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Designer | Frans Soff, Anton van Wouw |
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Opening date | 1913-12-16 |
Dedicated to | Boers held in concentration camps during the Second Boer War |
The National Women's Monument[1] (Afrikaans: Nasionale Vrouemonument) in Bloemfontein, South Africa, is a monument commemorating the roughly 27,000 Boers who died in British concentration camps during the Second Boer War. The Monument is a Provincial Heritage Site[1] in the Free State.
The monument was designed by a Pretoria architect, Frans Soff, and the sculpting was done by Anton van Wouw. It consists of an obelisk about 35m in height and low, semi-circular walls on two sides. A central bronze group, sketched by English activist Emily Hobhouse and depicting her own experience of 15 May 1901, is of two sorrowing women and a dying child in the Springfontein camp. The monument was unveiled on 16 December 1913, attended by about 20,000 South Africans. Thirteen years later, Emily Hobhouse's ashes were ensconced at the foot of the monument. Also beside the monument are the graves of Christiaan de Wet, Rev. John Daniel Kestell, President of the Orange Free State Martinus Steyn, and his wife.