Bloemfontein Travel Guide

The War Museum of the Boer Republics in Bloemfontein is a tragic reminder of the full-scale war between Englishman and Afrikaner - a conflict whose shots still echo down to the present.

Exhibits in the C F Beyers Hall tell the tragic story of the concentration camps, which achieved notoriety for their high loss of life, especially among women and children. By the end of the war some 26000 Afrikaners had perished in these camps.

Outside, against its background of sky and hill, the Women's Memorial doesn't dominate until you're close to it. You look up into the face of the mother holding her dead child, and the face of the woman whose gaze goes above you and beyond, perhaps into the distant future. Whatever the sculptor intended, you may interpret his work as you will. See the figures as they are, or create, if you like, your own allegory of the land and its people, and war. There are phases of war - all war - represented in the bronze groups that make up the Burgher Memorial. 'Farewell' shows a burgher riding off to war, strong and strongly mounted on a fiery horse, leaving behind wife and child. Among some trees is another group, called 'The Exile'. Two desolate figures stand by a ship's rail, one a man too old to fight and the other a young boy. Both are defenceless and despairing, contemplating the ordeal of exile and the end of life as they have known it.