The Treatment of ‘Everyday Life' in Memory and Narrative of the Concentration Camps of the South African War, 1899-1902

This paper considers the idea of ‘everyday life’ in Boer women’s narratives of
the South African War concentration camps in three published collections of
camp testimonies. A striking feature of these collections is their absence of
memories about ordinary daily life in camp. The focus in women’s camp
narratives is largely on the brutal mistreatment of Boer women and children by
the British. This is part of a wider pattern evident in Boer women’s camp
accounts, which frequently testify to ‘identical’ incidents, share formulaic
narrative schemes and replicate stock phrases, thus exhibiting what Gillis has
called “memory work” (Gillis, 1994). The absence of the ‘everyday’ in camp
narratives is symptomatic of the close relationship many of these accounts had
with the growth of Afrikaner nationalism, particularly in the late 1930s.