Agrarian class struggle and the South African War, 1899-1902

Abstract

This study examines the sudden shift in the rural class struggle attendant upon the arrival of the British Army in the Transvaal during the South African, or Boer, War of 1899-1902; its foci are the war itself and (especially) its immediate aftermath, when the task of restoring landlord authority was undertaken by the new British Administration of the Transvaal. For the Boer War had been an imperialist war against a class of landowners. In fact, of all the guerrilla wars of the twentieth century, the Boer War is unique in that its guerrillas were rooted, not in a peasantry, but in an agrarian ruling class: the Boer Army whilst composed partly of Afrikaner tenant farmers, was commanded by landowners and a sizeable proportion of its rank and file were landlords as well. During the war, the British strategy came increasingly to concentrate upon destroying this class. The ferocious destruction and looting of Beer farms, livestock, crops and property; and the herding - there is no other word - of the landlord's families into concentration camps constituted an effective expropriation of the rural ruling class whose resources and command lay at the heart of the Boers ' war effort.