Boer War
The town was the site of a concentration camp for women and children captured by the British Army during their scorched earth campaign during the Second Boer War. 355 children and 132 adults died in this camp due to malnutrition and contagious diseases, while kept in tents without any infrastructure or protection during the bitter cold winters of 1899 - 1901.
The famous Boer General Koos de la Rey was born in the district of Winburg on the farm Doornfontein. General De La Rey was the leading Boer General of the Western Transvaal in 1899 - 1901.
Winburg had a black armed commando supporting the British soldiers during the war of 1899 - 1901.
Read more about this topic: Winburg
Famous quotes containing the word war:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)