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I am grateful to both Frank and Justin for their continued interest in, and support for this thread.

Frank
I like the idea of threads dedicated to units and there are already some on this forum. Consolidating relevant posts already on this forum would be an onerous task for David, but perhaps it will come in time.

Justin
Good news about the recommendations by Lord Kitchener - something else to follow up. I have already come across more information about some of the Scouts, although not all is directly relevant to the Boer War.

Regards
Brett

Gentlemen,
From memory, a great many of Kitcheners papers are in WO108, while much of Robert's are in WO105, I have not been through either for a long time now, the last time I looked, I was doing some research into a gentleman who had been appointed as military intelligence officer of the Zoutspansberg, at the request of Lord Kitchener himself.
Kind regards Frank

And here is a photo of James Molife, from the 'Black and White Budget' 3rd March 1900. It's a disgrace that they weren't awarded medals.

And here is a photo of James Molife, from the 'Black and White Budget' 3rd March 1900. It's a disgrace that they weren't awarded medals.

And here is an interesting paper on the Natal Native Horse in the 1906 Bambata Rebellion which features the same cast of characters.

www.pmbhistory.co.za/portal/witnesshisto...tal_Native_Horse.pdf

James

Thank you for the photograph and the link to the NNH article.

There is a group photograph in Huw Jones' book 'Biographical Register of Swaziland to 1902' entitled,"A group of prominent Driefontein residents ....", photographed circa 1908, which shows the following Boer War scouts:
Jabez Molife, Stephen Mini, Johannes Khumalo and Timothy Gule.
(This photograph is from Robert Samuelson's book, 'Long, Long Ago'[1929].)

Men like James Molife risked their lives every time they crossed Boer lines and they knew what their fate would be if they were caught by the Boers. In the book 'Black participation in the Anglo-Boer War' by Bill Nasson (Ravan Press, 1999), he wrote as follows:
"If captured they were summarily shot by Boer forces or flogged and then hauled off to serve as forced labour. It was not uncommon for army units to come upon the corpses of their men who had fallen into commando hands during action, and had later been killed and dumped in the veld. These smashed bodies - sometimes hacked, sometimes burnt, sometimes 'bloated shapes, flogged until they turned pink' - are among the most atrocious images of death produced by this war."

Nasson also writes in this book about "hostile questions being asked in Britain" about the use of armed native scouts by the British in South Africa. A "Lieutenant William Beale found [this] 'a damned nerve'. He snorted that critics should come out to South Africa, to be 'told to go to a farm 15 miles off to see if there are any Boers skulking there .... I always send a dozen or so native scouts with rifles at the ready, simply because they can see the country and what's in it three or four miles off as you can read a book, also they can ride 50% better than any soldier .... for the job of scouting, the black man has no equal."

Regards
Brett