Mourning Becomes...

This fascinating work challenges many of the accepted facts about the concentration camps run by the British during the South African War. The author demonstrates that much of what we have traditionally understood about these camps originates from the testimony which was solicited, selected and published by key women activists within Boer proto-nationalist circles.

Using detailed archival evidence, she shows that much of the history of the camps results from a deliberate imposition of 'post/memory'—a process by which what was 'remembered' was shaped and reshaped to support the development of a racialised nationalist framework. Many of the camps' occupants died from successive epidemics of measles, typhoid, enteritis, and pneumonia rather than deliberate ill-treatment. Yet, the book shows how mourning for those who died was overridden by state commemorative activities concerned with promoting pan-Boer nationalist aspirations.

The innovative and groundbreaking approach of the author in Mourning Becomes... invites the reader to step into and explore with her the commemorative sites passed by nationalist land acts, which still powerfully mark the South African landscape.