Twenty years before the Easter Rising, an Irish brigade fought with the Boers against the British, writes Joe Humphreys in South Africa.

Broederstroom, a sleepy farming village 15 miles west of Pretoria, is an unlikely hotbed of Irish nationalism. Afrikaans is the first language here, and the only contact people have with Ireland is the occasional sunburnt visitor to a local, former home of Andries Pretorius, the Boer leader who gave South Africa's capital its name.

It is in Broederstroom, however, or rather in a small farmhouse at the end of a potholed dirt track, that the headquarters of the Irish Brigade Memorial Fund can be found. A Tricolour and a Vierkleur - South Africa's former national flag, once synonymous with the apartheid regime - fly side-by-side at the entrance.

On the farm live brothers Dirk and Thomas Van Tonder, whose late father chaired the fund shortly after its inception in 1957. Neither brother has visited Ireland, and the family has no Irish roots, yet there is nothing they like better, they say, than a good sing-song to a folk tune from the Wolfe Tones or the Fureys and Davey Arthur.

"How do you do, young Willie McBride?" Thomas intones with his eyes closed. "When I hear the words of that song - Oiy! I find it hard not to cry." Their passion may jar with modern sensitivities - but perhaps only because of the story they cherish. It is a story - a true story - of Irish nationalists in a colonial war. It is a story of patriotism but also fanaticism, and no small amount of racism.

No wonder, then, that the story of the Irish Brigade in South Africa has been virtually written out of the history of Ireland's "freedom struggle". How many of those partaking in the Easter Rising commemorations, for example, will know that three of the 15 executed leaders of the 1916 insurrection had previously campaigned - militarily or otherwise - for the Boers? James Connolly and Tom Clarke were two of those men. The third was Major John MacBride, whose Transvaal exploits are explored in a new book published by Anthony Jordan.

The Mayo historian says that "the way South Africa has developed" has made people uncomfortable about the historical episode. "Irish people are a bit embarrassed that we might have fought for the Boers because of the international standing of the Boers today."

But, says Jordan, "We should honour Irish soldiers who took part in all wars. The Irish Transvaal Brigade should be remembered."

THE GROUP WAS formed shortly after the outbreak of war between the Boers, who hailed from Dutch settlers, and a British empire that had annexed their republics. With MacBride at the helm, along with an Irish-American commander, Col John Blake, the Irish Brigade numbered about 300 at its height. A further 1,200 Irishmen - most of whom had come to the gold-rich Transvaal in search of work - fought in other divisions of the Boer army, and many more Irishmen served in a British uniform against them.

But there is something about the Transvaal Brigade which stands out - and it is not just its close connection to the plotters of 1916. The band of fighters, whose strength was exaggerated 10-fold by propagandists, became a rallying-point for pro-Boer sympathy in Ireland.

A letter on display at the former Pretoria home of Boer ex-president Paul Kruger gives a sense of the strength of feeling in Irish nationalist circles. Addressed to Kruger from a Celtic Literary Society in Co Laois, it stated its members' desire "to disassociate ourselves from our fellow countrymen whom poverty has forced into the ranks of your enemy . . . Ours are the sentiment of the Transvaal Irish Brigade," the signatories declared. In 1899, up to 20,000 people took part in one Dublin rally in support of the Boers. Other protests, including a rowdy gathering outside Trinity College, were marred by clashes with police.

A critical figure in the campaign was Arthur Griffith, a close associate of MacBride's, who spent two years in South Africa - for a time living across the street from Kruger in the capital. Shortly after his return to Ireland in 1898, Griffith formed the Irish Transvaal Committee in offices on Lower Abbey Street in Dublin.

Less than a year later, out of the nucleus of this committee and in the same offices, he established Cumann na Gaedheal - the precursor of Sinn Féin.

The latter party had been largely inspired by the Boer philosophy of national self-sufficiency, according to Durban-based historian Donal P McCracken, who has written extensively on the subject. In a similar vein to Jordan, Prof McCracken notes that the history of Ireland and the Anglo-Boer war has been "left behind in the headlong dash for Irish freedom".

Strong links between Irish and Boer nationalists stretch back to at least 1896 when Dr Mark Ryan, the leader of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), struck up a friendship with Solomon Gillingham, an influential second-generation Irish settler in Pretoria. Twenty years before staging the Easter Rising, was the IRB trying to open a second front against the British? Jordan believes it is a possibility. "The IRB may have sent these guys [the Irish Brigade] out to South Africa with an eye to a possible struggle - a possible war. You can't prove it but there are more than a few straws in the wind to support the theory."

McCracken says "it might be stretching it a bit" to see the IRB's controlling hand on the brigade. Nonetheless, he says, "to anyone going out to South Africa in 1897 it would have been pretty obvious there was going to be a punch-up."

The war ended with a victory-of-sorts for the British, marked in Dublin by the construction of a triumphal arch at St Stephen's Green. Erected in 1907 at the Grafton Street entrance, where it remains today, it was quickly dubbed "the traitors' gate" by nationalists.

As for the impact of the war on nationalist thinking in Ireland, McCracken says Griffith became more convinced of the futility of an insurrection on Irish soil. MacBride, however, drew no such lesson from the Boer campaign. Unlike Griffith, he played a full part in the Rising and was executed in May 1916. As he faced a British firing squad, he reportedly uttered these last words: "I have looked down the muzzles of too many guns in the South African War to fear death, and now please carry out your sentence."

An intriguing footnote to MacBride's legacy came 20 years ago when an ANC activist called Robert McBride killed three people and injured 69 in a car-bomb attack in Durban. McBride's claims that he was a grandson of the Irish Major were said to have saved him from the death penalty, and he now works as a police chief in Johannesburg.

WHATEVER THE MOTIVE of the Transvaal Brigade, it has earned a special place in Boer, or Afrikaner, folklore. Almost 20 years after it first met, the Irish Brigade Memorial Fund unveiled a monument in Johannesburg honouring the Irish commandos. The Irish Government was represented at the 1975 ribbon-cutting ceremony, for which Betsie Verwoerd - a matriarch figure of the apartheid regime - was guest of honour. At Broederstroom, Dirk Van Tonder carefully dusts down a display case containing the scissors she used on the day. Alongside it is a photo of a nine-year-old Dirk presenting Mrs Verwoerd with a bunch of flowers.

The monument fell foul of vandalism some years later - prompting the fringe political party Freedom Front Plus to cover the cost of relocating it to a whites-only commune in rural Orania, Northern Province. Van Tonder admits not everyone supported the move but he believes it was the right thing to do as "nothing will happen to the monument there".

The statue's original plaque, celebrating the "everlasting bond between the Irish and Boer nations" is in Van Tonder's possession, along with other files and memorabilia. He says he is at an "advanced stage" of developing a heritage site at Broederstroom, complete with museum and Irish pub - in two cottages already erected at the site. "I had to explain to the builder I wanted the roofs crooked," he jokes. "This cottage" - he gestures to the smaller - "will house a photo-history, so that whether you are white, or black, or Chinese, or Russian, you will know about the Irish Brigade."

Van Tonder is hoping the Irish Government might support his project, although he is aware that it is not the most "politically correct" in today's age. Indeed, Ireland may be tempted to ignore its early links to South Africa, not only because of the activities of the Transvaal Brigade but, more importantly, because of subsequent events. The Irish were shamefully over-represented in the Rand Revolt of 1922 when white miners violently protested against improved pay conditions for blacks. The writings of republican leaders, such as Griffith, revealed a racist sentiment as bad if not worse than the early 20th-century norm in Europe.

McCracken notes that while Griffith was intellectually "head and shoulders above the others of his generation . . . he was anti-black and anti-Jewish; there is no use pretending otherwise".

McCracken says another awkward question for Ireland is why a "special relationship" existed for so long between it and the Afrikaner government. "That relationship was there until the early 1960s, which is very late by international standards." To the Van Tonders, a special relationship between the Boers and the Irish continues, at least in spirit. "We see ourselves in parallel with the Irish," says Dirk. "We still want our country. We are Boers. We are not actually part of the Rainbow nation. People frown on that. But that's how we are."

He stresses that he welcomed the end of apartheid because "it freed the Boers too" - in their case from the Broederbond, a secret society which governed almost all affairs in the state. Irrespective of his own views, he adds, the planned heritage site "is not meant to be a political statement. We simply want to acknowledge what the Irish did. There is a debt there."

• Anthony Jordan's Boer War to Easter Rising: The Writings of John MacBride is published by Westport Books, €14. Jordan will give a public lecture at the Ilac Library, Dublin at 6.30pm on Apr 24. Admission is free.

• The Irish Brigade Memorial Fund can be found at: www.iers.virafrikaans.com.

• The National Museum at Collins Barracks, Dublin, is finalising a major new exhibition on Irish military history, which will open this summer and run for 10 years. It will cover conflicts from 1550 to 1998, and include memorabilia from both sides of the Boer War