Page 50 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

552 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

orphans. To most Afrikaners north of the Orange River, the only way that the injustice of the
“peace” of Vereeniging could be reversed was by regaining the independence of the Boer
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republics (and much later, the establishment of a Republic of South Africa). The Afrikaners
who suffered most during the war were indeed those who lived in the Transvaal and the Free
State, and more specifically, the inhabitants of farms and towns whose houses had been de-
stroyed partially or entirely by the British forces.
However, the Anglo-Boer War left almost all the race groups in what is today known as
South Africa discontented. Afrikanerdom was left divided (the bittereinders versus the hands-
uppers and, especially, the joiners), while the bittereinders in particular were embittered and
humiliated. Coloureds and especially black people were frustrated because the end of the
war did not yield the expected political and other privileges. Although the British authori-
ties hadcreated the impression during the war that they would give equal political and social
rights to black people in exchange for their support against the Boers, some of them did not
really intend to do so, while others – as has already been pointed out – were prepared, in
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the interest of reconciliation with the Afrikaners, to sacrifice the blacks’ right to vote. Thus,
black people were more suspicious of whites than ever before and would soon seek their
political salvation in an organisation such as the South African Native National Congress
(SANNC), which was established on 8 January 1912 (with Sol T. Plaatje, who had been be-
sieged with the British at Mafikeng, as one of the founder members) and which was known
from 1923 as the African National Congress (ANC). as time passed, the black resistance
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movement (primarily working against white domination) would come into conflict with the
conservative white resistance movement (initially fighting against British domination), and
an important Leitmotiv in the history of twentieth-century political development in South Af-
rica would emerge, namely black nationalism versus Afrikaner nationalism; sometimes also
manifesting itself in the binary opposition black expectations versus white fears.
Afrikaner leaders too intended to consolidate Afrikaner power and therefore desired to
heal the rift in Afrikaner ranks. Not everyone was prepared to co-operate with English-speak-
ing South Africans, while co-operation with other race groups was not even on the cards.
There were indeed attempts to uplift the Afrikaner in a material sense, but otherwise there
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were no co-ordinated initiatives to come to terms with the trauma caused by the war of 1899
to 1902. In due course, this contributed towards the development of an aggressive Afrikaner
nationalism, with apartheid as one of its most important manifestations.
During the Anglo-Boer War, the humanitarian Emily Hobhouse launched the world’s first
(informal) “truth and reconciliation commission” when she compiled the book, The brunt
of the war and where it fell (published in the second half of 1902), consisting of, inter alia,
letters (and excerpts from letters) in which Boer women related their experiences during the

50 Strictly speaking, there was no peace of Vereeniging, because the conditions of surrender were signed on the
evening of 31 May 1902 in Pretoria.
51 See, for example, A.P. Walshe, “The origins of African political consciousness in South Africa”, The Journal
of Modern African Studies 7(4), December 1969, p. 599.
52 See, for example, A. Odendaal, Vukani Bantu! The beginnings of black protest politics in South Africa to
1912 (Cape Town, 1984), pp. 270-277.
53 See, for example, A.P.J. van Rensburg, “Die ekonomiese herstel van die Afrikaner in die Oranjerivier-Kolo-
nie 1902-1907” in Archives Year Book for South African History 30(2), 1967, pp. 134-340.