Eleven May has seen some genuinely wild moments in this country’s story, and today’s a good one to dig into.
1902: With the Anglo-Boer War grinding into its brutal final weeks, peace negotiations were intensifying around this time as Boer commanders gathered at Vereeniging to discuss surrender terms. The war had devastated the Boer republics, left tens of thousands of women and children dead in British concentration camps, and exhausted both sides completely. What fascinates me is how the Boer leaders who signed that peace treaty just weeks later would go on to shape the very country that had just defeated them. Men like Louis Botha and Jan Smuts didn’t disappear into history, they became the architects of a new South Africa, which is one of those strange ironies that makes you stop and think.
1961: South Africa formally became a republic on 31 May 1961, but the weeks leading up to that moment were filled with enormous political tension, and by 11 May the country was deep in debate about what kind of republic it would actually be. The decision to leave the Commonwealth, driven largely by international pressure over apartheid, was splitting opinion sharply. For millions of black South Africans, the birth of the republic meant nothing but the further entrenchment of a system designed to exclude them entirely. It’s one of those moments where the official celebrations and the lived reality of ordinary people couldn’t have been further apart.
1994: In the extraordinary weeks following the historic April 1994 elections, South Africa was still processing what had just happened. By 11 May the ANC’s election victory was confirmed and the country was preparing for Mandela’s inauguration, which would happen on 10 May, meaning the day after our date here the nation was exhaling after one of the most watched inaugurations in world history. People who lived through that period always tell me there was this strange mix of joy and nervousness, nobody quite believing the transition had actually held together. That feeling of collective relief is something I find genuinely moving every time I read about it.
Three very different moments, one country still figuring itself out across more than a century of change. That thread connecting 1902 to 1994 reminds me why I love South African history so much, it’s never simple, never tidy, but it’s always deeply human.
The 1902 Vereeniging negotiations are always framed as a pivotal turning point, but what struck me studying this at Wits was how deliberately Black South Africans were excluded from the peace settlement. The British guaranteed the Boers that the question of Black political rights wouldn’t be decided until after representative government was restored, which was diplomatic language for: your future subjugation is secured. The concentration camps are also remembered mainly through an Afrikaner lens, but Black Africans died in separate, far more poorly resourced camps, and that part rarely gets the same prominence in the popular narrative.
What gets me is how that 1902 agreement planted seeds that flowered into apartheid half a century later. The peace was never peace for everyone. That’s exactly the kind of thing that Wits history lectures felt like uncovering, layer by layer, and it’s why threads like this one still carry real weight.
ThandiM you’re not wrong, and that’s the part they glossed over in school when I was growing up in the seventies. The British basically sold out everyone who wasn’t white to get the Boers to sign, and then everyone acts surprised when the National Party formalises the whole rotten system fifty years later. It didn’t come from nowhere. The roots were right there in that tent at Vereeniging.
What gets me is how that same pattern repeated itself, the big guys negotiating and everyone else waiting outside to hear what was decided about their lives. You’d think after everything that happened in this country people would have learned something about leaving whole groups out of the room.
Anyway, history like this matters and I’m glad the forum covers it properly. My generation didn’t get taught half of this stuff, we had to figure it out ourselves later on. Better late than never I suppose.
My great-grandfather was in one of those camps near Springfontein. Lost two kids there. Family never talked much about it, you just farmed and kept going, dis mos so.
MarkD is right that it didnt come from nowhere. The British wanted the war finished, they made their deal, and everyone else could sort themselves out later. That “later” never really came, ja.
I dont have clever answers for what should have been done differently in 1902. I just know that plaas of ours has been through a lot since then. Ground stays, politics changes. Not always for the better.
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