Talk:Louis Botha

Allegiance: Natalia Republic
There is an error in the allegiance category as it states Louis Botha had allegiance to the Natalia Republic which wold be impossible as the Natalia Republic was annexed by Britain almost twenty years before Louis Botha was even born. I think the person who edited this meant to place the Vryheid Republic as Botha was indeed part of the establishment of this republic in the northern Natal. Ron7 (talk) 05:26, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Churchill POW
Claims exist that Botha captured Winston Churchill at the armoured train ambush in Natal on 15 November 1899; but this may be a fabrication depending on one's perspective. Certainly Churchill did not mention it in his book on The Boer War London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900), though later he made such a claim.

I see nothing to sustain the amateur Hardy Boys skepticism in the passage above. Depending on whose perspective, exactly? The authors of the article? Certainly Churchill, according to his published statements, was not introduced to Botha until 1902 (after the publication of London to Ladysmith via Pretoria), at which point Botha, not Churchill, claimed to be the captor. Since both men stood in agreement, what grounds exist for doubting the story? Churchill, until 1940, was a politician of middling success at best, hardly the kind of figure about whom one would fabricate a rather trivial story such as this. Albrecht (talk) 15:58, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

(First Post) I call nonsense on this one as well. It is a pretty extra-ordinary claim to make with no evidence. Some kind of Afrikaner meme that keeps cropping up? It is not even mentioned on the Afrikaans entry. If whoever put that in reads this and understands Afrikaans - "Dis 'n bietjie dik vir 'n daelder." It is unlikely/doesn't ring true. Therefore it is likely untrue and cannot be put in an encyclopedic work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stormbind158 (talk • contribs) 23:05, 8 August 2010 (UTC)


 * AFAIK, Churchill was a War Correspondent for a London Newspaper at the time and so would not have been regarded as anyone particularly noteworthy or important.