Mafikeng Things to Do

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The Mafikeng Museum is housed in a stunning Victorian building (formerly the Town Hall) in the heart of town and chronicles an extraordinary period of South African history. Its gorgeous exterior has been beautifully restored in cool ice cream shades of white and pale yellow, although the hall inside is much more low key.

The museum itself clearly has been cobbled together with little or no resources, but is run by a very enthusiastic lady, and even the superannuated, somewhat dogeared display material can't dull what is a riveting tale. It contains some small exhibits on the natural history and pre-colonial culture of the region, but the lion's share of the exhibit is given over to the siege of Mafikeng. Other than the Anglo Boer War museum in Bloemfontein, the Mafikeng Museum perhaps provides the best overview of this tragic conflict and is well worth a visit if you're in the area.

Looking at it today, it is hard to imagine that this small dusty town close to the Botswana border was the point of convergence for some monumental personalities during the siege of Mafikeng, including Baden Powell (commander of the British forces and father of the Scouting movement), Sol Plaatje (founding father of the African National Congress) and Lady Sarah Wilson, generally accepted as having been the first woman war correspondent. Even the timing of the siege - which ran from October 1899 to May 1900 was notable: it spanned the turn of the century and took place in the twilight of the Victorian era when the concept of the British Empire was being challenged more insistently. Indeed, I can't help wondering why the opportunity to make a movie out of this has been overlooked ...

For more about Baden Powell, read my travel tip on the founding of the Scouting movement.

Sol Plaatje (pronounced 'Ply-kee') is a fascinating figure who was one of the founding members of the South African Native National Congress (which later became the ANC). He was the organisation's first General Secretary, but unfortunately his huge contribution to the movement has tended to be overshadowed by his higher profile predecessors such as Albert Luthuli, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo. Plaatje was an extraordinarily accomplished man who was blessed with immense literary and linguistic talents which were recognised early on by the missionaries who schooled him. Although he trained as a teacher, he served as a court translator during the siege and went on to found and edit a number of newspapers for the black population, as well as becoming an author and translating some of Shakespeare's works into Tswana (his mother tongue). His account of the siege - the Boer War Diary - was published posthumously and provides a fascinating alternative account of an event that had hitherto been reported on from an almost exclusively British perspective. For more on this extraordinary man, follow this link to the Sol Plaatjie House in Kimberley, a city which is happily rediscovering his titanic legacy.

Lady Sarah Wilson (who was Winston Churchill's cousin and married to Baden Powell's aide de camp) was appointed by the Daily Mail to report on the siege of Mafikeng after their previous correspondent was captured sneaking out of the town to send his despatch. In fact, she had been evacuated herself to escape the Boer forces as they closed in on Mafikeng, but was captured, and held hostage until her freedom was secured by exchanging her for a horse thief. Her breezy, somewhat schoolgirlish copy makes for interesting reading, as she juxtaposes gory detail on casulaties with a socialite account of the celebrations to mark Baden Powell's birthday.

The relief of the siege after 217 days was cause for great rejoicing across the British Empire, and an event considered so significant that was marked by 20,000 people taking to the streets in London to celebrate this victory. However, what is less well publicised and infinitely more tragic is the fact that Mafikeng was the location of one of the largest Boer War concentration camps in which hundreds of Afrikaaner women and children were interned under unspeakable conditions and died in droves.

The ordeal of those in the concentration camp continued for much longer than the seven month privations of the siege, and under even more deprived circumstances. In particular, despairing extracts from internees' correspondence and the pictures of skeletal children on the brink of death by malnutrition are the stuff of nightmares and even the sadly dilapidated display boards cannot detract from the stark impact of the subject matter. The British human rights campaigner Emily Hobhouse (a reforming battleaxe of note and one of my personal heroines) visited the camp and was so appalled by the conditions that she used her political connections to have the camp commander fired for negligence. The exact number of people who perished in this camp is unknown, but over 1,050 burials are recorded in the two cemeteries which served the camp (although this is likely to be an underestimate): by way of contrast, the British recorded 212 deaths during the siege, with the Boers sustaining significantly more casualties. The suffering in this - and over twenty other Boer War concentration camps - is powerfully commemorated by the Women's Monument in Bloemfontein.

Note that photography is forbidden inside the museum.