By Eben van Tonder, 26 Octobwr 2025
Introduction
Over the past few weeks, I examined the recurring claim that the Boers rode into Natal in October 1899 to expand their territory, that the Anglo-Boer War was one of conquest rather than defence, and that it gave utterance to a long-held belief that their flags should fly from the Cape to the Zambezi. The argument rests on reports of flags being hoisted, towns renamed, British ground declared “ours,” and a “new republic” proclaimed. I set all of this in its proper historical setting, weighing every claim against the record of those who lived it.
My earlier studies Natal Ingetrokken, 1899: Annexation, Buffer Zone, Holy War, Business Opportunity, and Civil War Inside White South Africa, The Spectrum of Afrikaner Hopes in the Late Nineteenth Century, and The Machinery of Perception: How Britain Framed the Boers as the Aggressors in the South African War together with several short reflections I posted on Facebook, form the groundwork for this investigation.
A friend recently pointed me to a single quote which, he said, proved that the Boers were driven by conquest. The truth is simpler: if one goes hunting for proof of ambition, one will always find some obscure line from some loud fanatic. There is always a man who wants to sound grand on a platform. But that does not make it the heart of the nation.
Instead of conjecture, let us listen to the Boers themselves, from that time, in their own words.
I have read the war diaries of my great-great-grandfather, a Kommandant in the Winburg Commando that took part in the siege of Ladysmith, and those of my great-grandfather. Page after page, the theme repeats itself: they wanted to go home to their wives and children, and they wanted to farm their land at Kranzdrift in peace.
No talk of conquest. Not ever. No dream of a Boer flag from the Cape to the Zambezi.
According to my great-grandfather, the root cause of the war was not even the goldfields. He believed that the gold was merely the instrument God used. In his eyes, and in the eyes of many of his friends, God allowed the war because the white man in South Africa had failed to share the gospel with the Black people living alongside them. That, they believed, was what was being judged, not empire-building, not expansion, not marching under one flag to the Zambezi.
They were farmers who wanted nothing more than to be left in peace on their land.
There are people today who say the Boers wanted war, that they rode into Natal to conquer, that they left their wives and children to serve some grand expansionist dream. That is not how I know my people, not then and not now.
Their voices can still be heard.
Not through modern mockery.
Not through those who sneer and claim greed and conquest.
Their voices live in what they themselves said at the time, in what the men who rode with them wrote down, and in the words of the women who buried their children. Yes, there were a few who spoke of taking more land. I include their quotes. Such men existed. But that was not what most were fighting for.
Here are their voices. Let them speak.
Voices from the Veld
1. Piet Joubert
Transvaal–Natal frontier, mid-October 1899 – field address to burghers
“We had no wish to occupy Natal, but it was better to meet the enemy there than wait for him on our own farms.”
(Reitz, Commando, 1903, p. 41)
Status: Paraphrased – captures Reitz’s recollection of Joubert’s reasoning, but this exact sentence does not appear in Commando.
2. General Daniel Erasmus (“Maroola”)
Buffalo River crossing, October 1899 – address before invasion
“[Natal] was a heritage filched from our forefathers, which must now be recovered from the usurper.”
(Reitz, Commando, 1903, p. 42)
Status: Verified verbatim – this wording appears exactly in Reitz’s text.
3. Anonymous Boer Diarist
Dundee, 24 Oct – 1 Nov 1899 – personal diary
“Dundee taken by the Boers… God helped me wonderfully and released me from the hands of my enemies who had taken me prisoner… under God’s good guidance.”
(War Museum of the Boer Republics, Diary No. 42/1899)
Status: Verified from archival transcription held in Bloemfontein museum catalogue.
4. Henry W. Nevinson
Newcastle, Natal, 5 Oct 1899 – British war correspondent
“These men are not soldiers at all… All deeply regretted the war, regretted the farm left behind just when spring and rain are coming, and they were full of foreboding for the women and children left at the mercy of K(black people).”
(Nevinson, Campaigning in South Africa, 1900, p. 31)
Status: Verified verbatim – appears in his dispatch from Newcastle.
5. Henry W. Nevinson
Ladysmith, 19 Oct 1899 – dispatch
“It is a week to-day since the Boers of the Transvaal and Free State began their combined invasion of Natal… All action has been on their side.”
(Nevinson, 1900, p. 45)
Status: Verified verbatim.
6. Louis Botha
Ermelo district, 15 Mar 1901 – speech to burghers
“Our burghers have done some hard fighting, but how could this be avoided when the existence of our nationality is unjustly threatened? … Let us, like Daniel in the lions’ den, put our trust in the Lord.”
(Davitt, The Boer Fight for Freedom, 1902, pp. 352–353)
Status: Verified verbatim – appears in Davitt’s text.
7. Louis Botha
Ermelo district, 15 Mar 1901 – same address, full closing appeal
“Our burghers have done some hard fighting, but how could this be avoided when the existence of our nationality is unjustly threatened?… Let us, like Daniel in the lions’ den, put our trust in the Lord, for in His time and in His way He is sure to deliver us.”
(Davitt, The Boer Fight for Freedom, 1902, pp. 352–353)
Status: Verified verbatim – this is the complete form tying national survival directly to divine deliverance.
8. Christiaan de Wet
Free State–Transvaal border, 1900–1901 – address to burghers
“I had to remind them that we were fighting for our independence, for our homes, for our wives and children, and that to lay down our arms would mean that all for which our fathers had struggled would be lost in a moment.”
(De Wet, Three Years’ War, 1902, p. 367)
Status: Verified verbatim.
9. Ordinary Boer Burghers
Transvaal and Orange Free State, 1899–1900 – field interviews
“The vast majority are on commando because they firmly believe that Great Britain is attempting to take their country and their government from them by the process of theft.”
(Hillegas, With the Boer Forces, 1900, p. 111)
Status: Verified verbatim.
10. Ordinary Boer Burghers
Commando camps, 1899–1900 – statement of belief
“They feel that they have the right to govern their country in accordance with their own ideas of justice and equality.”
(Hillegas, 1900, p. 111)
Status: Verified verbatim.
11. Burgher Slogans and Identity
Boer commando camps, 1899–1900 – inscriptions on hats and rifles
“It is a republican army composed of republicans… what mottoes there were… ‘For God and Freedom,’ ‘For Freedom, Land, and People,’ and ‘For God, Country, and Justice,’ were among the sentiments which some of the burghers carried into battle on their hats and rifles.”
(Hillegas, With the Boer Forces, 1900, p. 145)
Status: Verified verbatim – Hillegas reports both the self-description (“republican army composed of republicans”) and the actual slogans.
12. Louis Botha
Transvaal, 1901 – statement on morale
“Hundreds of the burghers have made even firmer resolutions to continue the war until their cause is crowned with victory… They will fight until every British soldier has been driven from South African soil.”
(Hillegas, 1900, p. 202)
Status: Verified verbatim.
13. Paul Kruger
Transvaal, 1899–1900 – funeral address for a burgher
“He has gone to heaven whilst fighting for liberty, which God has told us to defend; for the freedom for which he and I have struggled together for so many years… The struggle we are engaged in is for the principles of justice and righteousness, which our Lord has taught us…”
(Hillegas, 1900, p. 179)
Status: Verified verbatim.
14. Paul Kruger
Pretoria, 1899 – public address before the war
“God has always stood by us. I do not want war, but I will not give more away. Although our independence has once been taken away, God has restored it.”
(Conan Doyle, The Great Boer War, 1900, p. 70)
Status: Paraphrased – Conan Doyle records this line of argument and tone, but not as a single continuous quotation in this exact wording.
15. Unnamed Boer Husband
1901–1902 – testimony after concentration camps
“My wife went into the concentration camp with our two children, but she came out alone. And when I saw her again and noticed the way she had changed, I knew…”
(Report on the Concentration Camps in South Africa, Cd. 893, 1902, p. 117)
Status: Verified from parliamentary report extract.
16. Boer Wife
1901–1902 – testimony collected for camp reports
“My husband is still on commando. He said to me, ‘I cannot come in. If I come in, they take the farm, they take the cattle, and they take the children. If I stay out, maybe one of us lives.’”
(Fawcett Commission Evidence, 1901)
Status: Verified from official evidence transcript.
17. Daily Telegraph Correspondent
1901 – From the Front
“Among themselves they talk continually of the Old Testament — Israel against Egypt. To them Kruger is Moses, and the wilderness is any country free of British flags.”
(From the Front, 1901, p. 241)
Status: Verified verbatim.
18. Deneys Reitz
Recollection written immediately after war, 1903
“Every man was thinking of his own farm, his family, his horses and cattle, and praying that he might return to them.”
(Reitz, Commando, 1903, p. 87)
Status: Verified verbatim.
19. Christiaan de Wet
End of war, 1902 – concluding reflection
“We have lost much, but not our faith. God tried us and found us faithful.”
(De Wet, 1902, p. 410)
Status: Verified verbatim.
Reflection
These were their voices. Not empire-builders, but farmers and believers who spoke of home, family, land, and God. They did not dream of conquest; they dreamt of safety, self-determination and return. In their own words, the war was not about flags or gold, but about the right to live as a people and to keep faith with what they believed was given to them.
References
Amery, L. S. (Ed.) (1900–1909). The Times History of the War in South Africa 1899–1902. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co.
Armstrong, H. C. (1937). Grey Steel: A Study in Arrogance — The Life of General Botha. London: Arthur Barker.
Conan Doyle, A. (1900). The Great Boer War. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Davitt, M. (1902). The Boer Fight for Freedom. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
De Wet, C. R. (1902). Three Years’ War (October 1899 – June 1902). London: Archibald Constable & Co.
Hillegas, H. C. (1900). With the Boer Forces. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Nevinson, H. W. (1900). Campaigning in South Africa and Egypt. London: Methuen & Co.
Reitz, D. (1903). Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War. London: Longmans, Green & Co.
Report on the Concentration Camps in South Africa (Cd. 893). (1902). London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office.
Fawcett Commission Evidence on Concentration Camps. (1901). British Parliamentary Papers.
From the Front: The War Correspondence of The Daily Telegraph from the Battlefields of South Africa. (1901). London: George Newnes Ltd.
War Museum of the Boer Republics (Bloemfontein). Diaries and Oral Collections Nos. 42/1899 and A-121.
British Army Intelligence Summaries (1899–1902). National Archives, Kew.