Preface

AS A SOUTH AFRICAN I learnt about Louis Botha at school, but only in passing reference to other, ‘more important’ issues. We were taught that he was a successful young general in the Anglo-Boer War, where, together with his close friend Jan Smuts (always in association with Smuts), he persuaded recalcitrant Boer generals like Christiaan de Wet and Koos de la Rey to accept the terms of defeat offered by Britain. Sometime later, Botha became the first prime minister of South Africa. We learnt about his controversial Natives Land Act of 1913, his split with J.B.M. Hertzog and, almost as an afterthought, his campaign in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) at the beginning of the First World War.

I unearthed my old high-school textbook to double-check. There was, in a wordy 700-page treatise on South African history, nothing more than a passing reference to the campaign; a single sentence stating it was brought to a successful conclusion by July 1915. That was the last we scholars heard about Prime Minister Louis Botha. We were not taught anything else about him, or his war. Our school history curriculum had more important things to negotiate, leapfrogging to Smuts and Hertzog’s protracted rivalry between the wars, which would result in apartheid, an ideology history texts in those days went to great pains to justify.

Botha, it seemed, was at best unimportant in the larger scheme of South African history; at worst, a traitor to Afrikanerdom for his repudiation of republican sentiment. He was, and still is, practically ignored by the official compilers of South African history, even though his statues take pride of place outside both Parliament in Cape Town and the Union Buildings in Pretoria, where successive governments have resided in the very rooms in which he, as the first prime minister, took office. And let us not forget Durban, where he stands side by side with his old Zulu friend, King Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo.

There is simply not a lot of information available on Botha and his invasion of South-West Africa in 1914/15. While a few international historians, most notably Hew Strachan, have written extensively about the campaigns in Africa during the First World War, most of their attention goes to the East African Campaign, in which Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, the indomitable German imperial commander of a largely African force of askaris, led the Allies on a protracted goose chase across the vast savannahs and forests of East Africa. Admittedly, Strachan deals with the other campaign, in the German South West, with a fair amount of diligence, but while the information is useful, it is not detailed. His account covers how the campaign affected the broader war, rather than the finer details, and it certainly does not explore the long-term consequences other than mentioning that the South Africans, despite Botha’s claim to Winston Churchill that he would throw them out for good, did not deport the resident German population, a group that is still evident in Namibia today.

I find it puzzling that Botha’s war has been swept under the carpet, because, as insignificant as official history has deemed it, this was the first war that South Africa fought as a united country. It was also the first campaign to be brought to a conclusion in the Great War. Contrast that with the East African theatre of war, which was the last campaign to be brought to an end, and only because there was no longer a kaiser for von Lettow-Vorbeck to fight for.

It has always seemed clear to me that Botha’s decision to accept Britain’s request to invade South-West Africa had tremendous consequences on the direction and course of both South Africa and the former German colony’s history, and that both countries today, a century on, are still struggling to shake off the colossal repercussions generated by this ‘sideshow’ of the Great War.

Only recently, after trawling the internet, did I discover more about Botha, the personality, and his war. I managed to purchase an old, dog-eared copy of Johannes Meintjes’ long out-of-print General Louis Botha: A Biography. The only published account of Botha’s life, it is a fascinating read, especially as it sheds light on the character of the larger-than-life man. But still, there is not quite enough about the war.

Meintjes’ references, however, led me to other, even older texts, such as Deneys Reitz’s Commando and Trekking On, books still popular with modern readers. Reitz, now a part of South African folklore, is an intriguing character, a true adventurer. He fought in the Boer War as a teenager and took part in the great battles under generals Botha, De la Rey, C.F. Beyers and Jan Kemp. He was also one of the last Boer fighters in the field, having followed Smuts into the northern Cape to carry out a protracted campaign of guerrilla warfare against the British garrisons there. After the war, Reitz exiled himself in Madagascar, but returned just before Botha became prime minister of the Union of South Africa. As Botha’s staunch ally, Reitz volunteered for the 1914 campaign and his personal account of German South-West Africa, as well as of the preceding rebellion, was invaluable to my quest.

Then I found something even better, and lesser known: Brigadier General J.J. Collyer’s The Campaign in German South West Africa, 1914–1915, published in 1937. This was and remains the official military account of the campaign. As Botha’s chief of general staff at the time, Collyer was as well placed as anyone to produce an accurate write-up of the operations and South Africa’s involvement.

I also managed to source the unabridged diary of Eric Moore-Ritchie, a policeman from Pretoria who volunteered to become a member of Botha’s mounted bodyguard, a small force of highly skilled soldiers that was formed at the outset of the war after rumours surfaced of a plot to assassinate the prime minister. The bodyguard shadowed Botha’s every move throughout the campaign and Moore-Ritchie’s account provided me with a window onto events as they unfolded 100 years ago.

To supplement my reading, I found titbits here and there on the internet. The online portal of the South African Military History Society has unique first-hand accounts of various aspects of the campaign, including the German use of airpower, which was hitherto a novelty in war. Other valuable websites include one maintained by the Imperial Research Circle and which has a blow-by-blow account of the opening battle of the campaign at Sandfontein by a certain J.E.M. Atwell, who took part in it. Then there is ‘The Soldier’s Burden’, an excellent online resource for first-hand accounts of relatively unknown events. It contains the kind of history I am interested in: texts written during or shortly after the war by the men who saw and experienced it.

Other information came from unexpected sources, such as The Anglo-African Who’s Who and Biographical Sketchbook of 1907 and a recent academic paper by Dr Anne Samson titled ‘South African mining magnates and World War One’. I even managed to find a website dedicated to German colonial uniforms. The site, www.germancolonialuniforms.co.uk, was useful in that it also gave accurate information on German and South African ordinances used throughout the campaign.

Perhaps the greatest contribution to my understanding of the subject, however, came from my own travels to Namibia to unearth the faint tracks left by the campaign. Although I had been to Namibia many times before, this time I had to step off the well-worn tourist paths, and even those of the locals, to discover the scenes of battles. As with the literature, there is not a lot of evidence of the war on the ground. Unlike in Europe, the only physical memorials are a few graves, small headstones lost in the bush announcing the date when hostilities ended, and discreet museums of the era’s artillery in Tsumeb and Windhoek.

I did, however, discover plenty of circumstantial and incidental evidence, like bits of rusty ammunition cartridges along the bed of the Swakop River, and the crude stone breastworks and redoubts or schanzes of defenders on the battlefields. Perhaps the most conspicuous evidence of the war is the indelible mark left by the South Africans on the Namibian social and cultural psyche. The Namibia of today is similar to South Africa; save for border control, one would be forgiven for thinking it is the same country. For seventy-five years it was treated as a fifth province of its southern neighbour. Many South Africans settled here, their languages, accents, cultures and racial policies infusing into Namibian society, culminating in a national makeup that originated with Botha’s decision to invade.

My own personal exploration, as well as the texts I managed to uncover, ultimately helped shed considerable light on what has essentially become a forgotten war.

I would like to thank Amanda, my wife and fellow travelling companion in our month-long exploration of Namibia’s backwaters while I was doing research on the ground. Not only did she give me the initial prod to write this book for the centenary of the First World War, but she provided the necessary goading to follow my instincts when eventually I did commit to it.

In Namibia, the congenial owner-managers of Sandfontein Lodge, Rodica and Willie Agenbach, allowed me free reign to ferret about their backyard looking for clues of one of the more significant battles of the campaign.

At Zebra Press, managing editor Robert Plummer played an unflappable role in getting this book ready for print. Special mention also to his editorial team, who had to meticulously cross-check the historical references as well as pore over the endless stylistic quirks of the antiquated texts I cited, and particularly to Bronwen Leak, who suggested some important additions and even did a bit of valuable research of her own.

I would like to show my deepest appreciation to Tim Butcher for his epigrammatic foreword. Tim is a friend and an author I greatly admire, who himself has just written a penetrating work on the Great War.

At the time of the war, South-West Africa was commonly spelt with a hyphen, and this is the style I have used when referring to that period. South West Africa is spelt without a hyphen when referring to later periods.

ADAM CRUISE

NOVEMBER 2014