The Battlefields Route, Northern Cape: follow the N12 and learn how the South African War reached even this remote, dry region

TThe South African War of 1899 to 1902 was once known as ‘the Second Anglo-Boer War’, in recognition of the fact that it was officially fought between the British Empire and the independent Boer republics of the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (ZAR – later the Transvaal province). 

However, people of all races were dragged into this war – from Indians like a young Mahatma Gandhi, who served as a stretcher-bearer for battlefield casualties, to famed writer and intellectual Sol Plaatje, who was one of hundreds of Tswana people trapped by the Boers in the Siege of Mafeking (now called Mahikeng), and who had to make do with even fewer rations than white citizens.  

There were also thousands of Africans interned in British concentration camps, just as thousands of Boer women and children were, when Lord Kitchener turned to his ‘scorched earth’ policy to force die-hard Boer guerrillas to surrender – mortality in these camps was appalling for both black and white. The name change, therefore, reflects the fact that all South Africans were affected by this terrible conflict. 

The Boer republics had been founded around half a century earlier, when Voortrekkers migrating away from British rule in the Cape Colony carved out two large independent states, after obtaining land from various indigenous peoples via negotiation and service (such as subduing a rival tribe), trade (with a price often paid in cattle), or flat-out conquest. 

The discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 – an irresistible lure to British industrialists and financiers – saw a rush of ‘uitlanders’ (‘outlanders’) into Johannesburg, and tensions between the cosmopolitan immigrants and the conservative, theocratic Boer republic – although it wasn’t above taxing the sinful heathens heavily – gave British arch-manipulator Cecil John Rhodes his opening. 

Rhodes actually managed to provoke the 2 Boer Republics into declaring war on the British Empire, so technically, England could not be blamed for the war. Very few South Africans are still taken in by this technicality, however – the war, which required British, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian troops to defeat the Boers, exposed the British Empire at its most savage.     

There are memorials to the war, erected by both sides, all over South Africa – it may surprise you that even the dry Northern Cape, land of the Karoo and the Kalahari Desert, was involved.  The N12 Battlefields Route starts in the city of Kimberley, which was a British stronghold when war broke out on 11 October 1899. The wealth of the city’s diamond fields made it an obvious target, and the Boers besieged it shortly thereafter. 

You can start the Battlefields Route in Kimberley at the McGregor Museum, a former residence of Rhodes – the mining magnate himself was trapped in Kimberley during the siege and was an influential voice among the British leadership. The museum houses a siege display, where the story of the siege and eventual relief of Kimberley is told. 

From here you drive the N12 to Hopetown, a route along which several battlefield sites are well signposted. These include the battles of Belmont, Graspan, Modder River and Magersfontein – the most famous of the battle sites, approximately 40km from Kimberley. 

On 11 December 1899 in the dim pre-dawn, the Boers opened fire on the Highland Brigade from their concealed trench at the base of Magersfontein Hill. It was a legendary Boer victory, but the memorials and graves at the site speak of casualties on both sides. 

A must-see is the Magersfontein Museum and lookout point on the hill. The museum has an audiovisual presentation that offers visitors a first-hand experience of battle from a darkened Boer trench. 

Kimberley was finally relieved in February 1900. 

The British ultimately won the war – their ‘scorched earth’ policy proved irresistible. They destroyed Boer farms and livestock (and any belonging to Africans in the vicinity), thereby cutting off the guerrillas’ access to food and supplies. Boer women, children and labourers – and any Africans who were deemed a potential asset to Boer guerrillas – were incarcerated in concentration camps, where death rates were horrific. 

This tactic may have forced the ‘bittereinders’ (‘bitter enders’) among the Boer leadership, finally, to sue for peace, but it left a legacy of bitterness among black and white South Africans alike that in some parts, still lingers more than 100 years later. Travelling the N12 Battlefields Route is a sobering reminder that wars aren’t glorious; they’re a blot on our history.