At the end of the Second Boer War (1899-1902), the Guild of Loyal Women and the British government donated money to mark the graves of soldiers killed in the area with iron crosses. The crosses were cast in Cape Town.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWG) is concerned with the upkeep of these graveyards. Many of the killed were unnamed, but it could be confirmed immediately after the war that they were indeed English soldiers.
Upon enquiry, the CWG director, Juan Maree, said, “We are losing this side of the battle.”
Maree is the director of this commission in the southern Africa area and Asia. His comment echoed the outrage by readers as a previous article on the damages received thousands of comments and were shared in Australia and Canada on various historical groups on Facebook. The FF Plus was also in agreement with the readers’ sentiments.
“Cultural heritage can provide an automatic sense of unity and acceptance within a nation and enable us to better understand previous generations and the history of where we came from. But a legacy is not just something from the past that lives with us. It is also what we send with our children’s children to the third and fourth generation so that it can survive. Our heritage has also been enriched by our people’s achievements, and includes a long list of heroes,” said Landé van Wyk-Willemse, the Mpumalanga spokesperson for the FF Plus. Van Wyk-Willemse said South Africa has a common heritage to be proud of.
“As a nation, we must have a tremendous and intimate sense of pride in all the achievements and events in relation to all our people, which all form part of our proud heritage. It is unacceptable that these heritage areas are considered so small, and the FF Plus Mpumalanga will send critical questions regarding the protection of such areas to the municipal manager and also follow up with what solutions have been come up with to ensure that such vandalism and theft do not occur again.”
Maree explained that the primary care and maintenance of war graves, memorials and other historical memorials/artefacts form part of the mandate to the South African Heritage Resource Agency (Sahra) and the respective provincial heritage bodies. “The care of graves specifically is the mandate of a department within Sahra. Significant damage and vandalism must be reported to the agency and provincial heritage authorities. The primary task of the CWG is to care for the graves of WW I and II casualties. This is our core mandate. The South African office performs maintenance work within a defined mandate on Anglo[1]Boer War graves and selected memorials; this is limited to graves that fall within the date range 1899 to 1902. We maintain a significant number of sites scattered across South Africa in terms of the mandate as agreed upon with our sponsor.
“We have experienced significant levels of vandalism across these sites; historic items are vandalised and damaged, and should these items be of steel, many of them are stolen and subsequently sold for scrap. We are committed to maintaining the sites across the country within the parameters of our mandated agreements. However, this in itself will never be enough. The buy-in and commitment are required from local communities all over South Africa. Local scrap dealers must freely report persons selling pieces of memorials and even whole memorials to the SAPS, and the police must be encouraged to investigate these issues and other issues where damage and vandalism are reported.” said Maree.
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Previously, retiring history expert Marion Moir compiled two booklets to identify the graves. She donated it to the Lydenburg Museum. Moir said to restart this process and re-erect the iron crosses was almost unthinkable. She was shocked to hear that this had happened.
Themba Sibiya, the marketing and media manager of Thaba Chweu Local Municipality, has still not indicated how it plans to improve the graveyard’s upkeep. In a previous enquiry, he did say cases of vandalism should be reported to the SAPS. The cemetery is a soft target for vandals because there is no security.
Sahra was also approached for feedback, but its comment had not been received by the time of going to press.
