Vredefort Road

Vredefort Road was the orphan of the camp system. It was located in the flat maizelands of the Free State highveld, at a station now known as Greenlands, on the railway line south of the town of Vredefort. It was popular neither with the camp authorities nor with later historians of the camps, and it was probably only established because the military did not know what to do with the hundreds of blacks and whites who congregated near the military encampment at the end of 1900. Inspector Daller described the place in May 1901 as ‘a bare stoney bleak spot on the slope of a hillside’, while George Brink, the superintendent’s son, noted that it was ‘laid out on a bare slope of a flint-stoned kopje in a notoriously bad hail belt. . . . Not a tree was in sight, and the nearest water supply was about three miles distant’.¹

With little water, often short of supplies and vulnerable to Boer attack, the camp inmates (for there was a large black camp as well as a smaller white one), led difficult and restricted lives. Yet, ironically, we know more about daily life at Vredefort Road than many other camps.

Vredefort Road was probably formed towards the end of 1900 and it was managed initially by Lieutenant R. Splaine of the 3^rd Durham Light Infantry. When the civilian administration took over in February 1901, there was a population of 163 whites and nearly 1,000 blacks.. Splaine struggled to deal with the black refugees still pouring in for he had no more room and no food. Shortly after he was removed but he was not replaced for some time and the Vredefort Road medical officer, J.P. Walker, was left to negotiate the erection of hospital tents and the provision of medical care.²

By the end of February some kind of administration had been set in place but it remained haphazard. The camps were not at Vredefort Road station at all, but some three miles to the south, and many of the refugees were simply ‘scattered all around’. Stores were not kept in the camp and tents were in short supply. ‘The refugees have a very unpleasant time of it on account of the incessant rains and bad state of tents’, Inspector Daller noted. The first official report, sent in by the local officer commanding, Colonel C.M. Keighley, also commented that food supplies were ‘not good’ because of the great increase in numbers. The hospital had not been erected because of a shortage of tents, and the water supply was only ‘fair’. Civilian staff had not yet arrived. A trickle of medical reports provided the only other information about the camps. Fortunately health was ‘good’ although some typhoid had appeared in the white camp.

Finally, in March 1901 Mr Nowers was appointed as superintendent but he lacked the ability to run these difficult camps. Although he had been a good magistrate, in the camp he seemed ‘helpless, nervous and rather wanting in common sense’, Inspector Daller thought. The clerk, the son of the local contractor, was both very young and ‘stupid’. The only intelligent staff member was Mr Daneel, the black superintendent .³

Certainly Nowers had endless problems to contend with, including a parsimonious and unsympathetic head office. When he arrived, the camp was ‘not in a very bright state’. The tents were pitched irregularly and were too close together. There were several sheep and cattle kraals in the camp itself and the job of clearing the animals, including fowls and pigs, was hampered by the incessant rain. As with many of the ORC camps, families poured in during April and May 1901 and head office was unable to supply enough tents. At the end of April the superintendent reported that he had 1,370 white refugees and only 234 tents, including those belonging to the people themselves. Many of the tents were so worn that all he could do was to put them over others but this left him even more short of accommodation.⁴

Apart from the shortage of tents, which meant that families of eight or ten people had to occupy a single dwelling, water remained a constant worry. As well as the distance, the supply was poor and transport was lacking. For months bullock carts, carrying water barrels, traipsed the three mile distance between the spring and the camp and even in better times the inmates were each restricted to 1 gallon (just under 4 litres) a day. The lack of water meant that washing of every kind was difficult. As late as September 1901, when the Ladies Committee visited, laundry was done in ‘dirty stagnant pools’ half a mile from the camp. The following summer, when the supply began to run dry, an attempt was made to drill for water but this was a failure, a ‘mere farce’ the medical officer declared. The shortage of water made it impossible to establish a vegetable garden as many other camps had done. When one was planted, most was lost from drought. ‘It was very useful when other sources of supply failed’, the superintendent commented sadly.⁵

Nor was the extent of Nowers’ responsibility for the black camps clear. Was he expected to check all their stores when they arrived, he asked. It was impossible to get to the station every day for it was too far away and there was often no conveyance. The work was so great that he had to do his books and correspondence late at night, ‘besides being worried and pestered by these good people about minor things from morning to night’.⁶

The camp inmates were amongst the most recalcitrant in the system, ‘a disreputable, truculent lot from Parys and Vredefort’, very different in style and class from the other camps, Inspector Daller explained. The women were bitter and the men refused to work, and they quarrelled amongst themselves. When the superintendent asked the local military commandant for help in dealing with them, the commandant merely complained about pettiness of the cases. ‘I can give you my assurance that I am trying my level best to get my Camp in good order’, Nowers assured the chief superintendent, ‘but find it very difficult indeed as some women are most troublesome’. But Captain Trollope, the chief superintendent, was unsympathetic: ‘there is no friction in other camps & the people are happy & contented’, he claimed.⁷

If the white camp was disorderly, the black camp was even more haphazard. By April 1901 there were two, containing altogether over 1,400 ‘souls’. The one was about a half mile from the white camp and the other two miles away, closer to the station. The West camp, of about 500 people, was slightly better off than the East. There huts were made only of sacking. Without livestock the people also lacked fuel, since cattle dung (‘mis’, variously called ‘mest’, or ‘mist’ in the camp literature) was widely used by blacks and Boers alike. All they had to cook their food were coal clinkers scavenged at the station. ’I know that some are starving for the want of fuel and cannot get it’, Daneel told the superintendent in June, during the cold highveld winter. The people suffered both from enteric and dysentery and had no hospital. The only ameliorating factor was that some of the men could find work with the military. In May 1901 the camps were united into one and Daneel, who had been living in the white camp, moved in with them.⁸

A major problem for black and white alike was the constant fear of Boer raids. Although Vredefort Road was never attacked like the Pietersburg or Aliwal North camps, gunshots were often heard in the distance. The local military commandant, who was more than a little paranoid about safety, insisted in May 1901 that the Boer men erect a double fence to protect the camp, together with a small fort. The men objected strongly – they were refugees under British protection, not prisoners-of-war, they declared. The commandant insisted, declining to use blacks as the superintendent suggested. This spat went to head office where Trollope was unhelpful. ‘The refugees must all take their share of any fatigues for the maintenance of a healthy and sanitary camp. . . . Any labour supplied by refugees for work not actually for the well being of the persons in the camp should be paid for at a fair wage’.⁹

In May 1901 Nowers was replaced as superintendent by J.G. Brink, who had previously been magistrate at Jagersfontein. His position could hardly have been worse. As a loyal Boer, he was viewed with the darkest suspicion by the more jingo British officials, while the Boers often distrusted him for his collaboration with the enemy. The Vredefort Road records are filled with his attempts to justify and defend himself against criticism. Brink appears to have been a kindly man, who struggled against the odds to do the best for his people, but he lacked the firmness which distinguished the most effective camp superintendents. The Ladies Committee observed that ‘The Superintendent, a well-meaning kindly man, of Dutch birth, belonging to this country, seems to find it impossible to get the men to work properly for him. There is much bitter feeling in the camp, and a general laxity in the control over it’.¹⁰ His twelve-year-old son, George, who became a well-known general in the Union Defence Force, commanding a division in the Western Desert campaign in North Africa in the Second World War, left an account of life in Vredefort Road camp, which gives the unusual perspective of a young boy who was a pro-Boer but not a camp inmate, although he lived in the camp for part of the time.

The other official about whom we know a certain amount was the senior medical officer, Dr John Alexander Graham, whose career was fairly typical of the British doctors who worked in the camps. He was an admirable and energetic young man, ‘a charming Scot with a red Captain Kettle beard’ as George Brink described him. Born in Paisley, Scotland, in 1875, Graham was about 26 years old when he arrived at Vredefort Road. He had qualified in Glasgow in 1896 with an MB CM (Master of Surgery), and had worked briefly at the Paisley Infirmary and Fever Hospital before joining his father in private practice. While we do not know what brought Graham to South Africa, we do know that the medical market was very competitive in Britain and he may have hoped to make a better living abroad. Initially he served as a civil surgeon in the British army before joining the camp service and he was appointed to Vredefort Road in July 1901. When Vredefort Road was closed down at the end of the war, Graham worked briefly in Winburg and Bethulie camps before settling in Dewetsdorp as a general practitioner. For all his ability, he seems to have fallen to some extent under the same cloud as Brink for, when he applied for a medal for his camp service (and was turned down), Trollope recorded that he remembered him as ‘rather a bad lot’. Graham married an Afrikaans woman and spent most of his life in the Free State, dying in 1948 in Cape Town.¹¹

Camp officials lived under conditions which were little better than the inmates. Their accommodation was more spacious, for the Brink family lived in a marquee, rather than a bell tent, divided into four by blankets, with the parents in one section and their daughter in another. George and his brother shared the third, while the last served as a sitting and dining room. The rations the camp officials received were much the same as the inmates and could not be supplemented easily, for there was no nearby town to shop and the camp stores were poor. The boys suffered from constant hunger. George explained (and other evidence confirms this) that one reason was the profiteering that occurred.

‘A Bloemfontein merchant, who made an enormous pile during the war held several contracts, and we could literally see through the sheep carcases that were delivered. The potatoes and onions were invariably rotten and stank so that the rations, which were not ungenerous, were inadequate. . . . We boys were growing and had healthy appetites, which somehow, could never be satisfied’.¹²

Certainly Dr Graham condemned the meat on several occasions because the animals were diseased.

‘In all of them [the carcases] there existed marked traces of disease in the form of numerous cold absceses [sic], varying in size from that of a walnut to that of two closed fists. These were only to be deleted by cutting into the meat, and were most frequent in the marrow of the bones. The lymphatic glands, where not removed in the process of dressing, were swollen and diseased. I was of opinion that the meat was unfit to be used for human food, and ordered it to be removed, in accordance with Circular No 50 of 9 July’.¹³

With their knowledge of the local environment, the Boer women could occasionally supplement their ration with food from the veld. In Vredefort Road people dug up a root, similar to a large sweet potato, known locally as ‘Gamma’ but, when some women and children fell ill, this delicacy was abandoned. With the run of the camp George could occasionally find other ways of easing his hunger.

‘There was a store built of wood and iron and the two owners, Messrs. Cheyne and Wright (Cheyne had a glass eye) lived in a similar structure and in luxury. At times I and a couple of my friends palled up to the old native cook and, when the two owners entertained, we helped him wash-up the dishes etc. in order to enjoy the scraps from the table which were generously provided’.¹⁴

Unfortunately, without competition from a nearby town, the Vredefort stores had a monopoly which they exploited shamelessly. When the Ladies Committee visited, they found that fabric was overpriced and the stores were bare of food or groceries. The women’s complaints, they felt, were entirely justified and, moreover, ‘The people were dependent on these shops for wholesome variations in their diet, and if properly supervised, they form a very necessary adjunct to camp life, and reduce the necessity for issuing medical comforts’.¹⁵

Although Vredefort Road had a school, which George Brink attended for some time, the education was poor and the accommodation as bad as that of the bell tents. The marquee was open, smothering the children in dust when it was dry and leaking when it rained. The schoolmaster, Mr Higgs, a Boer whom Brink considered should have been on commando, was poorly qualified and his female assistants could only teach the small children.

‘Very soon, and to my surprise, I was detailed to teach Stds. 1 and 11, the subjects allotted to me being simple arithmetic, reading and spelling. So, in the process of teaching, I was teaching myself; but, I was certainly not being prepared for advancement to the higher standards. This I was to discover to my cost at the end of the war when schooling again became a serious business’.¹⁶

At the same time, despite the monotony of camp life, the boys could always find entertainment. George Brink held ‘long conversations’ with the soldiers who guarded the camp (educated previously at Grey College in Bloemfontein, his English was fluent). They played regular cricket matches between the camp (George was part of the camp team) and the garrison, and barefooted soccer. Occasionally there were athletics meetings in which the garrison also participated. Sometimes they were allowed to drive the carts to the station to fetch supplies ‘and as soon as we were out of sight of the camp we indulged in glorious racing competitions. It was a miracle that we didn’t upset the carts’.¹⁷

George’s father had a much more difficult time. Relations with the local British commandant were a constant irritation; the latter interfered repeatedly in the running of the camp. He became extremely edgy after General de Wet attacked the local military post and the British troops raided the camp on several occasions to ‘search for Boers’; arresting both men and women for interrogation. Brink was incensed. ‘If this sort of thing is to be allowed, I shall lose control of the people in camp’, he complained to the chief superintendent. The Boer women, who had been accustomed to roam the veld to search for cattle dung for fuel, were prevented from leaving the camp, or to buy dung (presumably from the black camp inmates, who were also prevented from foraging, however). They petitioned Brink for a larger supply of wood and coal, which had to come from Kroonstad, but it always in short supply. The women were allowed out to do their laundry only in parties of 70 to 100, under police escort. ‘The necessity for this rule caused a natural grievance among those who had sick or very young children to attend to’, the Ladies Committee recorded, but there was no alternative.¹⁸

The commandant saw spies everywhere. He insisted that a ‘board of health’ composed of some of the inmates, be dissolved as ‘their action in holding meetings was undesirable’. He suspected Daneel, the superintendent of the black camp, who had been on commando with the Kroonstad Ambulance, and his assistant, P.J. Bouwer, who had also been on commando, of communicating with the Boers. ‘Both of them are constantly in the white refugee camp instead of attending to their business’, he complained. Both were demoted and sent to the white camp as ordinary inmates. This must have been a considerable loss to them financially for Daneel had earned £200 a year as superintendent.¹⁹

And then there were the Boer nurses, who were accused of signalling at night. It was Graham on this occasion who was annoyed. How, he asked, could he manage the hospital with the constant interference of the commandant. His health committee had been disbanded. His Boer nurses were treated discourteously and their tents were searched. Of course the night nurse carried a lantern with her – was this signalling? ‘Would you kindly inquire into this matter with the intention of preventing a recurrence of interference from outside influences on medical matters and hospital management’, he begged Trollope.²⁰

In this atmosphere of suspicion, suggestions of sedition were carefully investigated but they seem to have amounted to very little. The worst case that could be found was that of Mrs Martha Catharina Potgieter who, when the nearby railway line was blown up by the Boers, declared that the line was Boer property, not British, and she hoped that more British would be blown up. One of the young nurses was found to have a portion of a ‘star’ shell in her trunk and denied any knowledge of it.²¹

George Brink remembered vividly the tension which resulted between his father and the commandant.

‘My father warned him [the commandant] that he was causing unnecessary alarm in the camp, that he was upsetting the women, and asked him to desist. He refused, became abusive and stated in no uncertain terms that he would do as he d. . . well liked. This led to open friction and a report by my father to the Chief Super[intenden]t of Refugee Camps at Bloemfontein which was followed by a command from the General Officer Commanding British Forces, Kroonstad for my father to report there, which he did immediately. The result was the removal of the Section Commander and his replacement by one who proved to be much more co-operative’.²²

But suspicion of Brink did not end there, for he was repeatedly reprimanded for failing to do his duty, to an extent that occurred with no other camp superintendent. He was ticked off by Trollope for failing to follow instructions in keeping the men employed in making sun-dried bricks. Brink explained that lack of water, followed, ironically by heavy rain, made brickmaking impossible. He kept the men working hard, ‘grave digging, dam clearing, fountain cleaning, trenching, digging trenches for trees, camp clearing, wood shopping, turning the diamond drill, and a dozen other necessary duties’. ‘I can only say that I am trying to do my best in a difficult camp and I feel it to the quick when circumstances over which I have no control make it necessary that I should receive a rap over the knuckles’, he pleaded defensively.²³

The Ladies Committee visited Vredefort Road in September 1901. They had some sharp comments to make about the camp. There were not enough latrines for the women ‘which may account for the uncleanly condition of the ground’, they commented. The rubbish heap was untidy and too near the camp. The general cleaning was done by a ‘scavenging gang of lads’; line corporals reported unsystematically on cases of illness in the tents and, generally, ‘the whole sanitary condition of the camp is less good than many we have seen’. The camp matron, a Boer woman who had been recently appointed, was illiterate and, at £50 a year, overpaid, they felt. They much preferred Miss Lefevre, a French woman who had been in the camp from early on, spoke Dutch, was popular and, with some training, would do the job well. But the best thing to do, they felt, was to close down the camp entirely and remove it elsewhere. Doorn River was mooted as the place where the camp might go, but ‘military exigencies’ prevented any removal there and, in the end, Vredefort Road remained until the end of the war.²⁴

Brink was deeply hurt by the criticisms:

‘The time selected by the Ladies Committee in visiting this camp seems to have been rather unfortunate for me. I had made many preparations and indulged in many fond hopes that my camp would maintain the small reputation, and withstand the criticisms of this Committee, with as good results as it has done when inspected by HH the Deputy Administrator, Dr Yule and others, but the Ladies Committee has been too much for me and my poor efforts’ .²⁵

At least part of Brink’s difficulty with the British authorities arose from the fact that he was a Free Stater, for his loyalty was always under suspicion. When Dr T. Whiteside Hime, an arrogant and egotistical man, visited Vredefort Road camp, he was convinced that Brink was lax and disloyal. ‘From several days close personal intercourse with Supt Brink, during my inspection of the camp, I had intended reporting him as not being a suitable person to hold the important post. The above circumstance [a spat over a black worker arrested beyond the lines, while watering trees intended to beautify the camp] in my opinion, apart from others, render his removal imperative’. Once more Brink was forced to defend himself: ‘I cannot possibly work this camp’, he wrote, ‘without letting people in and out and it seems hard that responsibility should attract to me when occasionally one of the inmates goes out of the limits and is caught’.²⁶

January 1902 saw little improvement in Vredefort Road camp according to Inspector C. Hamilton, who found that, although the camp itself was clean, the surroundings were not. The superintendent explained that his clerical work claimed too much of his time and Hamilton agreed that this was so. By February, however, the camp seemed to be in a better state. Inspector Tonkin, a more sympathetic man, reported that the general condition of the camp was good and he spoke highly of Brink.²⁷

Throughout this period the black camp remained under ORC camp management. In August 1901, however, it was transferred to the Native Refugee Camps administration run by Major G.F. de Lotbinière. The purpose was to create farm colonies in which the women would grow their own food and even, it was hoped, produce enough surplus for sale to offset the costs of administration. By July 1902 Vredefort Road, with some 1,500 inmates, was producing 34,600 lbs of grain and the cost of the camp for that month was a mere £97. J.K. Derry, the minister of a church with some 2,000 black congregants, took a keen interest in the project. The natives were very clever at selecting land for ploughing, he suggested; perhaps some of the most experienced be used to identify suitable ground. In fact, Lotbinière had decided that the most suitable land for cultivation was along the railway line near to the existing camp, which was not, therefore, moved.²⁸

For all its difficulties Vredefort Road was not a ‘bad’ camp like Bethulie, Brandfort or Mafeking. As the graphs indicate, apart from the peak created by the measles epidemic, mortality was within the camp norms. Typhoid was not a serious problem, nor does the camp seem to have been dogged by endless ill health. Perhaps the remoteness of the spot was a contributing factor. On the one hand, with poor supplies and bad stores, scurvy was a concern at one point; on the other the camp was not threatened by an insanitary town or a polluted river. The measles epidemic struck Vredefort Road relatively late, in August 1901. The first cases were hospitalised, against the bitter opposition of the inmates but, as the infection spread, in the face of constant shortages of tents, hospitalisation became impossible. At first, the disease seemed mild but it became more severe as the epidemic set in.²⁹

By 1902 Milner sought to show British critics that infant mortality was no higher in the camps than it had been in the republics in peacetime. He invited the medical staff to participate in this project but Graham seems to be the only doctor whose reply has survived. Graham looked at families in which twelve children had been born. In Vredefort Road there were 24 such families, with a total of 288 children. Of these 105 had died. Twelve had died in camp and 93 at home. Of the 93 who died at home, 78 were under five years of age. Of the 24 families, 16 had lost no children, and eight had lost children both in camp and at home.

‘There are 373 families in camp, who have contained 2746 children. Of the 2746, 980 have died, 258 in camp and 722 at home, and of this 722 who died at home 562 or 77.8% were under 5 years of age. A similar return from all the camps should give rather a valuable answer to the great outcry against the camps’.³⁰

By 1902 the camp authorities were proposing to train the young Boer ‘probationers’ more formally. While some doctors were enthusiastic about the idea, Graham was not, for he felt that his own staff were drawn from too poor a class of people.

‘Only 5 of my local assistants speak English; the others understand a little, but not sufficient to follow even a simple lecture. That however is not an insuperable difficulty. The education of these girls however has only been carried to a certain point; they can read, write, and count, and that is about all; and I do not consider that their minds are sufficiently trained to acquire knowledge to enable them to absorb the elements of anatomy and physiology. I think that the only result at present would be to muddle them considerably while the tags of facts they did retain would probably be misapplied. What they are fit for, however, and what I have always taught to them, is the practical nursing of the patients; bed and poultice making, temperature taking etc. with the why and wherefore. . . . In a few months we can proceed by degrees to higher things, and gradually feel our way to a regular set of probationary lectures’.³¹

The endless problems with Vredefort Road camp meant that it was one of the first to be closed at the end of the war. Already half the inmates had been sent to camps at the coast so that, by March 1902, the numbers had been halved. In May, even before the end of the war, it was decided to close the camp entirely and move the remaining inmates to Kroonstad. Difficult though the inmates may have been, they were dismayed at the news. ‘We have now quite settled down here’, they pleaded, ‘many of us having gone to the expense of erecting houses etc. and which would be a loss to us, to leave or pull down to take away’. Now that numbers had been reduced, they lacked for nothing and they felt that the site was healthier than Kroonstad.³²

With the ending of the war two weeks later, removal became repatriation but Dr Graham was concerned for the fate of the Vredefort Road Boers. They would be returning to shattered homes, he pointed out, with hardly any clothing, little food and no medical comforts or doctors. He feared for their lives and urged that they should be kept in the camps at least until the end of winter.³³

Repatriation was not a simple task. The landlessness of the Vredefort Road Boers meant that many did not, in fact, have homes to return to and they were ill-qualified for skilled jobs. The British authorities established relief works for such people but the pay was poor, the work (dam-building and road-making) hard and the men were not interested, only four men volunteering for the scheme. ‘They do not yet realise their own condition’, Brink explained, although he had warned them that they would have to shift for themselves once the camps were closed. Instead, most of these people were sent on to Heilbron and Kroonstad camps to be repatriated from there. Apart from one patient in hospital, the camp was closed on 15 September 1902.³⁴

Sources

National War Museum, Johannesburg: George Brink, unpublished reminiscences.

SRC and CO files in the Free State Archives Repository [FSAR].

FK series in the National Archives, Pretoria [NASA].

Ladies Committee report: Cd 893, pp.99-104.