Afrikaners had surrendered voluntarily and resumed farming operations,
and
1,800
Afrikaners, most of them members of the landless class, had
gone over to the British side.
Britain and the republics had claimed that the war was among Whites
only and denied that they were using Blacks for military purposes. In fact,
both sides made extensive use of black labor, and Africans as well as
Afrikaners suffered from the scorched earth policy. Peter Warwick has
shown that: "at least 10,000
and possibly as many as 30,000
Blacks" had
fought with the British army and that "almost
116,000
Africans had been
removed to concentration
camps, in which over 14,000
refugees lost their
lives."48
On May 3 I,
I 902,
what became known as the Peace of Vereeniging was
signed in Pretoria, after its terms had been accepted, fifty-four to six, by
representatives of the commandos
at Vereeniging in the southern Trans-
vaal. As high commissioner, Milner had the major say in drafting the terms.
He was determined to translate the military victory into durable British
supremacy throughout
Southern Africa. He planned to rule the former
republics autocratically, without popular participation,
until he had dena-
tionalized the Afrikaners and swamped them with British settlers. When