The Bitter Legacy of the Boer War

In a society characterised by continuous strife, the Anglo- Boer War represents a period of sustained violence. A devastating war, fought mainly by white protagonists, ravaged South Africa for nearly three years. The British scorched-earth policy during the latter part of the conflict reduced the country almost to a wasteland. The Anglo-Boer War was the closest that South Africans came to total war Yet the war did not involve the total mobilisation of national resources not the complete annihilation of the enemy It was, however, a harbinger of the more encompassing and unlimited wars to be fought later in the twentieth- century.