"MacBride’s Brigade in the Anglo-Boer War" Topic

"At the top of Dublin's Grafton Street, at the corner of Stephen's Green, stands a handsome triumphal arch—still referred to by some locals as ‘traitors' gate'—which commemorates the ‘officers, non-commissioned officers and men' of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who fell in the second Anglo-Boer war (1899-1902). One will search Ireland in vain to find a counterpart: a memorial to those Irish soldiers who died fighting in the two Irish commandos in the Boer army. It is a strange omission since at the time ‘pro-Boer fever' engulfed nationalist Ireland. Pro-Boer demonstrations were held, pro-Boer rioting occurred, the flag of the Transvaal Republic—the vierkleur—was to be seen in Dublin, where for a period there even existed a no-go area at night for forces of the crown.
South Africa had not witnessed mass Irish immigration, nonetheless in the mid-1890s, Dublin Castle officials began to notice that numbers of advanced Irish nationalists were making for the unsettled South African, or Transvaal, Republic. These included Celtic Literary Society members John MacBride and Arthur Griffith. By 1896 there were about 1,000 Irish living in the mining settlement of Johannesburg as well as others in Pretoria and in more far-flung dorps, such as Middelburg where Griffith edited the precursor to the United Irishman. Unlike the English uitlanders, these Irish settlers supported Kruger's regime and in turn when a 1798 celebration was held in Johannesburg—an event which eclipsed that in Dublin—Afrikaners were prominent at the march and banquet…."
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Amicalement
Armand

John MacBride seems to have been an especially bellicose and unpleasant fellow. Described as a ‘short, red-headed, vehement whirlwind', McBride ‘launched into a no-hold-barred battle to win the local Irish [community in South Africa] over to militant republicanism'.

It was not only the civilian Irish of South Africa that was targeted in this campaign; attempts were also made to prompt Irish regiments to mutiny. Career troublemaker MacBride was later described as ‘boozy, slovenly, and abusive', and was immortalized by a fellow revolutionary in the poem Easter 1916 as ‘a drunken vainglorious lout'.

Robert McBride – allegedly a descendant of John MacBride – carried on the family tradition for terrorism, setting off a bomb in a packed Durban pub in 1986. Three people were killed, and another 69 injured.

In 1999, he was arrested in Mozambique for gun running.

In 2003, he was rewarded for these activities by being made chief of police for the Ekurhelni (East Rand) district of Johannesburg. He then crashed his car while drunk after a Christmas party in 2006, and got his police officers to cover up the evidence.

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand