After many years of planning, scheming, and skullduggery, President
Kruger launched his invasions of British territory on 11 October 1899,
sparking the Boer War and plunging southern Africa into almost three
years of misery. Natal was front and centre of Kruger’s dreams of carving
out a vast empire in the region; despite latter-day attempts to
desperately reinvent this as a ‘defensive’ invasion, towns were looted and
renamed, great swathes of the colony were annexed to the republics, and
thousands of civilians were driven from their homes. The objective was
to grab Natal and, with it, a seaport; indeed, even Louis Botha himself
later boasted that only General Joubert’s dithering had prevented him
‘coming to Durban in 1899 to eat bananas’. Written in Ash’s trademark
‘no holds barred’ style, this comprehensive history details the forces
involved – republican, British, and Natalian – and covers every aspect of
the campaign. Where other accounts tend to focus almost entirely on the
British defeats at Colenso and Spion Kop, this new work shows how they
fitted into the campaign as a whole and explores how the much-maligned
General Buller broke through to relieve Ladysmith, then drove the
invaders out in a series of barely known victories.
Fully illustrated with specially drawn maps that show both the
operational and tactical aspects of the campaign, Ash can stand back to
explain the ‘big picture’ but also take the reader into the trenches and
sangars with the Tommies and burghers. Written with verve and a
soldier’s eye, Ash’s accounts of the various battles place the reader right
in the thick of the action; one can almost hear the crack of the Mauser
bullets and the pounding of the guns. The cast of remarkable characters
who served in Natal are also explored in depth; indeed, the extraordinary
personalities involved are one of the many things that make this account
so readable and entertaining. This extensively referenced work cuts
through the apartheid-era myths, revealing uncomfortable facts and
truths that have been denied and glossed over by many in South African
academia for decades. But for the intelligent reader who wants to know
what really happened during the Boer invasion of Natal, Ash’s new book
will prove to be an eye-opener.