Wild West forts

[Phrossack]

The Boers didn't use kraals against the British because the British had big guns. Kraals are hugely advantageous when your enemy doesn't have artillery but are next to useless when they do. Since the British had big guns and the Boers didn't, the British stole the idea of the kraal but used superior building materials, resulting in the blockhouses Masada mentioned above. The Boers were reduced to irregular warfare against the British, unable to move against fixed British positions - the Boer seige of Ladysmith is now considered a mistake - while their own fixed positions were vulnerable to the far superior British munitions.

The Boers most certainly had artillery, which they used in said siege. In fact, here's an NYT article from the war.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F4061EFD355D11738DDDAC0A94D8415B8985F0D3

Then there's this source, which mentions the Boers using fully-automatic cannons with 1-lb. shells. This also mentions how the Boers used Krupp-made 75mm guns, plus a few 115mm "Long Tom" guns that could outrange anything the British had:

"…6.15 a.m. the 4.7 Naval gun began firing at Long Tom who was battering us a good deal. The Naval 12 pounders also opened fire but they could not get the right range and dropped very short indeed sometimes… the enemy 6" gun shot beautifully. Put two shells right alongside the 4.7 gun and one of these landing a foot to the right of the right gun support took off poor Egerton's leg at the knee, smashing also his other foot…"

 

[Dachs]

Yeah, Boer artillery was a pretty big pain for the first year or so of the war. Obviously they didn't have much of an ability to use guns after the British took over the main population centers of the republics and forced the Boers into commando fighting - hence why the blockhouses were so effective.

 

[Lord Baal]

The Boers most certainly had artillery, which they used in said siege. In fact, here's an NYT article from the war.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F4061EFD355D11738DDDAC0A94D8415B8985F0D3

Then there's this source, which mentions the Boers using fully-automatic cannons with 1-lb. shells. This also mentions how the Boers used Krupp-made 75mm guns, plus a few 115mm "Long Tom" guns that could outrange anything the British had:

"…6.15 a.m. the 4.7 Naval gun began firing at Long Tom who was battering us a good deal. The Naval 12 pounders also opened fire but they could not get the right range and dropped very short indeed sometimes… the enemy 6" gun shot beautifully. Put two shells right alongside the 4.7 gun and one of these landing a foot to the right of the right gun support took off poor Egerton's leg at the knee, smashing also his other foot…"

They didn't have very many of them though. And they didn't have artillery during the period I've been discussing the most in this thread, which is prior to the Boer War. The Boers only really started buying up artillery and guns after the Anglo-Zulu War, when they realised that they were next. They never built up much of a force of them, though they used what they had very, very well.