Boer War
Lord Kitchener applied this policy during the later part of the Second Boer War (1899-1902) when the Boers, defeated on the battlefield, resorted to guerilla warfare. This took the form of the destruction of farms in order to prevent the fighting Boers from obtaining food and supplies. However, the destruction left women and children without means to survive since crops and livestock were also destroyed. [10]The British conceived concentration camps as a humanitarian measure, to care for displaced persons until the war was ended. Negligence, lack of planning and supplies and overcrowding led to much loss of life.[11] A decade after the war P.L.A. Goldman officially determined that an astonishing number of 27,927 Boers died in the concentration camps: 26,251 women and children (of whom more than 22,000 were under the age of 16), and 1,676 men over the age of 16, of whom 1,421 were aged persons.[12]
One British response to the guerrilla war was a 'scorched earth' policy to deny the guerillas supplies and refuge. In this image Boer civilians watch their house as it is burned.
Boers were given 10 minutes to gather belongings
Emily Hobhouse tells the story of the young Lizzie van Zyl who died in the Bloemfontein concentration camp: "She was a frail, weak little child in desperate need of good care. Yet, because her mother was one of the 'undesirables' due to the fact that her father neither surrendered nor betrayed his people, Lizzie was placed on the lowest rations and so perished with hunger that, after a month in the camp, she was transferred to the new small hospital. Here she was treated harshly. The English disposed doctor and his nurses did not understand her language and, as she could not speak English, labelled her an idiot although she was mentally fit and normal. One day she dejectedly started calling: "Mother! Mother! I want to go to my mother!" One Mrs Botha walked over to her to console her. She was just telling the child that she would soon see her mother again, when she was brusquely interrupted by one of the nurses who told her not to interfere with the child as she was a nuisance." Shortly afterwards, Lizzie van Zyl died.