Anger at Rhodes is disingenuous and misdirected
More than a hundred years have passed since that fateful morning in 1901. But it is not only the years that have passed. The memories have already passed away, as did those who survived to tell the story. Those events now only live on in the knowledge of the descendants who interest their own lineage...
Under a cloud of thick black smoke, a wagon was slowly creaking towards the nearest British camp. Behind it roared the torturing sound of fire engulfing the farmhouse and kraal. The smell of ash would soon be replaced by the stench of decaying livestock, butchered to ensure that the farmer would not be able to continue with life as he knew it, once the war was over. This seemed an ample punishment for this Free State farmer's crime of defending his people by taking up arms against invasion by the mighty British Empire. But at that moment Christiaan Ernst Roets was not aware of the condition of his farm, nor the fate of his family.
As the wagon rolled on, other wagons joined it from surrounding Afrikaner farms. But I can only tell you the story about this one wagon, because it is the only one I know. On this wagon was Kotie Roets, the wife of Christiaan Ernst and the granddaughter of Sarel Cilliers, a well-known religious leader during the Great Trek. She was accompanied by two co-captives, her children. The youngest was about three years old. His name was Sarel Arnoldus Roets, my great grandfather.
As the wagon proceeded, Kotie realised that some of the other wagons were stuck in a ditch in the road ahead, so she devised a plan. She casually reminded her two children of a cave near the banks of the Vaal River. The plan was to jump from the wagon on her signal as soon as she saw that the guards were not watching. They were to run as fast as they could in opposing directions and rendezvous at the cave at dusk.
Miraculously, the plan worked. They found each other that evening and survived from sweet potatoes while living in that cave for an amount of days unknown to me. My ancestors survived. Others were not so lucky. In fact, more than 34 000 women and children lost their lives as a result of starvation in British concentration camps in the two years that followed. This scorched earth policy was implemented by Lord Kitchener, a direct result of British expansionism, as propagated by Cecil John Rhodes. Had the young Sarel Roets not escaped, his entire descendancy would have been obliterated in an instant and I would never have been born.