The 121st anniversary of the end of the Second Boer War in South Africa was marked on Wednesday. The 3-year conflict lasted from 1899 to 1902 and was marked by the early use of concentration camps by the British imperial forces. It is estimated that over 26,000 Boer women and children died in the camps.
The war resulted in the establishment of British rule over most of what is now South Africa. Lindiwe Sisulu, a former tourism minister, described the colonial era as one of the most “shameful pages of history.”
“The Africans were just standing by with nobody to protect them... Something like 100,000 black people died for no reason” in a war that “had nothing to do with them,” Sisulu told RT. “[The British] had superior arms. They overcame us,” she added.
She emphasized that colonialists did not apologize for their “despicable act,” but instead devised new strategies, in the form of trade relations, to maintain their dominance, after it became clear that they had no place on the African continent.