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VRYBURG
http://www.eggsa.org/library/main.php
- Photo’s from the website of eGGSA link above
People in this camp
674
People who died in this camp
261
Apart from the ‘authorised’ camps which produced regular monthly reports and statistics, there were a number of informal sites where refugees congregated at military posts and were rationed by the British army. Some such groups, like those at Warrenton or Ladybrand, were eventually transferred to formal camps. The one exception was Vryburg, where the white camp was eventually absorbed into the main Transvaal system as an ‘authorised’ camp. At what point Vryburg camp came into being is not clear. The first reference to its existence appeared in April 1901. The inmates were then listed as 100 whites, 40 ‘undesirables’ and 1,061 blacks; at the end of June 1901 there were still only 201 white inmates. Vryburg was. therefore, primarily a black camp, although it is mainly the whites whose history is recorded. There is no trace of Vryburg in the black camp statistics and the fate of these people is unclear. Charles van Onselen, however, records that, when Holpan farm near Schweizer-Reineke was burnt by the British, the black residents were taken to Vryburg and installed in a makeshift camp in the location. Much later they were probably moved to an official black camp.1
Vryburg was located just south of Mafekingin the Cape Colony, on the sparsely-populated Cape-Transvaal border. Like Kimberley, its inmates included colonial rebels as well as Transvalers. These‘Bechuanalanders’, as they were known, were regarded with deep suspicion by the British, who were often harsh in their treatment of the renegade families, giving them inferior rations and no fuel. Vryburg had been ‘a great rebel centre’ the Ladies Committee explained, and the camp had been started to house ‘undesirables, Colonial rebels and their wives and families, and other irreconcilables and evil doers’, as Dr Kendal Franks phrased it. The men and boys constantly escaped from the camp to give information to the enemy.2
The presence of the colonial rebels called into question the rationale of the entire camp system. Unlike the republicans, they were often recalcitrant, reluctant to work (although the evidence on this was contradictory), resistant to discipline and a number of the men absconded. In December 1901 the local British commandant responded with a heavy hand, demanding that all the men in the camp be confined to a prison enclosure at night. Later he suggested that the colonial rebels should not be paid for their work. Both Superintendent Pritchard and Inspector Scholtz objected strongly to this interference in the management of the camp. But Pritchard put his finger on the real problem – were the camps prisons or havens of shelter? ‘If a man is a rebel let him be punished to the utmost rigour of the law, but until he is arrested, tried and found guilty, well he ought to be treated at any rate as well as another in the same Camp. It is well known that forced labour is not in many ways equal to labour performed by men being paid and who take an interest in the work. This has been the case in this Camp. I have had no trouble to get the men to work at the rates laid down by myself. They have taken an interest in all they have done. I think it would be a great pity if any alterations were made. http://www2.lib.uct.ac.za/mss/bccd/Histories/vryburg/
Blue names Geni Profiles
Black names Not on Geni Yet
They survived
A
B
F
- Anna Wilhelmina Faber 1891 - ?
- Christina Johanna Faber 1889 - ?
- Hendrik Johannes Faber 1887 - 1918
- Johanna Petronella Margaretha Faber 1880 - 1952
- Pieter Faber 1899/1900 - ?
- Zacharias Johannes Faber 1873 - 1958
H
- Adriana Maria Handford 1889
- Anna Margaretha Annie Handford 1867 - 1925
- Anna Margaretha Annie Handford 1892
- Elizabeth Handford 1887
- Henry James Handford 1897
- Rosina Rose Handford 1896
J
- Johanna Lodewika Janse van Vuuren, formerly Faber (van den Berg) 1852 - ?
- Petrus Jacobus Janse van Vuuren 1829 - 1904
K
- Susanna Maria Elizabeth Koekemoer (Rossouw)
- Susanna Maria Elizabeth Koekemoer 1887 - 1902
- Cornelia Zacharia Koekemoer
- Jacobus Matheus Koekemoer
- Gabriel Petrus Koekemoer
- Joseph Christoffel Koekemoer
They died in this Camp
A
B
- Catharina Ignasina Wilhelmina Ballot 1843 - 1902
How to Participate
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