My bakkie is rattling along the R56 from Molteno to Dordrecht, while my mind pages backwards in time. We take a lot of time to make progress, as both are old, roughened by wear and tear. When finally, the Voëlvlei Dam shimmers past on the right of the road, my imagination has reached back to 1899, galloping with the Boer Commandos during the early stages of the Anglo-Boer War.

This area of the Eastern Cape Highlands, then part of the Cape Colony, was absorbed into the greatest empire of that time. The British had huge muscle back then and God was an Englishman, who, without fail, repeatedly saved the queen.

Power, greed, gold and diamonds encouraged these imperialists to attack two small Boer republics in South Africa. Many so-called rebels, Afrikaans farmers from the Cape Colony, had joined the Boer forces and were harassing the British supply lines and troops marching northwards.

Then the inconceivable happened. In December 1899, the Boers defeated the British in the in Grahamstown said of the British commander Lieutenant-General Sir William Forbes Gatacre, ‘His column goes astray, he loses his bearings, his guides did little reconnoitring of the area, the troops were marched in the dark, hungry, tired, disorientated and with fixed bayonets’.