Last pockets of rebellion in the Transvaal

A British chronology of the war records under 11 January 1915 the capture of the last rebels in the Transvaal, the northern province of the Union of South Africa. The entry does not say who was captured or where. We have not found this event in the official South African history of the war of 1924, in the government report on the rebellion or in more recent studies. Most probably it refers to the rounding up of the last small groups of rebels who were still in hiding after the collapse of the rising.

The rebellion in the Transvaal

Of the roughly 11,500 Afrikaners who took up arms against the government, nearly 3,000 came from the Transvaal. There the revolt affected mainly the western part of the province and the area around Pretoria. Its most important leader, General Christiaan Beyers, drowned in the Vaal river on 8 December 1914 while fleeing from government troops. The last significant rebel force in the province, led by Captain Jopie Fourie, was surrounded and broken up on 16 December north of Pretoria. According to the official history a few of his men managed to escape. Fourie himself was shot by firing squad four days later.

The end of fighting in the Union

The official history states that by the end of 1914 peace reigned in the Union and the armed rebellion on its territory was over. That is why the British chronology records the end of the rebellion as early as 28 December. Government troops, however, went on combing the districts affected by the revolt for several more weeks. Around Heilbron in the Orange Free State the officer and later writer Deneys Reitz tracked down the last rebels until the end of January 1915. The chronology’s January entry probably concerns a similar manhunt in the Transvaal.

At the beginning of January Prime Minister Louis Botha left Pretoria for Cape Town to oversee the embarkation of troops for the expedition to German South West Africa. The government no longer had to worry about the situation at home. Only Manie Maritz and Jan Kemp with their forces on the border of the German colony remained at large. After a failed attack on Upington on 24 January they too opened talks on surrender, and at the beginning of February the rebels laid down their arms.