The South African
An article about Holkrans by Prof Pat Irwin appeared in the December 2021 Journal (Vol 19 #3) and is on the internet at www.samilitaryhistory.org Space limitations meant that not all of his references were printed. The full article, including all references, is on the website.
With peace discussions taking place in Vereeniging and Pretoria, there occurred on the farm Holkrans, north of Vryheid, an incident whereby no fewer than 56 Boers were killed, together with 52 of the AbaQulusi. That was a considerable engagement, whatever the cause of the disturbance.
It should certainly not be considered as part of the military history of the Anglo Boer War. It was a domestic squabble between the local inhabitants of the area. Which would explain why the general histories of the Anglo Boer War give it hardly a mention.
At that time, May 1902, the British commander in the area was Major-General Bruce Hamilton with his headquarters in Vryheid, then part of the Colony of the Transvaal, the annexed Boer Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek. Vryheid had been the capital of the short- lived New Republic until it was absorbed into the ZAR in 1886. The New Republic was the land given to the Boers by after they sent commandos to support Dinizulu in his campaign to reclaim the Zulu kingship.
Bruce Hamilton was certainly the most successful of the British anti-commando leaders. In the last few months of 1901 and into 1902 he had harried the Boer commandos to such an extent that Louis Botha had led his men away from the undulating eastern Transvaal highveld into the more rugged area north of Vryheid. With peace talks beginning in Vereeniging and Pretoria, General Lord Kitchener’s orders were for Hamilton to contain what was left of the Boer commandos within that area and not to actively seek to engage them.
There was in no sense a formal armistice in operation in the area but merely a tacit understanding by both sides to refrain from military action. On the Boer side they were mostly demoralised after their recent experiences. Their clothing was in tatters in many cases and there was a shortage of ammunition and supplies. Ken Gillings did an extensive investigation and research into the battle of Holkrans some years ago, together with S.B. Bourquin and Tania van der Watt, but never submitted anything in writing to any journal, citing the controversial nature of the event.
Louis Botha accompanied the commandos until he became a vital part of the peace negotiations. On 6 April he had travelled to Val, thirty kilometres west of Volksrust, on a safe conduct pass. There he was taken by special train, first to Klerksdorp and then to Vereeniging. The Boer leaders of the ZAR and the Orange Free State met in Klerksdorp but told Kitchener that they alone did not have constitutional authority to conclude binding terms of peace. It was necessary for them to assemble thirty of the citizens of each republic as delegates to decide this matter.
All this took time and commandos in the western Transvaal and the Free State proceeded with their guerrilla actions. Notable was the capture of Lieutenant General Lord Methuen by General Koos de la Rey in April 1902 in the west of the Transvaal. Botha’s men on the other side of the country were taking no active part but were foraging and acquiring cattle to feed themselves. In the country to the south of Vryheid the inhabitants were the abaQulusi, a tribe owing allegiance to the Zulu king, Twenty years previously in 1879 they had been responsible for the attack on a British convoy at Ntombi Drift, near the mission settlement of Luneburg, when Sergeant Booth was awarded the V.C. So they were known as fighters. Clearly they would have been involved in the Zulu civil war unrest which ended in 1884 and Botha is said to have been acquainted with their chief Sikhobobo.
When the Boer commandos moved into the area in early 1902 there was naturally competition for food. The Boers raided the abaQulusi’s kraals and took from them their grain stocks and cattle. Food supplies were not abundant and several farm murders took place. Sikhobolo looked to the British for protection (and so did Botha, who sent complaints in to Vryheid). Hamilton likely asked the abaQulusi for intelligence as to the whereabouts of Boer laagers and for the abaQulusi to turn over any Boer prisoners that they might take. Arming them with rifles was a sensitive matter, Kitchener had been evasive in his responses to the War Office in London, but it was without question that numbers of guides and cattle guards had been given rifles. Any rifles the abaQulusi had, and they undoubtedly had a considerable number, were acquired from other sources.
Botha accordingly may have given orders for certain of Sikhobolo’s kraals to be burned. They were a source of food supplies for the Boers and they did have to use forceful methods to acquire what they needed. This was more than a month before the Holkrans incident. A Boer commando under Field Cornet Jan Potgieter was laagered at the foot of the Holkrans alongside the stream on 6 May 1902. Their cattle, acquired from several kraals in the vicinity, oxen and horses grazed on the flat plain. They did not expect to be attacked and they had very few, if any, sentries on watch. The cattle, oxen and horses were not laagered.
Above them the hill sloped upwards and the Zulu attack came in the dark as their men rushed down the slope and into the sleeping laager. There were only 73 Boers against certainly many more Zulus. Most of the casualties in the camp would have been assegaaied/speared but their armed men pursued a few Boers, including Jan Potgieter, who managed to climb up the hill for a short distance. They defended themselves there until their ammunition ran out.
Out of the 73, 56 were killed, 13 escaped and 3 younger men were captured. The Zulu lost 52 killed and 48 were wounded. The bodies of the Boer fatalities were taken in to Vryheid and buried in the cemetery. A monument was erected in the churchyard of the Vryheid Dutch Reformed church which has the names of those killed inscribed on it. At Holkrans on the hillside, on a flat piece of ground, another monument was erected which has names on plinths on its four sides and including the names of the escapers and the three young boys who were captured.
Those are substantially the facts of the matter. The incident has attracted a great deal of attention over the years and was controversial right from the outset. The local Boer farmers, there were quite a number in what was a relatively quiet area during the war, rightly thought of it as murder. The Zulu people thought of it as retaliations for the theft of their livestock. Both are probably right, depending on the viewpoint of the onlooker.
At least two writers have alleged that Field Cornet Potgieter went to Chief Sikhobolo and, using abusive language, grossly insulted him and challenged him to come to the Boer laager and get his cattle back. There is no proof of this contention available, documentary or otherwise. Claims made by another writer that Sikhobolo’s people were part of the British force in Vryheid and were encouraged to attack and arrest the Boers and take their cattle are equally unfounded. Their being armed by the British has been dealt with above.
General Botha’s alleged orders to burn Sikhobolo’s kraals are also not documented anywhere. He had been gone from the area for a month and was engaged with the other Boer leaders in the peace negotiations at Klerksdorp, Vereeniging and Pretoria. Botha was friendly with Dinizulu, the Zulu King, or at least known to him. Perhaps under extreme provocation, theft of their cattle, Sikhobolo’s men might have disobeyed the King and attacked the Boers. Hamilton too had requested them not to retaliate but to supply the British with intelligence after what had clearly been a number of cattle thefts in the area at that time.
In spite of all that, the abaQulusi had only a loose allegiance to the Zulu King. In 1879 they were involved in the attack on a British convoy at Ntombe Drift, near Lune- berg. This was their own initiative and was not ordered by Cetshwayo. The abaQulusi, who also owed some allegiance to the Swazi King, displayed some independence on that occasion as well as at Holkrantz.
Another author’s contention that the Vryheid magistrate, A.J. Shepstone, gave instructions for the attack to take place is without foundation. This would clearly have violated Hamilton’s orders for a standfast until there was more clarity about the state of the peace negotiations. Any resumption of hostilities would certainly have required orders from Kitchener in Pretoria. Quite how British troops were to have prevented the incident, another of that author’s contentions, is unclear.
The incident certainly had some bearing on the Boer leaders’ acceptance of the terms of the Peace of Vereeniging only three weeks later. The Free Staters had been without the leadership of Christiaan de Wet and President Steyn since January due to Steyn’s illness. General Ian Hamilton’s campaign in the western Transvaal caused further setbacks for Boer arms. Louis Botha’s commandos were clearly in a parlous state after Holkrans. Koos de la Rey thus suggested that the bitter end had surely come.
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About the Author
Robin became known as a collector of battlefields when he started sharing the slide shows from his many visits with Society members at lecture meetings in several provinces, as far back as 2001 (Crimea)
He has self-published several books and recently had two books accepted for publishing in the UK. Many book reviews and a good handful of articles have graced the pages of this Journal; he serves as a member of the editorial board. He has delivered ZOOM lectures post-Covid-19
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