TOPIC:

Served: General de Wet.

Hero or traitor?

Signed manuscript statement (undated) by Commandant David (Dawid) Andries Maree of the Kroonstad Kommando concerning the shooting of armed natives. Maree fought under Hoofd kommandant De Wet and was appointed by de former Commandant of the Kroonstad commando in 1901.

The statement reads:

“It is true that I received orders from General De Wet to shoot all armed natives that I caught. But I never gave orders to this effect. I told my Field Cornets to bring all captured natives to me. I sent away to Volveron [sic] station in the Transvaal the two burgers Botes and Pieterse- who shot the three natives near Cyfergat- because they had done so. I can prove that I let captured natives go by the evidence of two natives, now at Kroonstad, one is called Kerre (?) and the other Jonas.”
[signed] D. Maree

This is a rather fascinating document from the Boer War or its immediate aftermath. Commandant Maree declares -in English, so most probably to his captors- that he received orders from his ultimate superior to shoot armed natives but that he deliberately disobeyed these orders and that he got rid of the men in his commando who actually carried them out. Does this make him a hero or a traitor?
In the “modern” western world, a soldier has the duty to refuse to obey an illegal order. He may still be court martialed and found guilty – just as in case he actually obeyed the illegal order. A soldier may not disobey an immoral order, because that is considered a subjective judgment.
I am not a lawyer and don’t know which rules applied to Maree back in 1902 (from memory the OVS and ZAR weren’t signatories to the Geneva Convention). There were ample grounds for Maree to deem the order to shoot armed natives to be immoral, but did he have legal grounds to disobey the order under the rules that did apply to him? The fact that after the war De Wet didn’t end up in court over the order may suggest otherwise.