Qualla: Siege of Mafeking

Siege of Mafeking: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author signed, Public domain. When news reached London in May 1900 that the little South African town of Mafeking had been relieved after seven months under siege, the city lost its head. Crowds poured into the streets in such delirious celebration that the place-name itself became a verb: to maffick, meaning to rejoice loudly and publicly. The siege had no real military importance. But it had a hero, a plucky garrison, and a story Britain desperately wanted in a war going badly. The legend that emerged here would launch a worldwide youth movement. The reality, lived out in the dust by some nine thousand people, was harder and far less tidy.

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Image: Unknown authorUnknown author signed | Public domain

Siege of Mafeking: A Stockpile on the Frontier

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. On the eve of the Second Boer War in 1899, Colonel Robert Baden-Powell was sent to raise mounted regiments on the frontier between the British Cape Colony and the Boer republics. He chose Mafeking as his supply base: it sat near the border, on the railway between Bulawayo and Kim...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Siege of Mafeking: Improvise and Endure

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Henry Frederick Bacon; Original uploader was Stronach at en.wikipedia. Later version(s) were uploaded by Smalljim at en.wikipedia., Public domain. What followed became the stuff of imperial folklore. The defenders dug a six-mile ring of trenches. They built a howitzer in the railway workshops and pressed an antique cannon from 1770 into service, the barrel happening to bear the initials B.P. Short of coins and banknotes, Ba...

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Image: John Henry Frederick Bacon; Original uploader was Stronach at en.wikipedia. Later version(s) were uploaded by Smalljim at en.wikipedia. | Public domain

Siege of Mafeking: The Other Mafeking

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Diverman, CC BY-SA 3.0. The legend has a shadow, and it lived in the stadt, the adjacent African township where the Barolong people made up most of Mafeking's population; roughly four in five residents of the town were Black. When food ran short from early 1900, the rationing was not shared equally. Bla...

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Image: Diverman | CC BY-SA 3.0

Siege of Mafeking: Hero and Aftermath

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photo by J. Angus Hamilton, Our Special Correspondent with Major-General Baden-Powell, Public domain. On 12 May, in the siege's final spasm, a Boer force under Field Cornet Sarel Eloff slipped through the defences before dawn, set fire to the stadt, and seized a police post, only to be cut off and beaten back by nightfall. Days later a relief column fought its way in. Mafeking ha...

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Image: Photo by J. Angus Hamilton, Our Special Correspondent with Major-General Baden-Powell | Public domain