South African Collectors’ Society

Anglo-Boer War Philatelic Society Intro.
The Mineral Revolution.
The Jameson Raid and ‘The Apron Flag’ by Terence Sorour.
Judging a book by its cover.
The Nooitgedacht British POW Camp.
Mafeking Siege Mail.

Anglo-Boer War Philatelic Society Intro

In October 2024 I attended my first meeting of the Anglo-Boer War (ABW) Philatelic Society (ABWPS) at the Union Jack Club in Waterloo London. It was an unexpected treat, an enoyable and convivial philatelic society meeting that began with an excellent lunch (optional) followed by discussion in a comfortable room where remarkable postal history was passed around the table from member to member for each to hold and closely examine. Viewing postal history doesn’t get more intimate than this.

The Union Jack Club is situated a stone’s throw from nearby Waterloo Station. It supports and promotes the welfare of serving non-commissioned members of the British military, their families and veteran personnel. It was an honour and a privilege to be invited there. The Club is decorated with photographs and the military badges of the men and later women who marched and fought in service of their Kings, Queens and Country.

At the Autumn Stampex 2024, London, Ian Shapiro, a SACS and ABWPS member, had invited me to the meeting because, he said, “there is going to be a talk on the Jameson Raid”, which he emphasised with his usual enthusiasm, “you really must come along. It will be very interesting”. It was! I was reminded of the ironic Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”, one that refers to enduring a time of uncertainty, strife and war.

The invasion of the independent ZAR (Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek / South African Republic) by an unauthorised British colonial force under Dr Leander Starr Jameson, an employee of the diamond and gold mining magnate Cecil Rhodes, the Prime Minster of the Cape Colony, created just such an ‘interesting’ time in South Africa. The Jameson Raid’s effect was to make the war of 1899 – 1902 inevitable. As such, it is a very good starting point for anyone wanting to understand the causes of the Anglo-Boer War or, as more and more people are calling it today, the ‘South African War’.

I went to the ABWPS meeting with some apprehension. I disagree with the continued use of the term ‘Anglo-Boer War’ (ABW) as a desciption of the conflict of 1899 – 1902. I prefer to use ‘South African War’ (SAW) because it does not restrict the conflict to European ‘Anglos’ and ‘Boers’ as some of my racists teachers in Apartheid South Africa had led me to believe. To them, it was a “White Man’s War in Africa”. We now know that it was nothing of the sort. It was a war that affected all of South Africa’s people, not just Boers and Brits. Black people participated as combatants, resistance fighters, ‘agter-ryers’ (Afr. ‘squires’), auxillaries, blockhouse and town guards, stretcher bearers, refugees, labourers, spies, post-runners and victims. Despite my contrary opinion on the validity of their historic society name today, the ABWPS’ members made me very welcome. Thank you.

The Mineral Revolution

In this article I refer to capiitalism and capitalists, imperialism and imperialists, terms used by modern historians, often Marxists, to describe South Africa’s modern history. Offensive as they are to some, these terms describe political facts and that is how I attempt to use them here. I hope this article will be seen as revisionist rather than ‘woke’.

Before the discovery of diamonds, wealth in South Africa was measured in livestock, mostly cattle. For the first 200 years of European settlement the Cape offered the Dutch and later the British very little of any exportable financial worth. As the Cape’s first rectangular stamps of 1864 show, its tenuous economy was based on little more than wine, wool and ship’s chandlery. The discovery of diamonds in 1867 and later gold propelled South Africa from an agricultural backwater into a modern industrial society. This transformation is known in today’s South African histories as the ‘Mineral Revolution’.

The discovery of diamonds and gold saw a mass movement of people, Black and White, to work mines and the new industries of the booming towns and cities. This transformed the traditional concept of wealth in South Africa as well as its late 19th c. demographics. The industries of the Mineral Revolution required capital to fully exploit the opportunities within the new economy. It also needed skilled miners and other artisans who came in their tens of thousands from Europe, mostly England. Most of the capitalists and their employees gave their allegiance to Britain, the world’s greatest imperial power. Their biggest problem was that the gold was not found in a British colony but in the Boers’ ZAR. The government of President Paul Kruger had initially viewed the discovery of gold as unfortunate and unwanted. His response was hostility to the demands of mining capital and the ‘Uitlander’, (Dutch. foreigner) migrant community. As a result, pro-Empire British mining capital and British mine labour united in large part against the ZAR Boers.

The leading British capitalist (and unapologetic imperialist) in southern Africa was Cecil John Rhodes, (1853 – 1902), a self-made man, the sickly son of a parson from Bishop Stortford. Rhodes went to South Africa to recover his health in Natal but decided instead to seek his fortune in the Diamond Fields of Kimberley where he eventually gained control of the diamond mining industry. He was the richest man in southern Africa when gold was discovered 300 miles away in the ZAR in 1884. Rhodes used his capital, contacts, infrastructure and financial skills to take full and early advantage of this new opportunty to amass further wealth from the exploitation of the ZAR’s vast gold deposits.

It was Rhodes’ ambition to paint Africa in British pink from the Cape to Cairo. This would have allowed him to exploit the pick of Africa’s wealth. He was the arch-British Imperialist of his age and as such the bete noir of the Republican Boers. He believed, and rightly so at that time in England’s history, that “to be born an Englishman is to win first prize in God’s lottery of life!” He would in his short lifetime found De Beers (diamonds), Consolidated Gold Fields and the BSAC (British South Africa Company) in a territory later named after him, Rhodesia. His term as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, (1890 – 1896), would end in humiliation and resignation when his leading role in the Jameson Raid, a conspiracy to overthrow the ZAR government by force, was exposed.

The Jameson Raid, including ‘The Apron Flag’ by Terence Sorour

Our very pleasant meal in the Club’s dining room was followed by a talk on the Jameson Raid. This was given by Terence ‘Terry’ Sorour, the South African author of ‘The Apron Flag’, an historical drama set in Johannesburg between 1895 and 1896, the period when the Raid was being planned, briefly enacted and its consequences suffered. The author was accompanied by his son Marcus. Together they had visited many of the battlefields of southern Africa and talked knowledgeably about them. Terry’s talk was on the historical background to his book with particular emphasis on the events leading up to the Battle of Doornkop, (now a part of Soweto), where Jameson surrendered on the 2nd January 1896, outmaneuvered, outnumbered, without food, water or a hope in hell.

Had Britain not lost its Transvaal colony in the ZAR’s ‘First War of Independence’ South African history might have been very different. The British Army’s defeat and the Transvaal Boer’s victory at Majuba in 1881 was recognised by the British government who gave the Boer’s the freedom to restore their republic subject to a small degree of British suzerainity over foreign policy. Many proud Britons bitterly regretted this humiliating defeat and remained unreconciled to it, especially after the discovery of vast gold deposits on the ZAR’s Witwaterrand in 1884. In the run-up to the ABW of 1899 ‘Remember Majuba’ became an British rallying cry. In a further attempt to undermine the authority and independence of the Boers, many British continued to use the old colonial name of ‘Transvaal’ to cast doubt on the ZAR’s status as a fully independent country.

Terry Sorour’s historical novel tells the story of Harold Sandal, a British lawyer living in the ZAR. He lives on a farmstead outside of Johannesburg, a rapidly expanding gold-mining town, the majority of whose inhabitants are newly-arrived British English-speakers or Uitlanders come to profit from the opportunities made possible by the discovery of gold. Sandal is on good terms with his Boer neighbour but is nevertheless driven by a sense of injustice over the treatment of his fellow migrants. Sandal inhabits Johannesburg’s Anglo-centric world and opposes the ‘Dutch’ government of the ZAR who had regained Boer republican independence from Britain after rising up in rebellion against British colonial rule in 1880. As an English ‘rooinek’ (Afr. red neck / newcomer ) inhabiting his own British bubble Sandal has little understanding of or affinity for the Boers. He is slowly drawn into the murky world of Rhodes’ emotive pro-Empire, anti-Boer politics. Rhodes and his fellow Randlords unashamedly use the grievances of the Uitlanders to further their financial aims.

Due to a pool of cheap Black labour and the ethnic exclusiveness of the unionised British miners, there was no significant Boer presence in Johannesburg’s rapidly developing economy. However, rural natural disaters like a plague of locusts, drought and cattle disease forced a growing trickle of poor Afrikaners to move into the towns of the Rand in order to make a living. Many did so as transport riders or cab drivers. British prejudice towards the Boers was reinforced by their interaction with these poor, unskilled and often hopelessly destitute ex-farmers. The ZAR government created some politically expedient affirmative action policiess, like creating a Boer police force in Johannesburg, the ZARPs (ZAR Police), some of whom were illiterate and could not speak English. One ZAR intiative was to provide employment for a small number of Boers in the Johannesburg Post Office, a department of its government. This was ridiculed in Johannesburg’s English press because, apparently, “the Boers lacked the technical skills to make a success ot it”.

It was in this unmentioned climate of English hautere and superiority in all things that Terry’s hero, the idealistic Sandal, joins the Reform Movement. This was an agitprop organisation created by Rhodes, an unapologetic British imperialist, and other mine-owning ‘Randlords’, like Alfred Beit. Their plan was for the Reform Movement to turn British public opinion against Kruger and the ZAR Boers in order to smooth the way for regime change, ideally an invasion of the ‘Transvaal’ by British forces. When the mine owners realise that this will not happen, Rhodes comes up with a plan of his own. He and Beit begin to secretly smuggle guns into their gold mines in order to arm the miners for what will be presented as a ‘spontaneous’ uprising based on the unbearable grievances of the oppressed Uitlanders as described by the Reform Movement and as printed in the British press. Sandal now begins to recruit men for the impending uprising.

Rhodes was no stranger to usurping other people’s land. He had begun in 1888 by persuading Lobengula, king of the Matabele, to sign a treaty giving him the rights to mining and administration in Mashonaland, a tribal area not under the direct rule of the king. In 1890, he and his BSAC (British South Africa Company) dispatched an armed force, the Pioneer Column, to annex the territory of Mashonaland, later forming a large part of Southern Rhodesia. Its occupation by the Pioneer Column lead to the start of BSAC rule in ‘Rhodesia’. In 1891 Rhodes expanded across the Zambezi into Matabeleland itself.

In Britain, Rhodes’ plans to subvert the ZAR were given a nod and a wink by Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary. Some three months before the Raiders crossed the border into the ZAR Chamberlain obligingly provided the conspirators with a convenient staging point at Pitsani, Bechuanaland, three miles from the ZAR border and a 3 – 4 day’s march from Johannesburg. The plan was for a small but powerful invasion force of some 600 fighting men equipped with modern weapons, machine guns and field artillery to enter the ZAR with the excuse of peacefully going to assist the oppressed Uitlanders’ uprising on the Rand in order to prevent further bloodshed. This was calculated to play well with a patriotic British public who had grown tall on tales of imperial derring-do. Few knew that the conspirators ‘code name for the Jameson Raid’ was the ‘flotation’, as if it was just an everyday business venture made possible by capital expenditure.

The rank and file of the invasion force was drawn from Rhodes’ BSAC employees, specifically the Matabeleland Mounted Police who were led by British Army officers on the Reserve. In overall command was Dr Leander Starr Jameson, a confidant and employee of Rhodes. He believed he would ‘lick the burghers all around the Transvaal’. (Note his use of ‘Transvaal’.) When the Uitlander uprising on the Rand failed to materialise Jameson found himself up the creek without a paddle deep inside the ZAR. The best laid plans of high finance collapsed into ignominous failure once the shooting started. The ZAR Boers were clearly within their rights to defend their country while Jameson’s Raiders were no more than corporate raiders riding in under a flag of convenience.

For all his idealism, Sandal cuts a sorry, shabby and rather hollow figure as he begins to realise the game is up. He fears that his involvement in the conspiracy has imperilled him and his family. After his disapproving wife has asked him if he was prepared to kill his Boer neighbour and told him to stop all involvement in this stupid conspracy, Sandal expresses some concern for his friendship with his Boer neighbour who is called-up on commando duty to stop Rhodes’ Raiders. Sandal’s relationship with the Boer Gert is the least convincing part of a tale that is otherwise well-researched and told. Nevertheless, their friendship underlines the tectonic shift in trust between Boer and Brit that the Raid precipitated. The growing gulf between republican and imperial loyalty would later gnaw away at attempts to build a unified nation of ‘White South Africans’ after Union in 1910.

‘The Apron Flag’ contains a passage that describes the scene above. “Early that morning, about one hundred armed horsemen, all the Reform Committee could muster to go to Jameson’s aid, had left Johannesburg in an endeavour to ride out and join Jameson and his troops. They had barely left the town before they were overhauled by a couple of riders sent out by the Reformers to stop them. They had changed their minds at the last moment for two reasons. Firstly, they realised that such a small force could not have been of much assistance. Secondly, sending out riders to assist the Raiders would fall foul of the new Proclamation from the British High Commission, which forbade any British subjects from aiding the Raiders, which was not a risk worth taking.”

The Jameson Raid ended in abject failure. The Raiders’ long, dry march from Pitsani in Bechuanaland ends on the Doornkop battlefield near Krugersdorp where Jameson, believing that he had no option but to surrender, asks around for a white flag to hoist. A small handherchief was offered which Jameson refused. Instead he asked a local woman if he could use her large white apron. This incident provides the title of Terry’s book, ‘The Apron Flag’. It was run up the chimney on a stick, a bugle sounded ceasfire and it was all over. Jameson and his men were marched into captivity. Rhodes was humiliated and forced to resign. Chamberlain squirmed and denied everything. Sandal fears for his safety but succeeds in covering his tracks and resumes his relationship with his Boer neighbour.

The results of the Raid were felt immediately. The 1895 recession worsened and became a full-scale depression which lasted until late 1888. Boer opinion swung against the benefits of being a part of the British Empire with a majority of the Cape Dutch switching political support from Rhodes to their Republican kin north of the Orange River. Militarily, the Boers realised how outdated their weapons were by comparison to Jameson’s small but compact force. This led them to purchase large quantities of modern arms and ammunition from France and Germany and for the ZAR and OFS to join together in a mutual Boer defence treaty. President Kruger, an implacable opponent of Uitlander rights, capital and imperialism, was given a resounding victory in the ZAR’s 1898 election.

The Raid’s one positive was to make the ZAR government more aware of the importance of its mining industry and to be more accomodating of its needs. He introduced welcome economic changes but they were not enough to fully satisfy the mines, nor did they go far enough to reduce British politicians’ and civil servants’ desire for war. Alfred Milner, the new British High Commissioner for SA, 1897 – 1905 upped the ante with further demands and inflamatory statements, many of which were intended to engineer war with the Boers. At the Bloemfontein Conference of May/June 1899 Milner demanded that Uitlanders be given the immediate right to vote, that English be used in the Volksraad (ZAR Parliament) and that all its laws be approved by the British Parliament.

Kruger, who remembered when English was the exclusive language of law, education and government in the Cape, rejected these demands as impossible, stating that he was not willing to give his country over to “strangers”. At this point Milner sent his notorious “Helot’s Dispatch” in which he described ‘thousands of British subjects kept permanently in the position of helots’. (Greek. a badly mistreated, state-owned Spartan serf). Kruger and the Boers, he said with useful exaggeration, were a “menace to the prosperity of the world“. The world that Milner was referring to was one painted British pink and created by privateers like Rhodes and his swashbuckling accomplice. It is true to say that Kruger and this supporters cared more about freedom from British rule than they did about gold.

Despite the Boers preventing British capital and its shareholders from enjoying maximum profits and their proud and stubborn republican independence being an affront to world’s largest empire, one which the English public believed was essentially benevolent, the Boers were no threat to any but the unscrupulous greedy mine-owners and over ambitious imperialist politicians. Milner continued to make impossible demands intended to drive the Boers into a corner. He left them with little or no alternative but “God and the Mauser”. The Boers declared war on 11th October 1899 in the hope that a pre-emptive strike would stall the inevitable British invasion. As General Smuts noted in 1906, it was the Jameson Raid of 1896 that had been “the real declaration of war” against the ZAR.

‘The Apron Flag’ is an historical novel ‘based on the events of the Jameson Raid. The dramatisation of its key events, especially the Raid and the final battle leading up to Jameson’s surrender is vivid and believable. The well-told military side of this tale is presumably the author’s passion. However, the fictional story about the personal lives of people on either side of the conflict is a bit flat. Missing from this tale is the remarkably colourful social history of 1890s Johannesburg. With the possible exception of Sandal’s Boer neighbour, there are no heros in this tale, just Brits thinking they are better than Boers. For all their idealism, Sandal, his Uitlander pals and Jameson’s brave men are an uninspiring lot. By the end, Sandal chickens-out of Rhodes’ Boy’s Own adventure and returns chastened and fearful to his wife. This is probably just how the conspiracy fizzled out for most of Johannesburg’s participants lucky enough not to be jailed. The Apron Flag’ is an interesting read centred on time in South African history whose consequences plagued the country for much of the 20th c. Available from Amazon for £9.74.

Judging a book by its cover.

The cover of Terry Sorour’s The Apron Flag’ is a recreated image that bears only a basic structural resemblance to the real historic farmhouse. Knowing that a postcard and a sketch of the original farmhouse exist, why was a recreation of it necessary? Was it simply to accomodate the apron flag flying from the chimney? Apparently, yes. Look closely and you will see it. I show two images of the correct farmhouse below this.

As a South African postcard and ephemera collector, I find the image on the cover an unsatisfactory feature given that images of the real building exist. I find the brooding presence of the cover’s dark, faux farmhouse with its modern-style corrugated roofing on the front cover is quite disturbing. Compare it to the real, curiously familiar windowless farmhouse with its thatched roof, blue-gum trees and chickens scratching in the dirt.

Ingvald Schroder-Nielsen, a Norwegian “officer and a gentleman“, arrived in the ZAR in 1898. Outraged by the British Army’s policy of burning farms, he sided with the Boers during the guerilla phase of the war. He was captured and threatened with execution. He witnessed the execution of a young Hollander on trumped-up charges. Exiled to Bermuda he later wrote a book about his experiences. An image found on the back cover of his “Amongst the Boers in Peace and War” (Kenilworth: Africana Publishers, 2012), is presumably intended to portray an everyday Boer farmhouse. It is, in fact, the farmhouse in which Jameson surrendered. It is not known when it was sketched. The uniformed soldiers do not appear to be Boers. No details of this image are provided.

The Anglo-Boer War Philatelic Society Meeting – October 2024

Ian Shapiro added excellent items of ephemera to the discussion that followed Terry’s talk. His first were two white plates printed with sepia portraits of Rhodes and Jameson. These had the quality of mass-produced souvenir crockery, probably made and sold at the time when Jameson was standing trial in Britain for leading the Raid. Jameson and his co-conspirators enjoyed considerable British public support at the time.

These two unusual non-philatelic offerings were followed by a possibly unique photograph signed by both Rhodes and Jameson which showed them standing together. Whatever his faults, Rhodes was loyal to those who supported him. Ian also produced a stampless letter written by Rhodes in Cape Town and addressed by him to Jameson in Bulawayo, Matabeleland. This had presumably travelled in a BSAC company bag.

Ian also showed examples of what are believed to be the first postcards printed with a photographic image in South Africa. Entitled ‘The Late Crisis in Johannesburg’, these were ZAR printed stationery postcards overprinted on the reverse with photos of events that occurred during the Jameson Raid. The earliest recorded date of their use is the 3rd February 1894, one month and a day after the raid was stopped dead in its tracks.

As synchronicity would have it, while looking for material in preparation for this meeting Ian found among his collection the large photograph of Bettington’s Horse departing Johannesburg. To his surprise and delight he realised it was an original large size photo used for one of the Late Crisis in Johannesburg’ postcards. It showed Bettington’s Horse in very impressive detail as they prepared to ride out of western Johannesburg to welcome the Jameson Raiders. See above.

The Nooitgedacht British POW Camp.

The Anglo-Boer War Philatelic Society is one I had once applied to for membership but had never joined. I was about to discover the extent of this lost opportunity to share in its members’ outstanding postal history from South Africa’s most divisive war.

Nick Harris produced a remarkable item of mail from the Boer’s Nooitgedacht POW camp which he passed around the table. Nooitgedacht held some 1800 British prisoners, about half of whom were removed by the Boers from the POW camp at Waterval on 4th June 1900, the day before the occupation of Pretoria by British forces under Lord Roberts. The writer of the stampless lettersheet below was one of some 450 invaders under Lieutenant Colonel B. Spragge captured at Lindley, OFS, on 31st May 1900.

The lettersheet of George Moody contained this brief message. This is a transcript.

Prior to this cover I was only aware of the New Model School POW camp that housed Winston Churchill in Pretoria. This gem was well worth the trip to the ABWPS in London. And then it got even better.

Mafeking Siege Mail

Following Kruger’s declaration of war on Britain and its Empire, ZAR and OFS Boer commandos advanced rapidly into the British colonies of the Cape and Natal. This led to British forces being isolated and besieged in Mafeking, Ladysmith and Kimberley. The most important Briton to be ‘locked-up’ in Kimberely was Cecil John Rhodes!

Nick Harris’s now produced some remarkable examples of Mafeking Siege Mail. This 217 day siege of British and colonial forces began three days after the formal declaration of war by the ZAR and lasted from 14th October 1899 until 17th May 1900. It was the longest of the three Boer sieges of British forces.

Mafeking’s British Forces were famously under the command of Brevet-Colonel Robert Stephenson Smythe Baden-Powell, the besiegers under the command General Piet Arnoldus Cronje, later Kommandant Sarel Eloff. The besieged British had a number of philatelists in their ranks who took every opportunity to produce philatelically interesting items including overprinting Cape and Bechuanaland stamps with ‘MAFEKING BESIEGED’ and even making entirely new ones in Mafeking, much to the the displeasure of H. M. Victoria who resented Baden-Powell putting his head, not hers, on a ‘British’ stamp.

Lietenant Colonel Lord Edward Cecil was in charge postal communications within besieged Mafeking. In March 1900 he started a postal service using Baralong native runners. “The Baralong black natives played a crucial part in the defence of the town. It was they who were solely responsible for conveying military and press despatches to and from Mafeking”. The letters were usually concealed in their clothing. The rates were set at 1/- per half ounce for mail that left Mafeking on the northern route (above) via Crocodile Pools and Bulawayo and 6d for mail that departed from Mafeking along the southern route (below) to Barkly West and Kimberley after its siege was lifted on 15th February 1900.

The Kimberley route was the more dangerous and carried the greater risk of mail not getting through to its intended destination. It did, however, have the benefit of a 6d postal rate as opposed to 1/- to Bulawayo. Letter smugging was a dangerous job. The Boers shot post runners out of hand. In early April 1900 the besieging Boer Forces intercepted mail being run out of Mafeking. They shot the runners and attached the letters to their corpses which were found the next morning near the town’s defences.

This incident gives the lie to the ‘Anglo-Boer War’ being exclusively “a White Man’s War”. Although these ‘native runners’ were unarmed non-combatants paid to provide a clandestine service of mail delvery they took the risk knowing that if caught the Boers would kill them. This was not something they did to captured British soldiers. The Boer’s disregard for the rights of Black runner’s can be attributed to General J. P. Snyman’s order “that all black runners caught leaving Mafeking were to be considered combatants and shot.” The participation of these dead black ‘combatants’ in the Anglo-Boer War was not one that I was taught at school in South Africa when it was increasingly under siege from Western disapproval and sanctions as a result of its focus on ‘Whites Only’ policies.

Unortunately it was at this point that I ran out of time. I dallied as long as I dared but eventually had to apologise to run and catch my train before the peak travel cut-off. What little I saw of Nick’s over-printed GB ‘Mafeking Besieged’ material was so special I was sorely tempted to stay. It was with heavy conflict in my heart that I departed to Waterloo Station for an Underground Tube journey across London. I caught my train at King’s Cross with 2 minutes to spare. God willing, I will attend the next meeting and will make sure I will not miss a single minute of it. I have attended many society and club meetings but none were so enjoyable as this. If the next meeting is half as good as the last, you will not be disappointed! Visit the Anglo-Boer War Philatelic Society’s website.