In 1926, Britain, Germany and South Africa agreed to destroy a damning “Blue Book” published in 1918 by the British government “by Command of His Majesty”, King George V, about German atrocities in Namibia, then called South-West Africa (see NA, Jan 2002). From this month, we begin the serialisation of a rare copy that survived, starting with the “Preface” written in 1918 by the British Administrator in South-West Africa, E.H.M. George. It is a world exclusive.

In preparing a statement dealing with the native races of South-West Africa and having special reference to their history and treatment while under German domination, it is desirable to give a brief outline of the ways and means by which German influence was introduced, and of the events which led up to the consolidation of such influence by subsequent annexation...
In Part I, a rapid survey of the history of this country from the time Europeans first penetrated into it is given, the methods by which Germany proceeded to establish her dominion are shortly shown, and an account of the atrocities committed on the natives is furnished...
The time available for the collection of material for incorporation into this report and for the careful collation of that material has been brief.
But, notwithstanding, a large amount of evidence is presented which contains irrefutable proof of the gross ineptitude with which Germany entered upon her scheme of colonising this territory, of callous indifference with which she treated the guaranteed rights of the native peoples established here, and of the cruelties to which she subjected those peoples when the burden became too heavy and they attempted to assert their rights...
The object of this report is to present the essential features only in an easily assimilable form.
Enough is, I think, contained herein to leave no doubts as to the terrible courses pursued both by the German Colonial Administration, acting either under the orders or with the acquiescence of the Berlin Government, and by individual Germans settled or stationed in the country, or as to the deplorable plight the natives fell into under the brutalities and robberies to which they were systematically subjected.
It will be found that for the native there was, in effect, during the first 17 years after the formal annexation of the country by Germany, no law, and that such protection as the law eventually provided was granted not out of motives of humanity, but because it was at length recognised that the native was a useful asset in the country, and that, without his labour, cattle-ranching, for which large areas of the country are well suited, and diamond and copper mining, were impossible.

Herero genocide
In Chapter XV, it is pointed out how the German writer Rohrbach condemned the extermination of the Herero tribe in 1905 “because the cattle and sheep of the Hereros shared the fate of their native masters”.
There was then not a word of sympathy for the unfortunate Herero people or recognition of their value in the economic scheme of things in the colony. That came later when the mischief had been done.
The only regret expressed at the time was that the flocks and herds of the natives, on which the settlers had set greedy eyes, were sent, in the blind fury of von Trotha, to the same fate as their owners.
One can, however, fairly believe that the colonists, or a proportion of them, became at length so satiated with the sight of the human blood that was shed in 1904 and 1905, and so alarmed for their future labour supply and at the destruction of the native livestock that went on pari passu with the extermination of the Hereros, that they used such influence as they possessed to call a halt to the insensate slaughter that was taking place.

Read the full story in the February 2002 edition of New Africa Magazine

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