After nearly three years of guerrilla warfare, scorched-earth British tactics, and the deaths of tens of thousands of Boer civilians in concentration camps, Boer leaders signed the Treaty of Vereeniging, surrendering their independence in exchange for eventual self-government. The war's brutal methods, including the internment of Boer women and children, provoked international outrage and left a legacy of bitterness that shaped South African politics for generations.
By 1902, the war had ground down from conventional battles into a punishing guerrilla campaign. British commanders, unable to defeat elusive Boer commando units in open combat, adopted a scorched-earth strategy: burning farms, slaughtering livestock, and herding Boer civilians, along with Black African laborers, into concentration camps where disease and malnutrition killed tens of thousands, many of them children.
Emily Hobhouse, a British welfare campaigner, publicized the horrific camp conditions back home, causing a political scandal that embarrassed the British government even as it pressed its military advantage. Facing starvation and the destruction of their farms and communities, Boer negotiators finally agreed to terms at Vereeniging, near Johannesburg.
Under the treaty, the Boer republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State lost their independence and became British colonies, though Britain promised eventual self-government - a promise fulfilled in 1910 with the formation of the Union of South Africa. The peace, however, left deep scars. Bitterness over the camps and the loss of Boer sovereignty fueled Afrikaner nationalism for decades, a movement that would eventually produce the architects of apartheid.