Abstract
Camps interning black civilians during the South African War (1899-1902) are known as concentration camps, yet this is not the full picture of what transpired during the conflict. Rather, by mid-1901, the concentration camps established for black civilians in South Africa during late 1900 and early 1901 were incorporated into the newly formed Native Refugee Department, which fell under direct command of the British Army. At this point, the camps were mostly closed and the internees relocated to Boer farms cleared of civilians. There, departmental camps were established with a completely different function to that of the concentration camp system. These camps, established by the Native Refugee Department, operated as forced labour camps wherein women, children and elderly men were compelled into forced labour, growing crops for the British military in exchange for food. If they refused, they were starved to death on the ‘let die’ basis. Able-bodied men in turn sought work with the military or the mines to support their dependants. Dry Harts Forced Labour Camp forms the focus of this article. A combination of sources was used to reconstruct this history; archaeological surveys, the fragmentary written archive, and accessing local oral history and memory at the site during 2001-2008. Through this research, a narrative emerges. What is learned is that the fight for land, the creation of forced labour, civilian displacement and the horror of Total War are not, as some scholars advocate, a shared experience with the Boer population at the hands of a common enemy, commensurate with mutual suffering or black participation in the war. The experience of civilians inside Dry Harts Forced Labour Camp was fundamentally different to that of the Boers interned in camps. Theirs’ was not so-called black participation, rather it was a standalone experience of land, labour, war and displacement.