Battlefields South Africa – even worse than I feared

When I learned that the History Channel would be showing some programmes which were (allegedly) about battles fought in South Africa, I feared it was going to be shockingly bad… when I learned that the episode on the Boer War would feature (surprise, surprise) two British defeats, I knew what their agenda was… and when I saw that Prof Pretorius was connected to it, I knew it was just going to regurgitate the same old, long-discredited National Party era myths.

And I was proven correct on all counts.

From the very start, John Robbie – who might know his rugby, but clearly doesn’t have the first clue about military history – spewed out the normal hyperbolic rubbish about ‘the greatest humiliations in British military history’, and the usual nonsense about ‘gold and diamonds’… without seeming to think that, if the war all about to expanding ‘the bounds of Empire at all costs’ to steal ‘precious resources’, it is rather strange that the two battles they decided to cover were fought deep inside British territory.

Of course, that inconvenient reality was simply glossed over the maintain the pleasing fiction that the Boers were the wronged party in all of this.

A decent, well-made programme which compared, say, the way that Colenso was fought, to the way that The Battle of Tugela Heights would later be fought would have been worth watching… but this utter rubbish should be given a very wide berth.