End of the Boer rebellion

A British chronology of the war records under 28 December 1914 the end of the organised rebellion in the Union of South Africa. The date does not correspond to any particular battle or surrender. Rather, it marks the moment when no larger rebel unit was fighting on the Union’s territory any longer. The revolt had not entirely died out, however. Generals Manie Maritz and Jan Kemp, supported by the Germans, went on fighting on the border of German South West Africa for more than a month.

Collapse of the rising in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal

The rebellion collapsed in November. On 12 November the Prime Minister, Louis Botha, routed the main forces of General Christiaan de Wet at Mushroom Valley. On the same day the government promised an amnesty to all rank-and-file rebels who laid down their arms by 21 November. Many took advantage of it, and the rising began to fall apart. De Wet himself was captured on 1 December on the edge of the Kalahari.

In the north-eastern part of the former Orange Free State, however, the commandos of Wessel Wessels and his companions were still active. At the beginning of December Botha took their centre, the small town of Reitz, without a fight. On 8 December more than a thousand rebels surrendered unconditionally. On the same day General Christiaan Beyers died. Pursued by government troops, he tried to cross the swollen Vaal river near Makwassie and drowned. According to some sources, his heart failed in the water. His body was recovered two days later.

In the Transvaal the last significant unit was led by Captain Jopie Fourie, who operated north of Pretoria. On 16 December, after a fierce fight, he was surrounded and captured. A court martial sentenced him to death because he had gone over to the rebels without first resigning his officer’s commission. He was shot on 20 December. By mid-December the rebellion in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State was practically over.

Maritz and Kemp

Only Maritz and Kemp remained out of reach of the government forces. Kemp, with about 600 men, rode almost 1,300 kilometres, mostly across the Kalahari, and at the end of November crossed the border of the German colony. There he joined Maritz, who had gone over to the Germans as early as October. The rebels, supported by German units, raided posts on the South African side of the border. On 21 December, or according to some sources a day later, they routed a column of government troops at Nous and took about 130 soldiers prisoner.

The last act of the rebellion was the attack by Maritz and Kemp, with German participation, on the town of Upington in the northern Cape Province on 24 January 1915. The defenders under Colonel Jacob van Deventer beat it off after six hours of fighting. The rebels then began to negotiate a surrender. The document was signed on 30 January, and at the beginning of February, on 2 or 4 February according to different sources, the rebels laid down their arms. Kemp, ill with fever, went to prison, while Maritz fled to the Germans with a handful of followers.

Balance

According to estimates, about 11,500 Afrikaners took up arms against their own government, more than 60 per cent of them from the Orange Free State. Botha sent about 32,000 soldiers against them, of whom about 20,000 were also Afrikaners. The government managed without the help of British troops. On the government side about 130 soldiers were killed or died of wounds, and more than 240 were wounded. The rebels lost about 190 killed and at least 300 wounded.

Botha took care that the suppression of the revolt should not deepen the rift among Afrikaners. Most of the rank-and-file rebels had returned home by the end of 1915. The leaders were tried by special courts that could not impose the death penalty. De Wet received six years in prison and Kemp seven, but by the end of 1916 all of them had been released. Their fines were paid by supporters from public collections. The rebellion delayed the invasion of the German colony by several months, but once it was over the Union’s forces could at last concentrate on the war with Germany.