KWAZULU-NATAL BRANCH

Newsletter No. 487
September 2016

Those present at the August 2016 meeting were asked by the Chairman to stand for a moment's silence in memory of two stalwart members of the Society and longstanding members of the KwaZulu-Natal Branch, Matthew "Midge" Carter and Don Ente, who passed away recently.

The Darrell Hall Memorial Lecture was due to have been Ms Michelle Dye of the African Conservation Trust. Unfortunately Michelle was recovering from a virus currently doing the rounds, but she managed to persuade her colleague, Carl Grossmann to make the presentation on her behalf. Carl is one of the original founders and present Chairman of the African Conservation Trust.

  Michelle’s talk was entitled, ‘Creating interactive tools to promote battlefield tourism and historical analysis’. Advancements in modern mapping technologies are making it possible to create immersive virtual realities to explore historic sites in new ways. The African Conservation Trust (ACT) worked together with the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and Amafa to shed new light on three of KwaZulu-Natal’s most significant battles: Isandlwana, Rorke’s Drift and Spioenkop. The sites were documented using GIS mapping, 3D laser scanning and various photographic methods. The projects have been a great success and the talk presented the results and demonstrated the scope of these technologies. Understanding the details of complex military engagements is challenging and difficult to communicate to interested historians, students, and visitors. Modern mapping can be used to digitally record the sites, compare historical and current data and offer new insights into the course of events. For example, elevation data was used to generate viewsheds which show what is visible from certain observation points. Viewsheds can suggest what may have influenced decisions made by key military leaders, show the visibility of potential deployment positions, and possibly the impact of relief on the range and effectiveness of artillery fire.

The example above is a viewshed from Warren’s headquarters (point A) and demonstrates the effective placement of the Boer guns and the limited view by Warren from his position at Three Tree Hill.

3D laser scanning works by sending out laser pulses and measuring the time it takes for the light to hit the object and bounce back to the scanner. The scanner can capture up to 50 000 points per second and the result is a ‘point cloud’ which is so dense that it looks like a solid surface. The scanning of Isandlwana took 7 days and consisted of 50 individual scans taken from various angles around the battlefield. The final point cloud consisted of 780 million measured points. Each point has an xyz coordinate making it possible to take accurate measurements anywhere on the model. The scan data gives an amazing view that can be moved in 3D space to see the battlefield from any perspective. Future projects will focus on using the scan model as an accurate base to digitally reconstruct historical features so that the site can be viewed as it was during the time of the battle.

Photographic techniques such as ultra-high resolution images make it possible to view both the general location as well as small detail at selected points of interest. Hundreds of individual images are stitched together to form one detailed panorama image. You can zoom in to read hundreds of names off a monument, or view the plaque of an individual grave. Similar images can also be used to create a virtual tour (such as that of Rorke’s Drift (below), an online tool that places the viewer at the centre of any chosen location and enables them to explore the scene in its entirety, and at their own pace. Virtual tours allow you to capture an environment in a way traditional photography cannot and deliver that experience to anyone with a computer, smart phone or tablet.

The tools have been made available online to promote interest in the battlefields by both local and international tourists. It is suggested that you visit the following link to explore the sites: http://www.actheritage.org/battlefields/

The Main Talk was presented by one of South Africa’s most eminent authorities on the Anglo-Boer War, Professor Fransjohan Pretorius, who is Professor Emeritus, University of Pretoria, and who travelled from Pretoria to speak to us. Professor Pretorius’s lecture was entitled: “Publications; a Historiography of the Anglo-Boer War”.

The meaning of the word historiography: That which has been written on history. The historiography of the Anglo-Boer War is a huge topic, because it is one of the themes in South African history that has attracted the most attention.

From the outset a deluge of books written from a British perspective appeared on the Anglo-Boer War. By 1903 the United Service Magazine had already reviewed almost 100 volumes on the conflict. Within five years of the end of the war there was already a large enough number for the American Historical Review to give a general assessment of the value of British literature on the topic. By 1909 Volume 7 of The Times History of the War in South Africa was able to include a bibliography of 31 pages of published material on the war, most of it in English. However, the significance of the war was soon overtaken by the prominence of several other international wars, including both World Wars, with the result that much less was published in Britain in subsequent years.

With Britain victorious in the war, most of the English literature in the first half of the 20th century was emphatically subjective and pro-British. The second half of the century saw a much more sober approach, both by public and academic historians, culminating in some important publications with the commemoration of the war from 1999 to 2002. Significantly, a number of these are indicative of the cooperation of British historians with South African English, Afrikaans and black colleagues.

Boer (or Afrikaner) literature on the war initially saw about 23 diaries or war memoirs appearing between 1900 and 1905, excluding those written by foreign volunteers who had fought with the Boers. However, in the period 1906 to 1931 only about ten Boer diaries or reminiscences were published, mainly because Afrikaners were struggling to express themselves succinctly in either Dutch or Afrikaans. By 1925 this situation had improved with the recognition of Afrikaans as an official language (together with English).

With the emergence of a new wave of Afrikaner nationalism in the 1930s and the Afrikaner’s seizure of political power in 1948, a host of subjective reminiscences and diaries appeared in Afrikaans, mainly on the disaster of the white concentration camps and on Boer heroism on the battlefield. Neethling, Mag Ons vergeet? Steenkamp, Helkampe. These publications were used to great effect by Afrikaner leaders to promote Afrikaner nationalism. They were soon joined on the bookshelves by the work of public and academic historians, who saw the war as a struggle for freedom. Preller, Jack Hindon, Ons Parool, Talana. Scheepers Strydom, Kaapland en die Tweede Vryheidsoorlog. Afrikaners felt that what they had lost in 1902 they had regained in 1948 with the National Party victory at the polls, to be followed in 1961 by the establishment of a republic outside the British Commonwealth. Rewriting the history of the war from an Afrikaner nationalistic perspective was “to set the record straight” and to celebrate the final political victory over the British Empire.

However, with the republic achieved in 1961, the ideological function of the war as a historical driving force began to fade and the war lost its iron grip on the Afrikaner historical consciousness. Afrikaners experienced social mobility on a large scale as a growing Afrikaner middle class emerged, aided by an economic boom. On the one hand this led to the waning of Afrikaner nationalism, but on the other it fed into a more objective approach by Afrikaner historians to the war. This new direction was headed by Albert Grundlingh and our very own speaker. Grundlingh had his Master’s dissertation on the Boer collaborators with the British, entitled Die “Hendsoppers” en “Joiners” published in 1979, and this was given an English edition in 2001 with the title The Dynamics of Treason. Meanwhile Prof. Pretorius’s PhD on life on commando during the war was published in 1991 as Kommandolewe tydens die Anglo-Boereoorlog 1899-1902, and the English edition came eight years later. In this work the attempt was to investigate the Boers on commando, warts and all, and it was no coincidence that the chapter on discipline was the longest chapter in the book – because there was such a lack of discipline on commando. More recently Albert Blake’s Boereverraaiers, Broedertwis has been published.

The commemoration of the war (1999-2002) followed in the wake of the Afrikaners’ renouncement of power in the democratic South Africa of 1994. Afrikaners now had to cope with a challenging new political environment. Some Afrikaner historians used this opportunity to write about the war more objectively than before, because it was a period in Afrikaner history for which they did not have to apologise — in stark comparison with the apartheid era. This was still evident in publications by Prof Grundlingh and Prof Pretorius. However, it also provided the opportunity for a number of subjective popular works; they were in much the same vein as fifty years previously. Andries Raath’s two volumes entitled Die Boerevrou 1899-1902, Moederleed and Kampsmarte are examples.

Until the 1960s, apart from the Afrikaner emphasis on the suffering in the concentration camps, the historiography of the Anglo-Boer War focused mainly on the military course of the conflict, the role of prominent military commanders and political aspects. Although these issues have by no means been exhausted, historians subsequently began to consider other aspects of the war, thereby dramatically broadening our view. Following research into war and society in Europe and the United States, the primary focus shifted to social aspects — the vicissitudes of ordinary civilians in wartime. The war is now seen as a total South African war in which all groups participated; a war that affected all the inhabitants of southern Africa, hence the designation “South African War” favoured by some historians. The new approach has given prime attention to the position, role and experience of black people during the war, and has captured the attention of British, English South African, Afrikaans and black South African historians. Gender is another issue that has aroused interest. Perhaps the title of the book published after the conference held at the University of South Africa in 1998 — Writing a Wider War: Rethinking Gender, Race, and Identity in the South African War 1899-1902, edited by Greg Cuthbertson, Albert Grundlingh and Mary-Lynn Suttie — is the best indication that the paradigms for the historiography of the war have shifted significantly.

Prof Pretorius continued discussing the historiography of the Anglo-Boer War along thematic themes. Firstly, there are a number of useful publications on the bibliography of the war. Unquestionably one of the best bibliographies is the voluminous A Bibliography of the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902, published in 1999 by the War Museum of the Boer Republics and the University of the Orange Free State Library and Information Services in Bloemfontein, under the editorship of M. C. E. van Schoor. Subsequently our speaker has published a book with Scarecrow Press in the United States in 2010 entitled A to Z of the Anglo-Boer War with a bibliography of 53 pages, arranged according to themes. Most of the titles mentioned are works written in English.

A number of thought-provoking works have appeared on the origins of the war. J.A. Hobson’s The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Effects (1900) succeeded in setting in motion a lively debate for an entire century, with contributions representing a wide variety of ideologies, including those of G.D. Scholtz, J.S. Marais, G.H. le May, John Benyon, Shula Marks, Alan Jeeves, Andrew Porter and Iain R. Smith. The latter’s careful analysis, The Origins of the South African War (1996), remains the best broad analysis to date.

Many histories have offered a general overview of the entire war. The jingoistic works of the likes of H.W. Wilson’s With the Flag to Pretoria (2 volumes, 1900-1901) and After Pretoria: The Guerilla War (1902), and Louis Creswicke’s South Africa and the Transvaal War (8 volumes, 1900-1902) are equalled in their excessive subjectivity by pro-Boer publications from the European continent, such as the Dutch W.F. Andriessen’s Gedenkboek van den Oorlog in Zuid-Afrika (1904) and G.L. Kepper’s De Zuid-Afrikaansche Oorlog (1900). Louwrens Penning’s De Oorlog in Zuid-Afrika (3 volumes, 1899-1902) was on a par with Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Great Boer War (1902) with regard to some balance and depth. Leo Amery’s The Times History of the War in South Africa (7 volumes, 1900-1909) and Frederick Maurice and Maurice Grant’s The History of the War in South Africa (4 volumes, with 4 volumes of maps, 1906-1910, known as The Official History), still offer the best military overviews of the war, although they are not free of undue bias for the British. Meant as an Afrikaner nationalistic antipode to them, Die Geskiedenis van die Tweede Vryheidsoorlog in Suid-Afrika (6 volumes, 1969-1996) by J. H. Breytenbach has a pro-Boer bias, but as a reference work it proves as useful as the Times History and the Official History. However, it does not take the war beyond the middle of 1900.

After some solid contributions by Rayne Kruger (Good-Bye Dolly Gray: The Story of the Boer War, 1959) and Byron Farwell (The Great Anglo-Boer War, 1976), Thomas Pakenham’s The Boer War (1979) has played a major role in opening up a renewed interest in the war, particularly in Britain, but also in South Africa and the United States. A piece of exceptional literature, it thoroughly deserves the many editions and reprints it has enjoyed. Although it is an honest attempt to give a balanced picture, the author remains an observer from within the British lines. A more academic approach is found in editors Peter Warwick and S.B. Spies’s The South African War: The Anglo-Boer War (1980), Bill Nasson’s The South African War (1999), and Denis Judd and Keith Surridge’s The Boer War (2003). Attractive and lavishly illustrated popular works include David Smurthwaite’s The Boer War (1999), Martin Marix Evans’s The Boer War: South Africa (1999) and my The Anglo-Boer War (1985 with reprints in 1998 and 2013 – there were editions in both English and Afrikaans). Martin Bossenbroek, De Boerenoorlog (2013).

Among the many published reminiscences, diaries and letters of the war, some have achieved classical status, none more so than Deneys Reitz’s Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War. Although originally written in Dutch in 1903 and published in English (by Faber and Faber) only in 1929, it is the sparkling reminiscences of a young Boer who went to war at the age of 17. Less well-known is the diary of a youthful anti-hero with a wonderful sense of humour, Roland Schikkerling, entitled Commando Courageous (A Boer’s Diary). Its publication in South Africa as late as 1964, when the main interest in the Anglo-Boer War had waned, sadly prevented this book from reaching Commando’s classical status. To complete the trilogy of Boer greats is the sensitive diary (in Dutch) of the later famous poet, Jan Celliers, published as late as 1978 under the editorship of A. G. Oberholster. And Three Years War (1902), Gen. Christiaan de Wet’s reminiscences, written in less than three weeks while De Wet was on board ship to England shortly after the war, has been a faithful companion to many a student of the war.

Winston Churchill’s London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900) can be regarded as the British counterpart to Reitz’s epic volume, although Gen. Ian Hamilton, together with V. Sampson, attempted to seize that honour with their Anti-Commando by the same publisher (Faber and Faber) in 1931. Not far behind is Maj.-Gen. Robert Baden-Powell’s Sketches in Mafeking and East Africa (1907), and J.F.C. Fuller’s The Last of the Gentlemen’s Wars: A Subaltern’s Journal of the War in South Africa (1937, again published by Faber and Faber). Edward Spiers, letters from Ladysmith and Kimberley.

Books on the military and social history of the combatants include publications that cover specialized themes. Modern scholarship has produced a number of fine military histories, among others Lord Methuen and the British Army (1999) by Stephen Miller and Generaal Louis Botha op die Natalse Front (1970) by C.J. Barnard. Some commendable recent publications that can be defined broadly as social history are Diana Cammack’s The Rand at War (1990); The Siege of Mafeking (2 volumes under the editorship of Iain R. Smith, which hosts chapters by historians from both Britain and South Africa, in 2001); Albert Grundlingh’s The Dynamics of Treason: Boer Collaboration in the South African War (2006); my Life on Commando during the Anglo-Boer War (1999); Andrew McLeod’s unpublished D.Phil thesis, “The Psychological Impact of the Guerrilla War on the Boers during the Anglo-Boer War” (2004), and the latest of these works, John Boje’s An Imperfect Occupation: Enduring the South African War (2016) on the district of Winburg and the war.

The Anglo-Boer War had a profound effect on the adjacent British colonies — the Cape Colony and Natal. Rodney Davenport’s The Afrikaner Bond (1966) remains a classic in this regard, as does J.H. Snyman’s Die Afrikaner in Kaapland (1973). Johan Wassermann has filled another lacuna with his unpublished D.Phil thesis, “The Natal Afrikaners and the Anglo-Boer War” (2004).

For various reasons the Anglo-Boer War was of considerable importance to Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and several contingents came to South Africa in support of the British army. This, together with the war’s influence on local politics, ensured a solid bibliographical contribution. The best examples are Craig Wilcox’s Australia’s Boer War (2002) and Carman Miller’s Painting the Map Red: Canada and the South African War (1993). The circumstances surrounding Breaker Morant and the Bushveldt Carbineers have sparked a number of recent anti-imperial Australian publications, including Nick Bleszynski’s Shoot Straight You Bastards! The Truth Behind the Killing of ‘Breaker’ Morant (2002) and William Woolmore’s The Bushveldt Carbineers and the Pietersburg Light Horse (2002). South African Arthur Davey provides a more balanced view in Breaker Morant and the Bushveldt Carbineers (1987). With One Flag, One Queen, One Tongue: New Zealand, the British Empire and the South African War, 1899-1902, John Crawford and Ian McGibbon have edited a useful reference work to the Kiwi experience of the war (2003).

With the British empire at the height of its power, the reaction of British society to the Anglo-Boer War is portrayed in a number of excellent recent works. Richard Price looks at working-class attitudes and reactions to the war in An Imperial War and the British Working Class (1972); Arthur Davey gives a broad overview of the British Pro-Boers in the period 1877-1902 (1978); religious reaction in Britain is covered inter alia by Greg Cuthbertson’s unpublished D.Phil thesis, “The Nonconformist Conscience and the South African War” (1986) and H.H. Hewison (Hedge of Wild Almonds: South Africa, the Pro-Boers and the Quaker Conscience, 1989). Donal McCracken studies the Irish Pro-Boers (1989) and the Irish Brigade that fought on the Boer side (1999); Stephen Miller fills an important gap with his Volunteers on the Veld: Britain’s Citizen-Soldiers and the South African War (2007). Paula Krebs brings Gender, Race and the Writing of Empire: Public Discourse and the Boer War (1999) to the fore.

There is some fine material on Boer prisoners of war. S.P.R. Oosthuizen’s unpublished thesis on the treatment and life of these Boers is only available in Afrikaans (1975), but Colin Benbow’s revised edition of Boer Prisoners of War in Bermuda (1982) is quite useful in this regard. Elria Wessels, Bannelinge in die Vreemde (2010). The experiences of British prisoners of war remains a topic that needs to be explored.

Afrikaner nationalist studies on the white concentration camps, in which women are portrayed as victims of the war, flooded the market between the 1930s and 1960s. J.C. Otto’s biased Die Konsentrasiekampe (1954) was, however, countered by A.C. Martin’s The Concentration Camps (1957), which attempts to prove that the British were grossly but unfairly maligned for their conduct of the camps. S.B. Spies’s Methods of Barbarism? (1977) on Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener and civilians in the Boer republics brought much-needed balance and has given direction to subsequent publications, among others the five volumes on this topic in Afrikaans by Jan Ploeger (1990), and Scorched Earth (2001) under my editorship.

In the meantime gender studies on the role of women in the war have received long-overdue attention. Notable are works by Helen Bradford (2002), Helen Dampier (2005) and Liz Stanley (Mourning Becomes Post/Memory and Commemoration of the Concentration Camps of the South African War, 2006). Elizabeth van Heyningen’s warning (2002) that we should take note of the clash of medical cultures in the concentration camps, should be taken seriously. Van Heyningen’s latest, The Concentration Camps of the Anglo-Boer War: A Social History (2013). Bill Nasson & Albert Grundlingh, The War at Home (2013).

Since Philip Bonner’s thesis on the participation of black people in the Anglo-Boer War in 1967 aroused interest in this issue, a host of exciting new material has appeared, some of it by black historians. Sol Plaatje’s diary (the only thus far found that was kept by a black person during the war) was first published by John Comaroff in 1973. Peter Warwick’s Black People and the South African War (1983) is still the best overview, and Bill Nasson’s Abraham Esau’s War: A Black South African War in the Cape (1991) the best regional monograph. Stowell Kessler, The Black Concentation Camps of the Anglo-Boer War (2012). Authoritative work has appeared on other groups by Fred Morton (1985), John Laband (2000), John Lambert (2002), Bernard Mbenga (2002) and Neil Parsons (1999).

The medical history of the war is rich with diaries and reminiscences of doctors and nurses who served on the Boer or the British side (or both). J.C. (Kay) de Villiers and Miemie Groenewald have done some sterling work recently on Boer medical aspects, as has Shula Marks on British nursing in the war. De Villiers’ 2 volumes, Healers, Helpers and Hospitals: A History of Military Medicine in the Anglo-Boer War (2008).

International interest in the war, particularly in Europe and the United States, has ensured a rich harvest of books on the topic. Ulrich Kröll’s Die Internationale Buren-Agitation (1973), which looks at pro-Boer activities in Germany, France and the Netherlands, is sadly only available in German. The recent The International Impact of the Boer War (edited by Keith Wilson, 2001) offers some excellent chapters, but an overall binding factor is lacking.

Biographies of people involved in the war have accumulated steadily. Fine examples include Keith Hancock’s biography of Jan Smuts (1962); Tim Jeal’s on Robert Baden-Powell (1989); Roy Macnab’s on Gen. Georges de Villebois-Mareuil (1975); Karel Schoeman’s on Olive Schreiner (1993); Richard Mendelsohn’s on Sammy Marks (1991); J. W. Meijer’s on Gen. Ben Viljoen (in Afrikaans, 2000); and Brian Willan’s on Sol Plaatje (2001).

Important work has been done on the Peace of Vereeniging. This includes Sophia du Preez’s unpublished thesis in Afrikaans (1986); I have analysed why the Boer delegates accepted the British peace conditions at Vereeniging (2002); and M.C.E. van Schoor has looked extensively at peace attempts before and during the war, which culminated in the Peace of Vereeniging (Die Bittereinde Vrede, 2005). Of great importance as a source for further study are the minutes taken by J.D. Kestell and D.E. van Velden on the peace negotiations between the Boer governments and the two representatives of the British government (Lord Kitchener and Lord Milner), which were published in English in 1912.

The final theme, on the aftermath of the war, provides important material on the political and social reconstruction in South Africa after the war. In A Grand Illusion (1973) Donald Denoon looks succinctly at the failure of imperial policy in the Transvaal Colony during this period. Unfortunately A.P.J. van Rensburg’s probing study on the economic recovery of the Afrikaners in the Orange River Colony is only available in Afrikaans (1967). David Omissi and Andrew Thompson have acted as editors for the authoritative The Impact of the South African War (2002). Military lessons learned from the war are well covered in Jay Stone and Erwin Schmidl’s The Boer War and Military Reforms (1988) and in R. Williams’s The South African War and Army Reform (1991). Spencer Jones, From Boer War to World War: Tactical Reform of the British Army, 1902-1914 (2012). Most recent: Karel Schoeman in Afrikaans, Imperiale Somer (2015).

In conclusion, we have a proud history of books on the Anglo-Boer War, and the latest publications are mostly at a high level, revealing a balanced and objective historiography. However, we should not be too complacent – more and hard work still needs to be done.

Lt Col Dr Graeme Fuller conveyed the appreciation of the Branch to both (in fact all three) speakers for their truly amazing presentations. It is not often that we have the privilege of listening to such outstanding professional presenters / speakers and this was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable meetings that we have enjoyed in the history of the KwaZulu-Natal Branch. Graeme presented the visiting speakers with a customary token of appreciation.

KwaZulu-Natal Branch Tour – 27th and 28th August 2016.

43 attended the Branch’s 2016 Annual Tour of military history sites in and around Pietermaritzburg and Mooi River this past weekend and judging from the comments received, the tour was highly successful. Members of the Society for the Preservation of Militaria joined us on the tour.

The itinerary included the Natal Carbineers HQ & Museum, the Commercial Road cemetery (where we focussed on the graves of the likes of Martin West (the first Lieutenant Governor of Natal), Sir Theophilus Shepstone, Sir Melmoth Osborn, Inspector Hunt and Trooper Armstrong (killed in the first skirmish of the 1906 Poll Tax (Bhambatha) Uprising), the Colenso Family, former commanding officers of several Colonial Regiments, Boer graves from the Pietermaritzburg Concentration Camp, the grave of President JN Boshof and his family and some German WW1 graves). We also visited St George’s Garrison Church, Fort Napier, Fort Napier military cemetery, Maritzburg College Museum, World’s View, Howick Concentration Camp site, the site of No 4 General Hospital at Mooi River, the grave of Maj Gen Sir Edward Woodgate at Weston and the military cemetery at Bruntville.

The team of presenters included fellow members Steve Watt, Jack Frost (who amazed and impressed us by playing some outstanding music on the St George’s Garrison Church organ), Lt Col Dr Graeme Fuller, Brian Thomas, Prof Philip Everitt and Ken Gillings.

What was even more gratifying was the number of participants who were able to include the fruits of their own research to the discussions in the field. We are also very grateful to WO2 Izabel Gebhart of the Natal Carbineers for arranging for us to visit the Regimental Museum.

Full marks go to fellow member Matthew Marwick and his former teacher Simon Haw, for guiding us around Maritzburg College. Their passion and enthusiasm for the history of that great institution was clearly evident and undoubtedly one of the highlights of our tour.

Next Meeting:

Thursday 8th September 2016:

Darrell Hall Memorial Lecture: “South African memorial devices issued to next-of-kin” by Brian Conyngham.
Main Talk: “D-Day 1066” by Charles Whiteing

Future Meetings:

Thursday 13th October 2016:

Darrell Hall Memorial Lecture: “The WW2 Arctic Convoys of William Foster” by Clyde Foster
Main Talk: “Isis” by Maj Peter Williams.

Thursday 10th November 2016:

Darrell Hall Memorial Lecture: “General Patter in Sicily” by Maj Dr John Buchan
Main Talk: “The voyage of Admiral von Spee, Sept to Dec. 1914” by Robin Smith

Thursday 8th December 2016: One lecture only, followed by the Branch’s annual cocktail function: “Another Aeroplane Crash in the Scottish Highlands”, by Ian Sutherland.

Meetings are held at the Murray Theatre, Department of Civil Engineering, University of KwaZulu-Natal Howard College Campus, Durban at 19h00 for 19h30.

End of Year Luncheon

Immediate Past Chairman Charles Whiteing is arranging the 2016 Branch annual luncheon at the Blue Waters Hotel, Durban, on SUNDAY 27TH SEPTEMBER 2016.
This will be a special event, because it will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the South African Military History Society in Johannesburg in 1966.
Cost: R185 per person (R165 per person for pensioners).
Please contact Charles Whiteing on charlesw2@absamail.co.za or 0317647270 / 0825554689 if you’d like to attend.
A list is also being circulated at monthly meetings.