German South West Africa

“ It is a matter for congratulation, but not on the statesmanship displayed by British ministers, that the fruit of the German essay at the establishment of a "new Empire" in Southern Africa was no more than the annexation of South West Africa, for it is by no means unthinkable that there was a possibility that in addition to the south-west the Germans might have drawn a wide belt right across the continent from west to east, taking in Bechuanaland, the Transvaal, Tongaland, and that portion of Zululand giving the Transvaal an outlet to the east coast at St Lucia Bay. ”

“ 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 [Pg 153] 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. ”

“ Neither is there the slightest reason to doubt the perpetration in German South West Africa of many hideous individual outrages, floggings, murder, rape and all the concomitants of unbridled passion which have disgraced the records of the White invaders of colonisable South Africa. ”

“ General Botha has undertaken, for reasons of Imperial importance, to attack, to capture, and to occupy German South-West Africa. [Hear, hear.] The Imperial Government knew then and know now that he can do so, but they know also that it will be no light task. The Africander is proud of the unstinted trust which has been reposed in him by the British people since their war; they know what freedom and self-government mean and from whom they have sprung. The minority of rebels are shaming their fellows and defaming their honour. ”

“ Even German South-west Africa differs scarcely at all from the Kalahari Desert, which adjoins it and which forms the western part of Bechuanaland, and differs little also from the north-western regions of Cape Colony. ”

“ While many and grievous mistakes have been made, it must be remembered that success in the difficult sphere of colonial enterprise rarely, if ever, comes save with experience. To provide in South-West Africa a home for German emigrants and a [Pg 174] market for German trade, considerable effort and large sums of money have been expended, and that success is not more marked is partly due to the fact that so much energy has been devoted to warlike operations rather than to the task of colonisation. ”

“ If our victory is great enough, we can hope to unite under our hand the whole of Central Africa with our old colony South-west Africa; Senegambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Dahomey, well-populated Nigeria with the port of Lagos, Kamerun, the rich islands of San Thomé and Principe with their splendid ports, the Katanga ore district, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Mozambique, and Delagoa Bay, Madagascar, German East Africa, Zanzibar, and Uganda ”

“ It was on the recommendations of this body that the operations against Togoland, the Cameroons, and "German East" were initiated, that every encouragement was given to the projects set on foot by the Australasian Governments for the conquest of German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, Samoa, and other localities in Oceania, and that similar encouragement was given to the Union Government of South Africa in respect to its plans for wresting "German South-West" out of the hands of its possessors and oppressors. ”

“ A few thousands of the Ovambos have been attracted to the mines, but the Hottentots, Bergdamaras, [Pg 166] and Hereros find employment on the farms and as domestic servants. About 2,500 natives from the Cape work as labourers at the diamond fields.
The White People
In the year 1880 the white population of South-West Africa consisted of 300 trek-Boers and 150 Europeans in Damaraland, and a dozen whites at Walvis Bay: in 1900, that is, six years after the German annexation, there was a total white population of 3,388, made up of 2,146 men, 452 women, and 790 children. ”

“ Of early books of travel the most valuable are: F. Galton, Tropical South Africa (1853; new ed. 1889) ; Charles J. Andersson, Lake Ngami (1856) , The Okavango River (1861) and Notes of Travel (1875) . See also Sir J. E. Alexander, An Expedition of Discovery into the Interior of Africa (London, 1838) . Reports on the German colonies are published by the British foreign office. The Kriegskarte von Deutsch-Südwestafrika (Berlin, 1904) , in nine sheets on a scale of 1 : 800,000, will be found useful. (F. R. C.)
↑ As the result of wars with the natives, the population greatly decreased. ”

“ One cannot look at the map of Africa and miss seeing that extraordinary territory labelled German close to Cape Colony, without being reminded of the obtuseness shown by the Cape democracy. But the Germans are a great nation, rich, commerce-loving, and enterprising, and the Cape people need to be warned, considering that they are largely mixed up with Dutch Boers who are slow to move and sadly behind the times. ”

“ Germany could use natives in war.
German colonial aims are really not colonial, but are entirely dominated by far-reaching conceptions of world politics. Not colonies, but military power and strategic positions for exercising world power in future, are her real aims. Her ultimate objective in Africa is the establishment of a great Central African Empire, comprising not only her colonies before the war, but also all the English, French, Belgian, and Portuguese possessions south of the Sahara and Lake Chad and north of the Zambezi River in South Africa. ”

“ Germany and Belgium are the only two Powers in West Africa which do not possess colonies in other parts of the world from which to recruit labour, hence they are dependent upon other Powers. To the proud German Empire, this situation is irritating, while Great Britain, France, and also Portugal, to a limited extent, can each of them augment the labour force of any given colony by recruiting from their other colonial possessions. ”

“ France has been the competitor, to some extent the successful competitor, of Germany in West Africa, where she partially envelops the Cameroons and Togoland. But the German Government has never ventured to state the French colonial methods as a casus belli. That the German people have viewed with jealousy the growth of French power in Africa is a notorious fact. Quite recently, on the eve of the present war, we were formally given to understand that Germany, in any war with France, might annex French colonies [11] ”

“ Any influence that Germany may have hoped to exercise on South African politics has received a check by the insuperable barrier that has been created by those slender lines of steel between its South-West African Colony and the Dutch Republics. ”

“ The merchant seeking a new field for commerce in West Africa will find the warmest welcome and the fairest treatment in German colonies, and next to Germany, in this respect, the British colonies; there is not much to choose between the Belgian and the Portuguese. None but Frenchmen should go to the colonies of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” for there is little Liberty, less Equality and no Fraternity in the French colonies for white or black. ”

“ If the Great War makes Central Africa German, fifty years hence 500,000 and more Germans can be living there by the side of 50,000,000 blacks. Then there may be an army of 1,000,000 men in German Africa, and the colony will have its own war navy, like Brazil. An England that is strong in Africa dominates the situation in Southern Europe and does not heed us. But from Central Africa we shall dominate the English connections with South Africa, India and Australia, and we shall force English policy to reckon with us. ”

“ At first we thought the German in East Africa to be a better fellow than his brother in Europe, more merciful to his wounded prisoner, more chivalrous in his manner of fighting. But the more we learn of him the more we come to the conclusion that he is the same old Hun as he is in Belgium—infinitely crafty, incredibly beastly in his dealings with his natives and with our prisoners. ”

“ A country in which Afrikanders have fallen in war and have been buried will have more than a material value in the eyes of Africa’s sons. For the first time in history British and Dutch have fought side by side on African soil to overthrow the common enemy, and the land won amid such conditions will always have peculiar value to those who have made sacrifices to secure it. No: South-West Africa must drop into its natural place as an integral part of the Union of South Africa. ”

“ The African is shaking himself free from the shackles he has worn for so long and is at last beginning to realize his strength. At present Britain, with all her shortcomings, leads the way in giving the native the fullest scope for his abilities. In British and Portuguese Colonies alone in West Africa has the free native the chance of attaining the full stature of a man. In German and French tropical territories, the native is there, not as a citizen, but merely as a necessary adjunct to the production of wealth for the white man. ”

“ The second difference is, that the land in South Africa is worth your having, you can go and domesticate on it; whereas in West Africa you cannot. A failure to recognise these differences is at the root of our present ill-judged West African policy, outside the Royal Niger Company’s domain; by introducing South African methods we are trying to get what is of no use to us, the Landes Hoheit, and thereby devastating what is of use to us, the trade. ”

“ Who would be sent to healthy, cheery Nairobi? Who to the vile desert at Voi? Who to interesting, far-distant Uganda? Who to the ghastly mangrove-swamps down the coast by the border of German East? Who to places where there was real active service, fighting, wounds, distinction and honourable death? Who to dreary holes where they would “sit down” and sit tight, rotting with fever and dysentery, eating out their hearts, without seeing a single German till the end of the war. ”

“ Now look at any modern map of South Africa. Damaraland is now German territory, the Transvaal has been given back to the corrupt and tyrannical government which has of late made itself a libel on the name of civilisation. A German railway runs from Pretoria to Delagoa Bay, the only road from the sea to the Transvaal which does not pass through British territory. ”

“ Having secured an opening on Lake Chad for her Cameroon colony, Germany was anxious to obtain a footing on the middle Niger for Togoland. German expeditions reached Gando, one of the tributary states of the Sokoto empire on the middle Niger, and, notwithstanding the existence of prior treaties with Great Britain, sought to conclude agreements with the sultan of that country. But this German ambition conflicted both with the British and the French designs in West Africa, and eventually Germany had to be content with the 11th parallel as her northern frontier. ”

“ Nothing in West Africa is more striking than the attitude adopted by the several colonizing Powers towards commerce. At present, Germany is easily in the front rank; her policy towards business men is the most enlightened of any Power, and it is therefore to be the more regretted that her treatment of the natives is not equally far-sighted. Were it so, all students of African questions could view with equanimity her gradual absorption of the whole of Equatorial Africa. ”

“ Leaving out of sight the still unsettled problem of the mineral wealth of these territories, they are in other respects one of the most promising parts of South Africa. I have remarked that as regards pasture and agriculture they are superior to the inland parts of Cape Colony. They are in these points also superior to the Transvaal, and still more plainly superior to the neighbouring possessions of Germany and Portugal. Portuguese East Africa is fever-stricken. German East Africa is in many places barren and almost everywhere malarious. ”

“ On the other side of the continent, just south of the Equator, lies German East Africa, almost twice the size of the mother country and the largest and richest of the Kaiser's transmarine possessions. The combined area of these four colonies is equal to that of all the States east of the Mississippi put together; certainly a substantial foundation on which to begin the erection of an empire, especially when it is remembered that French Africa, which now [Pg 176] comprises forty-five per cent of the continent, is for the most part the work of but a single generation. ”

“ In connection with this point it must also be borne in mind that in British East Africa the natives are for the very large part, not soldiers, but agriculturists by nature; whereas German East Africa teems with natives who form as fine material for soldiers as any in the world. This point is always worth remembering since, because of it, while Germany held German East Africa, she was a potential menace to the whole continent. ”

“ Germany is, in many respects, a progressive Power, but she has no philanthropic soul for the well-being of native races. A single word from Germany indicating a willingness to co-operate with Great Britain during the Congo agitation would have saved thousands, [297] if not millions, of lives. That word was never spoken, the Congo tribes were left to perish, and German public opinion maintained a cynical attitude until the end. A merchant or two rendered yeoman service, but they were as voices crying in the wilderness. ”