Who was the farmer who became Britain’s most elusive enemy?
When the Second Boer War began in October 1899, Christiaan de Wet rode away from his farm as an ordinary burgher, carrying little more than his horse, his rifle and a determination to defend his republic. Within months, he would emerge as one of the most remarkable military commanders of the war.
In this first episode, we follow De Wet from his childhood on the lonely grasslands of the Orange Free State to the battlefields of the war’s opening months. We explore the frontier life that shaped him, his deep Calvinist faith, his years as a farmer and politician, and the disastrous Battle of Paardeberg that convinced him the old way of fighting could never defeat the British Empire.
It was there that Christiaan de Wet began to imagine a completely different kind of war.
Part Two follows De Wet as he transforms the Boer commandos into a fast-moving guerrilla force, becoming the legendary “Ghost of the Veld” and forcing the British to adopt increasingly desperate measures—including the scorched-earth campaign and concentration camps that would later be exposed to the world by Emily Hobhouse.
