Qualla: Zonderwater POW camp

Zonderwater POW camp: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The name is Afrikaans for "without water," and the men who arrived in 1941 found out why. Italian soldiers, captured in the deserts of North and East Africa and shipped to the far end of the continent, were unloaded onto a bare, dry stretch of highveld near Cullinan with little more than the rags they stood in. There were no proper barracks, scant clothing against the bitter highveld winter, and almost nothing prepared for them. From this unpromising ground grew the largest Allied prisoner-of-war camp of the entire Second World War - and, against every expectation, a place remembered for its humanity.

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Zonderwater POW camp: An Obligation to the Empire

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

South Africa took these prisoners partly to prove a point. As a member of the Commonwealth, Prime Minister Jan Smuts wanted to show that his country could shoulder its share of the war effort. He deliberately refused to hold German prisoners - there were too many Nazi sympathiser...

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Zonderwater POW camp: The Man Who Changed Everything

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Then came Colonel Hendrik Prinsloo. He was, in one of history's quiet ironies, the son of a Boer commando leader who had fought the British at Spioenkop - and he turned this place of confinement into something close to a community. The prisoners built their own salvation: brick a...

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Zonderwater POW camp: Orchestras Behind the Wire

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What flourished at Zonderwater would be remarkable in any prison and astonishing in a wartime camp. The Italians formed an orchestra. They staged operettas and plays, the men taking every role, including the women's parts. They held craft and art exhibitions, built a library of 1...

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Zonderwater POW camp: What Remained

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The camp closed in January 1947, held open past the war's end only by a shortage of ships to carry everyone home. But Zonderwater never really emptied. The men who died in captivity - around 250 of them - lie in a cemetery still tended with care, where Italian flags flutter each ...

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