I have been being entertained by an especially True Believing fanatic on Quora over the last couple of days. Seven years ago, I had answered the question: What led to the Boer war and what was its outcome? Furious at my daring to challenge his much-loved National Party myths, a rather bizarre fellow called Alex van Heerden decided to take me on, and – surprise, surprise – felt compelled to bring up the concentration camps, even though the question had nothing whatsoever to do with them:
Always keen to educate the ignorant, I tried to take Alex through my response step-by-step, but he was frantic in his desperation not to do that:
I attempted to keep him focused, and pointed out the sheer hypocrisy of his claiming that the poor, innocent, Boer victims only attempted to take Kimberley ‘after the war had broken out’. To be fair, this seems to be the latest rubbish from Professor Pretorius, who made a similarly stupid claim in a low-brow newspaper a couple of years ago.
After a few more pointless posts, he then spewed out this self-pitying rubbish and, with mind-numbing predictability, used the mythical and completely made-up excuse of British troops ‘massing on the borders’ to excuse Kruger’s aggression:
From this point, poor old Alex got more and more frazzled and ill-tempered, as it was clearly the first time his life that someone has asked him to prove this self-serving claim:
Yes folks, you read it here first: in the weird and wacky world of Alex van Heerden, ‘Ladysmith (Natal), Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Durban’ are all towns ‘near the Boer republics’ and in which ‘Britain massed troops’ before ‘war was declared’. In the unlikely event that anyone reading this blog has (like van Heerden) never seen a map of South Africa, this will give you a clue as to just what a stupid and far-fetched claim this is:
So van Heerden’s understanding of South African Geography is clearly highly suspect… as is his understanding of the nation’s History. In truth, and as I pointed out to him, there was absolutely no ‘massing’ anywhere near the borders, or really anywhere else. In response to a plea by the Natal Government – which could clearly see that Kruger was preparing to invade – reinforcements had indeed been rushed to theatre, but these were only small numbers, were certainly not ‘masses’, and were only there in response to the warlike preparations on the Boer side of the borders:
And, what is more – and as much as it upsets the likes of van Heerden – other than a few companies at Kimberley, these troops were no where near the borders. Here was the situation in Natal:
Yes, you read that correctly: the troops that van Heerden wants to pretend were ‘massed’ in Durban (which is, apparently… err… ‘near the border’), amounted to a single squadron of the 5th Dragoon Guards.
And in the Cape, the situation was even worse (from a British point of view, that is), as I pointed out to van Heerden:
Realising that the game was up, and that he was hopelessly out of his depth, van Heerden refused to even attempt to answer any more questions, and just resorted to silly, school-yard insults, so I attempted to sum up his ridiculous outlook on the Boer War:
And so the entertaining exchange sputtered to an end, with – in the face of actual stats and evidence – the best van Heerden could muster was this:
Of course, there is nothing particularly new in any of this: exchanges with True Believers tend to follow the same well-trodden path: first they scream that I am wrong and… err… concentration camps! And then they excuse the Boer invasion of British territory by citing made-up ‘masses of British troops on the border’ – which they can never justify, because, well, they didn’t exist.
But at least van Heerden added an element of (albeit unintentional) comedy to this standard defence of National Party myths: I have never previously been assured that ‘Ladysmith (Natal), Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, and Durban’ were on the borders of the Boer republics. But I guess they are getting desperate, so now South Africa’s Geography needs to be reinvented in the same way they have always shamelessly reinvented its History.
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Jesus wept. These True Brlievers are always thick as fuck… but I reckon this van Heerdan idiot is the worst of the bunch. I guess this is the 30% pass mark kicking in?
To be fair, James, I think van Heerden was indoctrinated under the previous regime, so cannot even use the 30% pass mark as his excuse.
There must be little doubt on both sides of debate that the impact of The British Empire’s rapid industrialisation of agrarian societies worldwide dragged them into the 20th century kicking and screaming.
However the greater pressure was the imposition of this empire’s form of Pax Romanus; this signalled the beginning of the end of tribalism in Southern Africa.
Cecil Rhodes took it upon himself to push for his vision for The British Empire to run unbroken from Cape Town to Cairo. As this article points out, the British eventually provided some support and protection for Rhodes’ project but this might not have directly led to conflict with the Republics – they could have been bypassed – refusing legitimate status to settlers did cause tensions but these were mostly resolved by Rhodes weighing the defeat and acceptance of servitude; by the defeated Black Tribes’ chiefs, along with accepting a temporary extension of tribalism in Zuid Afrika; establishing The White Tribe as those – that the tribal laws of Africa; of winner-takes-all – would be at liberty to impose a dominion across the whole region.
The two republics’ vision differed strongly compared with what Capetonians’ vision had been during the conflict with the British and to some extent the resolution as to what a future nation ought to look like but the political decisions at the close of The Boer Wars did lead to a high degree of security from external invaders, safety for the population and stability enabling both wealth and populations of all tribes within Zuid Afrika to grow.
At the end of The Boer Wars, when Zuid Afrika became independent from Britain and again in 1994, the idea of a wide voting franchise was on the table but perhaps wisely, those who considered themselves Boers and the Afrikaaners within The White Tribe understood that tribalism needed to be constrained for generations before the option of some form of democracy could be implemented.
Separate development fitted such a situation well, though that each tribe would fail to teach their children about better forms of governance than the tribalism that benefited the elites within each tribe perhaps might have been better challenged.
It currently rests with folks like Alex van Heerden and especially leaders from all ethnicities to take an honest look at the facts of history from all the perspectives of those AT THE TIME, check for current indoctrination – which is given to provoke outcomes usually only of benefit to those trying to manipulate people – then plan a way forward that IS a genuine win for all concerned and IS allowing discussion and debate leading to decisions that create more reasonable people and every opportunity to avoid history repeating itself.
The big problem with the likes of van Heerden is that he simply does not WANT to learn what really happened. He is much happier, wrapping himself up in a comfort blanket of myths, and nothing as simple as historical reality is every going to breakthrough his shield of victimhood.
As we have seen, Van Heerden is so fanatically determined to keep National Party myths alive, that he is happy to pretend that Durban was ‘near the border’ of the republics, and that the single squadron of cavalry that was there is somehow the same as ‘massing troops’.
Alas, this is the level of blinkered ignorance, and willful pigheadedness, that we have to endure when discussing the Boer War.
Any idea who this van Heerden is, Chris? Other than a complete fool, of course. I do like the way these guys always think they will take you on – and then you rip them a new asshole and send them running away back to mommy.
No – no idea who he is. But there are a lot of fellows like this, bouncing about in South Africa. They pretend to be passionate about the Boer War… but never passionate enough to actually learn anything about it. Instead, they love to wallow in faux victimhood. It’s both entertaining and pathetic.
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