1895 Deeds Office Sketch of Vygeboomsvlakte farm with Wolwedans subdivision depicting the three houses, furrow and irrigated lands.338
5.3. Forming Dry Harts Forced Labour Camp. September to October 1901.
At the end of September 1901, planning was underway to relocate the refugees from Kimberley, Taung and Orange River Station camps and to concentrate them at a proposed new site at Dry Harts, located 160 kilometres north of Kimberley and 40 kilometres south of Vryburg. This
proposed site is depicted on a map which indicates all Native Refugee Camps operating that month across South Africa together with a table of the approximate numbers of refugees and how many families this represented.339
• Kimberley: 1,575 internees made up of 260 families
338 Vryburg Deeds Office, Vygeboomsvlakte and Wolwedans farm files
339 VAB, CO, Vol. 56, Reference 3481/01.
170
• Orange River Station: 1,237 internees made up of 210 families
• Taungs: 600 internees made up 100 families
This number of 1,537 correlates with the De Beers Consolidated Mines records for
Blankenbergvlei population on 18 September 1901 and therefore refers to Blankenbergvlei Native Refugee Camp. Klippiespan camp was not officially on strength and neither were the large number of black civilians already at Dry Harts. Captain De Lotbiniere wrote to Lord Milner that it would take 100 trucks alone to move the Kimberley and Orange River Station camps to Taungs and Dry Harts, with five families to a truck, versus 20 families to a truck, as originally envisaged.340 This means that the total number of families being moved was about 500.
Two points about De Lotbiniere’s communication with Milner are pertinent. Firstly the forced removal from these two Native Refugee Camps included 1,575 people (260 families) at
Blankenbergvlei and 1,237 people (210 families) at Orange River Station, totalling 470 families.
This leaves a shortfall of 30 families, approximating 150 people. The hypothesis is that these 30 families were Kimberley refugees at Klippiespan who were also railed to Dry Harts at a later stage.
The second point is that why were only five families allocated to a truck versus the 20 envisaged?
The hypothesis is that the refugees salvaged all possible materials that they could use from their dwellings at Blankenbergvlei and Klippiespan and Orange River Station to construct new shelters at Dry Harts. The military allowed these materials to be railed with the refugees as it would save them having to purchase and rail through on a separate occasion building materials for the camp being assembled at Dry Harts. The refugees would arrive on site with materials on hand.
On Monday 23 September 1901, the move from Kimberley to Dry Harts commenced.
The first batch leaving now by rail for Dry Harts where a new camp is being formed. The last batch is expected to leave by Sunday next (29 September). Some 70 natives in work till now have left or are leaving their employment to go away with their families to the new
340NASA, SNA, Vol. 59, De Lotbiniere to Milner, (30 September 1901).
171 camp. Some natives tried yesterday to get away from here to Mankoerane’s but mounted pickets prevented them from going into this location. In a few days a raid will be made on Makoranes again. I am informed that some natives living here are going to build their huts near the De Beers Consolidated Mines Reservoir, those natives are employed.341 A sense of apprehension must have prevailed about this imminent forced removal. The fact that some of the refugees attempted to escape in order to avoid their displacement to Dry Harts indicates a sentiment about where they were going. The report does not disclose their gender;
perhaps they were women and children trying to remain behind as their men were working on the mines and this was their attempt to retain their family cohesion.
On 24 September 1901, 347 refugees left Orange River Station for the Dry Harts forced labour camp.342 It is unknown what date they passed through Kimberley, yet they were joined by the next group of Kimberley refugees on 29 September 1901, for routing north.
341 De Beers Consolidated Mines Archives, Record No: 9054 Native Camps and Natives Generally [Box 2/1/36 Ref E].
342 NASA, FK, Vol. 1822.
172 The original caption for this photograph is: Refugees and Transport from Transport Train,
Kimberley (1901).343 This photograph was taken at Kimberley railway station and depicts refugees with their possessions loaded into a railway truck. Note the empty sacks which would be used to construct shelters. Dated 1901, these people are about to be railed to Dry Harts and is the only photograph ever identified to date depicting a specific group of refugees in a specific place and linked to the specific events that this thesis describes.
On 1 October 1901, the refugees at Blankenbergvlei were gone. This meant that refugees from the Boshof, Jacobsdal, Petrusburg, Hebron, Hoopstad and Christiana districts ended up in the Dry
343 http://www.boer-war.com/Gallery/Stereoview1-64.html. As assessed 19 August 2016.
173 Harts forced labour camp. An inspection by a De Beers Consolidated Mines representative found an old woman and man too ill to be moved and who were left with a quantity of foodstuffs by the departing Superintendent.
Thirty wagons and carts were abandoned, some very good ones, others more or less broken down. Nobody looks after these wagons. On the site a great amount of tins, old sheet iron used for building the huts is strewn all over the place, portions of huts still standing. I found 10 huts close to the road running along the Dorsfontein – Kenilworth boundary fence, east of the De Beers Consolidated Mines reservoir. The huts are occupied by natives working for Nicols sanitary contractor.344
Prior to the move on 18 September 1901, there were 307 refugee huts at Blankenbergvlei. Six days later the De Beers Consolidated Mines inspector found only scrap left behind and portions of huts still standing, suggesting that the shelters were recycled for all usable pieces and taken with them to Dry Harts.345
Given that the purpose of the Native Refugee Department was to provide male labour to the army and the women, children and elderly agricultural labour, no records were located that indicate if an agricultural scheme was started before the internees were relocated to Dry Harts forced labour camp.346 No planting was attempted at Blankenbergvlei as no record of this exits in the
meticulously recorded reports about this camp in the De Beers Consolidated Mines archives. At Klippiespan camp this was possible, as directly adjacent to the living areas there is evidence of very old ploughed lands. This is not visible on the ground though it is visible from the air. These lands may very well existed from before the war and which is why the internees were positioned there in order to use them.
Prior to formation of the camp black refugees were already being assembled at Dry Harts by military columns clearing the western Transvaal. How many in total was not identified in the
344De Beers Consolidated Mines Archives, Record No: 9054 Native Camps and Natives Generally [Box 2/1/36 Ref E]; De Beers Consolidated Mines Archives, GM Collection, F & E 1/1/1.
345 De Beers Consolidated Mines Archives, GM Collection, F & E 1/1/1.
346 SNA 1902, Vol.13, Captain De Lotbiniere to Sir Godfrey Lagden, Commissioner for Native Affairs, Johannesburg, (13 January 1902).
174 archive yet the archaeology offers a possibility. The burial site on Vygeboomsvlakte has three distinct burial areas which the research describes as Areas A, B and C. Area C contains
approximately 600 graves based on the archaeological survey, with only one engraved headstone.
Area B has stones dated 1901 and Area A stones engraved 1902. The hypothesis is that Area C is the burial site of those refugees already at Dry Harts before the formation of the camp and once formed, burials continued in Areas B and finally A.
Sketch plan of Dry Harts camp cemetery by E. Voigt, 13 June 2001.347
In analysing the fragmentary archive which consists of camp registers for Dry Harts, Taung and Orange River Station containing statistics of refugee numbers, births, deaths and rationing costs it is possible to form three deductions around the formation of this camp. However, when dealing
347 Author’s collection.
175 with fatalities the research will show through the archaeological record that the authorities under recorded the deaths.
On 3 September 1901, Reverend Brown wrote of his visit to Dry Harts, which may have been in August the month before that the refugees were:
In great poverty and misery and our visit was a comfort to them. Many are dying from day to day – what is to become of the survivors I cannot think. Between the Dutch and the English they have lost everything, and there being no political party interested in their destiny, they ‘go to the wall’ as the weakest are bound to do.348
These people would not have been settled near the station given the garrison requirements of a clear field of fire of a minimum of one mile around their positions. As Vygeboomsvlakte and Wolwedans had been cleared of Boers and were located just over a mile from the station and had wells, this was where they were settled. Their dead were buried in Area C, and from Reverend Brown’s description, the death rate was high.
A question is that although being Transvaal refugees how did they get to Dry Harts? The fragmentary archive records that on 19 August 1901, there were 200 black refugee families approximating 1,200 people at Taung.349 On 30 September 1901 this number dropped to 600 people.350 What happened to the other 600? One possibility is that this missing 600 died at Taung.
Another is that given that plans were afoot during September 1901 to consolidate at Dry Harts the hypothesis is that these 600 people were dispatched to Dry Harts during late August 1901 and it was these people that Reverend Brown encountered. They formed the initial core of the camp that was to be formed.
During September 1901 the relocation of the Kimberley camps and the Orange River Station camp to Dry Harts commenced. The research identified that these refugees did not go directly to Dry
348 P. Warwick, Black People, 156.
349 NASA, FK, Vol. 1813.
350 CO, Vol. 36. Ref 3481/01.
176 Harts. They arrived at Taung and were held in the Native Refugee Camp there during October 1901. The only register ever made by the Native Refugee Department for the Taung Native
Refugee Camp was for the month of October 1901. A review of the camp register as on 31 October 1901 reveals that the refugee total soared to 3,449 people in camp with 84 deaths for that month, making a total of 3,533 in camp, comprising 632 men, 1,184 women and 1,633 children.351 If we subtract the 600 people from August 1901 this leaves a figure of 2,933 people who arrived in October 1901. The refugees that left Kimberley and Orange River Station in September 1901 totalled 2,810.
This evidence shows that they were not railed directly to Dry Harts station. They disembarked at Taung and were held throughout October 1901 in transit at the Taung Native Refugee Camp. In November 1901 they arrived at Dry Harts, in all likelihood having walked there from Taung when the camp opened. November 1901 is the opening date of Dry Harts camp as this is when the refugees from the south were consolidated there and it was that month that the first camp register was opened. The camp was located on Wolwedans farm and the burial site on Vygeboomsvlakte farm. If they walked from Taung to the farm then they would not have carried with them all their building materials taken from Blankenbergvlei, nor transported them as their carts and wagons were left behind. Consequently exposure to the elements would have been a serious cause of illness and death.
Research into the philately of Dry Harts also dates November 1901, as the opening of the camp.
The first postage stamp issued for Dry Harts existed from 1888-1889. Thereafter stamps were issued from 1891 until 15 October 1899, when the Boer forces occupied the area. No further
351 CO, Vol. 36. Ref 3481/01.
177 stamps were issued until November 1901.352 This is relevant in that once the camp opened, post would need to be sent and postage stamps would be required.
The camp register for November 1901 month end has 3,388 refugees in camp. This comprised 651 men, 1,182 women and 1,555 children with 208 deaths making a total of 3,596 people in camp.
The deaths are broken down as 11 men, 30 women and 167 children. These figures support the fact that there was an original core in this camp before the 3,449 refugees arrived from Taung. For example approximately 1,633 children arrived from Taung in November 1901, 167 died in camp which at the month end had 1,555 children in camp. Child refugee numbers according the register declined by 78 yet total deaths were 167, the difference representing 89 child deaths are from the original core population before the arrival of refugees from Taung.