The backdrop to this story is the South African Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), fought between the British Empire and two Boer Republics in Southern Africa. This mini-drama series focuses on the lives of those who had to endure and suffer through it. When the great insurrections, revolutions and wars sweep over everyday people, their social fabric is torn to shreds, their futures become uncertain, their lives open-ended. And in their desperate predicament they find themselves doing what would have been unthinkable during the secure and predictable times of peace. To Captain Brooks, Harry the Welsh miner, the wealthy van Wyk family and people like Daantjie van Wyk and his beautiful wife, Magrieta, the war becomes the ultimate test of who they really are. Perhaps only the little dreamer, Fienatjie Minter, understands the unspeakable things that suddenly engulf their daily lives... because, in her strange dreams, it is only she who can hear the dying children sing