South African War Memorials & After

Welcome to the ‘South African War Memorials & After’ website.

The South African War was fought from 1899 to 1902 between the Boer Republics of the Transvaal and Free State, and Britain in association with its colonies in the Cape and Natal. The SAWM website features photograph galleries of all the memorial sites of the concentration camps to which many of the civilian population of Boer farming people were relocated as part of the British military ‘scorched earth’ strategy. There are also photograph galleries of a range of later South African memorials, including the ANC counter-memorialisation project. In addition, because an imperial war, there are memorials to the military dead in Britain (and in the countries of its colonial allies), and many photograph galleries of these are also featured. Memorialisation of the black dead has occurred largely post-1994, and galleries of significant sites are provided. These are mainly not linked with the South African War – commemoration and its absence are never politically innocent.

The UK’s British Academy and ESRC, and the Mellon Fund, funded the research that collected these photograph galleries, as part of a wider project investigating the rise of nationalism and women’s role in this. Liz Stanley, University of Edinburgh, was the principal investigator, with a number of other researchers involved in different components of these projects. The research on black memorials is a new, separate project concerned with these commemorations in their own right.

For further information, see the ‘Read’ guides and publications.

Black Memorials

The ‘Black Memorials’ pages feature research on black memorialisation and counter-memorialisation. A range of these memorial sites can be accessed from the link at the end of this page, and they are added to regularly.

Photographs on other SAWM pages are concerned with the rise of Afrikaner nationalism and use of commemoration of the concentration camp deaths in its ideological armoury. Black commemoration and memorialisation is included in some of these these memory sites of nationalism. This happened sometimes by mistake, and sometimes as a now neglected but still present aspect of how the past was, for black as well as white people were there and involved. In addition, black memorialisation and counter-memorialisation has taken off post-1994 and has its own pages here.

The remaining traces of much nationalist commemoration, such as at Aliwal North and the Brandfort Gedektuin, show there were cemeteries in which the black people who died in both the ‘white’ concentration camps and also the separate black camps were buried, and which seem to have taken the same form as the white cemeteries. But their fate over time was very different. Rather than being well maintained and many of them instituted as Gedenktuin, they were neglected apart from by individual local communities. The state-funded infrastructure of maintenance that existed for the white cemeteries and Gedenktuin did not exist for them, for obvious reasons. Even discovering their whereabouts is difficult now.

One result at both local and national levels of the post-1994 political transition has been commemoration of those involved in the anti-apartheid freedom struggle across a wide historical sweep. Many of these are the product of the Liberation Heritage Project, an ANC government initiative.

This is a contemporary counter-memorialisation project and has produced museums, visitor centres, heritage trails, monuments, memorials and some statuary, predominantly within an ANC political frame. Some of these commemorative sites concern events from 1960 on, others the long period before, with the LHP planning to eventually include all major heritage sites.

History meets politics meets heritage; and the past and its public and at times commercialised display for contemporary purposes come together and sometimes clash.

To access the list of black commemoratives sites and the guide to black commemoration, click HERE

Concentration Camp Memorials

The concentration camps of the South African War were populated by (mainly but not entirely) white people removed from their farms as part of the British military ‘scorched earth’ policy. The term was later (in the 1930s/40s) deliberately used by the Nazis as part of their propaganda campaigns, adopting it through links with the far right in South Africa in itself. Commemoration of those who died in them began as soon as the war ended in mid-1902. Initially many of the memorials were dedicated to the children who died in one of the many epidemics that swept the camps, with these often referred to as ‘mothers’ memorials’. This was followed by waves of commemoration increasingly associated with the development of nationalist aspirations and organisations. From the later 1960s but especially the 70s and 80s, the nationalist state became increasingly involved in instituting Gedenktuin or memorial sites that often obliterated the original camp cemeteries and memorials. Like the camps themselves, the cemeteries and Gedenktuin are to be found close to railway lines so the people removed from farms could easily be transported. Most are in the old Transvaal and Free State, with a few in the Cape and a small number in KwaZulu-Natal. Some are sad, testimony to the heart-breaking stupidities of humanity regarding warfare, while others have a triumphalist aspect imposed by the nationalist framework. Photograph galleries of all the concentration camp memorial sites will be found on these pages together with short descriptions of them. A small set of cemetery and Gedenktuin sketch-plans are included at the end; these indicate their scale and symbolic import.

For further information, see the ‘Read about’ guides.

Other South African Memorials

Commemoration is a public matter in which remembrance of the dead is made visible in a landscape or cityscape, and is particularly associated with governance and the state. It is about remembrance in a political as well as public context, rather than remembering personal grief and loss, although the two often become intertwined. In the South African context, commemoration of the concentration camp dead quickly became intertwined with commemoration of the war dead, then soon after that it was associated with the rise of nationalism. Concentration camp cemeteries, sad and touching places, were often overwritten by placing nationalist memorials in them. In many places, the surrounding area is also marked by many public acts of material remembrance made within a nationalist frame: resonant years include 1910 and Union, and 1936 to 1938 and the Great Trek re-enactment (AKA Second Trek). The Great Trek re-enactment in particular was intended to mark the landscape and show possession, and there are memorials at many places that the ox wagons crossing the country visited or passed through. There are also memorials to those people seen as heroes in ‘the history’ as viewed by nationalism. Photograph galleries of a range of such memorials together with short descriptions of them will be found here.

For further information, see the ‘Read about’ guides.

British Memorials

The South African War can in some respects be seen as a civil war, with its white populations largely split on ethnic Boer/English-speaking lines; but in greater part it was an imperial war, provoked by Britain and with many British troops and those from other parts of the British empire being deployed. Most of the British troops who died succumbed to the same epidemics of diseases that affected people in the concentration camps, rather than being killed in military action. There are many memorials to them in Britain, some of which pointedly differentiate between those killed or injured in battle and those who succumbed to disease, as many of the troops could have been inoculated but were not because high-level military commanders wanted them in the field as quickly as possible. They range from touching plaques to individuals, to memorials to volunteer groups, to imposing regimental monuments. Photograph galleries of a range of them will be found on these pages; brief interpretations of some will be added in due course.

For further information, see the ‘Read about’ guides.