South-West Africa

by William Eveleigh

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.

German Intrigue in Africa

The recent rebellion within the Union of South Africa may be viewed as the culminating point of forty years of intrigue in South Africa, for German emissaries have been at work in the country seeking to undermine British authority since the ’seventies of the last century.

“Would to God,” exclaimed Karl Mauch, the traveller and explorer, on his return to Germany from the Transvaal in 1873, “that this fine country might soon become a German colony.” A year or two later Bismarck was urged by Germans in the country to send a “steady stream of Germans through Delagoa Bay to secure future domination over the Transvaal, and so pave the way for a great German Empire in Africa.” When in 1884 the German flag was hoisted over Angra Pequena the perfervid Treitschke went into ecstasies of delight. This was but a beginning to the advocate of a greater Germany. He postulated a “natural tendency for a Teutonic population to take over South Africa,” and painted in rosy colours a picture of a great confederation of German possessions in Africa. South-West Africa was regarded as a point d’appui; its real value lay in its proximity to the coveted lands in the possession of the “dis-affected” Boers. With his usual prescience Sir Bartle Frere saw the danger, and warned the Boers that “the little finger of Germany might be heavier than the loins of the British Government.” When the Anglo-Boer war broke out a Press campaign was inaugurated in Germany in favour of the “downtrodden Boers,” and it is highly probable that the Kaiser’s famous telegram sent to President Kruger after the Jameson raid was not the impulsive message it was thought to be at the time, but part of a carefully planned scheme of conspiracy against England.

As far back as July of 1895, Die Grenzboten, an important political weekly published in Berlin, wrote as follows: “For us the Boer States, with the coasts that are their due, signify a great possibility. Their absorption in the British Empire would mean a blocking-up of our last road towards an independent agricultural colony in a temperate climate.” The same newspaper wrote two years later: “The possession of South Africa offers greater advantages in every respect than the possession of Southern Brazil. If we look at the map, our German colonies appear very good starting points for attack.” In the same year the following appeared in the Koloniales Jahrbuch: “The importance of South Africa as a land which can receive an unlimited number of white immigrants must rouse us to the greatest exertions in order to secure there the supremacy of the Teuton race. The greater part of the population of South Africa is of Low German descent. We must constantly lay stress upon the Low German origin of the Boers, and we must, before all, stimulate their hatred against Anglo-Saxondom.”

More remarkable still is the speech made in the Reichstag by the unsentimental Herr Lattman, when discussing the railway line from Luderitzbucht to Keetmanshoop. “The line,” he boldly stated, “is not of very great importance for the transport of war material or for commercial purposes, but it gives us the solution of a much more important problem, namely, the position of the colony if war should break out between us and Great Britain. In this case the line would facilitate considerably our attack on Cape Colony.”