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Report of Resident Magistrate, Gordonia, May 23, 1901. Native shot dead. May 25, 1901. District Harrismith. A native accused of laziness and insolence was shot by men in M. Prinsloo's commando. May 28, 1901. At Sannah's Post three natives were captured and shot. June 5, 1901. Three natives with Colonel Plumer's column captured and shot near Paardeberg. July 27, 1901.
The chance of snapping up isolated garrisons allured him from the less brilliant but more practically useful work of hacking at the railway upon which Lord Roberts depended for his communications, and his wonderful and unexpected success at Sannah's Post encouraged him to persevere.
He must have regretted that the strong hand and will of the man of Waterval Drift, Kitchener's Kopje, Sannah's Post, and Mostert's Hoek, were not with him on the right bank of the Vaal to animate the shrinking burghers of the South African Republic.
Brand made for the Bloemfontein-Thabanchu line of posts, which was the sport of every Boer leader who chose to hack at it, and which recently had scarcely impeded the progress of Van der Venter to the south for an hour. On September 19, near Sannah's Post, he ambushed and destroyed a party of mounted infantry engaged in raiding a farm. Two guns and nearly 100 prisoners of war were taken by Brand.
Between Sannah's Post and Reddersburg he in one day persuaded more than a hundred sworn burghers to break their oaths of neutrality and join him. Whether the energy and resource which he displayed would not have been more profitably expended in a vigorous effort to shrivel up the line between Bloemfontein and the Orange is a matter for speculation.
On Christmas Eve De Wet saw that he had before him a prey that would fall into his hands as easily as Sannah's Post or Waterval Drift, and he resolved to clutch it at once. His burghers, though dispersed, were within call, and a force of over 1,000 was quickly assembled.
At Waterval Drift, Kitchener's Kopje, Sannah's Post, and Mostert's Hoek, De Wet showed himself to be a daring and successful partisan leader. He was instinctively drawn towards helpless or unwary detachments. He played his own hand without reference to his partner's, and seemed to be incapable of co-operating in a general scheme of strategy.
On the way to Sannah's Post he had cashiered a commandant named Vilonel for disobeying his orders with regard to transport. His nomination of Roux did not give satisfaction. The partisans of other leaders protested, and it was determined to settle by election the question of the Chief Command.
The tangible result of the Brandwater Basin operations was the capture of more than 4,000 Boers and of three guns, two of which had been lost at Sannah's Post. The mountains in which the burghers had taken refuge became a prison, from which they were taken when Hunter came on circuit for the gaol delivery, and on conviction they were sent beyond the seas.
It would not be so very far from the truth to say that the guns at Sannah's Post were captured on the polo-ground at Hurlingham; that Magersfontein was lost at Lord's; that Spionkop was evacuated at Sandown; and that the war lingered on for thirty-two months in the Quorn and Pytchley coverts.
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