Although we now know a great deal about black and coloured participation in the South African War, San (or ‘Bushmen’) involvement is completely absent from the general historiography of the war. Recently, however, a few scholars, notably F. Prins, have begun the process of filling in this void, using mainly oral sources.
Oral accounts indicate that San participation occurred during the guerrilla phase of the war, following the implementation of Lord Kitchener’s scorched-earth policy. In the Lake Chrissie area in the eastern Transvaal, for example, San farm labourers accompanied their Boer masters into battle as agterryers, but they were not armed for combat.
On 6 February 1901, during the battle of Lake Chrissie, Boer commandos under General Botha attacked the British forces that were deployed close to the little town of Chrissiesmeer. The Boer plan was to thwart the advance of the forces of General Smith-Dorrien into the eastern Transvaal.
Oral tradition also relates that, using their intimate knowledge of the local terrain, San scouts constantly observed the movements of Smith-Dorrien’s forces and reported them to the Boer commandos. For instance, they reported the location of British military camps. Although the death toll during the battle of Lake Chrissie was equally heavy on both sides, it should be noted that because of San intelligence, the British advance into the eastern Transvaal was delayed. Oral tradition also relates that one night on Commandant Prinsloo’s farm named Lake Banagher in the Lake Chrissie area, one of his servants, a San simply named Job, alerted Prinsloo’s commando to the fact that ‘he knew a secret way out of the lake and persuaded them to follow him through the mist . . . In this manner the Boer commando managed to escape without any casualties.’
Only some San servants accompanied their masters to the war front, while the majority remained on their masters’ farms. When the scorched-earth policy of the British forces came into practice, loyal San and Swazi servants took Boer livestock into Swaziland for safe-keeping – and herded the livestock back to their masters when the war ended. San servants who remained on the farms also carried out surveillance of the movement of British troops in the area and reported this to the Boer families on the farms. Such information was crucial because the movement of British forces around Boer farms was intended partly to pick up Boer women and children and take them into the much-dreaded concentration camps. Such information therefore enabled Boer women and children to hide as far away from British forces as possible, while being cared for and supplied with food by their San servants.
