We’re up to episode 138 and it’s a week to go before the all-important Boer Conference in Vereeniging starting May 15th 1902.

Lord Kitchener has ordered his men in all intents and purposes to stop chasing the Boers, stop the burning of farms and to wait for the Boers conference.

We have heard how Jan Smuts and Louis Botha met in the Eastern Transvaal, chose their representatives and now were making their way to the South Eastern border down on the banks of the Vaal River. That was on the 4th May 1902.

The western Transvaal Boers were doing the same, selecting 30 representatives who would debate the future of their people, so too were Free State’s president Steyn and diehard General Christiaan de Wet – except for the outcome. They wanted the Boer conference to reject surrender and to push on to oblivion. Which is what awaited the hawks I’m afraid.

Lord Milner the British High Commissioner also wanted the Boers to fight until they were totally crushed so that he could flood South Africa with English loyalists. In military terms, you know you’re in trouble when your most hated adversary thinks your strategy should be to fight to an inevitable death.

That’s what the loyalists through South African wanted, the English speaking hard-core British iumperialists. Yes, they were shouting, keep it up Mr Boer until your terms of surrender at unconditional then you’ll be all but extinct and we can just take over everything you’ve built.

The most vocal jingos of the day were actually despised the professional British officer corps in South Africa. The war needed to end so that they could get on with their careers.

Winston Churchill was one of those who found what were known as loyalists as deeply concerning. He’d survived a Boer prisoner of war camp and many close calls and respected his former captors, there was very little rancor.

While the Boers and the British were framing their views and devising their negotiation strategies, an incident in Natal on May 6th was to sharpen everybody’s minds. Some historians have suggested that what became known as the Holkrantz incident gave further impetus to the Peace Process and strengthened the hand of the moderate Boers like Smuts and Botha who wanted to end the war immediately.

Steyn and de Wet on the other hand took the opposing view – fight on was their rallying call. Watching all of this closely was black South Africa.

The massacre at Holkrantz shocked most Boers into accepting that the longer this war continued and the more unlawful the landscape would become.