1.3 German colonisation

In the early 1880s, German businessman Adolf Lüderitz announced his intention ‘to establish a trading-post along the South West African coast’, simultaneously requesting ‘German protection’, confirmed by Imperial Chancellor Bismarck in 1884.152 Lüderitz’s representative, 20-year-old Heinrich Vogelsang, agreed a land purchase from Captain Josef Fredericks of Bethanie encompassing Angra Pequeña Bay (now Lüderitz in !Namiǂgûs Constituency) and adjoining territory: later extended down to the Orange River, this large area becoming known as “Lüderitzland”.153 Following a complex series of negotiations between Germany and Britain, in 1884 Germany annexed the territory, with some exceptions such as the Walvis Bay enclave claimed by Britain.154 This new colonial state impetus had significant implications for land and society in Etosha-Kunene. Land, “natural resources” and people became incorporated into commercial enterprises linked to increasingly militarised state protection. The first German Schutztruppe—Protectorate troops of the German Colonial Company for South West Africa—arrived in the late 1880s and were reinforced in subsequent years.155 Many Schutztruppe personnel derived from distinguished military families and Prussian nobility, and were later incorporated into the colony’s ‘land police’ (Landespolizei).156

In this section we first outline processes of state incorporation, as these played out in Etosha-Kunene through treaties permitting commercial access to resources, as well as through intensified hunting and missionary activity. We then look at the radically disruptive impacts of rinderpest in the late 1890s, and its links in Etosha-Kunene to Indigenous resistance and the militarised suppression that ultimately made possible colonial appropriation of formerly inhabited lands. We conclude by considering the emergence of formal state policy regarding so-called game, and the establishment of “game reserves” in the wake of these disruptions.

1.3.1 State colonial incorporation: Treaties, hunting, missionaries

At the end of January 1885, an agent of Lüderitz called Waldemar Belck left Walvis Bay for ‘the Kaokoveld’, holding conferences at Otjitambi—a big waterhole south-east of Kamanjab—with the Swartbooi captain Cornelius Swartbooi (|Hôa-|arab !Âbemab157) for ‘the purchase of their territory’;¹⁵⁸ also claimed by Kamaherero.159 Belck was joined by Ludwig Kock who had recently obtained ‘a very favourable mining concession from Jan Jonker [Afrikaner]’ further south.160 On 19 June, Kock “bought” ‘the Kaokoveld from Cornelius Swartbooi’, excluding Okombahe (!Aǂgommes/‘Nattbout’) and its grazing lands [which in around 1873 had been allocated to ‘Berg Damaras’], for R200, with R10 to be received by the Swartbooi for ‘every mine worked in
the territory’: 

[t]he border went from Omaruru to the mouth of the Omaruru River, along the coast as far as Cape Frio, from there to Swartboois Drift on the Kunene River and then via Nattbout [Okombahe/!Aǂgommes] and Ameib [!Am-eib] to Omaruru.161 

German scientist Waldemar Belck also conducted anthropometric measurements at Otjitambi.162 Kock subsequently went ‘to the section of the Topnaar tribe living at Sesfontein under Captain Jan Uichamab [|Uixamab]’, receiving on 4 July ‘a declaration from them in which they relinquished their claim to the Kaokoveld and acknowledged the contract of sale with Cornelius Swartbooi’, from which would be excluded Sesfontein and its grazing lands ‘which would remain the Topnaars’ private property’: the Topnaars received R100 for their rights, again with R10 for ‘every mine worked in the territory’.163 Lüderitz thus acquired ‘the right of development and utilisation of all mineral resources’ for the ‘coastal strip’ from 22°S (around the mouth of the Omaruru/ǁEseb River) to Cape Frio, ‘while the captains reserved control over their places of residence and their pastures’.164 As Rizzo writes, these treaties are the first written official documents through which the north-west Oorlam Nama leadership formally expressed their claim to the north-west,165 subsequent to Kamaherero’s claim expressed to Palgrave in 1876, as per Figure 1.3. This 1880s process involved negotiation of ‘a detailed territorial outline of the region’, later drawn on in the establishment of colonial companies intended to control extractive possibilities, see Figure 1.10 below.166 The Swartbooi/|Uixamab “sale” of rights to this large area of the north-west was contested by Herero Captain Manasse at Omaruru, in a meeting at Okahandja with Dr Göring of the colonial administration:

[a]fter he had learnt of the sale of the Kaokoveld the previous July, Manasse had put his objections to this to the Kaiser. Although the territory was not being inhabited by the Hereros at that moment, it was [considered] Herero land and neither the Topnaars nor the Swartbooi Hottentots had any right to sell it. Dr. Göring tried to settle the matter by reprimanding Cornelius Swartbooi. He pointed out to the Swartbooi captain that he and his tribe had only settled at Otjitambi in the Kaokoveld in 1882 and therefore did not own the territory [although see Section 1.2.3 for background here]. It would have been much better if they had first obtained the permission of the Hereros at Omaruru before they had sold the territory. In the same breath Dr. Göring strongly advised Cornelius Swartbooi to place himself under German protection.167

By 1887, and under the leadership of Cornelius, the Swartboois had settled in Fransfontein where, from December 1891, they were joined by RMS missionary Heinrich Riechmann.168 Riechmann tells of people he calls ‘Bergdamara’ (i.e. ǂNūkhoen) living in the larger area around Fransfontein who ‘were resettled to Tsumamas, a fountain about 25kms east of Fransfontein [… also with] good soils for gardening and plenty of water’.169 In the early 1890s, the RMS established a mission station at Tsumamas/Otjimbuima under missionary Friedrich Kremer especially for so-called ‘Bergdamara’ who came from werfts (dwelling places) in all directions: this was abandoned soon after for ǁGaub near Otavi, established as the future station for those settled at Tsumamas.170 In the mid-1880s, the director of the Botanical Museum of Zurich (Hans Schinz) journeyed through German South West Africa (GSWA),¹⁷¹ similarly encountering a number of ‘Bergdamara’ huts at ‘Otjovasandu’ (also ǂKhoabendus): he reports the area as rich in open water pools and pasture, with large antelope herds, springbok especially, caught in snares attached to trees and consumed alongside veld foods; a ‘Bergdamara’ bringing him a fur bag filled with berries.172 In 1893, some groups of ‘Bergdamara’ (around 200 people) led by their leader !Naruseb [!Nauriseb173] arrived at Okombahe from Sesfontein, complaining that |Uixamab’s people made war on them, and asking those at Okombahe to accommodate them.174 In the late 1800s both Jan |Uixamab of Sesfontein and Cornelius Swartbooi of Fransfontein wrote to the Rhenish Mission Society (RMS) requesting missionaries (on which more below).175

Further east, William Worthington Jordan, a “mixed race” trader from the Cape, and Kambonde (son of Ndonga king Kampingana), reached an agreement with regard to a 25,000 km² concession of land for Trekboer in Angola associated with Jordan: the concession stretched between Grootfontein, Otavi, Etosha Pan (with Okaukeujo and Ombika as the western boundary), and the Waterberg.176 Kambonde and his father ceded to Jordan a piece of land of around 957 geographical square miles in the south-east corner of Ondonga’s area, reportedly against the payment of 25 muskets, a “salted horse” (i.e. a horse with resistance to sickness177), and a cask of brandy.¹⁷⁸ This “Republic of Upingtonia” was proclaimed in 1885 with 46 Boers signing an agreement as citizens of the new Republic, and the land subdivided by Jordan although he ‘retained the mineral and trading rights for the whole area’.179 The farmers here had to cope with “Bushmen” attacks on a daily basis,180 with at least two Upingtonia settlers (Todd and du Toit) being shot.181 Like Manasse in relation to the Kaokoveld, when Kamaherero heard about the Upingtonia contract he also laid claim to the area, but without success.182 In June 1886, Jordan was murdered in Ovamboland by ‘[p]eople of the chief Nehale of Ondangwa’ (Kambonde’s brother), rumoured to have acted on behalf of Kamaherero; after which the Republic of Upingtonia was dissolved and the area placed under German protection.183

In 1895 a Johannes Kruger was appointed by German governor Leutwein as ‘Captain of the natives’ of Grootfontein—namely ‘Bushmen and Damaras and of all people who lived at Ghaub’ [ǁGaub]—who were required to recognise German sovereignty.184 At !Naidaus south of Etosha Pan, German Captain von Estorff re-negotiated a ‘protection treaty’ (Schutsvertrag) with a ‘Captein Aribib’, incorporating environmental permissions and restrictions:

[t]he Bushmen cede to the German government the entire territory to which they believed up to now to have claimed. It extends from the area of Outjo up to the area of Grootfontein. The northern limit is the Etosha Pan. The southern limit is formed by the northernmost werfts of the Hereros. In return, the German government promises to provide the Bushmen with security and protection from everyone. The Bushmen may not be driven away from the waterhole !Naidaus, where they are presently. They are also entitled at all times and everywhere on their former territory to collect veldkos. In return, they promise not to oppose the settlement of German farmers, but to be of assistance to them and to remain on good terms with them. In particular they promise not to set grass fires. Captein Aribib vows to remain always loyal to the German government and to meet its requirements with good will. He receives, as long as he fulfils this obligation, an annual salary of 500 marks. For every grass fire noted in the area described in paragraph 1, 20-50 marks will be deducted.185

In 1893 the German colonial company for South West Africa (Deutsche Kolonial-Gesellschaft für Südwest-Afrika) transferred the rights it had acquired from Lüderitz (in 1885) to Hirsch and Co., later the Kaoko Land and Mining Company (Kaoko Land und Minen Gesellschaft, KLMG), reportedly for £45,000.186 The KLMG’s commercial rights were considered to involve the land depicted in Figure 1.10a—an area now lodged in popular consciousness as “Kaoko” or “Kaokoveld”,187 although this ‘Kaoko identity’ does not necessarily match Indigenous framings of this territory (see Chapter 13).¹⁸⁸ The company was represented by surveyor Dr Georg Hartmann in strategic alliance with German colonial governor Leutwein.189 Hartmann thereby became a key actor in the fate and fortunes of the peoples of this area. His first ‘Kaoko-Feld’ expedition in 1894 travelled from Otavi to Otjitambi, along the Hoanib River to ‘Seßfontein’, and then to the coast; returning southwards on the gravel plains across the !Uniab and ǁHuab rivers to a meeting point at Sorris-Sorris east of the Brandberg; then back to the limestone concession area of the South West Africa Co., south of Etosha (also see Chapter 12).¹⁹⁰ His second expedition to investigate ‘a route for transporting copper by rail from the Otavi area to the coast, and to explore the coast for a suitable harbour’,191 as well as to examine ‘the whole coast of the ǂUgab-river north of Cape Cross to the Kunene mouth for guano and landing sites’,192 involved military personnel who in 1897–1898 were deployed to suppress insurgency in the north-west (see Section 1.3.2).

Hartmann’s north-west expeditions drew attention to the prolific indigenous fauna and spectacular scenery of the area. On reaching the Kunene River via the Marienfluss, he writes:

[t]he enormous abundance of game in the whole northern area was remarkable, it is a true El Dorado for the hunter for all antelope species up to the rare rooibuck [impala, Aepyceros melampus] and waterbuck [Kobus ellipsiprymnus], one sees ostrich herds up to 100 animals; the elephant appears in herds, the giraffe [Giraffa camelopardalis angolensis] in smaller troops, and the isolated rhinoceros. The traces of lions are numerous, they only clear the field where the elephant appears, and they move with the big antelope-herds which move around to the good grass-grazing pastures in the country.193

Eberhard Rosenblad, a Swedish navy captain who accompanied Hartmann’s second Kaokoveld expedition in 1895–1896 confirmed that:

[t]he further north we went, the more plentiful became the supply of game. We encountered giraffe on several occasions. Here they occurred in herds, and then we had our fill of their delicate marrowbones. Gemsbok [Oryx gazella] were also plentiful.194

Rosenblad describes hunting elephant on a moonlit night, near Kaoko Otavi:

As the method of hunting that we had had to employ on this occasion was unsporting and could be regarded as unnecessary slaughter, we decided never to use it again. It is a different matter when you encounter the animals in daytime and in the open veld.195

The infrequent references by Hartmann and Rosenblad to their local guides suggests that they rendered somewhat invisible the presence of these key local actors, bringing to the fore their own agency and instrumentalising surveillance of the Northern Namib and the ‘Kaoko-Feld’. The presence throughout the north-west landscape of local peoples is similarly glossed over (as well as strongly racialised). Nonetheless, Hartmann notes numerous peoples in these areas: ‘Berg-Damara’ in mountainous areas of the ‘southern part of the Kaoko-Feld’, as well as ‘numerously at the Brandberg, on whose plateaus small independent tribes still live, practising small animal husbandry (sheep and goat breeding), and [also] north to the |Uni!ãb [!Uniab] and Franzfontein’; ovaHerero in the north-eastern Kaokoveld, their relatives migrating south-eastwards; and ‘Zwartboois’ and ‘Toppnaers’ Nama at Fransfontein and Seßfontein, feared by northern ovaHerero but who ‘rendered outstanding services’ as guides and ‘[a]t my instigation […] recognized German patronage in 1894’.196

Fig. 1.10 ‘Karte des Landbesitzes und der Minengerechtsame in Deutsch-Südwestafrika’ (Map of Land Ownership and Mining Rights in German South-West Africa), by Max Moisel and Paul Sprigade 1914, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz: a) detail of the Kaoko Land und Minen Gesellschaft area; b. full map. Source: Public domain image, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Karte_des_Landbesitzes_und_der_Minengerechtsame_in_Deutsch-S%C3%BCdwestafrika.jpg, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Indeed, in the vicinity of Sanitatis north of Sesfontein, Hartmann and Rosenblad were ‘visited by the important chief Jan Ugamab [|Uixamab], who arrived from his headquarters at Zesfontein accompanied by about 40 of his subjects’.197 The area ‘south of Etosha, which was still full of elephants and other wildlife’ is described as ‘only inhabited by bushmen and few mountain-Damara’.198 The German Colonial Handbook (Deutsche Kolonial-Handbuch) first published in 1896 provides an illuminating description of Nama settlement in the north-west in this year:

[t]he mat houses of the Zwartbooi Hottentots, of which there are about 450, form a wide circle around the spring [at Franzfontein]. The water is bright and clear, free of any bad taste; it is a little warm at the spring, but cools down quickly. The surrounding area is rich in bushes and trees to the south, east and west, and there are several small springs, some of which are good pastures. The view is limited by a low mountain range. Franzfontein offers a good passage through the mountains on the way north. A gate leads to Otjitambi (copper mine), inhabited by Zwartboois people, and to Zesfontein, the six-spring place, where a part of the Topnars, belonging to the Hottentots of the Walfischbai, is currently staying.199

A feature of colonial encounters with African peoples throughout Etosha-Kunene in the 1890s is the increasing use of photography to provide a visual record, with accompanying narratives illustrating how colonial actors sought to understand and delineate ethnic identities and to link these with specific localities. Figure 1.11 provides one set of images and their locations from this decade, including: ‘ovaTjimba’ in the far north-west of what is now Kunene Region; so-called ‘Bergdamara’ [ǂNūkhoen] close to the west of Etosha Pan; so-called ‘Bushmen’ [Haiǁom] north of Etosha Pan; ‘Swartbooi Nama’ [ǁKhau-|gôan], south of Etosha Pan; and so-called ‘Seebushmanner’ [ǁUbun] at the Hoanib River mouth.200

Fig. 1.11 Photographed encounters with diverse peoples across Etosha-Kunene in the 1890s. Sources: Hartmann (1897: 123, 129) and Rudner & Rudner [Möller] (1974[1899]: opp. 147, 162), out of copyright. Map prepared by Sian Sullivan using Google Maps (the coloured dots represent selected colonial travellers’ journeys, see Figure 1.2): Map data © 2024 Google, INEGI Imagery © 2024 NASA, TerraMetrics, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Already in the mid-1880s, the German colonial government was also attempting to fix the northern boundary with Portugal, ‘yet neither country had any jurisdiction over the Ovambo’,201 whilst borders between Kaokoland and the western Owambo kingdoms (Uukwaluudhi, Uokuolonkadhi, Ongandjera) remained open.202 As had occurred in the 1860s further south (see Section 1.1.3), in the 1880s and 1890s, European hunters and traders became increasingly concerned about competition from Oorlam Nama also seeking to exploit the wildlife resources of the north-west. In the late 1800s, Axel Eriksson had a hunting camp south of the Kunene River and, like KLMG surveyor Dr Georg Hartmann in 1900, reports large Portuguese hunting parties crossing the Kunene into Kaoko,203 competing with Oorlam hunters.²⁰⁴ In these years Mossamedes, the most important harbour on the southwest Angolan coast, was the main outlet for ivory from north-western Namibia.205 The ‘[s]cope and scale of Oorlam involvement in the underground trade [in southern Angola] would trouble the SWA colonial administration in the making’,206 encouraging moves towards its suppression. Between 1885 and 1907 Angola Boers took part ‘as volunteers in ten expeditions against [so-called] insurgent natives’, playing ‘an important part in the subjugation of the remote territories of Angola to Portuguese authority’.207 In 1890 Angola Trekboers fought Petrus Swartbooi and associates, and in a ‘final clash’ in 1893 Nama in Angola were ‘soundly defeated and did not venture to cross the Kunene again’: reportedly 37 Nama and two Trekboer were killed in this event.208 Conflict such as this is perhaps a contributing factor that explains why David Swartbooi of Otjitambi signed a protection treaty with the German colonial government (Figure 1.12), even though his captaincy was not recognised by all, with Lazarus Swartbooi considered the leader at Fransfontein.209

Fig. 1.12 ‘Negotiation with the Swartboois and Topnaars September 1895’, Outjo. Source: Leutwein (1906: 66,
out of copyright).

These are the dynamic colonial circumstances into which the critically disruptive ‘agent’ of rinderpest appeared in 1897,210 precipitating heightened colonial control, intensified Indigenous insurgence, militarised colonial response, and ultimately systematic appropriation of land and livestock.

1.3.2 Rinderpest, colonial control and Indigenous resistance

The rinderpest epidemic arrived in the Horn of Africa in the late 1880s, ‘possibly carried by Indian cattle imported into Eritrea by the Italian colonists’.211 In June 1896, an import ban ‘on all ruminants and their products’ was ‘issued by German military command’, beginning attempts to halt this highly contagious disease, which affected cattle and other cloven-hooved animals such as buffalo (Syncerus caffer) and large antelope like eland (Taurotragus oryx) and kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros).212 Rinderpest is described as spreading ‘through the country “like a tempest”’: German authorities estimated that ‘50% of the country’s cattle herd perished within the first six months of the panzootic and over the next year up to 90% mortality was reported among Herero herds in the central highlands’.213 The death of some 90% of cattle in southern Angola pushed pastoralists further into the Portuguese colonial economy, including working as mercenaries with Trekboers as the Portuguese sought to contain rebellions of oshiWambo-speaking peoples in southern Angola.214 This is the context in which leaders such as Vita Thom enhanced their regional power to become powerful headmen and raiders of livestock in the north-west in the early 1900s,215 stimulating south-westerly movements of ovaHimba from north-east Kaokoveld (as documented in Section 1.2.3).

Following a conference on the rinderpest crisis convened in late August 1896 by the British Cape Colony at Vryburg (British Bechuanaland, now Botswana),216 a “defense line” or Absperrline was established to control movement of livestock between northern “native” areas and southern and central European settlement areas.217 This cordon consisted of a chain of military outposts, some of which became permanent after the pandemic ran its course, a situation with lasting effects for Indigenous inhabitants.218 The ‘northern district’ centred on Outjo, where a military station had been established by Leutwein in 1895,219 officially charged with controlling the spread of rinderpest and trade in livestock.220 The four most north-western stations were located from west to east at Tsawisis in the west, Omaruru on the ǁHuab River, Kauas-Okawa/Okaua, to Okaukuejo (the largest station), from which it ran along the southern margin of the Etosha Pan towards the next station at Namutoni: see Figure 1.13.221 A roughly 30 km neutral zone or ‘no go’ area was proclaimed north of the line, ‘defined by the specific water holes that were banned from use’²²²—the clearance of which echoes to this day in visions of this area as a ‘wildlife corridor’ rather than a livestock-herding and inhabited area (see Chapters 3, 13 and 14). Additional ‘military outposts along the east-west axis at Grootfontein, Otavifontein, Naidaus, and Fransfontein’, began to ‘sever any alliance between the Owambo and Herero regions’.223 Fransfontein, which by this year had a mission congregation under missionary Riechmann of 460 people or half the Swartbooi of the area, was thus positioned inside the Police Zone. Sesfontein, which had gained the young evangelist Nicodemus Kido (also ‘Gaseb’) after a visit by missionary Riechmann—as well as most of ‘Kaoko’—was beyond this ‘red line’.224

Fig. 1.13 The most westerly veterinary stations in the ‘cordon’ (red markers) established between November 1896 and February 1897. Map prepared by Sian Sullivan, using Google Maps: Map data © 2024 Google, INEGI Imagery © 2024 NASA, TerraMetrics, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

The establishment of these militarised veterinary posts sparked a process of separating indigenous herds north of this line from the herds of emerging settler farmers in the south of the country (see Chapter 2). Local support and ‘auxiliary troops’, and especially local knowledge of waterholes, were essential for the siting of outposts along the cordon, and was garnered especially from leaders such as David Swartbooi of Fransfontein, the ‘Bushman chief’ Johannes Kruger at ǁGaub, the ovaHerero chief Kambazembi at Waterberg, and traders such as Axel Eriksson.225 It is reported that 50 Swartbooi men played an important role along the cordon ‘because of their “great influence on the Bushmen and Bergdamara of these regions”’.226 Outpost guards ‘were instructed to maintain the “neutral zone” along the cordon, keeping it free of humans and animals, including killing all wildlife found in the zone’.²²⁷ According to Deputy Governor von Lindequist, the northern parts of the protectorate (beyond this cordon) were to ‘be treated as foreign territory’,228 excepting Sesfontein, for which the intention was to include this ‘former centre of power’ within the cordon.229

These military posts proved unpopular with local leaders and herders, who resented being controlled and told where they were permitted to move. Jan |Uixamab of Sesfontein, for example, ‘refused to support the cordon’s construction’ and ‘rejected the suggestion that he, his followers, and their livestock should temporarily leave Sesfontein and move south near Fransfontein’; also refusing ‘to provide more than vague assurances that they would move their herds north to Warmbad (Warmquelle), south of Sesfontein’.230 In Fransfontein 2,685 head of cattle were inoculated but it is unclear how many belonged to the RMS and how many to African Christians.231 ‘Divide and rule’ practices deployed by the colonial authorities—specifically the replacement of David Swartbooi, Captain of Fransfontein, ‘by his old rival Lazarus Swartbooi’232—exacerbated tensions in the region. Although herds may have survived through retreat to remote areas, the ‘devastating toll’ of the pandemic is suggested by residents of Sesfontein remembering, 50 years later, ‘the destruction of their herds’.233

Rinderpest was a gift to the consolidating colonial government.²³⁴ The decimation of indigenous herds and the associated disintegration of African societal organisation opened the door for state appropriation of territory and livestock, facilitated by militarised state power. After initial successes, African resistance to colonial authority led by ‘a regional coalition of Herero and Oorlam leadership’235 along the western cordon was defeated through an increasingly militarised campaign. Led by individuals such as Captain Ludwig von Estorff, who had gained knowledge of the area through being part of Hartmann’s second Kaokoveld expedition described in Section 1.3.1, this campaign stretched from Outjo to Sesfontein (see Figure 1.14). Hartmann himself submitted an advisory report to the colonial administration in December 1897, in which he supported an escalating military campaign to suppress the Swartbooi and their associates. As indicated in Section 1.2.3, it is clear from this report that he had been guided through the Kaokoveld in the mid-1890s by a Johannes Swartbooi in particular, who is mentioned repeatedly in Hartmann’s report.236 Archive sources also show that at the very beginning of unrest in the area in late 1897, colonial leaders were articulating a clear desire for more land and access to water sources throughout the region: providing an ultimate reason for the disproportionate crushing of Nama and others in the area—whose main initial crime was the theft of horses and donkeys from the 4^th Field Company of the administration stationed at Fransfontein.237

Fig. 1.14 Map of the area stretching from Outjo to Sesfontein connected via the Swartbooi / Grootberg Uprising and colonial military response in 1897–1898. Source: GSWA (n.d.: 417, out of copyright), adapted by Sian Sullivan,
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

In this colonial ‘theatre of war’, the German military campaign mobilised ovaHerero allies (who later became prominent victims of ‘genocidal escalation’238) to crush one of the first Indigenous wars against the colonial government in a mountainous area of north-west Namibia known today as “Grootberg” (Kai |Uis), i.e. “Big Mountain”. As recounted by Friedrich von Lindequist (governor of the colony from 1905), reporting Captain von Estorff’s description of the support received in building towards military engagement here:

[f]rom the people of the chief captain Samuel Maharero and Manesse of Omaruru, I have mustered about 100 men as quickly as possible. In Omaruru I intend to gather them all and then ride towards the theatre of war.239

The uprising involved a complex, multicultural alliance of peoples:

I learned from the spy that the Kaisib detachment, composed of Topnars-Swartbois [Nama] and Bergdamaras [ǂNūkhoe], was about 35 men strong, well armed (partly with 88 weapons) and with several other weapons.240

[and]

According to the latest news from Omaruru, the Herero leader Kambatta,241 who lives on the border of the Kaokofeld, has gone over to the enemy with about 70 men, but allegedly few rifles.²⁴²

In the course of this particular military and imperial campaign, diverse autochthonous Africans allied with and were mobilised against each other. The uprising met with a devastating defeat at the so-called “Battle of Grootberg” (Kai|uis) of 26 February 1898, a locality now crossing the Etendeka Tourism Concession and ǂKhoadi-ǁHôas Conservancy areas of north-west Namibia. Some German military personnel lost their lives, as did those participating in the uprising; local leaders and fighters were executed;243 and hundreds of people were deported to become forced labourers in the new colonial capital of Windhoek—intentionally opening previously inhabited lands for appropriation by settlers. By 1901, 39 settler farmers (11 German, eight ‘Transvalers’, seven ‘Capelanders’ and seven Englishmen) were reported for Outjo District.244 Indeed, in 1895 governor Leutwein had already articulated an aim ‘to expropriate the Zwartboois entirely in favour of the Kaoko-Land- und Minengesellschaft’.245

After this defeat ‘[s]ome coalition forces withdrew to Sesfontein, and others fled to Owambo or surrendered to the German military’.246 The former leader David Swartbooi was deported to Windhoek; and in August 1898 Jan |Uixamab, leader at Sesfontein, surrendered in Outjo and handed over most of his weapons.247 More drastic punishment was avoided due to limited military resources, but |Uixamab was forced into a protection treaty (Schutzvertrag) with the German colonial government, charged 1,000 head of small stock, and requested to hand in all arms and ammunition owned by himself and followers.248 The KLMG began selling farms to German and Boer settlers with Jan |Uixamab of Sesfontein ‘selling’ 4,000 hectares constituting the farm Warmbad (Warmquelle) that was later taken over by Carl Schlettwein.249 Sesfontein became a priority for a military station—Sesfontein Fort, now a high-end lodge run by a German investor—despite being located ‘nearly 150 kilometres northeast of the [veterinary] cordon’.250 In 1902 the population of Sesfontein was reportedly reduced to 120 people, mostly women and children, although ‘the station commander conceded that he neither knew how many people lived in Sesfontein’s surroundings, nor what their economic activities consisted of, beyond growing maize and wheat in the local gardens’.251 Letters from RMS evangelist Nicodemus Kido in Sesfontein report ‘cases of women being forced into sexual relations with German military personnel’,252 and the Nama leadership reportedly began advising people to ‘start hiding in the field during the day and stay away from the military station’.253

More than 500 people were deported to Windhoek from the Fransfontein Swartbooi community where they were used as forced labour (see Figure 1.15); and 25 men ‘identified as followers of [ovaHerero leader] Kambatta’ were charged in Omaruru ‘as war traitors and sentenced to forced labour for several years’.254 The fortunes of the people of Outjo District in around 1901–1904 were further impacted by smallpox and prolonged drought.255

Fig. 1.15 Captured Swartbooi Nama in Windhoek in 1899: Captain Christian Swart is thought to be the man standing on the right (Hartmann 2005: 33). Photo by August Engelbert Wulff, 1899. Source: Übersee-Museum Bremen, P00092), https://nat.museum-digital.de/object/1101015, CC BY-SA.

A key representation of African habitation in the years immediately following this uprising nonetheless provides some indication of the diversity of interspersed peoples occupying Etosha-Kunene—see Figure 1.16: ‘Topnaars (Aonin, Gomen)’ and ‘Zwartboois (Kaugoan)’ stretch from ‘Zesfontein’ towards ‘Outjo’; ‘Owatjimba’ are placed north and east of ‘Zesfontein’, with ‘Owaherero’ in a separate band from Karibib to Waterberg; ‘Bergdamara’ are grouped throughout the area from north-west of ‘Zesfontein’ southwards towards Okombahe and east towards ‘Gaub’; ‘Buschmanner’ are positioned south and east of Etosha Pan; and different Owambo groupings are mostly north of Etosha.256

Fig. 1.16 Detail from ‘Map of nations (Völkerkarte) for Deutsch-Südwestafrika before the uprisings of 1904–05’, by Prof. Dr. K. Weule in Meyer (1909: no page number, out of copyright), CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

The so-called Swartbooi/Grootberg Uprising and its aftermath in the late 1890s prefigures escalating rebellion against colonial rule in the early 1900s, clearly linked with settler appropriation of land south of the 1897 veterinary cordon. Travelling through this consolidating “Police Zone” in 1903, Paul Rohrbach—appointed to lead a Settlement Commission for the German colony—clarifies his intent as the ‘precise task of helping to found the beginnings of a piece of German-national history of development of the present in this still history-less country’.257 He observes a settler farmer making a first attempt at constructing wire fencing for his farm, writing of the ‘evidence of German struggle for the ploughable, home-bearing soil’, and of attempts by white settlers and traders to acquire land and cattle from ovaHerero who had themselves appropriated the central pastures of the territory 100 years previously from so-called ‘Bushmen and Klippkaffern [Damara/ǂNūkhoen]’.258

Capturing the spirit of settler colonialism in this moment, Rohrbach writes of ‘the joyful feeling of witnessing how the advancing German settlement is boldly and vigorously taking possession of this truly new and promising land’, and also of land speculation in the Grootfontein area by the South West African Company.259 Rohrbach’s celebration of the achievements of settler farmers on their vast farms—including former members of Schutztruppe protection forces as well as new settlers from Germany—was disrupted, however, by increasing resistance to land appropriation and colonial control.260 Rebellion by Bondelswarts Nama in the south began in 1903 following the murder of Bondelswarts Kaptein Jan Christian by a Lieutenant Walter Jobst: following this incident, Jobst, his sergeant and another soldier were gunned down.261 Leutwein responded by declaring war on the Bondelswarts Nama, demanding military reinforcements from Berlin and heading a Schutztruppe force of 500 men to Warmbad where this initial ‘Bondelswarts uprising’ of October was crushed.262 Attacks on settler farmers in the northern areas of Grootfontein and Namutoni—by ‘wild Kungbush people’, ovaHerero and ‘Ovambos’—increasingly characterise Rohrbach’s narrative into 1904.263

By mid-January 1904 the so-called Herero uprising had begun, leading to a massive colonial war in 1904–1908 that—through an ‘extermination order’ issued by incoming Governor Lothar von Trotha in October 1904—developed genocidally.264 In February 1904, northern Owambo troops from Ondonga attacked the German Schutzruppe police station at Namutoni to the east of Etosha Pan.265 Later in the year Witbooi Nama in southern Namibia, who, under severe pressure, had allied with the German colonial military,266 also joined the war.²⁶⁷ These circumstances are repeatedly evoked by Rohrbach (and others) as a justification for seizing land and cattle in increasingly punitive ways (as had happened from prior to the rinderpest epidemic268), so as to compensate white settler farmers for losses caused by Indigenous contestation of consolidated colonial rule.269 Indeed, in the context of the warfare of 1904–1908, Rohrbach’s role shifted to the leadership of a new Compensation Commission to oversee compensation for settler losses, mostly from land and livestock acquired from Africans.270

In a substantial act of ‘so-called primitive accumulation’,²⁷¹ Ordinances in 1907 issued by the colonial government in the wake of this escalating conflict thus made provision for ‘the colonial state to appropriate vast parts of formerly African-owned land and stock’.272 In this context, and echoing suggestions outlined above, the RMS urged the colonial government ‘to forcefully remove the Zesfontein community to Fransfontein in order to raise the number of residents [at Fransfontein] and hence to guarantee the continuity of the mission work’.273 This call prefigures a proposal decades later by ecologist Ken Tinley to remove Nama and other Khoekhoegowab speakers from the Hoanib valley to Fransfontein so as to create a protected area that would connect Etosha Pan with the coast (considered in more detail in Chapters 12 and 13).²⁷⁴

The scale of the impact of the 1904–1908 colonial war can be seen in estimated population reductions of 81% ovaHerero, 57% Damara/ǂNūkhoen and 51% Nama.275 Today, forensic scrutiny of historical military orders and texts for evidence that would meet contemporary United Nations definitions of the crime of ‘genocide’—itself positioned alongside, and differentiated from, ‘crimes against humanity’, ‘war crimes’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’276—drives a heated discourse of recognition and reparation in international law. An expanding literature in Namibian history and historiography debates details of colonial military strategy and intent, iteratively revising prior interpretations.²⁷⁷

In the wake of this colonial war, further appropriations were enabled, shifting land and livestock to the growing colonial settler economy. Sesfontein’s ‘tribal property’ (Stammersvermögen), for example, was expropriated with some financial compensation,278 due to alleged involvement by the Topnaar leadership of Sesfontein in uprisings associated with the colonial wars further south.279 A meeting took place in Sesfontein of a commission appointed to estimate ‘the value of the community’s possession in large stock, which the German colonial authority intended to confiscate’, ‘for sale at auction in Outjo to local European farmers’.280 Having lost the land of Sesfontein to the German government, on the basis of regular lease payments the ‘Sesfontein community’ was granted right of residence281 to the 31,416 ha ‘farm Zesfontein’ for use by the ‘Topnaar Swartbooi Hottentot’ for grazing purposes: this is the origin of the restricted ‘10km radius from the waterhole Zessfontein’ visible on multiple maps and land designations until Independence in 1990.282 Fransfontein experienced similar treatment:

land and cattle was [sic] confiscated, the community was allowed to keep 2ha of garden land and a maximum of 500 piece of small stock, five mission evangelists were allowed to keep their large stock, and the district commander reserved the right to determine where people would be allowed to reside and to work.283

Simultaneously, shortages of labour meant that by 1907, police and military patrols ‘were rounding up Bushmen and allocating them to farmers as laborers’, as well as to mines: ‘a military patrol from the Waterberg rounded up some fifty Bushmen in the vicinity of Tsumeb and transferred them to the mines as laborers’.284 Settler farm(er)s in Grootfontein and Outjo districts subsequently became the focus of stock thefts and murders by ‘Bushmen’, combined with attacks on Owambo migrant workers moving between these districts and north-central Namibia: a series of events that became known as the ‘Bushmen plague’, the ‘Bushman Danger’ or the ‘Bushmen problem’. Between 1909–1914, police with soldiers thus ‘undertook more than 400 Bushman patrols in the Grootfontein, Outjo, Rehoboth, and Maltahohe districts, covering some 60,000km²’.285 The punitive measures towards those living relatively independently of the emerging colonial state and speaking a language characterised by click consonants have led to anthropologist Robert Gordon describing these attacks as a forgotten Bushmen genocide.286

It is in the aftermath of these disruptions during the first two decades of colonisation that the colonial state introduced formal policy and legislation to govern wildlife in the territory.

1.3.3 Legislating colonial game preservation

Alongside and in the wake of the transformations outlined above in allocating and governing land, the German colonial state began to institute formal wildlife protection from commercial hunting alongside the establishment of Game Reserves. It is in these years that an increasing impetus towards strategies of purification, determining what should and should not mix, became part and parcel of formal governance: imperfectly separating people from nature, livestock from wildlife, and black from white (as considered further in Chapter 2).

In the post-Swartbooi/Grootberg Uprising years, commercial hunting was carried out increasingly by Europeans:

[o]nly when the power of the Swartboois and Topnaar communities was broken by the German colonial forces did Kaokoveld’s plentiful game become accessible to professional hunters operating mainly from southern Angola.287

In 1900, Georg Hartmann wrote in a secret report that informants in Sesfontein told him of ‘Portuguese hunters, who usually spent several months (August to November) at Otjijandjasemo, a significant water-place in northern Kaoko’ (south-east of Okongwati): they would ‘enter the region with their ox-wagons or would cross the Kunene on horseback’, depending on the water level.288 Well-armed and ‘supported by large numbers of African carriers and guides from southern Angola and from Kaoko’—not least through an alliance between the Sesfontein Oorlam leadership and the ovaHerero leader Kakurukouje289—they ‘would shoot up to 100 elephants all over the area and collect their loot at Otjijandjasemo’.290 In the early 1900s, Angolan Trekboers hunting ‘in small groups of usually less than ten well-armed hunters’ conducted elephant hunts on horseback, and shot around 300 hippos ‘along the lower Kunene’ for lucrative hippo-hide sjamboks (whips), leading to the almost complete demise of this population.291 They reportedly came down as far as the Hoanib River to hunt elephant; although the ‘names chiselled out on stones in the Khowareb Schlucht’ in 1916 could also be by Union of South Africa military personnel in World War 1.292

Already in 1886 Dr Göring, first appointed Imperial Commissioner for ‘the SWA Protection territory’, warned about ‘reckless hunting’ caused by demand for ostrich feathers, hides and ivory.293 In 1892 the German colonial administration began to restrict ivory exports from south-west Africa’s coastal harbours.294 Regulations for commercial hunting were also issued in this year, such that anyone wishing to hunt with horses, draught animals or pack animals had to purchase an annual permit; with the hunting of female and young animals (for elephants and ostriches) prohibited, and an annual closed season set for ostriches (from 1 August to 31 October, extended to 31 November in 1896).295 In 1902, the first government ordinance for controlling hunting was proclaimed—Ordinance Concerning the Exercise of Hunting in German South-West Africa Protected Areas (Verordnung betreffend Jagd der Ausübung der Jagd in Deutsch-Südwest Afrika Schutzgebiete)—reportedly signed by Governor von Estorff.296 Joubert writes that,

[c]ertain areas were closed to hunting (these areas were claimed as game reserves by Governor von Lindequist in 1907 [see below]), and it was furthermore illegal to set any form of traps or snares. The Territory was divided into districts (later to become magisterial districts) and each district had an official known as a District Chief. This District Chief had the authority to enforce hunting seasons of varying duration for various game species depending on circumstances in his district every year.297

As historian Marie Muschalek documents, hunting and nature protection laws were enforced in these years by policemen (the Landespolizei), who were also encouraged to acquire hunting licences for supplementing their diet with meat, and for gaining proficiency in aiming at moving targets.298

These regulations were intended to protect so-called game as a ‘financial resource’, and made provision ‘for the potential establishment of game reserves, if the hunting regulations were not sufficient’.299 Indeed, travelling in the vicinity of Namutoni and Etosha Pan in late 1903, Paul Rohrbach observed that ‘[t]he whole southern side [of Etosha Pan] is to become a game reserve’.300 Subsistence hunting continued to be allowed for Indigenous peoples—and in any case was very difficult to control—within what was understood to be “their territories”. At the same time, colonial actors such as Rohrbach were already elevating colonial-settler relationships with wildlife over African practices.301

In 1909, some amendments were made to the 1902 game/hunting ordinance, making:

provision for the Governor to give permission for any of the protected game to be shot for “economic or scientific reasons”. A general closed hunting season from “November to the end of February” also came into force, although the District Chief still had the authority to shorten or lengthen the hunting season according to conditions in his district. One also had to obtain the permission of landowners to hunt on their land.302

Overall, though, this ordinance remained in force until the occupation of the territory by South African forces in 1915 in the context of World War 1, when E.H.L. Gorges was appointed Governor of the Military Regime,303 and technically it was still in force until the new Union of South Africa legislation of 1921 (see Chapter 2).

It is in the wake of the German colonial war that a series of three ‘Game Reserves’ (Wildschutzgebiet) were proclaimed,304 through Proclamation No. 88, issued on 22 March 1907 by the Imperial Governor of Deutsch Südwestafrika, Dr Friedrich von Lindequist.305 Economic motivations were clearly articulated in the explanatory paper for establishing the Game Reserves:

[e]verybody knows how much economic value game has in the country. In some cuisines, only game is served as fresh meat. Also the utility value of the skins for blankets and for making straps and whips is known to everyone. Unfortunately, it is impossible to make statistics, but if one wanted to calculate the many hundredweights of game captured in the country every year on the basis of average slaughter prices, it would be estimated to be more than 200,000 m [marks]. If you take this sum as an annual pension, the capital involved would mean a fortune of many millions of dollars that we have in our game stock. We all receive this pension free of charge from the country, and so our wildlife provides a very significant part of our common wealth, which every inhabitant of the reserve should be scrupulous about protecting, as it is in the interest of every individual. [...] The benefits that the game reserves would bring to the country would be as follows: centres would be created where game would have to be moved from the grazing areas there and would be brought to farms where it could be shot and exploited. African game is very variable and so the supply of game from the reserves could be extended to areas far from the reserves. […] The reserves indicated as 1-3 include areas which, for the most part, are not, or temporarily not, suitable for farming. Farms which are located within the reserves or which would later be sold, for example, enjoy the exemptions of § 7.306

Of interest here is the emphasis on game as an economic resource: the focus was on possibilities for translocating game to settler farms ‘where it could be shot and exploited’, with a converse emphasis on keeping game reserve areas free of farming. Of the proclaimed reserves, Game Reserve No. 2 (Figure 1.17)—at the time, the largest conservation area in the world—stretched from Etosha Pan to the Skeleton Coast in the north-west, and included Kaokoveld (today’s northern Kunene Region); thereby removing the option of settlement by white farmers in this area.307 Hunting was prohibited in the Game Reserves ‘without written permission of the district office’; vehicle traffic was also prohibited.308 Lieutenant Adolff Fischer, commander of Fort Namutoni at the time, became the first warden of Game Reserve No. 2,309 reporting in 1912 that lion were heard here again after their decline due to hunting.310 It was later noted that,

[i]nitially, the definition of Etosha’s boundaries made little impact on the movement of wild animals, except for the legal nicety that after crossing a mapped line they were not protected. Physically the boundaries consisted of surveyed points and, later, cleared fire-breaks along some of them. Migratory herds were therefore unrestrained in their movement along traditional routes.³¹¹

It is also unlikely that the diverse African peoples living throughout so-called Game Reserve No. 2 had any idea ‘that they were now inhabiting the world’s largest protected area’,312 or that their mobilities were initially affected in any significant way by the Reserve’s proclamation specifically.

Fig. 1.17 Boundaries of Game Reserve No. 2 in 1907. Map: © Ute Dieckmann, data: Proclamations NAN, Atlas of Namibia Team 2022, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

At this time, the presence of Haiǁom in the eastern parts of Game Reserve No. 2 was tolerated with the suggestion that more Bushmen from outside the reserve could be settled near Namutoni: the prohibition of hunting in this area applied only to hunting with guns, but not to the use of bows and arrows.313 Diverse otjiHerero- and Khoekhoegowab-speaking residents also remained in the north-west part of the Game Reserve, as well as south of its southern boundary (see Chapters 13 and 14), as directly observed in the comprehensive tour of ‘Kaokoveld’ by Major Manning in 1917.314 As Eugene Joubert writes, ‘nature conservation’ was clearly ‘actively practised’ during this period of German occupation, through ‘the formulation of hunting laws and the proclamation of game reserves’.315

1.4 Brief conclusion

The shift from pre-colonial circumstances to colonisation and colonial land control—including for conservation—was clearly very dramatic. By the beginning of World War 1, Indigenous Namibians had been radically disembedded from the land, murdered in droves, or otherwise transformed into a proletariat that laboured for the new colonial regime.316 Indigenous fauna had been very negatively impacted through commercial hunting primarily by colonists, facilitated by the availability of firearms. The management and governance of so-called game throughout the territory had been appropriated by the state, and placed into the hands of militarised police. These are the circumstances taken up by the incoming British Protectorate and South African administration after 1915, as considered in detail in Chapter 2.

Archive sources

GSWA (German South-West Africa) (n.d.) Reports on the Campaign Against the Swartbooi Hottentots from December 1897 to March 1898, 414–29.

NAN ADM 156 W 32 General Kaokoland report [and ‘Manning Map’] by Major Manning 15.11.1917: 2.

NAN Manning Diary Notes 23, 26.8.1917, 2^nd M.C. from Native Chief Vita, alias OORLOG or ORO, 19.8.1917.

NAN Statement taken by Major C.N. Manning at Zesfontein, Kaokoveld from Native Chief Vita, 19.8.1917.