President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Britain's Duke of Kent paid homage on Saturday to more than 70,000 Britons, Boers and blacks killed in the 1899-1902 conflict. But their messages of reconciliation were heard by an audience comprised almost entirely of blacks.
Clearly missing from the crowd were the white Afrikaners who had gathered for their own commemorations 60 km away at a Boer monument or on the private farm of the great-grandson of Marthinus Steyn, the last president of the Boer republic of the Orange Free State.
The Duke of Kent came close to the apology denied by the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, during his visit in January, when he labelled the war "more pointless than most".
The duke said: "No one who has read the history of the time could fail to be moved and shocked by the shameful neglect, particularly of women and children, that occurred in those places [British concentration camps]."
Mr Mbeki welcomed what he called the new relationship with Britain, but said the Afrikaner republics had been right to fight London's armies.
"We pay homage to the courageous Boer men and women . . . [who] had the courage to take on a Goliath in defence of their freedom. We pay homage to them because . . . they asserted the right of all colonised people to independence," he said.
In another ceremony, about 1,000 Afrikaners, led by about 40 horsemen waving old Boer republic flags, marched through the streets of Bloemfontein to the War Museum of the Boer Republics.
The museum, funded by the old apartheid regime and regarded by some as an Afrikaner propaganda tool, is now emphasising the role played by blacks during the Boer War.