Making a library of works of academic gobbledygook

I recently read the following passage, which explores the role that – for political reasons – academia has played in pushing for illogical, unscientific and ahistorical utter nonsense to be taught, believed and regurgitated:

Still, the purveyors of social justice theories have done a job, in providing a library of works which (however unreadable) present an intellectual framework on top of which political positions can be adopted and politicized claims can be made. Anyone who finds it useful to argue that gender or race are social constructs can cite a whole library of material to bolster their claim and cite endless numbers of tenured academics who can ‘prove’ it… Any student wondering whether the world really works like this can be instantly presented with the library of intimidating evidence that the gobbledygook he is failing to comprehend is his fault and not the fault of the writer of the gobbledygook’.[1]

All this refers, of course, to the modern-day cult which has taken over various university faculties in the US, in which so-called academics call for ‘equity rather than equality’, pretend there are suddenly 24, or 38, or 57 genders, that all white people have some sort of inherent ‘privilege’, and various other woke, ‘identity politics’ claptrap. But, by changing only a handful of words, the passage could just as readily apply to the feverishly duplicitous work of the academic purveyors of Boer War myth. For equally insidious political reasons, some have gleefully pushed a narrative around the conflict which is just as nonsensical as today’s ‘social justice theories’.

And when those who deny scientific reality so as to push the latest fads of ‘social justice’ are (inevitably) challenged on their nonsense, they only get more enraged. Just like the Boer War True Believers, they passionately want (need?) their rubbish to be true, so shamelessly ‘retreat from ‘the facts are wrong’ to ‘the facts are unhelpful’’^[2] – just as happens when the myths of the Boer War are exposed. And again, anyone daring to point out the errors in either case can expect to be met with ‘denial and rage. In general the denial is systemic, but occasionally it fixes its gaze on a particular object or person, and then everything that can be thrown is thrown against the person who have raised (or threatens to raise) the heresy’.^[3] Which all sounds rather familiar.[4]

In another similarity, the Defenders of the Boer War myths have also created a similar ‘library of works’ over the decades which others can cite to ‘prove’ their much-cherished fairy tales. Anyone who wants (needs?) to pretend that the Boers were the innocent party in the war which they started can, for example, reference Professor Leopold Scholtz.[5] Turning a conveniently Nelsonic eye to a couple of decades’ worth of unrelenting and violent territorial expansion, the Prof inexplicably (and disingenuously) proclaimed that President Kruger ‘never gazed beyond his own borders’.^[6] Manfred Nathan, in his enthusiastic biography of Kruger, treats us to a similarly illogical, ahistorical (and unreferenced) remark, also bizarrely declaring: ‘All the Republic wanted was to be left alone.’^[7] Or they could cite Professor Bill Nasson,[8] who – ignoring Kruger’s stated aim of building an Empire ‘from the Zambesi to Simon’s Bay’[9] – ludicrously pronounced that ‘The South African Republic asked only to be left alone’.[10]

The objective reader would wonder why none of these claims are referenced, and yet anyone who wants to believe the Apartheid-era myths can simply parrot (and cite) this rubbish, and squeal that, as a couple of academics (and Kruger’s biographer) said it, then it must be true – even though these claims are blatantly false. The inconvenient reality (for the Defenders of the Myth) is that, for many years, Kruger’s Transvaal had expanded in all directions, grabbing chunks of Zululand,^[11] taking control of Swaziland, and constantly encroaching into Bechuanaland.^[12] Furthermore, Kruger’s well-funded Secret Service was gun-running and rabble-rousing in British territory.^[13]

Likewise, these self-serving claims ignore that, as early as the Secret Conferences of 1887,[14] Kruger had been pushing the Orange Free State to sign up to an offensive alliance against the British.^[15] As one of the member of the OFS delegation put it, ‘… the South African Republic desired nothing more nor less than the offensive and defensive alliance which, in my opinion, would have been a breach of the Convention of the 23rd February, 1854, by virtue of which we held Sovereign Independence. That independence would have been imperiled thereby, and ourselves made sharers in the animosity cherished against the British Government, which appeared very clear to me during the conference in Pretoria in June, 1887.’[16]

Simply put, the notion that the Transvaal just wanted to be left alone, and had no aggressive intent whatsoever, is utter rubbish. This was summed up by John X. Merriman (who was no one’s idea of a ‘Jingo’): ‘The policy of the Transvaal was to push out bands of freebooters, and to get them in quarrels with the natives. They wished to push their border over the land westwards, and realize the dream of President Pretorius, which was that the Transvaal should stretch from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. The result was robbery, rapine, and murder.’^[17]

Sir Hercules Robinson, writing about the Transvaal’s expansion into Bechuanaland, agreed: ‘So long as there were native cattle to be stolen and native lands worth appropriating, the absorbing process would be repeated. Tribe after tribe would be pushed back and back upon other tribes, or would perish in the process, until an inhabitable desert, or the sea, were reached as the ultimate boundary of the state’.^[18]

Robinson’s first-hand account will, of course, be waved away by the True Believers due to his crime of being British, so let’s add the words of Montsioa Toane, Chief of the Barolong people in Bechuanaland. In a letter flamboyantly addressed to ‘His Excellency Her Britannic Majesty’s High Commissioner, Sir P. Wodehouse, KCB’, the chief requested ‘refuge under your protecting wings from the injustice of the Transvaal Republic, whose government have lately, by proclamation, included our country within the possessions of the said Republic’. He went on to explain: ‘…without the least provocation on our side, though the Boers have from time to time murdered some of my people and enslaved several Balala villages, the Transvaal Republic deprives us, by said proclamation, of our land and our liberty, against which we would protest in the strongest terms, and entreat your Excellency, as Her Britannic Majesty’s High Commissioner, to protect us.’^[19]

The efforts of the Transvaal Secret Service agents in Bechuanaland continued relentlessly. In July 1899 — a time at which we are meant to believe poor old Kruger was desperate to concede anything for peace — King Khama received a visit from a certain Petrus Viljoen who attempted to turn him against the Imperial Government. Khama, always a loyal friend to the British, sent him off with a flea in his ear, declaring, ‘You must not think you can frighten me, and my people, with your war talk. You must know that I am a son of the white Queen. I do as they instruct me. If I find you in my country, I shall help to drive you out’.[20]

Furthermore, Kruger’s invasions of British territory were far from being the last-minute act of desperation some historians like to pretend. Way back in 1884, after negotiating the London Convention, the Transvaal delegation travelled to Amsterdam where the then superintendent of education of the ZAR, and one of the leaders of the Bond, the Reverend S. J. du Toit, was invited to give a speech at a banquet in the Dutch Capital. In this, he stated: ‘The South African Flag shall yet wave from Table Bay to the Zambezi, be that end accomplished by blood or by ink. If blood it is to be, we shall not lack men to spill it.’^[21]

As we have seen, this was confirmed as being Kruger’s burning ambition at the Secret Conferences of 1887, and British military intelligence was warning of the growing threat as early as June 1896. Major E. A. Altham, DAAG Military Intelligence, produced a memorandum in that month entitled Remarks on the Present Strategical Situation in South Africa, which warned of the increase in Boer military strength and of the possibility of the two republics making a dash for Natal and the port of Durban. In November 1896, another memorandum was produced, this time by Major-General Ardagh, and entitled, The Transvaal Boers from a Military Point of View. Ardagh pointed out that the South African Republic had spent £1.5 million on military preparations and set aside a further £850,000 for the provision of artillery, rifles, ammunition, and fortifications. Rather stating the obvious, Ardagh remarked: ‘as the Transvaal is almost entirely surrounded by British territory, this large expenditure can have no other explanation than an anticipation of war, or an intention of aggression against this country, and its supremacy in South Africa.’^[22]

And none other than Commandant-General Joubert admitted that detailed invasion plans had been drawn up with the assistance of German staff officers as early as March 1898^[23] – over a year prior to the Bloemfontein Conference.[24] These invasion plans were finalised by Jan Smuts in early September 1899,^[25] before the arrival of any meaningful number of British reinforcements. Hardly the actions of a man, or nation, which only wished to be left alone.

So why would any historian pretend that Kruger ‘never gazed across his borders’, or claim that the Transvaal ‘only ever wished to be left in peace’? That such claims are made can only come down to either abject ignorance of their supposed field of expertise (which seems improbable); a rather unpleasant belief that grabbing land from black people doesn’t count; or – most likely – a bizarre, deep-seated determination to paint the Boers as the innocent party come what may (and to hell with historical reality). Given that the constant, violent expansionism of the republics is such an important facet of the story, why would any self-respecting academic be so desperate to ignore and deny it? What, one wonders, is the agenda?

Similarly, anyone who is keen to perpetuate the myths of the Boers invasions of British territory being… err… ‘defensive’[26] can reference a ‘library of works’ which frantically support this illogical nonsense. If a nation declares war and invades their neighbour, any open-minded and intelligent person would require some spectacularly convincing evidence before believing they were (somehow) the innocent party in the war they started. Instead, we are just expected to take this on faith, and not ask awkward questions of the academics who peddle this myth.

In 2022, a remarkable (and entirely unreferenced) article appeared in one of the more low-brow South African newspapers.^[27] Penned by Professor Fransjohan Pretorius (surprise, surprise), it was basically a far-fetched attempt to explain why, despite all the similarities, the 1899 Boer invasions of British territory were completely and utterly different to modern-day Russia’s invasion of Ukrainian territory. By performing endless mental gymnastics to pretend that Kruger wasn’t the aggressor in the war he started, all the Prof managed was to prove that there are some out there who are still so wedded to what has been termed ‘the Klippies and Coke’ version of South African history,[28] that they genuinely want us to believe that tens of thousands of armed men swarming over the border into someone else’s territory isn’t a ‘real invasion’.

In what was the most farcical comment in the whole ridiculous article, the increasingly frazzled Prof attempted to exonerate the republican invasions of Natal because – wait for it – they happened ‘after war had broken out and because they hoped thereby to attain better military positions – which in a war situation is justified’ (translation from the original Afrikaans). It is unlikely that Pretorius can be so completely ignorant of South African history as to be unaware that war had (ahem) ‘broken out’ precisely because the Boers invaded British territory. And what is really telling is that neither the Prof, nor any of his fawning minions, have ever been able to identify exactly where these supposed ‘better military positions’ were – for the simple reason that this is complete make-believe, and just a self-serving attempt to explain away the flagrant aggression of Kruger’s regime.

Amazingly, however, there are other academics who also tie themselves in knots to tout this ‘defensive invasion’ excuse. Dr Katz – glibly overlooking the perennially inconvenient fact that the Boer republics declared war, invaded British territory, annexed great swathes of it, and looted towns and farms – defiantly took to Facebook to deny historical reality, indignantly squealing that it was ‘ridiculous’ to talk of ‘Boer aggression’.^[29] Which word, one wonders, would he consider to be a less ‘ridiculous’ one to use when talking of the invasion of someone else’s land? Would Katz also consider it ‘ridiculous’ to describe Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland as an act of aggression?[30] Oh wait – let me guess – it’s different when the Boers invade somewhere?

In his book, The War for South Africa, Professor Nasson also does his best to downplay the awkward fact that the war started with a Boer invasion of British territory, shamelessly plumbing new depths of gobbledygook to surreally describe the invasion as (wait for it) a ‘cross-border advance into Natal’[31] – anything, it would seem, rather than actually calling it what it was. One wonders if Nasson would describe, for example, the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in a similarly weaselly, and misleading, fashion. But then Nasson clearly knew he had to choose his words carefully; if he called the invasion out for what it blatantly was, how could he go on to pretend that, ‘On the Boer side, the war which came was entirely defensive’[32] – in the same way, presumably, that he considers Germany’s 1941 invasion of the USSR to have been ‘entirely defensive’? Doubling down on this Orwellian Newspeak (and still not troubling himself to provide any sort of references) he then shamelessly declared, ‘even if the chosen method of defence would be the invasion of British colonial territory, it was widely understood to be a defensive enterprise.’^[33]

Presumably this unreferenced rubbish was not ‘widely understood’ by the people of northern Natal who were driven from their homes, or had their property looted and torched by the invaders. Does Nasson really want us to believe that, when Dundee was comprehensively ransacked^[34] (and then renamed^[35]) by the invading Boers, the inhabitants ‘widely understood’ this was part of a ‘defensive enterprise’? Reverend Bailey – who remained with his flock throughout the occupation of the town – recorded the way that civilian townsfolk were rounded up in Dundee: ‘those residents who had remained quietly in their houses were sent off to Pretoria, with the exception of half a dozen householders and about a score of women and children.’^[36] This was a clear case of ‘ethnic cleansing’ to free up property in the town for the hordes of incoming Boer ‘settlers’: ‘The Boer population in Dundee is being added to daily. Many fresh families have arrived. They are making themselves comfortable in the houses and appear to have made up their minds that this is to be a Boer dorp now and always. Henceforth, it is to be Meyersdorp.’^[37]

In Newcastle – which was (presumably ‘defensively’) renamed ‘Viljeonsdorp’^[38] by the invaders – the Reverend Prozesky of the Dutch Reformed Church Mission Station at Muller’s Pass[39] was appointed as superintendent over the black population, and notices were issued under his signature that the region had been incorporated into the South African Republic. Stern measures were taken against any blacks suspected of passing intelligence to the British, and the Boers demanded they supply horses.^[40] Are we asked to believe that these black Natalians also considered all this to have been a ‘defensive enterprise’?

And what about the good people of Pomeroy, whose village was left a smouldering ruin after the Boer raiders ‘looted every building, and burned down the gaol, post-office, hotel, and sundry other buildings’.^[41] And how does Nasson think the townsfolk of Ladysmith (and all the refugees who had sought sanctuary there^[42]) felt about this ‘defensive enterprise’? After enduring bombardment, starvation, and rampant disease during several months of siege, I doubt they would go along with the Prof’s revisionist, self-serving and utterly illogical white-washing. It would seem that Nasson is blissfully unaware (or perhaps just keen to ignore) that some of the invaders even started pegging out farms for themselves, and sent for their families to come and occupy these newly grabbed estates.^[43]

And nor was the invasion even ‘widely understood’ to be ‘defensive’ by the townsfolk way down in Durban, who could only start to breathe a little more easily after a sizable Royal Navy brigade[44] was put ashore on 8 November 1899 to garrison their town.^[45] It was a commitment to defending the port which, in the eyes of one commentator, finally ‘banished all hope from disloyal minds of ever seeing the Vierkleur hoisted over Durban Town Hall – a common boast of the Boers before the war’.^[46]

Simply put, no one with a functioning brain would reasonably consider tens of thousands of men storming over the frontier into someone else’s country, looting, pillaging, and annexing land as they came, as a ‘defensive enterprise’. But, again, anyone who is desperate to keep the Apartheid-era myths alive can reference this nonsense, squawking that, because a Professor said it, it must be true… and that’s that.

And Professor Scholtz added yet more to the library of gobbledygook, declaring – and just like Pretorius and Nasson, without feeling the need to provide any sort of reference to support his remarkably convenient claims – that the object of the invasion was ‘to take up defensive positions at appropriate places not too far from the borders to await the enemy’s expected offensive’.[47] Leaving aside that a History Professor felt such an extraordinary claim required no actual evidence, Scholtz seemingly wanted to excuse the Boer invasions by pretending that they ‘only’ wanted to take part of someone else’s territory, rather than all of it. One wonders if he also completely excused Germany’s invasion of the USSR for the same reason – after all, the poor, innocent, misunderstood Nazis ‘only’ wanted to invade the Soviet Union as far as the ‘A-A line’,[48] and then take up defensive positions there – so that makes it OK, right?

It is noteworthy that ghastly regimes never seem to think they should just ‘defend’ their own borders – why, one wonders, do they feel the need to invade someone else’s territory, and then pretend only to be setting up defensive positions? Of course, in reality, the objectives of Kruger’s invasion were not ‘defensive’ in the least, and were actually aimed at taking Durban and then onto the Cape ports,^[49] with the hope (as Scholtz himself rather hypocritically admits) of sparking a mass rebellion in the Cape: ‘by such action the interior districts of the Cape Colony would be encouraged to rise and to form themselves into a third great republic’.[50]

How does this (for once, referenced[51]) bombshell statement fit with the myths he is pushing? Why would Scholtz try to convince his readers that the invasions were ‘defensive’, despite providing (for once, referenced) evidence that they were anything but? If Scholtz could have proved that the invading Boers ‘only’ wanted to take up these mythical defensive positions (rather than – as in reality, and as he inadvertently admitted – driving the British out of the region), then of course he would have. For anyone with an enquiring mind, the fact that the Prof simply stated it without referencing the claim is telling, and one might be excused for thinking he hoped he’d get away with it. Why didn’t Scholtz let us in on the secret as to where these mysterious ‘appropriate places’ were,[52] which set of orders identified them, and which units had been assigned to occupy them? And – most tellingly – why does the Prof not explain why the poor, blameless and helpless Boers could not just, well… err… defend their own borders? Why did their (ahem) entirely innocent and ‘defensive’ aims involve invading other peoples’ territory in all directions?

However comforting such claims may be for some, without any of this information, they are simply self-serving nonsense, pulled out of the air, and spewed out only to try to preserve the myths of Boer innocence (in the war they started). And yet these unreferenced rantings can still be cited by the Faithful: ‘Prof Scholtz said it, so that’s good enough for me – no need for me to exercise any sort of critical thinking’.

Again, what is the agenda? Why were these fellows so desperate to dream up all manner of far-fetched excuses to completely exonerate the (long-planned-for) Boer invasion of territory belonging to other people? Would they attempt the same sort of hysterical white-washing in the case of any other invasion in history? As long as a gaggle of academics still shamelessly push this nonsense, the myths will stagger on a little longer; if you can mindlessly reference a Professor (even when what he has written is utter tripe) there’s absolutely no reason to think for yourself.

Needless to say, they, and others of their ilk, will scoff at all this, frantically circling the scholarly wagons, squealing about cast-iron objectivity, and arrogantly poo-pooing the very notion that there is any sort of agenda – despite all the evidence to the contrary. If anything, their panic-stricken reinvention of South Africa’s history makes the reinvention of science by their fellow fanatics over in the ‘social justice’ cults of some American universities actually look pretty rational.

NOTES:

[1] Murray, The Madness of Crowds, p.61

[2] Murray, The Madness of Crowds, p.171

[3] Murray, The Madness of Crowds, p.173

[4] https://www.chrisash.co.za/entertaining-fanmail/

[5] Scholtz was an Extraordinary Professor of History at Stellenbosch University (where else)

[6] Scholtz, Why the Boers Lost the War, p.6

[7] Nathan, Paul Kruger: His Life and Times, p.452

[8] Professor of history at – wait for it – Stellenbosch University

[9] Lowry, The South African War Reappraised, p.209

[10] Nasson, The War for South Africa, p.25

[11] Walker, A History of Southern Africa, p.402

[12] Thompson, A History of South Africa, p.103

[13] Frere, Letters from an Uitlander, p.21, Warwick, Black People and the South African War, 1899–1902, p.65, Conan Doyle, The Great Boer War, p.61

[14] https://www.chrisash.co.za/2020/09/22/secret-conferences-pretoria-june-1887/

[15] Fraser, Episodes of my Life, p.137

[16] Fraser, Episodes of my Life, p.145-147

[17] Cook, Rights and Wrongs of the Transvaal War, p.25

[18] Fitzpatrick, The Transvaal from Within, p.xiv

[19] Carter, A Narrative of the Boer War, p.23

[20] Schmitt, The Bechuanaland Pioneers and Gunners, p.69

[21] Rethman, Friends and Enemies, p. 6

[22] Soldiers of the Queen, issue 123, December 2005

[23] War Office, Military Notes on the Dutch Republics of South Africa, p.52

[24] https://www.chrisash.co.za/2020/04/19/bloemfontein-conference-a-determined-path-to-war/

[25] Pakenham, The Boer War, p.105

[26] The only ‘defensive invasions’ in history? Answers on a postcard, please

[27] Beeld, 12 April 2022

[28] Dr Jamie Miller of the University of Pittsburgh coined this splendid description of the mindset in a 2017 article for HuffPost. He is the author of An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and Its Search for Survival

[29] https://www.chrisash.co.za/2025/05/19/the-katz-out-of-the-bag/

[30] https://www.chrisash.co.za/2026/05/01/sweet-caroline-the-myths-never-seemed-so-wrong/

[31] Nasson, The War for South Africa, p.56

[32] Nasson, The War for South Africa, p.37

[33] Nasson, The War for South Africa, p.65

[34] Reitz, Commando, p.32

[35] Bailey, Seven Months Under Boer Rule, pp.87–88

[36] Bailey, Seven Months Under Boer Rule, p.69

[37] Bailey, Seven Months Under Boer Rule, pp.87–88

[38] Torlage & Watt, A Guide to the Anglo-Boer War Sites of KwaZulu-Natal, p.5

[39] Also known as ‘Mullerspas’, this lies to the south-west of Newcastle, close to the border with the old Orange Free State

[40] Warwick, Black People and the South African War 1899–1900, p.80

[41] Stott, The Boer Invasion of Natal, p.215

[42] Amery, The Times History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902, Vol.2. pp.236–37

[43] Conan Doyle, The Great Boer War, p.215

[44] Commanded by Captain Percy Scott of the HMS Terrible, this comprised some twenty 12-pounders, heavier 4.7” guns, and a detachment of about 300 Royal Marines with Maxims

[45] Scott, Fifty Years in the Royal Navy, p.342

[46] Crowe & Jane, HMS Terrible & Her Naval Brigades, p. 80

[47] Scholtz, Why the Boers Lost the War, p.18

[48] The Arkhangelsk–Astrakhan line was the military goal of Operation Barbarossa, as first mentioned on 18 December 1940 in Führer Directive 21 (Fall Barbarossa), which set out the goals of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, describing the attainment of this line as its overall military objective

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

[50] Scholtz, Why the Boers Lost the War, p.23

[51] Selections from the Smuts Papers, I, p.326 (memorandum by Smuts, 4 September 1899)

[52] I have heard this ‘defensive positions, just over the border’ excuse a thousand times, yet none of those who blindly swear by it has ever been able to identify where they were. One would have thought it someone is going to make such bizarre and self-serving claims, they would at least be able to say where these positions were