Battling the Boers

Abstract

In superseding Chelmsford as GOC, South Africa, Sir Garnet Wolseley assumed wide-ranging powers as both high commissioner in southeastern Africa and governor of Natal and the Transvaal. He sought to impose a settlement upon both Zululand and the neighbouring Transvaal (the former South African Republic that Britain had annexed in 1877). Setting aside the confederation plans of Sir Bartle Frere, he resolved that Zululand (other than the disputed territory left in Boer hands) should be ruled by thirteen minor chiefs. He then moved into the Transvaal to restore British prestige by overthrowing Sekhukhune, whom the Boers had failed to defeat in 1876. The strategy had only short-term impact and, after barely a year, 4,000 Boers at their national convention voted to restore the South African Republic, by force of arms, if necessary. In the ensuing conflict, the First Anglo-Boer War (1880–81), soldiers had their first encounter with a well-armed African foe, who was mobile, adept at skirmishing and capable of conducting siege warfare. Some 1,800 soldiers served in the Transvaal and all were besieged in isolated garrisons throughout the war, with few managing to send letters beyond their beleaguered posts. Even the relief force from Natal struggled to maintain its line of communications, and few war correspondents reached the front (none covered the first two battles and only three observed the final battle at Majuba). As the war lasted little more than two months, contained a series of unrelieved disasters, and divided British opinion about its propriety, it aroused scant enthusiasm at home. Indeed the newspapers, at least latterly, were preoccupied with the assassination of the Tsar and the death of Benjamin Disraeli. To attack Sekhukhune, Wolseley assembled a formidable composite force, comprising the 2/21st and the 94th (2/Connaught Rangers), with two companies of the 80th, four guns, a party of Royal Engineers with explosives, a troop of mounted volunteers under Commandant Fereira, C H A P T E R T H R E E