The British army built forts for protection against small-arms fire called “blockhouses” for pretty obvious reasons. This one is protecting a railway bridge against attacks by boer rebels in their one-time Cape Colony.
The reasons for the exodus of many Afrikaners from the province and the establishment of the ‘Boer’ republics are pretty distasteful. But as distasteful were the British machinations to seize those republics the moment the first whiff of gold carried from the Witwatersrand to the noses of the powers in Cape Town and Durban.
The resistance put up by those largely rural people against the greatest super-power the world had ever known was astonishing. And despite Reese-Mogg’s blatant lies recently, the British terrorised and starved their families and burned their farms to the ground to try to bring a fierce people to heel.
It’s only a pity that pro-fascist, racists took ownership of the Afrikaner political agenda in the 20th century - rather erasing the goodwill they’d generated.