Fading Memories
The smaller theaters of war, such as the Sudan, China, and South Africa, had all but dominated the headlines in the first few months of the war. This only stands to reason since the primary belligerents had a good number of their elite troops deployed in these forward theaters long before they even knew a war was coming. It took time for nations to mobilize their full military forces and while this dreary process went on, the elite troops abroad got a head start on the conflict. This naturally drew media attention and, as a consequence, names such as Custer, Earp, Kitchener, Smuts, Mahan, and Von Tirpitz had all dominated the headlines. As the first year of the war came to a close, many of these men would be all but forgotten and the theaters they had become famous in, lost in the news as well.
This did not mean that the theaters were any less volatile than they had been before the war. In most cases the situations had rapidly deteriorated as the flow of war materials were siphoned off for larger disasters closer to home. This was never more true than the situation, in South Africa, that had now become a human rights disaster for all parties involved. The failure of Boer forces to overwhelm the British border defenses had doomed both sides to protracted sieges in multiple locations.
The cities who were under siege had been in no way prepared and starvation, disease, and war had all combined to wreak misery and death on civilian and military alike. The situation of the besieging army was little better than that of the besieged. While the Boer Commando’s were fierce fighters, their military was ill prepared for the operations they were attempting. Logistics to supply those men in the field was practically non existent. The absence of the men on their farms had guaranteed that the food production in both the Transvaal and the Orange Free State was less than half of what was normal.
The inadequate supply situation drove many Boer Commando’s to desert and go home. Many more took what they needed from their enemies by raiding deep into Natal and Cape Colony. The raiders were grossly inefficient in obtaining the needed supplies. Much more was destroyed than brought back while even the goods that reached Boer camps was largely wasted. The result was that no one in South Africa, neither in the British colonies, nor the Boer nations, were in good shape by the end of 1899. The only question now was, who would fail first.
Without aid from the rest of the world the South African front lacked the supplies to undertake any effective major offensive operations. That situation only grew as time went on. The prospects for help from another theater looked bleak as well. The French still had their bases in Madagascar but, they lacked the supplies to support a major army or fleet. They were barely managing to funnel what little they had across the pipeline in Mozambique and that Boer life line was getting thinner as time went on.
The US was equally at a loss to support their French or Boer allies. Their pacific fleet was still at Port Arthur, licking it’s wounds from the Battle of the Yellow sea. Even if that had not been the case they were too busy supporting operations in that theater where the Japanese were now making their presence felt. The US Atlantic fleet was equally pinned down with their blockade of Canada. The US did try and send supplies to the South African theater but, the sea lanes of the world were no longer safe for anyone and the few merchant ships that managed to get through were sporadic at best.
The British had the advantage of having sea lanes, in the Indian Ocean, that were safer than those of their enemies. They had put plans in motion to reinforce their South African colonies with troops and supplies from India but, Russia put an end to this. Once the war expanded, the threat of a Russian expedition across Afghanistan, aimed at the heart of India, gave Lord Roberts all the clout he needed to keep the bulk of his forces in India. A few regiments and some supplies were transferred to Natal but, not in the quantity needed to change the situation on the ground.
Maybe it was due to this seeming lack of interest, from the rest of the world, that produced some of the more unique political opinions that formed in South Africa. If racial relations in the CSA were bad, they had nothing on the problems in the Natal and Cape Colonies. Here, race relations were not only bad, they were complicated beyond comprehension by attitudes that, today, seem quite bizarre. Here, you had more than two ethnic groups and, combined with other factors, meant just as much, if not more, than something as trivial as skin color.
On the bottom of the class system were the black populations. They outnumbered every other group by a sizable margin. They could have easily dominated and taken control of the entire region had it not been for one simple fact, they were not a unified group and hated each other more than their European over lords. The single most powerful of these groups was the semi independent Zulu of Natal. They had once commanded an independent nation that the British destroyed in 1879.
Despite loosing the war, the Zulu were still awarded a concession prize. They had fought so bravely, and were seen by many to have been victims of an unjust war, that they managed to retain much of their independence, practically, in all but name. There was a more practical reason why the British allowed this, because other black groups were even more terrified of the Zulu than the Europeans had been. It kept the more than a dozen black ethnic groups divided and allowed the British to play one group off on another, hence maintaining their power base in South Africa.
The most simple of ethnic groups might have appeared to be the white Europeans but, here too, things grew complicated. South Africa had been settled by a polyglot of European immigrants. Contrary to popular belief, some of these white settlers had actually been living in the region longer than the majority of the black ethnic groups who were now calling the area home. South Africa had been a cross roads of migration for a few centuries now, mostly due to the political turmoil in Europe and the collapse of the Malinese Empire in North Africa. Once the British deemed the area important, as a route to India, it turned the region from a backwater crossroads to a strategically important one.
In general, the Europeans were the best armed of the groups but, they too, were as divided as the black population. The fact that the last three wars were all between the Boers, who were descended from Dutch and protestant French refugees, and the British was evidence enough of this. The animosity went well beyond business as well. The friction between the English speaking colonists and their Boer neighbors usually filtered down to the personal level. To put it simply, the groups hated each other as much as they were economic rivals.
If this situation were not complicated enough, there were other groups who had recently migrated to the cape, that made the situation even more complicated. The British had flooded the region with settlers but, most of these people were of the unskilled labor sort. The Boers were mostly ranchers and even if they did have an educated middle class, they were largely disinterested in the types of jobs that form the infrastructure of modern economies. The British needed these kinds of people in South Africa but, were unable to find any volunteers in the United Kingdom. They did find a more than willing group to resettle from India though.
By December of 1899 the Indians were not even as numerous as the Europeans but, not only were they sizable enough to be noticed, they represented a class of skilled tradesmen and business types that could not be easily ignored. Despite their status (indeed some Indians were getting rich in South Africa) they were still subjected to racial laws, which were standard in the region, because of the simple fact that their skin color was a darker shade than that of the Europeans. You would think that this might make the Indians a viable political entity with a bone to pick but, the Indians had their own ethnic problems. They were saddled with an ancient caste system that was even more complicated than the European views on race.
When taking the chaotic social system into account, it is not so surprising that the next real “war hero” to come out of the African campaign was not a warrior at all. He was by trade an attorney in the employ of an Indian business man and entrepreneur. He was an Indian himself but, had been educated in England before he found himself in South Africa. His name was Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi. His major contribution was not to directly to the war effort. While the British were actively recruiting Indians to serve in regiments in their homeland, in South Africa they had been universally forbidden to serve.
Ghandi was apparently not satisfied with this state of affairs. While he was ethnically Indian, born into the merchant caste, at the time he was most definitely a born again British patriot. While he could not fight he did what he could to support the war effort on the home front. He did get to the front where he served for some time as a stretcher barer but, his work with the Red Cross slowly exposed him to an aspect of war that no one had ever considered or even dreamed of.
This war, unlike so many before it, was effecting civilians in ways that had never been seen before. You no longer had to be on the front lines to become a casualty. There are no records but, it is easily argued that thousands died in the war production industries where accidents were frequent. Many more would suffer ill health from their exposures to toxic chemicals that were not known of until well after the conflict. Even the people who were most removed from the war still felt the effects in the shortages of food, medicine, and other essential supplies that resulted form the break down of international shipping.
Nowhere was this more obvious than in South Africa. The infrastructure of the region was hard pressed to provide essential services in the pre war era. When the war erupted, what little there was quickly got diverted to support the military. It left much of the population, whether they be black, brown, or white, to their own devices. One might think that it would be the black population who felt the pinch first. Before the war they had been, as a matter of government policy, often denied the means to support themselves. This did not happen and, in fact, as the war went on their situation noticeably improved.
The reason for this was two fold. The main reason was that both the colonial and Boer governments no longer had the time or resources to devote themselves to enforcing the laws meant to keep the black population in check. It took some time for the blacks to notice but, when they did they took full advantage of the situation. The second was, that of all the groups in South Africa, they were the ones who were most skilled at getting by with what they had. This was in stark contrast to the European and Indians who were at the mercies of the international trade that was no longer showing up on schedule, if it ever showed up at all.
This was the situation that Ghandi became slowly aware of as did most of the population of South Africa. Ghandi emerged as an efficient organizer in the relief efforts that would spare many people from the sufferings of war. South Africa had an adequate food supply but, as the ruling European classes found out, it was only barely so and slowly coming under the control of the black population.
South Africa had a booming economy before the war and many whites were unwilling to change their life styles to meet the new reality. They wound up paying premium prices in both money and precious goods in order to maintain their comforts. Much of this wealth found it’s way into the black townships and, for the first time ever, many in the black community found themselves the masters of their own destiny. Once this happened it was not something that could be easily undone. As the war went on, whites were no longer able to even pretend that they were not trading with blacks in order to just survive, let alone live the good life.
Even more serious than food was the medical situation. The large number of war casualties quickly drained stores of medicine in South Africa. Due to even higher numbers of casualties in other parts of the world, these stores were never adequately restocked. A trickle of medicine was flowing from India but, all of it was being reserved for military use only. The civilians of South Africa found themselves at the end of a chain of supplies that was at the end of a chain of supplies. There was virtually nothing left for them and, suddenly, medical issues that were thought trivial before the war could be quite lethal.
If it had not been for the efforts of Ghandi, the intolerable situation might have been even worse. His efforts slowly became noticed over time. This was mainly due to newspaper reports that the authorities actually came to support. Britain increasingly found itself in need of it’s colonies, more and more. This went well beyond the need for the normal raw materials that they provided. Slowly they began need the manpower as well. A hero who was a British subject, of Indian origin, was just the propaganda coup required. Ghandi’s humanitarian efforts were also the kind of feel good story that diverted attention away from the daily casualty figures. Slowly, Ghandi’s name was just as familiar to factory workers in Manchester as he was to war victims in South Africa.
For all of Ghandi’s work, his contributions would not change the military situation in South Africa. It would have an even larger impact after the war. It would be one that resonated far beyond the cape but, that was later. For now, the fortunes of the people of South Africa would rest on another staple of the British morning paper. As both sides raced to send what they could to support this backwater theater, it would be the British who got their first. It would not come form Lord Roberts in India who, up till this point, had done little more than sit on his massive well of untapped troops and supplies. It would be the wild card of the empire who took the first real action, Horatio Kitchener.
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Believe it or not, that's not actually very different form what happened to Ghandi in the real world. The differences are, in the real world, these things happened a couple of years later and, because of the global nature of the war in this scenario, his actions become more widely known. In the real history, because his service happened in what was, considered by most of the planet, a local regional conflict his notoriety only grew in the Indian population. Still, it was his work in South Africa that first got him noticed by power brokers back in India and what led to him to having patrons who groomed him for a leadership role.
This part of his personal history is something that is not widely known, mainly because his fan club (the people who have practically deified the man as a symbol) don't want people to remember his work there. Ghandi's time in South Africa was a crucial time in his life that shaped his later strategy that got the British to leave India ( or leave when they did because it can be argued that they were planning on doing it anyway). The problem comes in that his time there is not the image his fan club wants to sell. For one thing, the guy dressed western, acted like a lawyer, was very pro British Empire, and showed all of the typical racist views of the day which, at the time, was not very controversial. Later, after WW2, these attitudes became less than fashionable and Ghandi's apologists do not want people remembering he was once a mere, average, Victorian era, man with a law degree.
That's what I meant when I said "at this point of his life." I was thinking that you integrated the RW South Africa Gandhi really well into your creative narrative.