The Jooste family stayed in Heidelberg before the Anglo-Boer War.
The parents were Jakobus Petrus and Anna Susanna Jooste.
Maggie Jooste was born in 1886 and was one of 12 children.
Jakobus was a successful wagon maker in Heidelberg and Anna was a seamstress in Heidelberg. When the Anglo-Boer War broke out in 1899, Jakobus and two of their sons were called up to the Commandos.
During their time in the war, they were captured and sent to St Helena as prisoners of war.
It was at that time that the British forces took over Heidelberg and confined women as well as children whose husbands were in the Commandos to their homes.
A few months later the confined families received a notification to report to the railway station to be deported to a concentration camp in Pietermaritzburg.
Everyone was transported to the camp in a cattle truck. It took three days to get to their destination.
At that time Maggie was 14 years old.
The concentration camp was a distance from the town on a hill. It was used as a dumping site before the war.
Later on, the Jooste family was relocated to another concentration camp in Howick.
The conditions were not pleasant as there were about 6 000 people in the camp.
Due to the number of people, families had to share tents.
The doctor that was available for the people in the camp was trained as a veterinary doctor and knew nothing about humans and especially children’s diseases.
At that stage, the majority of sicknesses in the camps were measles, chicken pox, whooping cough and dysentery.
Anna Jooste found time to act as a comforter for the sick, held prayer meetings and started a Sunday school. A lot of children died in the concentration camps.
Maggie’s brother Gerrie, then 21 months old, died in the camp. Anna managed to make a little coffin from a plank of wood and lined it with butter muslin.
When peace was signed in June 1902, the welcome news soon reached the women and children in the camps.
The family was reunited, some months later, when their father and older brothers made their way home to join them.
The Joostes then came back to their roots in Heidelberg.
Maggie started setting her own life back on course and attended a seminary in Stellenbosch to catch up on her education.
She returned home to help her parents financially by taking teaching jobs.
Maggie met and married a school principal Gawie Malan and they welcomed their first child in 1919, who died during the great flu epidemic that was still raging in parts of the Transvaal in 1921.
Her daughter Anna grew up to follow her parents in a teaching career.
In 1962, when Maggie was 76 years old, she wrote down her recollections of life in two concentration camps established in Natal during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902).
Maggie died in George with her grandchildren around her in 1964.
Sources: Global Heritage, Book Maggie: My Life In The Camp written by Maggie Jooste, Geneology.com, Magzter.
