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.
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.”
That a Pan-German propaganda has been carried on in South Africa for
some time is now evident, and, as recent events have made abundantly
clear, the seduction of men of “Low German descent” from their
allegiance to the Union Government, was a main part of the propaganda.
Happily, the majority of the Dutch Africanders were too wise to attach
any importance to the specious promises of a Republic, and with their
fellow citizens of British extraction they have played an honourable
part in the breaking up of the German rule in South-West Africa.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Dawson’s “The Evolution of Modern Germany,” p. 370.