Boer War Memorial, Bloemfontein, Free State, South Africa - Travel Photos by Galen R Frysinger, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

The Second Boer War (Dutch: Tweede Boerenoorlog, Afrikaans: Tweede Vryheidsoorlog) , commonly referred to as The Boer War and also known as the South African War (outside of South Africa), the Anglo-Boer War (among most South Africans) and in Afrikaans as the Anglo-Boereoorlog or Tweede Vryheidsoorlog ("Second War of Freedom"), was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902, between the British Empire and its independent six (6)colonies of Australia, Canada and New Zealand and the two independent Boer republics of the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (Transvaal Republic). The casus belli to the conflict was The Jamieson Raid, 1895-96. After a protracted, hard-fought formal and guerrilla war, the two independent Boer republics were annexed into the British Empire.

The southern part of the African continent was dominated in the 19th century by a set of epic struggles to create within it a single unified state. The British attempt to annex the Transvaal in 1880, and the Transavaal and the Orange Free State in 1899, was their biggest incursion into southern Africa, but there were others. In 1868, the British annexed Basutoland in the Drakensberg Mountains following an appeal from Moshesh, the leader of a mixed group of African refugees from the Zulu wars, who sought British protection against the Boers. In the 1880s, Bechuanaland (modern Botswana, located north of the Orange River) became the object of dispute between the Germans to the west, the Boers to the east, and Cape Colony to the south. Although Bechuanaland had no economic value, the "Missionaries Road" passed through it towards territory farther north. After the Germans annexed Damaraland and Namaqualand (modern Namibia) in 1884, the British annexed Bechuanaland in 1885.

“British imperialism, which often stalked its quarry with cultural and commercial feints before finally pulling down its prey through conquest and formal annexation, was for some time frustrated by the presence of the two independent Boer republics. Yet, within little more than a decade and half, the Orange Free State and the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek had both been subjugated in the course of the bloody South African War of 1899–1902” [The Modernization of the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek: F. E. T. Krause, J. C. Smuts, and the Struggle for the Johannesburg Public Prosecutor's Office, 1898–1899: Charles Van Onselen]

The Boers of the Transvaal Republic had in the 1880-1881 war proved skillful fighters in resisting the British attempt at annexation, causing several costly defeats to the British. The British government of William Gladstone had been unwilling to become bemired in a distant war demanding of substantial troop reinforcement and expense for what was at the time perceived to be minimal return. They had cut their losses, and signed an armistice to end the war, with subsequently a peace treaty with the Transvaal President Paul Kruger.

However when, in 1886, a second major mineral find was made at an outcrop on a large ridge some thirty miles south of the Boer capital at Pretoria, it reignited British imperial interests. By 1898 Britain was again at war with the Boer republics in the Second Boer War, and this time the lure of gold was more than enough for Britain to commit the substantial troops required and keep them fighting, and bear all the cost including the loss of lives, over the three long years that it would take.

The ridge, known locally as the "Witwatersrand" (literally "white water ridge" - a watershed) contained the world's largest deposit of gold-bearing ore. Although it was not as rich as gold finds in Canada and Australia, its consistency made it especially well-suited to industrial mining methods. With the 1886 discovery of gold in Transvaal, thousands of British and other prospectors and settlers streamed over the border from the Cape Colony (annexed by Britain earlier) and from across the globe. The city of Johannesburg sprang up as a shanty town nearly overnight as the uitlanders (foreigners) poured in and settled near the mines. The uitlanders rapidly outnumbered the Boers on the Rand, but remained a minority in the Transvaal as a whole. The Afrikaners, nervous and resentful of the uitlanders' presence, denied them voting rights and taxed the gold industry. The tax on a box of dynamite was five shillings of the cost of five pounds. These mines consumed vast quantities of explosives and President Paul Kruger gave manufacturing monopoly rights to a non-British operation of the Nobel company, which infuriated the British. The so-called "dynamite monopoly" became a major pretext for war. However, one of the underlying irritants for war occurred in 1894–95 over the railway and tariffs problems. Kruger wanted to build a railway through Portuguese East Africa to Delagoa Bay, bypassing British controlled ports in Natal and Cape Town and avoiding British tariffs. The Prime Minister of the Cape Colony was Cecil Rhodes, a man with a vision of a British controlled Africa extending from Cape to Cairo. Angered by these problems, the Uitlanders and the British mine owners sought to overthrow the Boer government. In 1895, Cecil Rhodes sponsored the failed coup d'état backed by an armed incursion, the Jameson Raid. Of this raid, Jan C. Smuts wrote in 1906, "The Jameson Raid was the real declaration of war...And that is so in spite of the four years of truce that followed...[the] aggressors consolidated their alliance...the defenders on the other hand silently and grimly prepared for the inevitable."

Paul Kruger and the President Martinus Theunis Steyn of the Orange Free State both understood that the failed raid was the precursor to a war and commencing in 1896 placed orders for Mauser rifles and German Krupp artillery.

The failure to gain improved rights for Britons became a pretext to manufacture a case for war and to justify a major military buildup in the Cape. The case for war was justified and espoused as far away as the Australian colonies. Several key British colonial leaders favored annexation of the independent Boer republics. These figures included the Cape Colony governor Sir Alfred Milner, Cape Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes, British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain and mining syndicate owners or Randlords (nicknamed the gold bugs) such as Alfred Beit, Barney Barnato and Lionel Phillips. Confident that the Boers would be quickly defeated, they planned, schemed and organised to precipitate a war, based on the Uitlanders' real or imagined grievances.

President Steyn of the Orange Free State invited Milner and Kruger to attend a conference in Bloemfontein which started on 30 May 1899, but negotiations quickly broke down, despite Kruger's offer of concessions. In September 1899, Chamberlain sent an ultimatum demanding full equality for British citizens resident in Transvaal.

Kruger, seeing that war was inevitable, simultaneously issued his own ultimatum prior to receiving Chamberlain's. This gave the British 48 hours to withdraw all their troops from the border of Transvaal; otherwise the Transvaal, allied with the Orange Free State, would declare war.

News of the ultimatum reached London on the day it expired. Outrage and laughter were the main responses. The editor of the Times laughed out loud when he read it, saying 'an official document is seldom amusing and useful yet this was both'. The Times denounced the ultimatum as an 'extravagant farce', The Globe denounced this 'trumpery little state'. Most editorials were similar to the Daily Telegraph, which declared: 'of course there can only be one answer to this grotesque challenge. Kruger has asked for war and war he must have!'.

War was declared on 11 October 1899. The Boers had no problems with mobilization, since the Presidents of the Transvaal and Orange Free State simply signed decrees to concentrate within a week and the Commandos could muster between 30-40,000 men. The Boers struck first by invading Cape Colony and Natal between October 1899 and January 1900. What the Boers presented was a mobile and innovative approach to warfare that had first appeared in the American Civil War. The average Burghers who made up their Commandos were farmers who had spent almost all their working life in the saddle, and because they had to depend on both their horse and their rifle they were skilled stalkers and marksmen, and became expert light cavalry. They could make use of every scrap of cover, from which they could pour in a destructive fire using their modern Mausers. They also had around one hundred of the latest Krupp field guns, all horse drawn and dispersed among the various Commando groups, and their skill in adapting themselves to first-rate artillerymen shows them to have been a versatile adversary.

Although it seemed as though the Boer War would be a quick and easy victory, it became clear that Britain would have problems with it from the start; over 2/3 of the men that attempted to enlist were turned away because they were medically unfit. This staggering number had a great influence on the Liberal Welfare Reforms of 1906-14, after the Conservatives had been voted out of power.

Emily Hobhouse was born on 9 April, 1860. She was raised in the tiny village of St. Ive near Liskeard in East Cornwall.

Her father was rector of the Anglican Church while her mother was the daughter of Sir William Trelawney who represented East Cornwall in parliament. After her mother’s death Emily took care of her father who was often unwell. After his death in January 1895 she left for the United States where she did welfare work among the many Cornish emigrants working in the mines in Minnesota. She became engaged to John Carr Jackson but broke off her engagement in 1898 and returned to England. When the war with South Africa broke out in October 1899, Leonard Courtney, a liberal MP, invited Emily to join the women’s branch of South African Conciliation Committee of which he was president. In July 1900 she learnt about the plight of the Boer women in war torn South Africa. She now started the South African Women and Children’s Distress fund. She also learnt about the existence of a camp for women in Port Elizabeth. She sailed for South Africa on 7 December 1900 and landed at Cape Town on the 27th. Here she learnt of camps in Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Potchefstroom, Norvalspont, Kroonstad, Irene etc. She immediately applied for permission to visit the concentration camps.

Her chances of visiting the camps were not good as martial law had been declared over large parts of the Cape Colony. Lord Milner agreed that she could visit the camps, subject to the approval of Lord Kitchener. He granted her permission to proceed only as far as Bloemfontein. She left Cape Town on 22 January 1901 and arrived at Bloemfontein on the 24th where she stayed at the home of the Fichardt family. The camp was "dumped down" as Emily put it, “on the southern slope of a kopje (small hill) right out on the bare brown veld." When she arrived in the camp she finally met the women she had come to help. There were then almost two thousand people living in the camp: the majority was women and children with a few surrendered men known as “hands-uppers." She had come with the object of providing such articles as could not be expected to be provided for by the authorities, "but I soon found out", she wrote, and “that there was a scarcity of essential provisions. The accommodation was wholly inadequate. When the eight, ten or twelve people who lived in the bell tent were squeezed into it to find shelter against the heat of the sun, the dust or the rain, there was no room to stir and the air in the tent was beyond description, even though the flaps were rolled up properly and fastened. Soap was an article that was not dispensed. The water supply was inadequate. No bedstead or mattress was procurable. Fuel was scarce and had to be collected from the green bushes on the slopes of the kopjes by the people themselves. The rations were extremely meagre and when, as I frequently experienced, the actual quantity dispensed fell short of the amount prescribed, it simply meant famine." Sicknesses such as measles, bronchitis, pneumonia, dysentery and typhoid had already invaded the camp with fatal results. There were very few tents who did not house one or more sick persons, most of them children.

When she requested soap for the people, she was told that soap was a luxury. She nevertheless succeeded in having it listed as a necessity. She was aware of the difficulties involved in obtaining supplies from the coast on a railway line constantly threatened and disrupted, but she could not forgive what she called :"Crass male ignorance, helplessness and muddling… I rub as much salt into the sore places in their minds… because it is good for them; but I can’t help melting a little when they ...confess that the whole thing is a grievous and gigantic blunder and present almost insoluble problems...”

She also visited the camps at Norvalspont, Aliwal North, Springfontein, Kimberley and Orange River and Mafeking. Everywhere she directed the attention of the authorities to the inadequate sanitary measures, meagre rations, and to inefficient organization. When she returned to Bloemfontein the military operations of March and April had brought a large number of extra families into the camp .She wrote that the population had redoubled and had swallowed up the results of improvements that had been effected. The appalling increase in illness and death and the fact that nobody in authority listened to her pleas, led to a decision to return to England. She hoped that once back in Britain she would be able to persuade the Government and the public to make an end to the conditions of misery and distress in the camps.

At the request of the Minister of War, St John Brodrick, she submitted her report on the camps to him in writing. Her report was also made known to the public by the committee of the Emergency Fund. It directed the attention of the public to the concentration camps and created a deep feeling of sympathy in all parts of the country but the debate on the report in the Houses of Parliament, was extremely disappointing as it was a picture of “apathy and impatience.” In spite of fierce opposition from newspapers supporting the Government’s standpoint Emily continued to address meetings about the plight of the women and children. The Government appointed a ladies' committee under Mrs. Millicent Fawcett to inspect the camps in South Africa. Hobhouse was not part of this committee. The committee’s report however repeated her findings and resulted in important improvements.

In October 1901 she decided to resume her work in South Africa. She steamed into Table Bay on 27 October 1901 but was not allowed to land. Five days later she was deported. The disappointment caused by her reception came as a great shock to her. She retired to the south of France to work on her first book “The Brunt of the War and where it fell”.

When the war ended in 1902 she saw it as her mission to support every effort aimed at rehabilitation and reconciliation of the war ravaged country. With this objective in view, she visited South Africa once more in 1903. Back in England she finalized her plan, conceived during her visit, of starting Boer home industries. She, accompanied by two helpers, returned to South Africa in 1905. They came equipped with the required apparatus to teach the women and girls the art of spinning and weaving. The first school was set up at Philippolis in the Free State. Eventually 27 schools were established in the Transvaal and the Free State. A lace school was also established at Koppies in the Free State.

The unveiling of the Women's Monument at Bloemfontein took place on 16 December 1913. Emily Hobhouse was asked to unveil the monument but eventually her ill health prevented her from completing her journey and personally delivering her speech. On the initiative of Mrs. Steyn, a sum of £2,300 was collected for her in 1921 with which she purchased a house at St. Ives in Cornwall. She died on 8 June 1926. Her ashes found a final resting place in a niche at the Women’s Memorial at Bloemfontein on 26 October 1926.

Christiaan Rudolph de Wet was born at Leeukop in the Smithfield district on 7 October 1854 and died at Klipfontein, Dewetsdorp on 3 February, 1922.

His father Jacobus de Wet was married to Aletta Strydom. In 1854 they settled in the Smithfield district where Christiaan was born. As a child he received very little formal education. In 1873 he married Cornelia Kruger. When Transvaal was annexed in 1877 they moved to the Vredefort district, to be on the spot in case of hostilities. He again changed farms before settling in the district of Heidelberg (ZAR) in 1880. When war broke out in 1881 between the ZAR and Britain he took part in the battles of Laingsnek, Ingogo and Majuba.

After farming in various districts of the ZAR he returned to the Free State and purchased Nieuwejaarsfontein, formerly his father’s farm. In 1896 he moved to the farm Rooipoort in the Heilbron district. He was elected to the Free State Volksraad in 1889 – a position he held until 1898.

In September 1899 he acquired his famous grey Arab, Fleur. With the onset of war De Wet left for the front as an ordinary burgher of the Heilbron command under Lucas Steenkamp. When Steenkamp fell ill De Wet was elected acting commandant. At the battle of Nicholson’s Nek (30/10/1899) he managed to drive the British troops from their positions with only 300 men.

In December 1899 President Steyn appointed De Wet as field-general under General PA Cronje on the western front. De Wet and General J.H. de la Rey tried in vain to persuade Cronje to go on the offensive. Cronje was finally pinned down by Lord Roberts’s forces at Paardeberg. De Wet, however, managed to avoid being caught up in this debacle. Although he managed to help Commandants J. Potgieter and C.C.Froneman to break out from the trap, his attempt to free Cronje failed. Cronje surrendered on 27 February 1900. Steyn now entrusted the command of the Free State commandos to De Wet. On 7 March 1900 he tried in vain to check the British advance on Bloemfontein at Poplar Grove. A further attempt at Abrahamskraal (Driefontein) on the 10th also failed and on the 13th Roberts occupied Bloemfontein.

De Wet now disbanded the commandos, with orders to reassemble at the Sand River on 25 March. A new spirit prevailed among the burghers when they reassembled. They were also informed that cowards and deserters would be strictly disciplined. In accordance with the resolution passed at the council of war at Kroonstad (17/03/1900) De Wet urged the burghers to get rid of their wagons as this seriously impeded their progress. From now on he planned and carried out his operations with complete secrecy. Treachery and lack of discipline were greater obstacles to him than the enemy’s superior force. He was a strict taskmaster, demanding total dedication from his burghers. Although he was not always too popular, his unerring certainty when summing up a situation and issuing commands and his uncanny sense of timing and direction, combined with his many successes ensured his men’s complete confidence and support.

On 31 March 1900 De Wet dealt the British a severe blow when he defeated Brigadier-General R.G. Broadwood's forces at Sannaspos near Bloemfontein. After the railway bridge across the Vaal River had been damaged, huge stores of provisions, destined for the British army, accumulated at Roodewal station. De Wet launched a direct attack on the station on 7 June 1900 where he managed to capture supplies worth £ 500 000.

To counter De Wet’s operations the British army assembled more than 15 000 men and marched on Bethlehem where De Wet put up a gallant defence. He had to retreat to the Brandwater Basin as the odds were too great. On 15 July De Wet, Steyn and the government managed to escape unscathed from the trap set by the British generals in the Brandswater Basin. General Michael Prinsloo was not as fortunate and had to surrender with 3500 burghers on 30 July 1900

Roberts concluded that he can probably end the war if he succeeded in capturing De Wet. He now initiated a large scale operation known as the “First De Wet Hunt.” About 50 000 men were soon on the trail of the ever elusive Boer general who crossed into Transvaal, and succeeded in shaking of his pursuers by crossing the Magaliesberg at Olifantsnek on 14 August 1900.

After a thorough reorganisation of the Boer forces burghers who had taken the oath of neutrality were called up again. De Wet headed the drive in the Free State and through his efforts and encouragement many a Freestater rejoined the commandos. For De Wet the adoption of guerrilla tactics heralded a period of reverses e. g at Frederickstad (20-25 October 1900) and Doornkraal (6 /11/1900) near Bothaville.

To relieve the pressure on the Eastern Free State De Wet invaded the Cape Colony. Three columns under General CE Knox took part in the second De Wet hunt. Heavy rains and a flooded Orange River thwarted Wet’s plans. He managed to evade capture and on 14 December he broke through the British lines near Thaba Nchu. At the end of January 1901 he again attempted to invade the Cape Colony. Seventeen flying columns (14 000 troops) now took part in the third De Wet hunt. De Wet finally crossed the Orange on 10 February 1901 but the lack of horses and torrential rain frustrated his plans. On 28 February he returned to the Free State. This second invasion was a dismal failure as he lost the strategic initiative and from then on he would be largely committed to defensive warfare.

To bring the war to an end Kitchener had a formidable line of blockhouses built and he started flushing out the Boers in a series of systematic drives. Even these measures proved ineffective against De Wet as he broke through the lines at will. Shortly after inflicting heavy losses on the British forces at Groenkop (25/12/1901) he managed to evade one extensive drive only to be caught up in another. Again he managed to escape.

During March 1902 he operated in the western Free State, but the end was in sight. The scorched earth policy and the plight of the women and children in the concentration camps brought the Boers to the negotiation table. Although De Wet was still prepared to carry on with the relentless struggle it was clear that most of the delegates at Vereeniging were opposed to prolonging the war. De Wet signed the peace treaty in his capacity as acting president of the Free State (29-31 May 1902) as Steyn was by then too ill. He then visited the commandos to persuade them to lay down their arms. In July 1902 De Wet, J.H. de la Rey and Louis Botha left for Europe where they raised funds for the reconstruction of the country. While on board the Saxon he wrote his wartime reminiscences" De Strijd tusschen Boer en Brit" (1902), aided by Rev JD Kestell.

Back in South Africa De Wet was a founder member of the Orangia Unie. He was Minister of Agriculture after the Orange River Colony was granted self-government. In 1910 De Wet retired from politics and settled on his farm, Allanvale, near Memel.

When the First World War started in 1914 De Wet was against Botha’s attack of German South West Africa. The situation was aggravated when Martial Law was declared and men were called up from all over the country. This created the impression that the Government had departed from its undertaking to use only volunteers. De Wet now favoured a form of armed protest which became a reality when the government started with the commandeering of burghers. During a skirmish at Doornberg (8/11/1914 his son Danie and several other rebels were killed. De Wet evaded his pursuers and was finally captured at Waterbury near Vryburg on 30 November 1914. He was held in the Johannesburg Fort. Six months later he was found guilty on a charge of high treason and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment and a fine of £2000 which was soon paid from voluntary contributions. In response to representations made by several influential people the Government granted him a reprieve and he returned to Allanvale on parole.

He sold Allanvale and after settling for a few years near Edenburg, he returned to the Dewetsdorp district where he settled on Klipfontein. He died on 23 February 1922 and was laid to rest at the foot of the Women’s Memorial.

There were early Boer military successes against the scattered British. The Boers were able to besiege the towns of Mafeking (defended by troops headed by Colonel Robert Baden-Powell), and Kimberley (defended by troops headed by Lt-Col Kekewich) on the borders of the Transvaal. The major British concentration was in northern Natal under Sir George White. White's troops, who were dangerously dispersed, were defeated separately, and were besieged in Ladysmith.

Siege life took its toll on both the defending soldiers and the civilians in the cities of Mafeking, Ladysmith, and Kimberley as food began to grow scarce after a few weeks. In Mafeking, Sol Plaatje wrote, "I saw horseflesh for the first time being treated as a human foodstuff." The cities under siege also dealt with constant artillery bombardment, making the streets a dangerous place. Near the end of the siege of Kimberley, it was expected that the Boers would intensify their bombardment, so a notice was displayed encouraging people to go down into the mines for protection. The townspeople panicked, and people flowed into the mineshafts constantly for a 12-hour period. Although the bombardment never came, this did nothing to diminish the distress of the civilians. Many of the townspeople, now under siege, sheltered in the local convent, now the Mcgregor museum. Since the mining that occurred there, for diamonds, was open air, the people were not able to shelter in mine shafts. The mine is now known as the Big Hole, a popular tourist attraction in the area.

Major British reinforcements were arriving under General Redvers Henry Buller. He originally intended an offensive straight up the railway line leading from Cape Town through Bloemfontein to Pretoria. Finding on arrival that the British troops already in South Africa were under siege, he split his Army Corps into several widely spread detachments, to relieve the besieged garrisons.

British commanders had trained on the lessons of the Crimean War, and could adapt themselves to battalion and regimental columns manoeuvring in jungles, deserts and mountainous regions; what they entirely failed to comprehend was the trench fighting and cavalry raids of the American Civil War. The British troops went to war with what would prove to be antiquated tactics, and in some cases antiquated weapons, against the mobile Boer forces with the destructive fire of their modern Mausers, the latest Krupp field guns and their innovative tactics.

The middle of December was disastrous for the British army. In a period known as Black Week (10 – 15 December 1899), the British suffered a series of devastating losses at Magersfontein, Stormberg, and Colenso.

At the Battle of Stormberg on 10 December, British General Sir William Gatacre, who was in command of 3,000 troops protecting against Boer raids in Cape Colony, tried to recapture a railway junction about 50 miles (80 km) south of the Orange River. But Gatacre chose to assault the Orange Free State Boer positions surmounting a precipitous rock face in which he lost 135 killed and wounded, as well as two guns and over 600 troops captured.

At the Battle of Magersfontein on 11 December, 14,000 British troops, under the command of Lieutenant-General Lord Methuen, attempted to fight their way to relieve Kimberley. The Boer commanders, Koos de la Rey and Piet Cronje, devised a plan to dig trenches in an unconventional place to fool the British and to give their riflemen a greater firing range. The plan worked and this tactic helped write the doctrine of the supremacy of the defensive position, using modern small arms and trench fortifications. At Magersfontein, the British were decisively defeated, suffering the loss of 120 British soldiers killed and 690 wounded, which prevented them from relieving Kimberley and Mafeking.

"Such was the day for our regiment
Dread the revenge we will take.
Dearly we paid for the blunder -
A drawing-room General’s mistake.
Why weren’t we told of the trenches?
Why weren’t we told of the wire?
Why were we marched up in column,
May Tommy Atkins enquire…."

From the "Battle of Magersfontein," verse by Private Smith of the Black Watch December 1899. Quoted in, ‘Thomas Pakenham’s "The Boer War," page 115.

But the nadir of Black Week was the Battle of Colenso on 15 December where 21,000 British troops commanded by Buller himself, attempted to cross the Tugela River to relieve Ladysmith where 8,000 Transvaal Boers, under the command of Louis Botha, were awaiting them. Through a combination of artillery and accurate rifle fire, the Boers repelled all British attempts to cross the river. The British had a further 1,126 casualties, and lost 10 artillery pieces to the Boers during the ensuing retreat. The Boer forces suffered 40 casualties.

The British suffered further defeats in their attempts to relieve Ladysmith at the Battle of Spion Kop of 19 to 24 January 1900, where Buller again attempted to cross the Tugela west of Colenso and was defeated again by Louis Botha after a hard-fought battle for a prominent hill feature which resulted in a further 1,000 British casualties and nearly 300 Boer casualties. Buller attacked Botha again on 5 February at Vaal Krantz and was again defeated.

By taking command in person in Natal, Buller allowed the overall direction of the war to drift. Because of concerns about his performance and negative reports from the field, he was replaced as Commander in Chief by Field Marshal Lord Roberts. Roberts first intended like Buller to attack directly along the Cape Town - Pretoria railway but, again like Buller, was forced to relieve the beleaguered garrisons. Leaving Buller in command in Natal, Roberts massed further reinforcements near the Orange River and on 14 February 1900, he launched a major attack to relieve Kimberley. The city was relieved on 15 February by a cavalry division under Lieutenant General John French. At the Battle of Paardeberg on 18 February to 27 February 1900, Roberts then surrounded General Piet Cronje's retreating Boer army, and forced him to surrender with 4000 men after a siege lasting a week. Meanwhile, Buller at last succeeded in forcing a crossing of the Tugela, and defeated Botha's outnumbered forces north of Colenso, allowing the Relief of Ladysmith the day after Cronje surrendered.

Roberts then advanced into the Orange Free State from the west, capturing Bloemfontein, the capital, on March 13. Meanwhile, he detached a small force to relieve Baden-Powell, and the Relief of Mafeking on May 18, 1900 provoked riotous celebrations in Britain.

After being forced to delay for several weeks at Bloemfontein due to shortage of supplies and enteric fever (caused by poor hygiene, drinking bad water at Paardeburg and appalling medical care), Roberts resumed his advance. He was forced to halt again at Kroonstad for 10 days, due once again to the collapse of his medical and supply systems, then finally captured Johannesburg on May 31 and the capital of the Transvaal, Pretoria, on June 5. (Before the war, the Boers had constructed several forts south of Pretoria, but the artillery had been removed from the forts for use in the field, and in the event the Boers abandoned Pretoria without a fight.)

British observers believed the war to be all but over after the capture of the two capital cities. However, the Boers had earlier met at the temporary new capital of the Orange Free State, Kroonstad, and planned a guerrilla campaign to hit the British supply and communication lines. The first engagement of this new form of warfare was at Sanna's Post on 31 March where 1,500 Boers under the command of Christiaan De Wet attacked Bloemfontein's waterworks about 23 miles (37 km) east of the city, and ambushed a heavily escorted convoy which resulted in 155 British casualties and the capture of seven guns, 117 wagons and 428 British troops.

After the fall of Pretoria, one of the last formal battles was at Diamond Hill on 11 – 12 June, where Roberts attempted to drive the remnants of the Boer field army beyond striking distance of Pretoria. Although Roberts drove the Boers from the hill, the Boer commander, Louis Botha, did not regard it as a defeat, for he inflicted more casualties on the British (totalling 162 men) while suffering around 50 casualties.

The set-piece period of the war now largely gave way to a mobile guerrilla war, but one final operation remained. President Kruger and what remained of the Transvaal government had retreated to eastern Transvaal. Roberts, joined by troops from Natal under Buller, advanced against them, and broke their last defensive position at Bergendal on August 26. As Roberts and Buller followed up along the railway line to Komatipoort, Kruger sought asylum in Portuguese East Africa (modern Mozambique). Some dispirited Boers did likewise, and the British gathered up much war material. However, the core of the Boer fighters under Botha easily broke back through the Drakensberg mountains into the Transvaal highveld after riding north through the bushveld. Under the new conditions of the war, heavy equipment was no use to them, and therefore no great loss.

In October, President Kruger and members of the Transvaal government left South Africa on the Dutch warship De Gelderland, sent by the Queen of the Netherlands Wilhelmina, which had simply ignored the British naval blockade of South Africa. Paul Kruger's wife was too ill to travel and remained in South Africa where she died on 20 July 1901 without seeing Paul Kruger again. President Kruger went to first Marseille and then stayed for a while in The Netherlands, before moving to Clarens, Switzerland, where he died in exile on 14 July 1904.

By September 1900, the British were nominally in control of both Republics, with the exception of the northern part of Transvaal. However, they discovered that they only controlled the ground their columns physically occupied. The Boer commanders adopted a guerrilla style of warfare. The Boer commandos were sent to their own districts where they had local support and the knowledge of the terrain, towns and district and could live off the land. Their orders were simply to act against the British whenever possible. Their strategy was to strike fast and hard causing as much damage to the enemy as possible, and then to withdraw and vanish before enemy reinforcements could arrive. The vast distances of the Republics allowed the Boer commandos considerable freedom to move about and made it impossible for the 250,000 British troops to control the territory effectively using columns alone. As soon as the British columns left a town or district, British control of that area faded away.

The Boers were especially effective during the initial guerrilla phase of the war because Roberts had assumed that the war would end with the capture of the Boer capitals and the dispersal of the main Boer armies. Many British troops were redeployed, and replaced by lower-quality contingents of Imperial Yeomanry and locally-raised irregular corps.

However, the British quickly revised their tactics. The British had first erected lines of fortified blockhouses to protect the railway lines. They now built fresh lines of these and linked them by barbed wire fences, to parcel up the wide veld into smaller areas to prevent free Boer movement across the veld. The controlled areas could be regularly swept and "New Model" drives were mounted under which a continuous line of troops would now effectively sweep an area of veld bounded by blockhouse lines, unlike the earlier inefficient scouring of the countryside by scattered columns. The British also targeted everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas under their "Scorched Earth" policy making it harder and harder for the Boers to survive. British troops swept the countryside, interning women and children in concentration camps, destroying crops, burning down homesteads and farms, poisoning wells, and salting fields. They also established their own mounted raiding columns to follow and relentlessly harass the Boers, and utilised armoured trains to deliver rapid reaction forces in response to intelligence of Boer activity.

In early March 1901 Lord Kitchener decided to break the stalemate that the extremely costly war had settled into. It was costing the British taxpayer 2,5 million pounds a month. He decided to sweep the country bare of everything that can give sustenance to the Boers i.e. cattle, sheep, horses, women and children.
Scorched Earth Policy

The W H Coetzer triptych depicting the Scorch Earth policy - War Museum of the Boer Republics

This scorched earth policy led to the destruction of about 30000 Boer farmhouses and the partial and complete destruction of more than forty towns.. Thousands of women and children were removed from their homes by force. They had little or no time to remove valuables before the house was burnt down. They were then taken by ox wagon or in open cattle trucks to the nearest camp.

Conditions in the camps were less than ideal. Tents were overcrowded. Reduced-scale army rations were provided. In fact there were two scales. Meat was not included in the rations issued to women and children whose men folk were still fighting. There were little or no vegetables, no fresh milk for the babies and children, 3/4 lb of either mealie meal, rice or potatoes, 1 lb of meat twice weekly, I oz of coffee daily, sugar 2 oz daily, and salt 0,5 oz daily (this was for adults and children who had family members on commando).