their primary skill, was simply unsustainable due to the slaughter and confiscation of all their livestock. Many fields and barns lay empty because of the disease-ridden and rotting carcasses. No fields could be planted let alone harvested with no labour, seed or money at hand. Family units had been destroyed with many husbands losing their entire families.

In turn, the Boer women had to work in the cities as servants and maids for British citizens in the very homes that the Boers had built and lived in before the war.

The emotional and psychological impact on the children who survived the British Concentration Camps, only became apparent in the 1930's when these children (many being orphans) became adults. The Boervolk then experienced unprecedented socio-economic problems.

South Africa was effectively a British colony up until 1961 when Britain delegated governance of the country to the Cape majority Afrikaners through the Westminster election system. The Afrikaners were those people who assisted the British in the war against the Boers. Although they spoke the same language, Dutch and then Afrikaans, the Afrikaners (Cape colonial citizens) were almost twice as many in numbers as the Boers. , effectively silencing any aspirations of the Boers.