Brandfort
Brandfort, officially renamed Winnie Mandela in 2021, is a small agricultural town in the central Free State province of South Africa, about 60 km northeast of Bloemfontein on the R30 road. The town serves the surrounding farms for supplies and amenities. It is well known for once being home to the anti-apartheid stalwart and wife of Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, during her banishment. History The town was established in 1866 on the farm Keerom, occupied by Jacobus van Zijl who was a Voortrekker elder. The community was visited by the then Orange Free State President, Johannes Brand, and the settlement was named in his honour shortly afterwards. Brandfort was proclaimed a town in 1874. The British built a concentration camp here during the Second Anglo-Boer War to house Boer women and children as well as a separate camp for Blacks. Brandfort was also at one time home to former prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd, an architect of apartheid, who matriculated here. Main sites Concentration camps Concentration camps, derived from the Spanish word "", were first used in Cuba in 1896 by General Butcher Weyler. Half a million Cuban civilians were rounded up and incarcerated in fortified villages in which about 100