‘The first day of the first week of the first month in 1900. Not at all a lovely morning. The distant pop of the Mauser distinctly shows that there is no holiday for poor beleaguered us.’ With these words Sol Plaatje began his diary entry for the first day of a new century, besieged by the Boers in Mafeking. John Comaroff's recovery of Plaatje's siege diary, and its subsequent publication in 1973, really marked the starting-point of the present study. Plaatje was one of more than 7000 blacks who shared the experiences of the siege with Baden-Powell's frontier force and the European townspeople of Mafeking. He was also one of more than four million black people in whose midst the familiar dramas of the South African War were played out. Yet at the time of the diary's publication almost nothing was known of the wartime experiences of South Africa's majority black population. How did black people interpret the issues over which the war was fought? What part did they play in military operations? How were their lives and livelihoods affected by the circumstances of military upheaval?

It was with questions such as these uppermost in mind that I embarked upon the research that has ultimately led to this book.