Captain Alfred James "'Bulala" Taylor (14 November 1861 – 24 October 1941) was an Anglo-Irish military officer who was active in Africa during the Scramble for Africa and the Second Boer War. He is best known as a defendant in one of the first war crimes prosecutions in British military history. Born into a middle-class Protestant family in Dublin, Ireland, Taylor jumped ship in Cape Town in 1886 and served in the British South Africa Police of the British South Africa Company (BSAC). He played a major role in the colonisation of modern-day Zimbabwe by the BSAC. During two subsequent uprisings by the Northern Ndebele people against Company rule in Rhodesia, Taylor was dubbed by the Ndebele "Bulala" ("He Who Kills") and "Bamba" ("He Who Takes").
Taylor is most infamous, however, for his actions during the Second Boer War. While serving as a captain in the War Office's Intelligence Department, Taylor was handpicked by Lord Kitchener as liaison to the Bushveldt Carbineers (BVC) at Fort Edward in the Northern Transvaal. South African historian C. A. R. Schulenburg has described "The Irishman Taylor" as "a notorious sadist", who was "ruthless" toward white and black South Africans alike.Leach (2012), p. 15. In October 1901, a letter accusing Taylor and other officers of crimes against the laws and customs of war was signed by 15 enlisted members of the BVC and mailed to the officer commanding at Pietersburg. In response, Taylor was arrested by British military police and put on trial at Pietersburg.
In the subsequent trial, Taylor was accused of ordering the murders of six unarmed Afrikaner men and boys at Valdezia on 2 July 1901 and the theft of their money and livestock. He was also charged with the murder of an unarmed Black man, who had refused to reveal the hiding place of his Boer employer. Australian Army officer J. F. Thomas, Taylor's defence attorney, managed to secure an acquittal on both charges. Taylor voluntarily resigned from military service, returned to Southern Rhodesia, and died at Bulawayo on 24 October 1941. In the award-winning Australian New Wave film Breaker Morant, Taylor is portrayed onscreen by John Waters.
Early life
Alfred Taylor was born into a middle class Anglican family in Dublin on 14 November 1861. His father, William Taylor, was a lawyer. His mother, Charlotte Bennett, was the daughter of an Anglo-Irish auctioneer and land agent. His father died in Texas in 1877 and his mother in 1879 and, at the age of 17, Taylor had to make his own way in the world. According to his unpublished memoirs, he became a merchant seaman and eventually became a ship's engineer. In 1886, Taylor was employed on a voyage between British India and Europe, when he jumped ship in Cape Town, and disappeared. After drifting to the Protectorate of Bechuanaland, he worked assembling machinery for the goldmines in Tati.
Rhodesia
Taylor then joined the British South Africa Police of the British South Africa Company (BSAC). In so doing, he played a major role in the BSAC's colonization of Matabeleland and the establishment of the colony of Rhodesia. Taylor preceded the Pioneer Column to Bulawayo, where he befriended King Lobengula of Matabeleland. In 1889, he witnessed the Rudd Concession signed between the King and the British South Africa Company. During the First Matabele War of 1893, Taylor acted as a guide to Cecil Rhodes. According to Taylor's unpublished memoirs and the "Plumtree Papers" by Mrs. Clarke, he had an argument with Rhodes whilst escorting him secretly to Bulawayo, threatening to abandon him.
According to South African historian Arthur Davey, Taylor was so feared among the Native population of Rhodesia that he received two nicknames in the Ndebele language: "Bulala" ("He Who Kills") and "Bamba" ("He Who Takes").Arthur Davey (1987), Breaker Morant and the Bushveldt Carbineers, Second Series No. 18. Van Riebeeck Society, Cape Town. p. lvvii. According to Australian Army Captain Frederick de Bertodano, "Bulala Taylor was an Irishman who had spent years among the natives and was known as a sadist. He frequently stirred up trouble in native Kraals and then shot some native 'in self defence', as he always stated. He was notorious and was distrusted by most white men he came into contact with."Arthur Davey (1987), Breaker Morant and the Bushveldt Carbineers, p. 55. Taylor later wrote that his Rhodesian estate, the Avoca Farm near Plumtree, was granted to him by Queen Victoria in return for services rendered.
During the Second Matabele War, Lt. Taylor commanded a unit of Mounted Scouts with Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert Plumer's Matabeleland Relief Force.Frank Sykes (1897), With Plumer in Matabeleland: An Account of the Operations of the Matabeleland Relief Force during the Rebellion of 1896, Archibald Constable & Co., Westminster. pp. 93–95. During the Battle of Thabas Amamba, Lt. Taylor "fired the first shot of the day" at a fleeing Ndebele whom he failed to wound or kill. His Mounted Scouts lost two killed and two wounded in the ensuing action.Sykes (1897), pp. 156–161. During the same battle, Lt. Taylor "caught sight of" an enemy combatant who "was dressed in a suit of khaki and was not a Matabele". Although Taylor "gave it as his opinion that" he had seen "a Basuto, fighting with the rebels", the incident "gave rise to the rumour that the rebels were led by white men."Sykes (1897), p. 159. In a handwritten account of his military service, Taylor claimed to have had "command of Plumer's Scouts" between 1896 and 1897. He further claimed to have been "shot through the leg in the Matopos in 1896".Leach (2012), p. 162.
Boer War
Lieutenant Taylor was recalled to active duty during the Second Boer War and rose to the rank of captain in the Intelligence Department of the War Office. According to historian Arthur Keppel-Jones, there was concern, upon the outbreak of hostilities in 1899, of an attack by the Boer Commandos against the Rhodesian railway lines. For this reason, four squadrons of Gen. Herbert Plumer's Rhodesian Regiment were deployed between Rhodes Drift and the Shashi Junction.Arthur Keppel-Jones (1983), Rhodes and Rhodesia: The White Conquest of Zimbabwe, 1884–1902, McGill-Queen's University Press, Kingston and Montreal. p. 591. Keppel-Jones elaborates, "The Boers, fearing an invasion from the north, placed the Waterberg and Soutpansberg Commandos, under Assistant Commandant-General F.A. Grobler, on that front. His task was to forestall invasion by raiding right up to Bulawayo. Grobler and his subordinate, Assistant-General H.C. van Rensburg, being timid and unenterprising officers, the task was not carried out. Plumer, on the other hand, was under orders to act on the defensive, protect the border, and not invade the Transvaal without a specific order."Keppel-Jones (1983), p. 591.
Captain Taylor described in a 1905 letter how, in 1900, he was "sent to the Transvaal to get information on Boer movements", which he "did to Genl. Plumer's satisfaction". On his return, Taylor was briefly "left in charge of the Detachment of A Squadron" until being ordered "to join Genl. Plumer at Crocodile Pools on the road to the Relief of Mafeking. I remained with him till I got Dysentery so bad I was sent back to Bulawayo Hospital."Leach (2012), p. 163. Upon his recovery, Taylor received "a wire from HQ Pretoria" ordering him "to report to Col Wood in Bulawayo. There I met a man named Keith who informed me that Lord Kitchener wanted me to find a way to Fort Botha, which was situated in the Makato Mountains."Leach (2012), p. 163.
Arrival in Northern Transvaal
Leading a party of six members of the Intelligence Department, Captain Taylor followed the Crocodile River until reaching the Soutpansberg Range. While interviewing Chief Madumetsa of the Mamadi People, Captain Taylor "began to suspect" the Chief of "collaboration or support for the Boers" and had him shot dead. Chief Madumetsa "was later buried by his tribesmen in the foothills of the nearby Zoutpansberg to the west of the Sand River."Leach (2012), p. 10. Upon reaching Fort Botha, Taylor found it occupied "by only two men named Lottering and Erasmus and from them I found out that the Boer Commando was at the foot of the hills and that they had a telephone attachment to Louis Trichardt, I broke up the machine and cut off all communication by wire to Pietersburg and the surrounding district."Leach (2012), p. 163.
The Attack on Perdeplaas Farm
On 4 May 1901, Capt. Taylor was part of a patrol which arrived at the Perdeplaas Farm (now Zwarthoek), near the peak of the Soutpansberg Range, to transport the wife and children of Zoutpansberg Commando member Coenraad Jacobus van den Berg to the concentration camp at Pietersburg.Van Niekerk, M.(?) Unbeknownst to Taylor, C. J. van den Berg had caught a "fever, probably malaria", and had been sent home to recover. Before the British patrol had arrived, the Burgher had retreated to some nearby rocks and instructed his wife to wave her bonnet if she felt threatened.Leach (2012), p. 7. When the patrol began looting the farm, Mrs. van den Berg waved her bonnet and her husband opened fire. In a brief exchange of fire, a shot from C.J. van den Berg's rifle severely injured a member of the patrol, R. H. Summers.Leach (2012), p. 8.
In a 1905 letter, Taylor recalled being certain that, "owing to the firing, the Boers heard we were there." Therefore, before clearing "into the mountains",Leach (2012), p. 163. a ceasefire was called. The van den Berg family was promised that no harm would come to them if they cared for Summers until a patrol returned for him. However, Summers later died and was buried on a nearby farm.Leach (2012), p. 8. Taylor and his men remained "in the mountains for 14 days" until being "relieved by Cols Grenfell and Colenbrander when they took Louis Trichardt."Leach (2012), p. 163.
On 9 May 1901, Cols. Johan William Colenbrander and H.L. Grenfell rode into Louis Trichardt ahead of a mixed force of about 600 men. In addition to Kitchener's Fighting Scouts, the force included elements of the Pietersburg Light Horse, the Wiltshire Regiment, the Bushveldt Carbineers (BVC), a large force of Native South African and Indigenous Australian "Irregulars" and six members of the Intelligence Department under Taylor's command.Leach (2012), pp. 2–4. Even though Trichardt was "reeling from the annual effects of malaria", British and Imperial forces sacked the town and arrested an estimated 90 male residents suspected of links to the Zoutpansberg Commando.Leach (2012), p. 3.
On 10 May 1901, Captain Taylor returned to the Perdeplaas Farm to "even the score" with C.J. van den Berg. Although the latter was "bed-ridden and barely able to walk", Mrs. van den Berg and their daughter were ordered to bring him to the door. Once they did so, C.J. van den Berg told his family in Afrikaans that the soldiers were going to kill him and kissed them goodbye. After walking only a few paces from the house, Burgher van den Berg was summarily shot by an ad hoc firing squad and buried in a shallow grave. His wife and children were given "five minutes to get your things". The farmhouse was then burned down and the van den Berg family was transported to the concentration camp at Pietersburg.Leach (2012), pp. 7–9. According to the deposition of Australian Bushveldt Carbineers Trooper Robert Mitchell Cochrane, the cattle herds from Perdeplaas Farm were stolen by Captain Taylor. They were secretly driven across the Rhodesian border, and sold in Bulawayo,Leach (2012), pp. 165–167. where Boer Commando attacks against the southern railway lines had more than doubled the price of food.Keppel-Jones (1983), p. 597.