Fury’s War

Buxton was born in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. His interest in the Boer war was sparked as a young boy by his grandmother, an Afrikaans woman whose maiden name was Fourie. She faithfully shared tales of the Anglo-Boer War and of Jopie Fourie, who was executed for treason in 1914 by, among others, General Jan Smuts. As part of his research he visited many Boer war sites, including a number of locations on which concentration camps were located. He was appalled by the dereliction of the sites given the magnitude of the tragedy in which close to 50,000 South Africans, both black and white, lost their lives. The death in the camps – close to half of Afrikaner children under the age of 12 – and the fear of losing an entire Afrikaner generation, was one of the major drivers behind the ultimate Boer surrender. One of Buxton’s objectives in writing Fury’s War is to bring to remembrance those who should never be forgotten.