5 - Allies and neutrals

Summary

During the war black resistance to the Boers was not confined only to the western and southeastern Transvaal. In other regions, too, the pre-war state effectively collapsed from wartime pressures from within. Throughout many rural areas of the Boer republics the war generated new circumstances in which the established system of state authority was overthrown, and in which the republics' forces were increasingly hindered from operating over African-controlled terrain and were compelled more and more to live off land whose use and products were controlled by others.

For black communities in the countryside the war opened up new possibilities as well as posing new difficulties. In the larger locations in the northern Transvaal many homesteads prospered largely untroubled by direct interference from officials of the colonial state. The absence of Boer landlords and the evacuation of white farms, especially during the final two years of the war, enabled many African peasants to cultivate more land on their own behalf, and so long as fields and crops could be protected from guerrilla raids, and provided produce could be safely transported to market, excellent prices were to be obtained for grain, tobacco, vegetables and livestock. In many of the areas of the republics where ‘scorched earth’ was never truly attempted or effected by the British forces, the interests of agrarian communities coincided closely with those of the army of occupation. Both wished to see the Boer forces defeated and both wished to deny the commandos access to supplies.