The War Reporter. The Anglo-Boer War through the eyes of the Burghers, by J.E.H. Grobler.

The War Reporter. The Anglo-Boer War through the eyes of the Burghers, by J.E.H. Grobler. ISBN 9781868421862 / ISBN 978-1-86842-186-2

J.E.H. Grobler's history book is different. 'The War Reporter: The Anglo-Boer War through the eyes of the Burghers' takes an imaginative leap to reconstruct the world of the first South African freedom fighters of the twentieth century.

J.E.H. Grobler  

One of the most formidable challenges that face historians is to understand the Zeitgeist or atmosphere of the period they write about. The same is true for readers of history books. A failure to understand the situation at the time makes it virtually impossible to understand the major events, the decisions taken by the major participants, the reactions of the ordinary people and the contradictions of the past in the context in which they occurred. This was my biggest challenge as I attempted to portray the world and the views of the Boers as the Anglo-Boer War progressed. The book is first and foremost an attempt to answer the question: how did the Boers experience the Anglo-Boer War? The War Reporter does not claim, or aim, to be an unbiased, balanced representation of the history of the war. When reading contemporary Boer newspaper reports as well as the diaries of Boers, both men and women, who were participants in the war, one soon senses that the way in which they viewed the war constantly changed. There was no single Boer view either, but often serious disagreements on, for example, the wisdom of prolonging the war. The War Reporter attempts to represent the standpoints of the so-called Bitter-enders, who literally stuck to their guns and their hopes up to the very (and for them, bitter) end of the war. I believe that it is impossible to fully comprehend a phenomenon such as a major war in the history of a people if one fails to understand the ways in which the participants - who did not have the luxury of hindsight - experienced the events that they were involved in. I had to divorce myself completely from knowing the eventual outcome of the war and its consequences. The 'correspondents' of The War Reporter similarly are not aware what the future holds for them. In each issue they 'report' on how they experienced the situation at that exact time. The challenge is to imagine how reporters and newspaper editors on the Boer side in those days would have experienced various issues. That should ideally also be the point of departure of the readers of The War Reporter, namely to consciously put themselves in the situation of the Boers at the specific points in time that they are reading about. In a book of this nature there can only be one standpoint, and that is one-sided. The War Reporter takes an imaginative leap to reconstruct the world of, to quote Nelson Mandela, the first South African freedom fighters of the twentieth century. Here, in newspaper format as it might have been, is the story of the 'English War' told by the Boers: by officers directing their troops on the battlefields of Magersfontein, Colenso and Spioenkop; by 'Bitter-ender' burghers on commando, bored men laying endless siege to Mafeking and Lady smith, women and children in concentration camps, the government in exile and many other participants, all in a wealth of contemporary sources and photographs. One of the most formidable challenges that face historians is to understand the Zeitgeist or atmosphere of the period they write about. The same is true for readers of history books. (...)

This is an excerpt from the book: The War Reporter. The Anglo-Boer War through the eyes of the Burghers, by J.E.H. Grobler.

Title: The War Reporter
Subtitle: The Anglo-Boer War through the eyes of the Burghers
Author: J.E.H. Grobler
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers
Johannesburg & Cape Town, South Africa 2004
ISBN 9781868421862 / ISBN 978-1-86842-186-2
Softcover, 29x40 cm, 157 pages, throughout b/w illustrations and photos