South-West Africa

by William Eveleigh

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Theal’s “History of South Africa” (1486-1691), p. 2.

[12] Mendellssau’s “South African Bibliography,” Vol. I., p. 185.

[13] Paterson’s “Narrative of Four Journeys,” 1789, p. 113.

[14] Cheeseman’s “William Threlfall, the Missionary Martyr of Namaqualand,” 1911.

[15] Cook’s “Modern Missionary,” 1849, p. 136.

[16] Alexander’s “Expedition of Discovery,” 1838.

Chapter VI
THE LATER HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

The red tide of war surged backward and forward over the land in the ’sixties, and deeds of appalling cruelty were perpetrated. The Hereros fought to secure their independence from the Hottentots, and they were at length victorious, but a guerilla war again broke out in the ’seventies, and the country was in a state of chronic unsettlement. In 1868 the harassed missionaries connected with the Rhenish Missionary Society, whose stations were either plundered or destroyed during these wars, sent an urgent appeal to the British Government for intervention and requested that the whole of Hereroland should be “declared British territory, under British protection.” The appeal was backed up by Bismarck, but the Secretary of State for the Colonies was “unable to adopt the German views on the subject.” Efforts were made, however, to restore peace among the tribes by a special commissioner sent up from the Cape. The matter of annexation was not allowed to rest, and in 1875 the Cape Parliament passed a resolution in favour of the extension of the limits of the Colony so as to include Walvis Bay and as much country inland as it was considered expedient to acquire. With a view to ascertaining the feelings of the native chiefs in Namaqualand and Damaraland, Mr. W. C. Palgrave was sent on a commission of inquiry. He was cordially received by the chiefs, with whom he made treaties which placed the country under British jurisdiction, and he also arranged that a European magistrate or diplomatic adviser should reside among the people at Okahandja. The missionaries were in hearty agreement, as were the German and Swedish traders. Sir Bartle Frere, the Governor at the Cape, strongly favoured annexation, and urged it upon the Home Government, but all that they would agree to was the acquisition of Walvis Bay with some 400 miles of land around it. Formal possession of this area was taken in 1878. The Guano Islands off the coast, which had enjoyed an odorous celebrity for some time, had been annexed in 1867. Sir Bartle Frere renewed his representations at a latter time, but the British Government still adhered to the opinion that it was inexpedient to encourage any scheme of extension of territory in South-West Africa.

When war broke out again in 1880 between the Namaquas and the Damaras, Palgrave was recalled from the country where he had resided for a time, and Major Musgrave, who had been acting as diplomatic adviser at Okahandja, was removed to Walvis Bay. This outbreak of hostilities led to correspondence between the British Government and Germany. In a memorandum presented to Earl Granville by the German Ambassador it was stated (and the admission is significant in view of subsequent events) that “since there could be no question as to an independent proceeding on the part of Germany for the protection of life and property of its subjects in those regions,” it was the wish of the German Government that “the British Government would direct that any measures ordered or intended for the protection of life and property of English subjects might be extended likewise to the German missionaries and traders living there.” This drew from the British Government the admission that “Her Majesty’s Government could not be responsible for what might take place outside British territory, which only included Walvis Bay, and a very small portion of country immediately surrounding it.” That careful note was taken of this reply is evident from later events.

Meanwhile the Berlin Geographische Nachrichten, of November 1879, had printed an article by Ernst von Weber in which the writer had made a cogent and powerful plea in favour of a plan for a German Colony in South Africa, and it is not without significance that, early in 1883, the German Embassy politely inquired of the British Foreign Office whether British protection would be extended to a factory about to be established by a Bremen merchant north of the Orange River at Angra Pequena, intimating that if this could not be done they would do their best to extend to it the same measure of protection which they gave to their subjects in remote places, but without any design to establish a footing in South Africa. This was rather a disturbing inquiry to Earl Derby; probably he called to mind the reply given to a previous question, in which a definite statement as to the extent of British territory had been made, so he immediately communicated with the Cape Government asking if they had any prospect of undertaking control of Angra Pequena in the event of the place being declared British. Unfortunately no reply was forthcoming from the Cape for some months, and the matter dragged on. But it is evident that Germany was not idle: one Vogelsang, acting as agent for Herr F. A. E. Luderitz, the Bremen merchant, landed at Angra Pequena, got into touch with the German missionary at Bethany and Chief Joseph Frederick, produced treaty forms, and soon had the satisfaction of annexing some 200 miles of land around the Bay. In a report of an official visit paid to Angra Pequena in October 1883, on behalf of the British Government, by Captain Church, of Her Majesty’s Navy, it is definitely asserted that “it was through the influence of the Rhenish missionary at Bethany that Herr Luderitz obtained this extraordinary purchase of coast land.” The cession is dated 25th August, 1883. So Germany obtained a place in the African sun.

This action on the part of Luderitz was keenly resented by British traders, for Captain Sinclair had obtained on behalf of De Pass, Spence & Co. a cession of the coast territory from Angra Pequena to Baker’s Cove from the chief of the Bondelswaarts in 1863, and for twenty years the company had enjoyed undisturbed and undisputed possession of the area. Luderitz, however, assumed proprietary rights.

Germany now made another move in the game. In November 1883 the British Foreign Office was asked by the German Ambassador whether Her Majesty’s Government claimed any rights of sovereignty over Angra Pequena and adjacent territory. The reply was made that while Great Britain only laid claim to certain specified areas, any claim to sovereignty or jurisdiction by a foreign Power would “infringe their legitimate rights,” since the country north of the Orange River had been viewed as a kind of commercial dependency of Cape Colony. But this did not deter Bismarck, who had evidently resolved on a definite course of action. Accordingly he instructed the German Consul at Cape Town to announce that Herr Luderitz and his establishments were under the protection of the German Empire, and the announcement was made on April 25th, 1884. Then the Cape Government woke up. In the following month the Governor, Sir Hercules Robinson, telegraphed to the Home Government that “Ministers have decided to recommend Parliament to undertake control of the coast-line from the Orange River to Walvis Bay.” Earl Derby also seems to have been aroused about this time, for in June he announced that arrangements would be made for giving protection under the British flag to any persons, German and English, who had duly acquired concessions or established commercial enterprises on the coast-line. In the following month the Cape Parliament passed a resolution in favour of the annexation of the whole coast-line from the Orange River to the Portuguese frontier; but the matter had been too long delayed—the prize had been grasped by other hands; for before the Cape resolutions could reach England a German gunboat had appeared at Angra Pequena, the German flag had been hoisted, and a German Protectorate formally proclaimed.

This was an act of state on the part of Germany, for the territory was vacant in the eye of International Law. Britain had done nothing to enforce her claims over the territory, though she had ample justification. So early as 1796 Captain Alexander of the Star sloop landed at Angra Pequena and “took possession in His Majesty’s name by hoisting the King’s colours, firing three volleys and turning over the soil.” Unfortunately, Great Britain had persistently neglected all opportunities to place the matter beyond reasonable doubt, so there was nothing left for her but to acquiesce in the German expansion with the best grace possible, and a reluctant recognition was given to the German claims, although European Colonial opinion in South Africa recognised the action of Germany as nothing less than an unnecessary and unwelcome intrusion. An Anglo-German Commission, consisting of Sir Sidney Shippard and a German representative, was appointed to investigate the claims of British subjects who had secured concessions on the coast in the vicinity of Angra Pequena before the German occupation and to discuss the interests of the various parties involved in the annexation. Matters were at length adjusted in a fairly satisfactory manner. The Report of the Commissioners was never published, twenty-five copies only being printed, of which twelve were sent to Berlin, twelve to London, and one was retained by the High Commissioner for South Africa.

In a statement made to the Reichstag on June 23rd, 1884, Bismarck said it was the intention of the Government to issue for Angra Pequena (renamed Luderitz Bay by Herr Luderitz) an Imperial Letter of protection similar to the Royal Charter granted by England to the East India Company. When defining his colonial policy at a later time he affirmed that it was not to found provinces but “mercantile settlements which would be placed under the protection of the Empire.” The subsequent history of South-West Africa affords a striking commentary on what proved to be a characteristic Bismarckian utterance. Unfortunately, Great Britain took the declaration at its face value.

Angra Pequena was but a starting point for large extensions of territory, and German eyes were soon turned in the direction of Damaraland. When rumours of designs on the country reached Cape Town, Mr. W. C. Palgrave was sent to Walvis Bay to make inquiries and to learn what measures, if any, should be taken in order to protect colonial interests and the rights of Her Majesty’s subjects north of the Orange River. On arriving at Walvis Bay Mr. Palgrave was requested by Kamaherero to visit him at Okahandja, and there, without inducement of any kind, the Herero Chief handed the Commissioner a Deed of Cession of Damaraland dated December 29th, 1884, giving “our whole country” over to Great Britain. Mr. Palgrave accepted the cession for transmission to England, but the British Government subsequently declined the offer and stated that it would have no objection to the extension of the German Protectorate “inland as far as the 20th degree of East longitude.” Was not Germany a “friendly Power”? Kamaherero then appealed to the Aborigines Protection Society, and stated that he had given his country to the British in 1876 and in 1884, yet the Germans threatened to seize it and bring war and destruction upon his people. But no help was forthcoming from Great Britain, and accordingly in the following year Germany seized the country.

These developments were viewed with considerable pride in Germany, for the early period of colonisation was characterised by immense national enthusiasm. The perfervid Pan-Germanists and the sword-rattling Chauvinists fanned the flame, and for a time the whole nation was “Colony mad.” No consideration whatever was paid to the fact that the newly acquired possessions in South-West Africa had long been widely recognised as British commercial dependencies. Small wonder that the startled colonists in South Africa rubbed their eyes in amazement at the displays of German high politics.

Among the events which call for brief notice during this period mention must be made of a characteristic Boer trek which took place from the Transvaal into Damaraland in 1873. A party of farmers journeyed with their families and stock across the waterless wastes of the Kalahari Desert to seek out a new home. They endured the most horrible sufferings and their line of march was a line of the graves of their dead. A relief expedition went up from Cape Town to their assistance in 1879, and some 300 of them were found in great straits in North Damaraland. They subsequently trekked into Portuguese territory.

In 1885 W. W. Jordan, a trader, attempted to establish a Republic in South Ovamboland. He purchased land from a Chief, cut it up into farms, secured the co-operation of a few other Europeans, established a Council and named the area Upingtonia in honour of Sir Thomas Upington, the Cape politician; but in the following year Jordan was murdered by natives, and the “Republic” came to an end.

Chapter VII
THE GERMAN OCCUPATION

During the early years of the German occupation the seat of Government was at Otjimbingue, where Dr. Goering, the Imperial Commissioner, had a handful of soldiers to assist him in the work of administration. In 1890 K. von François was appointed Commissioner and Military Commander, and as the few troops in the country had been reinforced, he proceeded to seize the territory around Windhoek, and two years later the first settlers from Germany arrived to make their homes at Windhoek, destined to be the new capital. François set about the task of subjugating the natives in typical Prussian fashion, and apparently adopted a policy of colonisation by the Mauser. In 1893 he stormed the stronghold of Hendrik Witbooi, the Hottentot leader, and the country was forthwith plunged into prolonged and costly wars. Even after Witbooi’s defeat other tribes carried on a most harassing guerilla campaign. In 1902 the Bondelswaarts rose, and in the following year the Hereros revolted. The farms of white settlers were devastated, and men and women were cruelly murdered, but, significantly enough, British and Boer farmers were not molested. In 1904, General von Trotha, who had done his utmost to suppress the rising, greatly exasperated at the failure of many of his “drives,” entered on a campaign of extermination. He issued a proclamation in which it was stated that “within the German border every Herero, with or without a rifle, with or without cattle, will be shot.” The record of the period which followed is a most sanguinary one. Thousands of Hereros were destroyed, and thousands more were driven out into the parched desert wastes, where they died of thirst, and where for several years after long lines of white bones lay bleaching in the sun, marking the track the stricken people had tried to follow across the wilderness. In “Peter Moor,” a narrative of the campaign written by a German soldier, some significant sidelights are thrown on the methods adopted in this campaign. Dealing with one incident the writer describes the foodless, waterless condition of the country, and how the soldiers stealthily surrounded a party of the enemy, men, women and children; and he proceeds: “We then led the men away to one side and shot them. The women and children, who looked pitiably starved, we hunted into the bush.” It is said that no less than 40,000 Hereros were destroyed in these wars.

Probably very few natives would have been left alive in the country had von Trotha been permitted to continue his work of destruction, but the repeal of his famous proclamation was ordered by Bismarck, and he was superseded by Herr von Lindequist in 1905. Von Lindequist issued a general amnesty to the Hereros, and wisely set aside reserves for those who surrendered. This conciliatory policy had an instant effect on the Hereros; but the Hottentots continued the struggle until 1907. The land of the Hereros was appropriated by the Government and made fiscal domain.

The campaign was a costly one for Germany, since it involved the loss of many hundreds of lives and an expenditure of some £30,000,000. At the height of the campaign there were 19,000 Germans in the field, with a large number of Dutch auxiliaries responsible for the transport arrangements.

There is no doubt that the main causes of the native risings were the bureaucratic methods of the colonial administration and the behaviour of the white traders. “Germany has nothing to learn from England,” said the colonial party’s official organ in Africa at the beginning of the enterprise, “or any other colonising nation, having a method of handling social problems peculiar to the German spirit.” Beginning in this temper, it is hardly a matter for surprise that their policy in South-West Africa has been marked by all the defects of the “German spirit.”

They failed utterly to appreciate the significance of the fact that England had achieved her success as a great colonising Power by adopting the twin principles of liberty and diversity in her dealings with subject or conquered races. With characteristic arrogance the Germans proceeded to apply the typical Prussian principles of compulsion and uniformity to all their methods of administration, and the “mailed fist” became the most appropriate symbol of German colonial rule. A ready-made system of Prussian bureaucracy was established; Berlin and Potsdam had their replicas on a small but exact scale in the little settlements where officialism flourished, and the cast-iron rules “made in Germany” were applied to the peculiarly flexible problems of colonial administration. The “system” was infallible! It had wrought miracles with home administration. It had only to be applied in Africa, and it would inevitably work the miracle of colonisation. Little regard was paid to native customs and traditions of life. Officialism rode roughshod over the ancient ways of life, tribal laws, and native susceptibilities in a manner that aroused the keenest resentment among the people. In a word the attempt was not to colonise but to Germanise.

“We started with a wrong conception of colonial possibilities,” said Professor Bonn, of Munich University, in a striking address before the Royal Colonial Institute on “German Colonial Policy,” early in 1914. “We wanted to concentrate on Africa the emigrants we were losing at the beginning of the colonial enterprise. We wanted to build up on African soil a new Germany and create daughter states as you have done in Australia and in Canada. We carried this idea to its bitter end. We tried it in South-West Africa and produced a huge native rising, causing the loss of much treasure and many lives. We tried to assume to ourselves the functions of Providence, and we tried to exterminate a native race whom our lack of wisdom had goaded into rebellion. We succeeded in breaking up the native tribes, but we have not yet succeeded in creating a new Germany.”

Worse still, some of the officials sent out were guilty of excesses and crimes which left a most evil odour. There were not wanting, of course, men who brought to their posts a sense of public duty and a high standard of personal honour, but “stories of slavery, violence, cruelty, illegality, and lust, committed both by officials and planters, were sent home too frequently by missionaries and clean-handed men in the colonial service, who could not see these things and be silent, and disciplinary proceedings at home generally confirmed the imputations of report, and frequently proved that the half had not been told.”[17]

Among the traders there was little or no sense of obligation towards the native races; their policy was entirely one of exploitation. No stronger words of condemnation of the ill-treatment of the people have been written than those which have come from German writers. At the time of the Herero insurrection the Cross Gazette stated: “Unscrupulous traders have been allowed to exploit the inexperience and the recklessness of the Hereros. The debts contracted with the white traders had enormously increased during recent years, while villages had mortgaged their cattle and their entire land with their creditors.”

A white resident who wrote home from Outjo did not hesitate to affirm that “most of the white traders are said to have been murdered, and in their fate one can only see a not unjustifiable act of vengeance on the part of the natives, who have avenged the unscrupulous outrages and plundering of the traders. The traders plundered the natives systematically. Every one took what he wanted.”

Pastor Meyer, a missionary, stated that “the traders took from the Hereros their land, though they had paid their debts four or five times over, since no receipts were given, and 400 per cent. was charged.”

In 1904, Herr Schlettwein, a Government expert who has had the honour of being called in to instruct the members of the Budget Committee of the Reichstag on the principles of colonisation, wrote in a pamphlet a characteristic German exposition of the policy of “frightfulness” as applied to the colonies. “In colonial politics,” states this disciple of Nietzsche and Bernhardi, “we stand at the parting of the ways—on the one side the aim must be healthy egoism and practical colonisation, and on the other exaggerated humanitarianism, vague idealism, irrational sentimentality. The Hereros must be compelled to work and, to work without compensation and in return for their food only. Forced labour for years is only a just punishment, and at the same time it is the best method of training them. The feelings of Christianity and philanthropy with which the missionary works must for the present be repudiated with all energy.”

These words are a sufficient commentary on an emphatic statement made in the Speech from the Throne with which the Reichstag was opened sixteen years before, when colonial enthusiasm was at fever heat, when it was affirmed that it must be a solemn duty of the Empire to “win the Dark Continent for Christian civilisation.”

The use of force as the method of civilisation has had its inevitable result on the natives. In some districts it is not safe for a German to venture to-day, and no German settler who valued his life would presume to make a home anywhere near these areas without the protection afforded by the presence of armed soldiers. There has also been a steady exodus of Hereros into British territory for many years, for, as one of the Hereros wrote to his kinsmen, “the land of the English is a good land.”

The Ovambos were never conquered. As recently as July of 1914, the Luderitzbucht newspaper, the Lüderitzbuchter Zeitung, stated: “If you were to tell an Ovambo despot in the far north that he was under German protection, he would laugh himself to death.” The mailed fist is a poor coloniser.

Herr Dernburg, the versatile ex-general manager of the Dresden Bank, who was appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1907, made a determined attempt to cleanse the Augean stables of administrative irregularity, and initiated many useful measures of reform. In 1908 he paid a visit of inspection to South-West Africa, and the years which followed his tour saw considerable progress. There is something more than irony in the fact that when war broke out Germany was beginning to profit by the lessons learned in the hard school of experience, and had peace continued, slow but certain progress would have been witnessed. On South-West Africa, in annual subsidies, administrative expenses, and warlike operations, it is estimated that Germany has spent nearly £50,000,000.

Officialism has been the bane of the country; the whole system of government has been altogether too elaborate and costly. At one time every third male adult was an official, and, apparently, the main occupation of these men was the compilation of voluminous records of all that pertained to the life of the civilians. Even the German settlers have been moved to protest at times against the petty restrictions imposed upon them by the dominant military caste. Taxes have been heavy; little encouragement has been given to the prospector; favouritism has been manifest in the apportioning of land; persistent attempts have been made to Germanise the non-Germans, notably the Dutch settlers, and the whole population has been weighed down with a burden of ordinances and regulations altogether out of proportion to the needs of a young colony.

The local government was vested in a Council of forty members, which had advisory functions only. The Governor, appointed by the Kaiser, had the supreme authority. Twenty members were elected by the Districts, and twenty were nominated by the Governor. All bills were first submitted to the Governor, and only such measures as had been laid before him, or suggested by him, could be passed into law.

Protests against such autocratic rule for a young country were numerous, and many appeals were made for a more representative form of government, but all were in vain. The “system” could not be weakened, and the last of the German Governors kept it inviolate to the end.