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Kaiser's Holocaust (10 page)
Hendrik Witbooi’s initial strategy for dealing with Curt von François had been to ignore him, as he had Heinrich Göring. However, as German farmers began to settle around Windhoek and Germany’s presence in the territory took on an air of permanence, this strategy was rendered obsolete.
There seems to be no doubt that Hendrik Witbooi recognised, before the other chiefs and
Kapteins
, the dangers posed by German colonialism. He was certainly alarmed by May 1890. At that time the settlers concentrated around Windhoek were few, the German garrison was small compared to the fighting force of the Nama and the industrial weapons that would ultimately make the colonialists indomitable had yet to make their appearance. A lesser leader might easily have dismissed the whites as merely another tribe. Hendrik Witbooi, following events in the wider world, understood the true nature of German ambitions.
An avid reader of newspapers from the Cape, Witbooi had gradually pieced together an understanding of the colonial process. His letters reveal that by 1892 he had learned of the Berlin Conference, which he described as ‘a large meeting to decide who should make Protection Treaties with the chiefs of which country in Africa’. He had also correctly deduced what rights to self-determination had been left in the hands of local Africans under the conference’s infamous ‘General Act’.
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In May 1890 Hendrik Witbooi concluded that von François and his men, along with the white settlers and traders, were the vanguard of a threat so great that it rendered his war against the Herero a parochial affair that could only strengthen the hand of a far more dangerous enemy. This epiphany is apparent in Witbooi’s correspondence. In the spring of 1890 he abandoned his customary tone of confidence and authority and, in letters to other chiefs, including the leaders of the Herero, he became increasingly earnest and brotherly. He called repeatedly for reason and unity. At the end of May he wrote in exactly such terms to Chief Tjamuaha, urging him to reconsider the protection treaty he had signed with von François:
This dry land is known by two names only: Hereroland and Namaland. Hereroland belongs to the Herero nations and is an autonomous realm. And Namaland belongs to all the Nama nations, and these too are autonomous realms, just as it is with the white man’s countries: Germany, England and so on … Do you realise what you have done, or for whom you did what you have done? … My dear Kaptein [Tjamuaha], you will come to rue it bitterly. You will eternally regret that you have handed your land and your rights as a ruler to the white men. This war between us is not nearly as heavy a burden as you seem to have thought when you did this momentous thing.
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It was not until the summer of 1892 that serious discussions about peace between the Herero and Witbooi began. By this time Samuel Maharero had emerged as the successor to his father as Paramount Chief.
As the two sides inched towards peace, von François was confronted by an increasingly belligerent Samuel Maharero and,
more worryingly, by the looming prospect of African unity. He responded by increasing his efforts to lure Hendrik Witbooi into a protection treaty and in early June 1892 he travelled to meet Hendrik at his mountain citadel of Hoornkrans.
A record of what was said at the meeting was made by one of Hendrik Witbooi’s deputies. After the usual diplomatic pleasantries, von François spelled out Germany’s future plans for the south-west, warning Kaptein Witbooi that ‘large numbers of Europeans will be arriving by ship soon’, and that these settlers ‘must be protected’. He then assured him that ‘German Protection’ would be extended to those African nations willing to sign protection treaties. To which Hendrik Witbooi responded, ‘What are we being protected against? From what danger or difficulty, or suffering can one chief be protected by another?’ Aware that the ‘protection treaty’ was nothing more than a form of subjugation, Witbooi dismissed von François’s overtures. ‘I see no truth or sense’, he told him, ‘in the suggestion that a chief who has surrendered may keep his autonomy and do as he likes.’ At his most eloquent, Hendrik warned his guest that although the Nama might appear to outsiders as separate nations, that might be divided and thus ruled, they were bound together by a deep and visceral kinship. ‘This part of Africa is the realm of us Red chiefs … If danger threatens one of us which he feels he cannot meet on his own, then he can call on a brother among the Red chiefs … for we are one in colour and custom, and this Africa is ours.’
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When von François left Hoornkrans, Hendrik Witbooi surely understood that the Captain’s visit was his final attempt to lure the Witbooi into a protection treaty by peaceful means. The threat of violence had been implicit but clear. Four weeks after the Hoornkrans meeting, Witbooi wrote to John Cleverly, the British Magistrate at Walvis Bay, appealing to the British for assistance:
The Germans are encroaching on my land, and are now threatening to destroy me with war … some rulers surrendered to German Protection and are today bitterly sorry for they have not seen any of the beautiful
promises kept. The German told them he would protect them against mighty invaders threatening to take our land by force, without permission from the chiefs. But from what I hear and see of the man, it now appears the German himself is … doing exactly what he said we would be protected from … He has already executed men for owing money … German officials told my officials how they had beaten the men in a disgraceful and brutal manner, as the dumb and ignorant creatures they think us.
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Referring to the Conference of Berlin, which he erroneously believed had been held under British auspices, Hendrik made a remarkable plea to Cleverly:
I beg you kindly to be so good as to forward this letter to the Cape government, so British politicians may hear about this, and hold another conference and deliberate about these Germans, to recall them if possible, from our country, for they do not abide by the Agreement and conditions under which you allowed them to enter.
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Four months later the Witbooi and the Herero finally agreed peace terms, and for the first time since 1885 there was a realistic prospect of the two most powerful South-West African nations uniting in opposition to Germany’s incursions. To counter this challenge, just three months after the peace had been signed, a force of over 250 German soldiers landed in South-West Africa. After numerous appeals for reinforcements, von François had been granted a force large enough to take offensive military action. As Hendrik Witbooi had repeatedly rejected the protection of the Germans, and it was he who best understood the danger the Germans posed, it was his people, the Witbooi Nama, who were the first targets of von François’s expanded force.
Late on the night of 12 April 1893, Hendrik Witbooi, his son Klein Hendrik and adviser Samuel Izaak sat in deep conversation in Hoornkrans, the Witbooi’s mountain encampment just 100 miles from Windhoek. It was autumn and the air in the Khomas Mountains was bitterly cold. Almost a thousand of Hendrik’s people were scattered across the valley, huddled in groups, talking and singing around their fires. The flickering orange light fell on the round clay huts, where the Witbooi’s children were
sleeping. Beyond them, on the edge of the camp, large enclosures were filled with hundreds of cattle. Beyond these were the steep escarpments that surrounded Hoornkrans on three sides.
That night Captain von François and two hundred of his men were riding through the Khomas Mountains. The troops had been told they were on night manoeuvres. It was only when they reached the foot of the Hoornkrans escarpment that von François gathered his men around him and informed them of their real purpose. This was no exercise, von François explained: ‘The object of this mission is to destroy the tribe of the Witboois.’ Knowing that he stood little chance against the Witbooi in open battle, von François had decided to surround the tribe as they slept and exterminate them.
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Leaving their horses behind, the Germans stealthily climbed the steep slopes overlooking Hoornkrans. One by one the soldiers took up their positions. On the plain below, the Witbooi people were asleep in their huts. It was just before dawn. Smoke was rising from the dying fires and the only sounds were unruly horses and the stirring of cattle in the distant enclosure. As the sun began to rise von François got to his feet and gave the signal. A second later two hundred rifles fired simultaneously. The thunder of the volley gave way to the discordant metallic clanking of reloading, followed by re-aiming and firing. Over the next thirty minutes, more than sixteen thousand rounds of ammunition were fired.
In the settlement below, hundreds burst from their homes and ran in search of cover. Children screamed hysterically, and the cries of the wounded were audible above the thunder of the rifles. Bodies lay in the sand; the injured clutched at gaping wounds. The few Witbooi fighters who managed to load their guns began to return fire, but to little effect. Bullets poured down upon them, killing indiscriminately.
Hendrik Witbooi, shocked and confused, still managed to give an order. He commanded the Witbooi men to run towards the dry river on the far side of the valley, hoping that the Germans would give chase and leave the women and children unharmed.
As Hendrik was ushered away, he might have caught sight of his twelve-year-old son. The boy, who had spent his short life coping with a partial paralysis, had been shot while trying to escape. Wounded, he crawled towards the dry riverbed, where a German soldier killed him with a shot to the head.
Up in the hills, above the dust and the screaming, von François, sabre in hand, gave a second order and his men began to fumble for their bayonets. Seconds later they were charging down the slopes into Hoornkrans, firing as they went. To the horror of the Witbooi, rather than chasing the men to the riverbed, they began to butcher the women, children and the elderly. Hendrik Witbooi’s eldest son Klein Hendrik described the fates of those who had remained in the camp:
[They] sat still as they thought their lives were safe, and that though they might be taken away for servants they would not be killed. So we all thought. We thought the men might be killed but not women … the women and children they shot in the houses, the wounded as well as the dead they did not bring out, but burned the houses over them … On the day of attack, the Germans captured an old man, a church elder, who was too old and infirm to run away, and who had hidden himself among the rocks. They tied him up and took him to their wagons and shot him the next morning with 3 bullets.
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Petrus Jafta, a Witbooi fighter, watched the massacre of his people from a nearby hilltop:
I and two other men got on a small Kopje [hilltop] and saw some women sitting a distance away. We called to them to get away, but they remained until the Germans passed. One of the soldiers shot one of these women. The others begged for their lives and asked the Germans to make slaves of them rather than kill them. The German soldiers took the women away, driving them before them … one woman was killed while her child clung to her screaming; a soldier shot the child through the head, blowing it to pieces. I saw the child shot. The soldier aimed at it. Houses were set on fire and burnt over the bodies of dead women and children … On another side of the werft [camp], all the women were killed except two of whom one was wounded. I did not count them, the bodies were decomposing when I went there [later] … Many children were killed in the houses …
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The slaughter at Hoornkrans was so indiscriminate that even some of von François’s men were shocked. When one German soldier, knife in hand, cornered Hendrik Witbooi’s sister, one of his comrades held back his arm and shouted for the woman to run.
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When the slaughter came to an end the sun had risen fully over the valley. Kurt Schwabe, a German soldier who had taken part in the attack and witnessed its immediate aftermath, wrote:
On all sides terrible scenes were disclosed to us. Under and over the hanging rocks lay the corpses of seven Witbooi, who in their death agony, had crawled into the hollow, and their bodies lay pressed tightly together. In another place the body of a … woman obstructed the footpath, while two three-to-four-year-old children sat quietly playing beside their mother’s corpse … [It] was a fearful sight; burning huts, human bodies and the remains of animals, scattered furniture, destroyed and useless rifles, that was the picture that presented itself to the eyes.
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Schwabe and his comrades did not spend long surveying the carnage. With von François’s blessing, they looted the remains of the Witbooi camp. Even the church was raided. Amid the smoke and devastation the soldiers of the most powerful army on earth groped and rummaged through the ruins of mud huts and stripped the bodies of women in search of booty. They then carefully listed the treasure captured for Germany and for the Kaiser: 212 stirrups, 74 horseshoes, 12 coffee pots, 12 coffee-grinders, 122 pieces of cutlery, 44 bits and bridles, 3 violins and a pair of opera glasses.
Von François’s men also seized eighty Witbooi women. They were brought to the new German fortress in Windhoek and distributed among the troops as house slaves. There is no record of their ultimate fate or how they suffered, but von François argued that their capture and abuse was ‘an appropriate form of punishment’. One of the female captives, Witbooi’s daughter, defiantly told her captors to ‘hasten back to the big ships in which you came, for my father will return soon to drive all white men from this land’.
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At Hoornkrans von François and his men had killed eight old men, two young boys and seventy-eight women and children.
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Only one German soldier had died; two were lightly wounded. In his report to the Colonial Department, von François claimed the attack had been so successful ‘that any further resistance on the part of Witboois is out of the question’.
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