Page "Koos de la Rey" Paragraph 16

To counter the guerilla campaign the British-under first Roberts and then Kitchener-adopted a scorched-earth counter-insurgency policy.

This involved sweeping the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the Boer guerrillas, including women and children, and included the destruction of crops, burning down homesteads and farms, poisoning wells, and salting fields, and saw non-combatants ( Boer families and sympathisers ) interned in concentration camps where mortality among the women and children reached an extreme whereby 50 % of the population of Boer children under 16 died.

Such attritional tactics slowly eroded the will of the Boer fighters still in the field, and ultimately they realised that the costs exceeded the cause ; there would soon be little left for them to fight for.

The British interned tens of thousands of blacks in appalling conditions in the concentration camps as well, while on the other hand the Boers suspected other Blacks of sympathising with the British and of betraying the whereabouts of guerillas, leading to harsh reprisals.