Heroes' Acre, Pretoria
The Heroes' Acre is a section of Church Street Cemetery in Pretoria, South Africa. It was established in 1867, contains the graves of renowned citizens and public figures, it is the burial place of a number of historical figures including Andries Pretorius, Paul Kruger and Hendrik Verwoerd. Australian Boer War anti-hero Breaker Morant is buried here; the first burials took place in 1867. In 1973, Tom Andrews was the first surveyor of the cemetery, he documented all graves and published it as a book called "Pioneer Sketches" The Church Street Cemetery is located on the corner of Church Street and DF Malan Drive in Pretoria. The central part of this historic cemetery is known as The Heroes' Acre; the cemetery is a vast green field filled with tombstones of diverse shapes and styles which are organized in rows. As this is a Christian cemetery, the graves are oriented facing east. Trees and shrubbery give the cemetery a calm feel; the silver crosses in The Heroes' Acre are distinctive of the cemetery.
The Heroes' Acre is listed as a heritage site. Andries Pretorius – Stephanus Schoeman – Willem Cornelis Janse van Rensburg – Thomas François Burgers – Mary Bryson – Paul Kruger – General Louis Botha – Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom – & sy eggenote Susan Strijdom Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd – Eugène Marais – Ernest George Jansen – Breaker Morant – List of cemeteries in South Africa List of heritage sites in Gauteng
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a British writer best known for his detective fiction featuring the character Sherlock Holmes. A physician, in 1887 he published A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels about Holmes and Dr. Watson. In addition, Doyle wrote over fifty short stories featuring the famous detective; the Sherlock Holmes stories are considered milestones in the field of crime fiction. Doyle was a prolific writer. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", helped to popularise the mystery of the Mary Celeste. Doyle is referred to as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Conan Doyle, his baptism entry in the register of St Mary's Cathedral, gives "Arthur Ignatius Conan" as his given names and "Doyle" as his surname. It names Michael Conan as his godfather; the cataloguers of the British Library and the Library of Congress treat "Doyle" alone as his surname. Steven Doyle, editor of The Baker Street Journal, wrote, "Conan was Arthur's middle name. Shortly after he graduated from high school he began using Conan as a sort of surname.
But technically his last name is simply'Doyle'." When knighted, he was gazetted as Doyle, not under the compound Conan Doyle. Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Scotland, his father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was born in England, of Irish Catholic descent, his mother, was Irish Catholic. His parents married in 1855. In 1864 the family dispersed because of Charles's growing alcoholism, the children were temporarily housed across Edinburgh. In 1867, the family lived in squalid tenement flats at 3 Sciennes Place. Doyle's father died in 1893, in the Crichton Royal, after many years of psychiatric illness. Supported by wealthy uncles, Doyle was sent to England, at the Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, Stonyhurst in Lancashire at the age of nine, he went on to Stonyhurst College until 1875. While Doyle was not unhappy at Stonyhurst, he did not have any fond memories since the school was run on medieval principles, with subjects covering rudiments, Euclidean geometry and the classics.
Doyle commented in his life that the academic system could only be excused "on the plea that any exercise, however stupid in itself, forms a sort of mental dumbbell by which one can improve one's mind." He found it harsh, citing that instead of compassion and warmth, it favoured the threat of corporal punishment and ritual humiliation. From 1875 to 1876, he was educated at the Jesuit school Stella Matutina in Austria, his family decided that he would spend a year there with the objective of perfecting his German and broadening his academic horizons. He rejected the Catholic faith and became an agnostic. A source attributed his drift away from religion to the time spent in the less strict Austrian school, he later became a spiritualist mystic. From 1876 to 1881, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, including periods working in Aston and Ruyton-XI-Towns, Shropshire. During that time, he studied practical botany at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. While studying, Doyle began writing short stories.
His earliest extant fiction, "The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe", was unsuccessfully submitted to Blackwood's Magazine. His first published piece, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", a story set in South Africa, was printed in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal on 6 September 1879. On 20 September 1879, he published his first academic article, "Gelsemium as a Poison" in the British Medical Journal, a study which The Daily Telegraph regarded as useful in a 21st-century murder investigation. Doyle was the doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880. On July 11, 1880 John Gray's Hope and David Gray's Eclipse met up with the Leigh Smith. Photographer W. J. A. Grant took a photograph aboard the Eira of Doyle along with Smith, the Gray brothers, ships surgeon William Neale; this was the Smith exploration of Franz Josef Land that on August 18th resulted in the naming of Cape Flora, Bell Island, Nightingale Sound, Gratton Island, Mabel Island. As M. B. C. M. after his graduation from university in 1881, he was ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast.
He completed his Doctor of Medicine degree on the subject of tabes dorsalis in 1885. In 1882, Doyle joined former classmate George Turnavine Budd as his partner at a medical practice in Plymouth, but their relationship proved difficult, Doyle soon left to set up an independent practice. Arriving in Portsmouth in June 1882, with less than £10 to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea; the practice was not successful. While waiting for patients, Doyle returned to writing fiction. Doyle was a staunch supporter of compulsory vaccination and wrote several articles advocating for the practice and denouncing the views of anti-vaccinators. In early 1891, Doyle attempted the study of ophthalmology in Vienna, he had studied at the Portsmouth Eye Hospital to qualify to perform eye tests and prescribe glasses. Vienna was suggested by his friend Vernon Morris as a place to spend six months and train to be an eye surgeon. Doyle found it too difficult to understand the German medica
Pretoria
Pretoria is a city in the northern part of Gauteng province in South Africa. It straddles the Apies River and has spread eastwards into the foothills of the Magaliesberg mountains, it is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the administrative branch of government, of foreign embassies to South Africa. Pretoria has a reputation for being an academic city with three universities, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and the Human Sciences Research Council; the city hosts the National Research Foundation and the South African Bureau of Standards making the city a hub for research. Pretoria is the central part of the Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, formed by the amalgamation of several former local authorities including Centurion and Soshanguve. There have been proposals to change the name of Pretoria itself to Tshwane, the proposed name change has caused some public controversy. Pretoria is named after the Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius, within South Africa sometimes called the "Jacaranda City" due to the thousands of jacaranda trees planted in its streets and gardens.
Pretoria was founded in 1855 by Marthinus Pretorius, a leader of the Voortrekkers, who named it after his father Andries Pretorius and chose a spot on the banks of the "Apies rivier" to be the new capital of the South African Republic. The elder Pretorius had become a national hero of the Voortrekkers after his victory over Dingane and the Zulus in the Battle of Blood River; the elder Pretorius negotiated the Sand River Convention, in which the UK acknowledged the independence of the Transvaal. It became the capital of the South African Republic on 1 May 1860; the founding of Pretoria as the capital of the South African Republic can be seen as marking the end of the Boers' settlement movements of the Great Trek. During the First Boer War, the city was besieged by Republican forces in December 1880 and March 1881; the peace treaty which ended the war was signed in Pretoria on 3 August 1881 at the Pretoria Convention. The Second Boer War resulted in the end of the Transvaal Republic and start of British hegemony in South Africa.
The city surrendered to British forces under Frederick Roberts on 5 June 1900 and the conflict was ended in Pretoria with the signing of the Peace of Vereeniging on 31 May 1902 at Melrose House. The Pretoria Forts were built for the defence of the city just prior to the Second Boer War. Though some of these forts are today in ruins, a number of them have been preserved as national monuments; the Boer Republics of the ZAR and the Orange River Colony were united with the Cape Colony and Natal Colony in 1910 to become the Union of South Africa. Pretoria became the administrative capital of the whole of South Africa, with Cape Town the legislative capital and Bloemfontein served as the judicial capital. Between 1910 and 1994, the city was the capital of the province of Transvaal. On 14 October 1931, Pretoria achieved official city status; when South Africa became a republic in 1961, Pretoria remained its administrative capital. Pretoria is situated 55 km north-northeast of Johannesburg in the northeast of South Africa, in a transitional belt between the plateau of the Highveld to the south and the lower-lying Bushveld to the north.
It lies at an altitude of about 1,339 m above sea level, in a warm, fertile valley, surrounded by the hills of the Magaliesberg range. Pretoria has a humid subtropical climate with long hot rainy summers and short cool to cold, dry winters; the city experiences the typical winters of South Africa with cold, clear nights and mild to moderately warm days. Although the average lows during winter are mild, it can get cold due to the clear skies, with nighttime low temperatures in recent years in the range of 2 to −5 °C; the average annual temperature is 18.7 °C. This is rather high, considering the city's high altitude of about 1,339 metres, is due to its sheltered valley position, which acts as a heat trap and cuts it off from cool southerly and south-easterly air masses for much of the year. Rain is chiefly concentrated in the summer months, with drought conditions prevailing over the winter months, when frosts may be sharp. Snowfall is an rare event. During a nationwide heatwave in November 2011, Pretoria experienced temperatures that reached 39 °C, unusual for that time of the year.
Similar record-breaking extreme heat events occurred in January 2013, when Pretoria experienced temperatures exceeding 37 °C on several days. The year 2014 was one of the wettest on record for the city. A total of 914 mm fell up with 220 mm recorded in this month alone. In 2015 Pretoria saw its worst drought since 1982. January 2016 saw Pretoria reach a new record high of 44 °C on 7 January 2016. Depending on the extent of the area understood to constitute "Pretoria", the population ranges from 700,000 to 2.95 million. The main languages spoken in Pretoria are Sepedi, Setswana, Xitsonga and English; the city of Pretoria has the largest white population in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since its founding it has been a major Afrikaner population centre
Boer
Boer is the Dutch and Afrikaans noun for "farmer". In South African contexts, "Boers" refers to the descendants of the Dutch-speaking settlers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 18th and much of the 19th century. From 1652 to 1795 the Dutch East India Company controlled this area, but the United Kingdom incorporated it into the British Empire in 1806. In addition, the term "Boeren" applied to those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to settle in the Orange Free State, to a lesser extent Natal, they emigrated from the Cape to escape British rule and to get away from the constant border wars between the British imperial government and the indigenous peoples on the eastern frontier. The term Afrikaner is used in modern-day South Africa for the Afrikaans-speaking white population of South Africa, the descendants of boer settlers and the bulk of White Africans; the Dutch East India Company had been formed in the Dutch Republic in 1602, the Dutch had entered keenly into the competition for the colonial and imperial trade of commerce in Southeast Asia.
The end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 saw European soldiers and refugees dispersed across Europe. Immigrants from Germany and Switzerland journeyed to Holland in the hope of finding employment at the VOC. During the same year one of their ships was stranded in Table Bay, the shipwrecked crew had to forage for themselves on shore for several months, they were so impressed with the natural resources of the country that on their return to the Republic, they represented to the directors of the company the great advantages to the Dutch Eastern trade to be had from a properly provided and fortified station of call at the Cape. The result was that in 1652, a Dutch expedition led by surgeon Jan van Riebeek constructed a fort and laid out vegetable gardens at Table Bay. Landing at Table Bay, Van Riebeek took control over Cape Town, after ten years and one month of governing the settlement, in 1662, Jan van Riebieeck stepped down as Commander at the Cape; the VOC favoured the idea of freemen at the Cape and many settlers requested to be discharged in order to become free burghers, as a result Jan van Riebeeck approved the notion on favorable conditions and earmarked two areas near the Liesbeek River for farming purposes in 1657.
The two areas which were allocated to the freemen, for agricultural purposes, were named'Groeneveld' and'Dutch Garden'. These areas were separated by the Amstel River. Nine of the best applicants were selected to use the land for agricultural purposes; the freemen or free burghers as they were afterwards termed, thus became subjects, were no longer servants, of the Company. In 1671 the Dutch first purchased land from the native Khoikhoi beyond the limits of the fort built by Van Riebeek; as the result of the investigations of a 1685 commissioner, the government worked to recruit a greater variety of immigrants to develop a stable community. They formed part of the class of "vrijlieden" known as "vrijburgers", former Company employees who remained at the Cape after serving their contracts. A large number of vrijburgers became independent farmers and applied for grants of land, as well as loans of seed and tools, from the Company administration; the authorities of the East India Company had been endeavouring to induce gardeners and small farmers to emigrate from Europe to South Africa, but with little success.
Now and again they were able to send out to their eastern possessions a few families who were attracted by the tales of wealth. But the Cape had little charm in comparison. In October 1670, the Chamber of Amsterdam announced that a few families were willing to leave for the Cape and Mauritius during the following December. Among the new names of burghers at this time are found those of Jacob and Dirk van Niekerk, Johannes van As, Francois Villion, Jacob Brouwer, Jan van Eden, Hermanus Potgieter, Albertus Gildenhuis, Jacobus van den Berg. During 1688–1689, the colony was strengthened by the arrival of nearly two hundred French Huguenots. Political refugees from the religious wars in France, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, they were settled at Stellenbosch, Drakenstein and Paarl; the influence of this small body of immigrants on the character of the Dutch settlers was marked. The Company in 1701 directed; this resulted in the Huguenots assimilating by the middle of the 18th century, with a loss to the community in the use and knowledge of French.
The little settlement spread eastwards, in 1754 the country as far as Algoa Bay was included in the colony. At this time the European colonists numbered eight to ten thousand, they possessed numerous slaves, grew wheat in sufficient quantity to make it a commodity crop for export, were famed for the good quality of their wines. But their chief wealth was in cattle, they enjoyed considerable prosperity. Through the latter half of the 17th and the whole of the 18th century, troubles arose between the colonists and the government; the administration of the Dutch East India Company was despotic. Its policies were not directed to using it to profit the Company; the Company closed the colony against free immigration, kept the whole of the trade in its own hands, combined the administrative and judicial powers in one body, prescribed to the farmers the nature of the crops they were to grow, demanded a large part of their produce as a kind of tax, made other exactions. From time to tim
Vryheid
Vryheid is a coal mining and cattle ranching town in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Vryheid is the Afrikaans word for "freedom". After Boer farmers, who lived in the Vryheid area, had helped King Dinuzulu defeat his rival chief Zibhebhu for succession of the Zulu throne, land that they occupied was given to them by cession from the Zulu king along the banks of the Mfolozi River. On August 5, 1884 the Boers formed the Nieuwe Republiek with Vryheid as its capital and its sovereignty was recognized by Germany and Portugal, it was incorporated into the South African Republic, but at the end of the Second Boer War the town and its surrounding area was absorbed into the Natal colony by the British. Vryheid is located along the Transnet Coaline. In 2007 Inkamana High School and Vryheid Comprehensive Secondary School were amongst several schools recognised as "historic schools". Funding of six million rand a year was earmarked for these two and Adams College, Ohlange High School and Inanda Seminary to make them academies focussing on Maths and Technology.
Other schools are Hoërskool Vryheid, which uses both Afrikaans and English as the medium of instruction and Hoërskool Pionier which uses Afrikaans as medium of instruction. Kilian Academy, a martial arts academy instructing in the arts of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Kickboxing, is situated in Vryheid. Vryheid Wrestling Academy, is one of the top wrestling clubs in the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal; the Hanami Gi-Challenge is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournament in Africa. The Hanami Gi-Challenges are hosted annually by the Hanami Martial Arts, with the first Challenge hosted in 2014 at the Indoor Speedball Club Vryheid in South Africa. In 2015, it will be held once again in South Africa; the Inkamana Abbey, a Roman Catholic Benedictine abbey is located in the town. The Dutch Reform Church in Vryheid, better known as Die Moeder Gemeente, has been added to the list of 12 Gorgeous Churches and Cathedrals in Africa, by AFK Insider. Louis Botha, Boer War general and first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa representing the district of Vryheid whilst in parliament.
Charles Theophilus Hahn, Canon of St Peters in Vryheid from 1913. Colleen De Reuck, South African long-distance runner was born in Vryheid. Cindy Elizabeth Eksteen, South Africa cricketer was born in Vryheid. Christian du Plessis, famous opera singer was born in Vryheid. Joe Pietersen, South African rugby player was born in Vryheid. Albert William Lee, Anglican Bishop of Zululand lived in Vryheid from 1928-1935. Mouritz Botha, South African rugby player was born in Vryheid. Thomas Spreiter, a German missionary lived in Vryheid. Bob Holness, British radio and television presenter was born in Vryheid. Thys Lourens, South African rugby player was born in Vryheid. Ruan Combrinck, South African rugby player was born in Vryheid. Keegan Longueira, South African cyclist and current holder of the Guinness World Record fastest man to cross the continent on Bicycle from Cairo to Cape Town. Danny Myburgh Springbok amatear champion 1985 to 1988 and Vryheid Sportman of the year 1986 1987. Professional South African Lightweight Champion 1993 to 1995.
World Lightweight Intercontinental contender 1994 and 1995. The town experienced water shortages from 2016 to 2017 due to neglect of infrastructure. Pumps and pipelines were allowed to fall into a state of disrepair, forcing many town residents to collect water from 15 communal water tanks provided by the municipality. In its aftermath the Bhekuzulu clinic received 550 cases of diarrhea a month. Other residents invested at great personal cost in boreholes, water tanks, pumps and power generators. Three sewage treatment plants stopped functioning, polluting the Besterspruit and Klipfontein Dam. Another outbreak of diarrhea occurred in 2019, with 535 people admitted to either Bhekuzulu or Mason Clinics. Media related to Vryheid at Wikimedia Commons
D. C. Boonzaier
Daniël Cornelis Boonzaier, more known as D. C. Boonzaier, was a South African cartoonist, he was famous for his caricatures of Cape politicians and celebrities at the turn of the century, for his anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist cartoons for Die Burger. He fathered the artist Gregoire Boonzaier. Boonzaier was born on a Karoo farm in the country districts near Harmsfontein part of the Cape Colony, in 1865, he joined the local magistrate's office as a clerk. In 1882, when he was 16 years old, Boonzaier moved to Cape Town to work in the office of the Master of the Cape Supreme Court, having been offered the job because of his impressive copperplate handwriting, he worked in the Colonial Office and Orphan Chamber. Boonzaier had drawn amateur caricatures since 1884, he was inspired by the work of William Howard Schröder, a cartoonist and publisher of the humorous weekly, The Knobkerrie, whom he met when a work of his was accepted for publication. Boonzaier had no formal art tuition, but studied the work of George du Maurier and Phil May of Punch fame.
In 1889 he became a professional cartoonist. Several newspapers, like Cape Punch, The Telephone and The Owl, began publishing his work. In 1891 he started work on a gallery of South African and foreign notables and persuaded them to sign their caricatures. Another collection, published in 1901, was dedicated to the members and visitors of the celebrated Owl Club, a society co-founded by Boonzaier in 1894 and "whose particular purpose was to entertain important visitors to the Cape"; the collection is of great historical interest, as it depicts all the main political actors of the time: Lord Milner, Cecil Rhodes, Gordon Sprigg, John X. Merriman, J. W. Sauer and W. P. Schreiner. In 1903 Boonzaier was hired by The South Africa News, becoming South Africa's first full-time newspaper cartoonist. Boonzaier began working for Die Burger when it was founded in 1915 and continued to do so until 1940; the paper was the mouthpiece of J. B. M. Hertzog's newly formed National Party and was edited by D. F. Malan beginning his political career as NP leader in the Cape Province.
Boonzaier's cartoons were powerful propaganda for the NP's resurgent Afrikaner nationalism, which opposed Louis Botha and Jan Smuts' pro-Imperial and free-market South African Party. Though Botha had been a prominent bittereinder during the Boer War, as South Africa's first Prime Minister he was perceived as naively conciliatory and pro-Imperial, became a regular target of Boonzaier's caricatures, but most influential were Boonzaier's anti-capitalist cartoons featuring the character Hoggenheimer, whom Boonzaier had borrowed from turn-of-the-century musical The Girl from Kays to evoke Randlords like Sir Ernest Oppenheimer. Though Boonzaier denied it, the character was assumed to be Jewish and came to be used to inflame anti-Semitism, most notoriously in the strident opposition to Jewish immigration in the 1930s. Boonzaier's cartoons expressed contempt for mining interests on the Rand, whose supposed exploitation of poor Afrikaners Smuts' government did little to prevent; these sentiments intensified when Smuts brutally suppressed the 1922 Rand Revolt, after which Hertzog swept to election victory over him and initiated a series of measures to protect white workers.
Hertzog's alliance with Smuts was vehemently opposed by Malan's Cape NP and Die Burger, Hertzog soon came to be caricatured by Boonzaier as Hoggenheimer's stooge. Remarkably for a boy from the veld with little schooling, Boonzaier's home was "a haven of culture in Cape Town", he was a lifelong enthusiast for theatre, both as an actor and producer, kept a journal of his theatre-going, published and became important source material. He was the first owner of a gramophone in Cape Town, collected books on the Impressionists and Hague School and colour reproductions of their work not otherwise available in South Africa, he maintained correspondence with Leo Tolstoy, George Bernard Shaw, Henry Irving and Gilbert and Sullivan. Boonzaier was a major patron to painter Pieter Wenning. Boonzaier's closest friends were Wenning, Kottler and the Dutch-South African sculptor Anton van Wouw, his son Gregoire Boonzaier is considered a household name in Cape Impressionism and founded and organised the New Group.
James A. Michener's historical novel The Covenant refers to Boonzaier's Hoggenheimer cartoons and their contribution to populist fears
Battle of Bergendal
The Battle of Berg-en-dal took place in South Africa during the Second Anglo-Boer War. The battle was the last set-piece battle of the war, although it was still to last another two years, it was the last time that the Boers' four 155 mm Creusot Long Tom guns were used in the same battle. Hostilities commenced in October 1899. On the Cape front the British forces broke through in February 1900 and the next month they were in Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State. Pretoria, the capital of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek was captured in June 1900; the government of the ZAR and a few Boer commandos fled eastwards along the railway line to Lourenço Marques. They were pursued by General Pole Carew and his 11th Infantry Division and a cavalry division commanded by Lieutenant-General French. Prior to the Battle of Diamond Hill on 11 June 1900, General Botha sent a few officers ahead to Belfast to select and prepare ramparts and emplacements for the next battle; the terrain at Belfast was such that it was the only place where the Boers could present a wide enough front to resist the enemy's superior force.
The Boer forces were deployed as follows: North of the railway line, in a semi-circle around the town of Belfast, the Lydenburg commando was to be found on the farms Spitskop and Langkloof. A Long Tom was placed on the farm Spitskop; these burghers' task was to prevent the English from taking the back road to Dullstroom. The commandos from Middelburg and Johannesburg were on the farm Steynsplaats, just east of the main road to Dullstroom, their task was to enfilade the enemy with cross-fire, should they decide to take the main road to Dullstroom and Lydenburg. Another Long Tom was placed behind these commandos on the farm Waterval. Still on the northern side of the railway line, but close to it, was the Krugersdorp commando. Next to them, but on the southern side of the railway line was a detachment of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Rijdende Politie, who were to bear the brunt of the British attack; the burghers from Germiston were next to them. South of the railway line the upper reaches of the Komati River flow from north to south giving rise to a number of hills and dales.
One such hill was called Gelukplato, because it was on the farm Geluk. The rest of Botha's force was ensconced on this plateau; the Heidelberg commando was on the farm Geluk, while the Bethal commando built their sconces on the farm Frischgewaagd, They were supported by the third Long Tom on Driekop. The fourth Long Tom was mounted on a railway truck. After 6 August, when Sir Redvers Buller started to advance towards Belfast, this gun was moved to position close to Elandskop. From there they could bomb Groblers Bridge, should Buller decide to advance via there to Machadodorp. Pole-Carew started assembling the XIth Infantry Division. French and his cavalry advanced to Wonderfontein. On the Natal front General Sir Redvers Buller broke through in February 1900, but was stopped, it was only on 6 August 1900. His task force consisted of the 4th Infantry Division commanded by Lieutenant-General N. G. Lyttelton, with Brigadier-General F. W. Kitchener of the 7th Brigade and Major-General Howard of the 8th Brigade.
Buller's mounted troops consisted of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, commanded by Major-General J. F. Brocklehurst and 3 Mounted Infantry Brigade under Earl Dundonald. Buller's force consisted of men with 42 guns. Buller reached the farm Twyfelaar on the Komati River on 15 August. There he got in touch with French's right flank; this enabled Buller to be supplied from Wonderfontein. General Buller advanced to the farm Van Wyk's Vley, about eight miles north of Twyfelaar. General French remained on his left flank. While advancing the last three miles, Buller's right flank came under fire from the Bethal commando on Frischgewaagd. A fight ensued and it lasted until early evening. British casualties were 3 Boers were wounded. Buller was peeved, he sent Major-general Walter Kitchener to teach the Bethal commando a lesson. Two battalions foot soldiers, four squadrons mounted eight guns accompanied Kitchener; the Brits did not know. They fought all day. British casualties were five wounded. No casualties were reported on the other side.
During Buller's advance, at a time when it was unclear to the Boers whether he was going to Machadodorp or Belfast, they removed the Long Tom from the railway truck and placed it near Elandskop. The remains of the emplacements was found at 25°46.214'S, 30°12.829'E. When Buller advanced from Twyfelaar to Van Wyk's Vley, it was clear; the Boers moved the gun to Captain von Dalwig's camp on the farm Waaikraal. The remains of the emplacement can be found at 25°46.225'S, 30°09.079'E. Pole-Carew and his infantry division advanced to Wonderfontein. Buller, with French still on his left flank, advanced to the farm Geluk and established his headquarters in the valley near the farm house. On his eastern side was the Geluk Plateau on which the Heidelberg commando had built their sconces, he ordered the 8th Infantry Brigade, assisted by Dundonald's mounted troops and the South African Light Horse, to ascend the plateau and make it safe. On the plateau they had to face the commandos from Heidelberg and Bethal, as well as Von Dalwig's guns, including two Long Toms.
Despite heavy losses, they managed to hold the edge of the plateau. British casualties were 61 wounded and 33 missing; the Boers had 12 wounded, including Captain
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