"I call this camp system a wholesale cruelty... To keep these camps going is murder to the children. Of the babies and children under five years old I have seen so many that are skeletons — their little bones almost through their skin, suffering from measles, bronchitis, pneumonia, and dysentery. I have seen mothers helpless with illness themselves trying to nurse their sick children, crying because they have no milk to give them. The rations are utterly insufficient. The women take in washing at sixpence a bundle to earn a little money to buy food. I am convinced that without a great increase in the rations and improvement in the conditions, there will be a terrible mortality."

Emily Hobhouse, report to the South African Women and Children's Distress Fund, submitted to the British government and published as 'Report of a Visit to the Camps of Women and Children in the Cape and Orange River Colonies', June 1901.