South African Collectors’ Society

Anglo-Boer War Philatelic Society Intro.
The Mineral Revolution.
The Jameson Raid and ‘The Apron Flag’ by Terence Sorour.
What did the house Jameson surrendered in look like?
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. Viewinging 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! “May you live in interesting times” is an ironic Chinese curse that refers to 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. Its effect was to make the war of 1899 – 1902 inevitable. As such, the Jameson Raid is a good starting point in understanding 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 ‘Anglos’ and ‘Boers’ as 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 a war that affected all of South Africa’s people, not just Boers and Brits. We know that Black people participated as combatants, resistance fighters, ‘agter-ryers’ (Afr. ‘squires’) supporting Boer commandos, 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. Many of the capitalists and their employees gave their allegiance to Britain, the world’s greatest imperial power. For them, the most vexing problem was that the gold was in someone else’s country, the Boers’.

The leading British capitalist (and 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 took control of the diamond mining industry. He was the richest man in southern Africa when gold was discovered in the nearby ZAR in 1884. Rhodes took full advantage of this new opportunty to amass further wealth from the exploitation of South Africa’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 Africa’s wealth. He was the arch-British Imperialist of his age and the bete noir of the Republicans 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), ended 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 during the fiasco of the Jameson Raid, a bold but ultimately foolish military strike that flopped over four days during the 1895 / 1896 New Year. The author was accompanied by his son Marcus. They had visited many of the battlefields of southern Africa together 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 found himself outmaneuvered, outnumbered, without food, water or a hope in hell.

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’s historical novel tells the story of Harold Sandal, a Britishg 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 come to profit from the opportunities unleashed 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, known to the Boers as ‘Uitlanders’, (Dutch. foreigners). Sandal opposes the government of the ZAR which had regained Boer independence and their republican status after rising up in rebellion against British rule in 1880. He is slowly drawn into the murky world of pro-Empire, anti-Boer politics.

Due to a cheap pool of 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 was reinforced by their interaction with these poor and unskilled Boers, as well as with the ZARPs (ZAR Police), some of whom were illiterate. A ZAR government intiative to employ Boers in the Johannesburg Post Office was ridiculed in the English press because, apparently, “the Boers lacked the technical skills to make a success ot it”.

It was in this undescribed climate of English superiority in all things that Terry has his idealistic Sandal join the Reform Movement. This agitprop organisation was created by Rhodes, an unapologetic British imperialist and diamond and gold mining magnate, and other mine-owning ‘Randlords’, like Alfred Beit, in order to turn British public opinion against Kruger and the ZAR Boers and to smooth the way for regime change. At the same time Rhodes and Beit secretly smuggle guns into gold mines and arm the miners in preparation for what will be a ‘spontaneous’ uprising based on the unbearable grievances of the oppressed Uitlanders as publicised in the British press. Sandal is slowly drawn into Rhodes’ conspiracy and covertly 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 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 Chamberlain obligingly provided the conspirators with a convenient staging point at Pitsani, Bechuanaland, three miles from the ZAR border and within a 3 – 4 days march of Johannesburg. The plan was for a small but powerful invasion force of some 600 fighting men to enter the ZAR with the excuse of going to assist the oppressed Uitlanders 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. Little did they know that in the code of the conspirators the Jameson Raid was known as 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, and 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’.). The audacity of the Raid is an indicator of the arrogance of Rhodes, his ‘Big Idea’ and the naivety of his men as well as the unsuspecting Boers. When the Uitlander uprising on the Rand failed to materialise, the best laid plans of high finance and imperial hubris 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 nothing less than corporate raiders riding in under the banner of the Union Jack.

With his disapproving wife asking him if he was prepared to kill his Boer neighbour, Sandal realises that involvement in the conspiracy has imperilled him and his family. His expresses some concern for his friendship with his Boer neighbour who is called-up on commando duty to stop Rhodes’ Raiders. This relationship the Boer Gert is the least convincing part of what is otherwise a well-researched and described tale. Nevertheless, it underlines a tectonic shift in trust between Boer and Brit that the Raid precipitated. The divergence between republican and imperial loyalty will later consume the attempts to build a unified nation of ‘White South Africans’ after the end of the ABW in 1902.

‘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 game was up!

The Jameson Raid ended in abject failure. The Raiders’ long, dry march from Pitsani in Bechuanaland ends on the Doornkop battlefield near Krugersdorp. Believing that he had no option but to surrender Jameson asked around for a white flag to hoist. This incident provided the title of Sorour’s book, ‘The Apron Flag’. A small handherchief was offered which Jameson refused. Instead he asked a local woman if he could use her large white apron. This 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 feras 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. ZAR President Kruger, an implacable opponent of Uitlander rights, capital and imperialism, won a resounding victory in the 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. Economic changes were introduced which provided welcome but not enough support to the mines. Alfred Milner, the new British High Commissioner for SA, 1897 – 1905 upped the ante with further demands and inflamatory statements, some 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 rejected these demands as impossible, stating he was not willing to give his country over to “strangers”. It was at this point that Milner sent his notorious “Helot’s Dispatch” in which he described ‘thousands of British subjects kept permanently in the position of helots’. The Boer, he said, were a “menace” to the prosperity of the world.

The slur of ‘Uitlander’ c. Driven into a corner, the Boers declared war in October 1899. As General Smuts noted in 1906, “the Jameson Raid was the real declaration of war” by British imperialists against the ZAR.

As a historical novel ‘The Apron Flag’ provides an accurate description of the events of the Jameson Raid while creating a fictional story around them about the personal lives of people on both sides of the conflict. While the social history of Johannesburg in the 1890s deserves a fuller description, Sorour’s dramatisation of the final battle’s sorry flop into fiasco and surrender is vivid and believable. Many collectors will enjoy finding ‘The Apron Flag’ in their stocking this Christmas. Available from Amazon for £9.74.

1896. The Anglo-Boer War Philatelic Society Meeting – October 2024

Ian Shapiro added some excellent items of ephemera to the discussion that followed Terry’s talk. His first was a pair of white plates printed with sepia portraits of Rhodes and Jameson. These had the quality of mass-produced souvenir crockery, probably manufactured and sold at the time when Jameson was standing trial in Britain for leading the Raid. Jameson and his co-conspirators enjoyed considerable 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. Ian also produced a stampless letter written by Rhodes 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 postcardsr 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, Ian found a large photograph among his collection while rummaging around for material in preparation for this meeting. To his surprise and delight he realised he had an original large size original photo used for one of the Late Crisis in Johannesburg’ postcards. This showed Bettington’s Horse in very impressive detail as they prepared to ride out of western Johannesburg to welcome the Jameson Raiders.

1896. Postcard. ‘The Late Crisis in Johannesburg’.
      This is thought to show pro-Boer Irishmen parading in Johannesburg.
      The arming and training of ‘Uitlanders’ had to be done in the utmost secrecy.

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 was among some 450 men under Lietenant Colonel B. Spragge captured in the disaster at the northern OFS town of Lindley on 31st May 1900.

1900. Stampless Lettersheet. NOOITGEDACHT POW Camp ’26 JUL 00′ to GB.
      Endorsed “Corpl G Moody, Imperial Yeomanry, 13th Battalion, Prisoner of War’.
      Manuscript ‘Gezien / Censor’ and Censor’s name. Postmarked Machadadorp, ZAR.
      One of only seven known Nooitgedacht POW Camp letters, all outgoing!
      The first cover shown to me at my first ABWPS meeting. Stunning!

The lettersheet of George Moody contained this brief message.

The writer of the lettersheet was among some 450 men under Lieutenant Colonel B. Spragge captured near Lindley on 31st May 1900. 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.

Nick Harris produced some very 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. The British Forces were famously under the command of Brevet-Colonel Robert Stephenson Smythe Baden-Powell, the besiegers under the command General Piet Arnoldus Cronje and later Kommandant Sarel Eloff. The British had a number of philatelists in their ranks who took every opportunity to produce philatelically interesting items, including overprinted stamps and entirely new ones made in Mafelking, much to the the displeasure of HM Victoria who resented Baden-Powell putting his head, not hers, on on a ‘British’ stamp.

As Mafeking was besieged, all normal pre-war postal routes were closed to it. The most common method of getting the mail out was to employ ‘native tunners’ to carry the mail to the nearest functioning ‘British’ post office that was not under the control of the Boers. This was a dangerous job as the Boers shot post runners out of hand. One such instance occurred early in April 1900 when besieging Boer Forces intercepted mail that was 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 non-combatants who were paid to provide a clandestine service of mail delvery they took the risk to earn good money knowing that if caught the Boers would kill them. Their participation in the South African War cannot be denied.

Unortunately it was at this point that I ran out of time. I dallied as long as I dared but eventually had to make my apologies to leave 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 and an Underground Tube journey across London with one change-over. I succeeded in catching my train at King’s Cross with 2 minutes to spare. Next time, and there will be a next time God willing, I was make sure I will not miss a single minure of the meeting. I have attended many society and club meetings but none have been so enjoyable as this. If you have an interest in the ‘Boer War’ join the ABWPS. If the next meeting has material half as good as I saw, you will not be disappointed!