For now at least, the Botswana Society for Nama, Ovaherero and Ovambanderu (BOSNOO) doesn’t see the need to hold Britain accountable for a German genocide whose officially stated purpose was to “exterminate” those communities in what was then called German South West Africa (GSWA). That notwithstanding, the Society’s Interim Secretary General, Reverend Rupert Hambira, says that the British were aware of what the Germans were doing and chose to do nothing. Britain’s inaction is also strange within the context of the relationship that it had with the Bechuanaland Protectorate, which relationship followed an international conference at which European powers divided Africa amongst themselves.
A protectorate is a state under the protection of another country, thus Bechuanaland was supposed to enjoy military protection from Britain. However, Britain didn’t have a defence plan for Bechuanaland Protectorate, choosing instead to arm some border communities with the expectation that they should protect themselves against invaders. Britain was well aware of what Germany was doing to Nama, Ovaherero and Ovambanderu communities. Nations typically deploy troops along the border when their neighbours are undergoing civil strife. Nations do that for the express purpose of preventing such strife from overspilling into their own territories. Despite such knowledge, Britain never deployed troops along the Bechuanaland-GSWA border. Resultantly, no one stopped German troops when they pursued Nama refugees into Bechuanaland and ended up slaughtering 58 of them. It was left to the refugees to defend themselves and even after the British discovered what the Germans had done in territory they had offered to protect, they didn’t do so much as slap the latter on the wrist. As shown by its actions, Britain was more concerned about Tshekedi Khama’s flogging of a sex pest white man in Serowe than it was about Germany not only invading its territory but killing 58 people as well. It deployed troops to Serowe but didn’t do the same thing after the German invasion.
An extermination order, such as those General Lothar Von Trotha issued, amounted to collective punishment – which contravened the Hague Convention of 1899 that both Germany and Britain were party to. Article 2 of the Convention outlaws collective punishment. Not only could Britain not have known where victims being collectively punished would flee, its own official correspondence so state in quite precise terms. On the basis of information from Britain military attaché in Berlin in 1904, the British government knew where the Herero that Trotha had driven into the desert would flee “eastwards” – to Bechuanaland. The attaché’s boss, Ambassador Sir. Frank Lascelles would also notify the Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, that “attacks have been made on von Trotha for having failed to annihilate the enemy at Waterberg.” By “enemy” he meant the Herero. John Cleverly, the Resident Magistrate of Walfish Bay, wrote on January 20, 1904 that “from the opinions expressed by the Germans themselves, little short of the extermination of the tribes in the [GSWA] protectorate will result.” Despite this knowledge, the British didn’t deploy troops along the Bechuanaland-GSWA border.
At the time that the Germans were slaughtering the Nama, Ovaherero and Ovambanderu, GSWA shared a border with the British-administered Cape Colony. Not too long ago (1899-1902), the British had fought two independent Boer states – the Republic of Transvaal and the Orange Free State. When the German pogroms started, the Cape economy was still recovering from the effects of the war and Germans were pouring huge sums of money into the Cape economy. As Governor Walter Francis Hely-Hutchinson stated in a February 16, 1906 letter to the Colonial Secretary, the Earl of Elgin, “the large expenditure by the German government is of great benefit to the Cape of Good Hope.” In the letter, Hely-Hutchinson revealed that by the end of 1905, German purchases of mules and horses were reported to have almost exhausted the Cape market, to the extent that the military worried that the Cape Colonial Forces would be left without enough riding and draught animals. The Cape Argus worried that the end of the war would bring “the purchase of stock, mules, horses, wagons, produce, harness, and so on” to an end. In April 1906, some 600 ox-and-mule wagons were reported to have crossed the border from Upington per month andthe paper feared that the end of the GSWA war would result in bigger unemployment rates in the transport industry.
On the whole, the extent of British complicity in the Herero, Nama and OvaMbanderu genocide was as extensive as to have motivated Daniel Grimshaw to write extensively about it. In “Britain’s Response to the Herero and Nama Genocide, 1904-07: A Realist Perspective on Britain’s Assistance to Germany During the Genocide in German South-West Africa”, he writes that while the Cape denied Herero, Ovambanderu and Nama freedom fighters “supplies”, it was more than accommodating to Germans. Grimshaw’s research revealed that a wood factory in the Cape won a contract to process 25 000 trees to be made into mule wagons for the German government; a South African harness maker obtained a contract to supply harnesses to the Germans for over 30 000 mules; from September–November 1905, 3 387 horses, 24 345 oxen, 13 915 mules and 9 875 donkeys were sent from the Cape to GSWA. As Grimshaw notes, “these animals were of high value to the German military”, not least because the ox-wagon was the “main mode of transport” for the German army.
That army, as the animals it used, also needed British support to keep body and soul together. Water amounting to £1000 a week was sent weekly from Cape Town to Lüderitz in GSWA. In April 1906, 100,000 rations and 200 tons of oats were being sent from Cape Town to GSWA and delivered to the front. Resultantly, the town of Upington in the Cape enjoyed an economic boom during the war.
Officially, the British banned trade in arms and ammunition, only allowing supplies for civilian use, but declassified documents reveal what was actually happening. They also that “supplies” was just a code word for the arming, feeding and transporting of German troops by the British. In a February 16, 1906 despatch to London, Hely-Hutchinson told the Earl of Elgin that Cape officials “will shut their eyes to the real destination of the supplies and will not take any step to interfere with the existing arrangements unless it is desired by His Majesty’s Government that they should do so.”
Some seven years before the start of the war, Britain had leased Shark Island to the Germans for 10 years, with a possibility for it to be renewed for a further five years at the discretion of the Cape. A year into the war and when the British knew that the island was responsible for the most deaths in the German concentration camp system, the Island was removed from the lease in exchange for some mainland of GSWA. Additionally, while the Cape allowed Germans to recruit Boers to help in the war effort, the Herero, Ovambanderu and Nama were not allowed to recruit their own tribesmen from over the border to similar purpose.
On the basis of this and other evidence, Grimshaw concludes that “through physical help with supplies, containing the refugees, allowing Shark Island to be transferred to GSWA, permitting Boers to work for the German army, letting border violations by the German army go unchallenged and co-operating with the German military, the British authorities clearly demonstrated they were on the Germans side.”
To be clear, the British didn’t persecute the Herero, Ovambanderu and Nama, forcing them to flee into Botswana. However, it is important that the historical record reflects Britain’s level of complicity in the GSWA genocide. Without British support, Germany would have lost the war. As to whether, BOSNOO wants the British to somehow be held accountable for its actions, Rev. Hambira says that the organisation hasn’t reflected on this particular issue to any extent.
