The siege of Mafeking (1899-1900) was a major engagement in the Boer War (aka South Africa War, 1899-1902). 8,000 Boers besieged the British-held town, which had fewer than 2,000 armed men to defend it. Commanded by Robert Baden-Powell, the besieged held out for 217 days until a relief column arrived. The lifting of the siege was widely celebrated in Britain as a symbolic turning point in the conflict, one eventually won by the British. Baden-Powell, who went on to found the Boy Scouts Movement, was feted as a national hero for his resourceful defence of Mafeking.
Causes of the Boer War
The causes of the conflict in Southern Africa, known as the Second Anglo-Boer War (aka South Africa War), which was fought between the Boers (settlers with Dutch ancestry and that of certain other European countries) and the British colonies of Cape Colony and Natal, were varied. Both sides wanted land for farming and control of rich natural resources such as the diamond mines at Kimberley and the gold mines at Witwatersrand. Another bone of contention was the prejudicial treatment of British settlers in the two Boer Republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Mutual suspicions were raised on both sides by the unofficial British attempt at a coup in Transvaal with the failed Jameson Raid of 1895. As a consequence of this raid, the Transvaal government began to buy foreign arms and signed a treaty with Germany, much to Britain's horror, since German involvement in Southern Africa could jeopardise British interests and dominance across the entire region. The two sides had already fought in the First Anglo-Boer War (1880-81), which the Boers won. Largely a war of skirmishes, this first conflict would be completely overshadowed by the massive scale and increased savagery of the second encounter.
The Fight for the Towns
In the first stages of the second war, the Boer cavalry fared well against inadequate British forces. Although not formally trained, the Boers had excellent rifles and were equally good at shooting them. The Boers also made excellent use of the local terrain. The Boers formed units known as commandos. Unlike in the previous war, this time the British government sent British troops to reinforce those already in the colonies. In this way, the British-led armed forces, which included 30,000 colonial troops from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, soon rocketed from 25,000 to 250,000 men. This numerical advantage helped the British seize the major Boer towns of Pretoria, Bloemfontein, and Johannesburg. One town that remained in the thick of the fighting was Mafeking, then located in Cape Colony on the border between British Bechuanaland and the Boer Republic of Transvaal and just a few miles from the harsh Kalahari desert. Mafekeng was one of three major British garrisons, along with those at Ladysmith and Kimberley, which the Boers decided to besiege.
Mafeking, meaning "place of stones" in the language of the local Tswana, had strategic importance as it controlled the road to the north and was the largest goods depot on the rail line from Kimberley to Bulawayo. Mafeking was also the administrative centre of British Bechuanaland (modern-day Botswana). The town had a significance beyond its size and location, since this was where the ill-fated Jameson Raid had set off from to attack Transvaal.
The Siege Begins
Mafeking was besieged from 14 October 1899 by a Boer force of between 6,000 and 8,000 men, commanded by General Piet Cronjé (1836-1911). The British garrison of 1,000 regular soldiers was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Baden-Powell (1857-1941), who would go on to found the worldwide Scouts movement. Baden-Powell had an additional 700 or so Europeans he could add to his fighting force. The British also received valuable assistance from local Africans, notably the Tswana, whose lands came under the territorial jurisdiction of Mafeking and who had a long-standing rivalry with the Boers. The Tswana chief, Simon Makodi, noted that this rivalry was "…because of the land. They wanted to make the blacks slaves and make us work for them. They fought for our land and the money that was being found in this land" (Jackson, 34). Baden-Powell harnessed this resentment of the Boers to form a regiment of Tswana, a controversial decision since it went against standard British policy of arming Black Africans, so much so that the Colonel later denied he had ever formed such a regiment. The Tswana regiment was given the name 'Black Watch.' In addition, Baden-Powell armed a small contingent of Black Africans from Cape Colony and used local Black African miners to dig trenches to better protect the town's perimeter and the adjoining native settlement.
Cronjé was outraged when he discovered his men would be fighting armed Black Africans, and he promptly sent a note to Baden-Powell, stating that this decision was "an enormous act of wickedness" (Jackson, 39). Cronjé called for the British colonel to immediately disarm the Black Africans. This was rather hypocritical, since Cronjé had himself armed around 300 Rapulana Africans to assist him in the siege.
The defenders had several artillery pieces, including improvised cannons and repurposed naval guns, the most famous example of which was called 'Wolf' (although the breach of this weapon eventually exploded). The British would have had more weaponry if the Boers had not intercepted an armoured supply train at Kraaipan, which had been headed for Mafeking. The Boers had plenty of artillery, too, and, unlike at the siege of Ladysmith, they regularly bombarded the town. One particularly effective artillery piece, a massive 94-pounder that required 16 oxen to pull it, was nicknamed by the Boers 'Long Tom.' The Boers were utterly ruthless and had no qualms about hitting civilians. The very first bombardment destroyed both the hospital and the convent. White inhabitants were given materials to build primitive bomb shelters, but these were denied to Black residents.
Another differentiation between Whites and Blacks was the food rations they received. When the siege dragged on, Baden-Powell cut the rations of Black Africans first, which resulted in them having nothing but thinned-out soup to eat. To add insult to injury, Black Africans had to pay for this soup as the soup kitchen was run at a profit. Any Black Africans caught stealing food were flogged or even executed. Many Black Africans were obliged to eat locusts to survive, but even so, starvation claimed lives during the siege. White residents, in contrast, received horse meat and porridge.
The Boer gunners quickly learned the more limited range of the British guns and so withdrew to where they could fire on Mafeking without being hit themselves. Despite the tightness of the siege, both sides agreed to an artillery truce on Sundays. The weekly ceasefire allowed the people of Mafeking some respite, and it was taken full advantage of, with a cricket match and concerts held each Sunday. When the weekly truce ended, the bombing was resumed with deadly effectiveness.
Baden-Powell was certainly resourceful, and he employed all kinds of tricks to confuse the Boers. He made, for example, a searchlight out of a biscuit tin and gave it to a runner who shone the light from various positions to give the impression there were lots of lights, and so a Boer night attack would be less likely. Another ruse was to put stakes amongst the defences and then give the illusion they held in place barbed wire by having the defenders regularly step over non-existent wire. A third ruse was to place wooden crates around the town's perimeter, only some of which had dynamite in them. A few of these crates were exploded as a deterrent to the Boers and to convince the spies inside the town that all of them were dangerous.
More controversially, Baden-Powell decided to solve his chronic food rations problem by effectively forcing 2,000 Black Africans to leave Mafeking. The stark choice for these people was either to stay and receive no food or run the gauntlet of the siege and reach a British supply depot. Small groups did try to leave Mafeking, but most were captured and, in some cases, abused or even shot by the Boers. As the siege dragged on, the Boers reduced the number of men beseiging the town, and this left gaps that could be exploited by those obliged to leave by Baden-Powell.
Relief of Mafeking
While Mafeking was resolutely holding out, more and more British troops were arriving by ship at the Cape far to the south. A flying relief column of around 1,150 men was dispatched to Mafeking under the command of Colonel Bryan Mahon. The column took eleven days to reach the beleaguered outpost, but its imminent arrival was noted by the Boers, who made one last desperate attempt to take Mafeking on 12 May. This last assault, although setting fire to part of the town, ultimately failed, largely because the Boer force was now too small for the task, and the defenders fought courageously. Mafeking was finally relieved on 17 May 1900. The siege had lasted 217 days.
The relief of Mafeking was widely celebrated in Britain when news reached there on 18 May. In London, Birmingham, and Edinburgh, "staid citizens…were to be seen parading the streets, shouting patriotic songs with the full force of their lungs, dancing, jumping, screaming in a delirium of unrestrained joy" (Marshall, 53). A partial explanation for the public's euphoria over the fate of a remote town on another continent is the run of bad defeats and bad press (both at home and abroad) they had had to endure in the preceding months. Indeed, the siege "achieved an emotional importance out of all proportion to its strategic significance" (Knight, 36). The celebrations were often so wild and the resulting hangovers so widespread, a new term was coined for overcelebrating: "mafficking." Baden-Powell became a national hero, and he frequently received standing ovations when he appeared in newsreels shown in British cinemas.
Aftermath
The decision to besiege Mafeking and other British-held towns was a strategic error on the part of the Boers since it allowed the British time to bring in reinforcements and negated the Boers' obvious advantages in conducting a more mobile type of warfare. In March 1900, the largest Boer army group surrendered at Paardeberg. Pretoria was abandoned in early June. Thereafter, the Boers were obliged to conduct a guerrilla war, which the British responded to with controversial scorched-earth tactics and the internment of civilians in concentration camps.
The Second Boer War came to an end in May 1902 with the Treaty of Vereeniging. Britain was the victor and took over Transvaal and the Orange Free State, and in 1910, both states, along with Cape Colony and Natal, as well as several former African kingdoms, were unified into a single colony: the Union of South Africa.
