Mafeking – a Boer ‘strategic success’

Even the man who started Wiki now accepts it is hopelessly biased[i], but it is still amusing to see just how abysmal it has become. For example, I found this section on the page about the Siege of Mafeking:

‘For Baden-Powell, and in the British media, the siege was thought of as a victory, but for the more practical Boers it had been a strategic success. For no significant achievement, the townspeople and garrison suffered 212 killed and over 600 wounded’.

It is always amusing to watch anti-British commentators tie themselves in knots to pretend that up is down, black is white, and that every Boer defeat was – in reality – a stunning victory. But this is taking that nonsense to a while new level.

The writer of this utter drivel seems blissfully unaware that the Boer strategy was to overrun Natal, capturing Durban to prevent the landing of British reinforcements, then sweep down to take the Cape ports. Indeed, this was confirmed by none-other than the man who finalised the war plans, Jan Smuts, and who related that the aim of invading Natal was

‘to strike down swiftly at Durban and the other ports upon the outbreak of hostilities, in order to prevent the British landing reinforcements. That phase completed, the mopping up of troops in the country would begin’.^[ii]

Though the Boer Generals were later re-invented by the Apartheid regime as clairvoyant military geniuses, all cut from the same cloth as Hannibal and Rommel, the fact is that they displayed a complete lack of strategic thinking. Instead of driving forwards with great dash, Joubert plodded hesitantly into northern Natal, splitting his forces and allowing them to indulge in looting binges. The Free State invasion of Natal didn’t even get underway until a week after they declared war, and – even then – their advance wasn’t coordinated with Joubert’s men, and they ignored the strategy devised by Smuts.

But over on the Western Front, things were – if anything – even worse. Again, the invading Boers showed zero concept of strategy, and were instead sucked into the pointless, and completely unsuccessful, sieges of Kimberley and Mafeking.

At a time when Smuts’ plan needed them to be surging through Natal, 7,500 Boers were instead assigned to the capture of Kimberley[iii]. They proved singularly incapable of doing this.

To the North, over 7,000 Boers (consisting of the Potchefstroom, Lichtenburg, Marico, Wolmaranstad and Rustenburg commandos, with a company of Scandinavian adventurers), were assigned to the attack on Colonel Baden-Powell’s small garrison at Mafeking[iv]. Yes, that’s right: at the start of the war, when Smuts’ plan called for a thunderous Blitzkrieg through Natal, bypassing or overwhelming the small scattered garrison and seizing Durban, more than 7,000 Boers were assigned to capture… the one-horse town of Mafeking.

Maurice’s Official History relates this ridiculous strategic blunder:

‘The most remarkable feature of the Boer dispositions is the influence on them of Baden-Powell’s contingent. His two little corps, each numbering barely 500 men, had drawn away nearly 8,000 of the best burghers. Mafeking was in itself a place of no strategic value, and, had the enemy been content to watch, and hold with equal numbers, Lt.-Cols. H. C. O. Plumer’s and C. O. Here’s regiments and the police and volunteers assisting them, a contingent of 5,000 Transvaalers might have been added to the army invading Natal, thus adding greatly to the difficulties of Sir George White’s defence. Alternatively it might have ensured the capture of Kimberley, or might have marched as a recruiting column from the Orange river through the disaffected districts and have gradually occupied the whole of the British lines of communication down to the coast’.[v]

By tying up 7,000 – 8,000 Boers (ie. perhaps 20% of their available man-power at the time) at the very start of the war, the strategic impact of Baden-Powell’s small scratch force was enormous. Had even half of the Boers hanging about at Mafeking instead been thrown into the invasion of Natal, who knows what the result might have been. Boer numbers at Mafeking did dwindle over the 217 days of the Siege, but never dropped below a few thousand – and these were men which were always badly needed elsewhere.

Of course, none of this will make sense those who dream up self-serving nonsense on wiki: to these idiots, being sucked in and committing thousands of men to a completely unsuccessful siege, of a town which – even had they been able to take – would have given them no advantage, was a ‘strategic success to the practical Boers’.

This is the level us utter stupidity and sheer self-delusion required to keep peddling the National Party myths.

NOTES:

[i] https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/wikipedia-co-founder-says-site-is-now-propaganda-for-left-leaning-establishment/

[ii] Jan Christian Smuts by his son, p.90, quoted in O’Connor, A Short Guide to the History of South Africa, 1652-1902

[iii] Maurice, History of the war in South Africa, 1899-1902, Vol.1, p.50

[iv] Maurice, History of the war in South Africa, 1899-1902, Vol.1, p.49

[v] Maurice, History of the war in South Africa, 1899-1902, Vol.1, p.51