ABSTRACT
There was a time during the apartheid era when the historian of the Irish diaspora in South Africa was inundated with requests from white South Africans wanting to prove their Irish ancestry. In the USA such third generation might have been 'Irish'; in South Africa they were biltong-eating South African. For the devoted young Irish nationalist South Africa offered another attraction. It was the only place in the English-speaking world where a white nationalist people were effectively standing up to the British Empire. As indicated, the Cape and Natal Irish nationalism tended to be of the Home Rule variety. The immediate effect of the eventual defeat of the Boers and the British annexation of what became the Transvaal Colony and the Orange River Colony was that most of South Africa's Irish advanced nationalists left the country. The sanctum of Boer republicanism had for the moment been destroyed.
