The first talk for 2024 is at 7.30om on Friday 2nd February by Dr Tony Stimson
Tony was co-founder and principal of Eynesbury Senior College 1990-2007. Since then, he has been a frequent visitor to South African battlefields and (with Jennifer Humphries) is about to publish Citizen Soldiers: South Australians at the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902. He is president of the South Australian Boer War Association (SABWA) and a former vice president of HSSA.
Morant and the South African War Memorial
In 1904 Adelaide’s South African War Memorial, sculptor Capt. Adrian Jones’ ‘Man on the Horse,’ was unveiled to public acclaim, and 60 men who had died as a result of wartime service are named on its plaques. One name was missing: Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant, who served briefly in a South Australian unit before he went rogue and killed civilians with the Bushveldt Carbineers. He was executed by a firing squad in 1902.
Since 2021 Adelaide City Council and Plan SA have been considering an application to add Morant’s name, an idea vigorously opposed by the SABWA and veterans’ organisations. This debate has a lot to say about community attitudes and the fate of war memorials in age when history is hotly contested. The Australian War Memorial’s position remains that Morant was guilty of war crimes.