“There is only a means, the resistance of the Boers to break; namely the toughest oppression.
In other words, we need to kill the parents, so that the children have respect for us.”
~ Winston Churchill, Journalist, Morning Post.
{NOTE: Boer concentration camp deaths 28,000 of whom 22,074 were children under 16 years of age.}
The British Empire was at war with the Transvaal and the Free State, and it was slowly winning. Most women across the empire believed the war was just and necessary. That was, after all, what they had been taught to think by media. But one of them was different.
One woman among millions, read the news reports and scratched her head. And frowned when the dots did not connect. When she heard that Boer civilians were being treated inhumanely, she was the only one who would not let others soothe her conscience and do her thinking for her. She bought a ticket for South Africa and set sail to investigate in person.
What she discovered defied description. She had believed that there was just one concentration camp. Instead, she found there were 45. They were comprised of captured civilians who had been herded behind barbed wire fences to make the country uninhabitable for the commandos in the field. Old men, women and children. She had been told that they were refugees, which the Crown was taking care of for humanitarian reasons. The concentration camps were for their own safety. That is what they told her. But that’s not remotely what she saw.
Instead, she discovered that the people in these camps were dying at an unbelievable rate – dying of disease, malnutrition, exposure to the elements and neglect. They were being abused and humiliated, the meat rations that they were given were often rotten or came from animals that had died of disease and exposure. Already entire families had died out. And every day some processions lead to cemeteries where the dead were being buried faster than coffins could be made.
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