Bondelswarts Rebellion

The application of the principles set out in the League of Nations mandatory covenants by the independent Permanent Mandates Commission led to a deepened international examination of the ethics of colonialism and of the actions of taken against subject peoples.

Leutwein resolved to remedy the inequitable results of the agreement at a later date,[13] and the purchase was not allowed in its full extent by the German administration, which in 1892 granted the Syndicate a concession of 50,000 square km on the condition that the company should build a railway from Luderitz to the interior.

[14] Many Germans objected to the policy of exterminating the Herero, including the chancellor, Prince Bernhard von Bülow, who argued to Kaiser Wilhem II that the order was "contradictory to all Christian and humane principles".

[20] The report detailed the German military operations against the tribes, with pictures of the crude executions, neck chains, leg and arm fetters, the flayed backs of women prisoners and Herero refugees returning starved from the desert.

[3] However, the pacification of Algeria by the French, the rule of King Leopold's rubber regime in the Congo, the exploitation by the Portuguese, English and Dutch of the slave trade on the west coast of Africa were no less ugly.

Many of the demands made by the white settlers during the military period for more land, tighter control of the labour force, branding laws, a heavier dog tax and others were introduced during the first five years of the League of Nations Mandate.

Article 2 of the Mandate for South West Africa states that the "Mandatory shall have full power of administration and legislation over the territory … [and shall] promote to the utmost the material and moral well-being and the social progress of the inhabitants".

[1] With the creation of the Permanent Mandates Commission, the regime created was not what its founders had imagined; it was not a structure for imperial collaboration but rather "a polyvalent force-field of talk, one that amplified the voices of non-imperial states and even of colonised peoples".

[25] For many years Hofmeyr had been the respected Clerk of the Union House of Assembly, and had come to Smuts originally on the strong recommendation of John X. Merriman, a former Prime Minister of the Cape of Good Hope, and had always proved himself trustworthy and intelligent.

The 1922 Report of the Administrator continues: "Almost without exception each section asked for the allotment of the old tribal areas, in which vested rights had accrued and the utmost difficulty was experienced in making them realize the utter impossibility of complying with such a request".

From the beginning of South African rule until the actual eruption of the 1922 rebellion, persistent reports of threatened uprisings had become a common feature in the white farming areas adjacent to the Bondelswarts reserve.

[40] Years later, Van Ryneveld, wrote "I remember the picture from the air of the forbidding Gungunib kloof gashing its way through the mountains to the waters of the Orange River … it was easy for us floating above the operation dropping our bombs.

[11] On 19 May, during the negotiations before the fighting began, Hofmeyr had received reports of "considerable unrest among the natives" in other areas, and that "some of these were in league with the Bondelswarts and ready to co-operate with them, and that small parties of Hottentots were forcibly collecting arms from isolated farmers in the Warmbad district".

[11] Emmett comments that although there were signs of panic (initially difficulty was experienced in raising a force for the campaign) and even clearer indications of bungling due to Hofmeyr's lack of military experience, he believes that Freislich's explanation is not a complete nor a convincing one.

[33] However, after this harsh criticism, the Report continued that "when considering the evidence dealing with the period between the visit of van Niekerk and the breaking out of hostilities [it was clear that] that the Administrator wished for peace … and showed patience and forebearance.

[43] The Manchester Guardian also disparaged the Commission Report when it came out, and Sir Sydney Oliver attacked South Africa's handling of the affair in a letter to the London Times on 2 June 1923, calling the suppression of the rebellion a "massacre".

"[47] Hofmeyr agrees with General Lemmer's rebuttal of this, but perhaps without sufficient self-reflection continues as if writing a lawyer's letter: "the public will in the first place be surprised to learn that no information on this point was sought from me by the Commission; … that, wholly contrary to one of the most ordinary principles of justice – audi alteram partem – I was not given any opportunity to admit or deny the evidence or to meet any charge framed therein.

[48] After the armed escort of Major van Coller, Fleck and Noothout, Hofmeyr said that he would not have gone to the Bondelswarts and suffered similar humiliation: "in the face of this action the Commission has the temerity to suggest that I personally should have gone to Haib to see Christian".

[44] However, Major Herbst was singularly under-prepared, and was forced to apologize for not bringing several relevant documents, including obvious material like the evidence heard by the South African Commission of Enquiry.

[44] The Permanent Mandates Commission focussed their enquiry on the deep roots of the trouble, the immediate causes of the uprising, South African conduct in repressing it, and the conditions of the Bondelswarts people following suppression of the rebellion.

[20] Major Herbst said that Hofmeyr had consistently resisted pressure from white farmers to give wider powers like flogging to local officials, and had tried to improve black-white relations in South West Africa.

[22] Major Herbst asserted that Hofmeyr had done what nine out of ten administrators would have done in similar circumstances, and argued that the commission should see the issue as one not of pre-existing native grievances and a just rebellion harshly crushed, but as the breach of law by the Bondelswarts.

[43] Herbst concluded by saying that since there was no standing army to speak of in South Africa, and since the white population was far outnumbered by the blacks, the Government had to act swiftly in the event of trouble to prevent a catastrophe developing.

"[1] The PMC Report found that "as regards the conduct of the military operations, it is not disputed that the Administrator, when it became evident that hostilities were inevitable, acted wisely in taking prompt and effective steps to uphold Government authority and to prevent the spread of disaffection.

[53] Nonetheless, the Commission remarked that the repression of uprising "appears to have been carried out with excessive severity, and had it been preceded by a demonstration of the overwhelming force at the command of the military authority, an immediate and perhaps bloodless surrender might have been anticipated".

[1] The Cape Times, in an editorial on 26 September 1923, summed things up as follows: "Whatever we may think of some of the Mandate Commission's conclusions, we believe that enlightened public opinion in South Africa, even with its local knowledge of mitigating circumstances, has made up its mind that there was much in the handling of the Bondelswarts episode to justify serious doubts as to the wisdom of the Administrator in that crisis.

"[55] Ward went on to express the belief that the Bondelswarts revolt was deliberately conceived and engineered, that the Administration acted throughout with the greatest patience and forbearance, and that but for the prompt and effective manner in which the rising was suppressed, the consequences ... might well have been disastrous.

[20] Most strikingly, the Permanent Mandates Commission agreed that bombing of civilians, the very method they had condemned in the Bondelswarts case, was allowable when repressing a genuine rebellion,[20] provided the officers in charge were French and not "colonials".

[18] Wellington points out that "the Administration, it appears, had accepted the Permanent Mandates Commission suggestion in the Bondelswarts affair, of a show of overwhelming force before launching an attack on rebels, and in this case the demonstration succeeded.

[11] At first the proposal was vetoed by the South African Minister of Defence, probably because of the international outcry that followed the bombing of the Bondelswarts in 1922, but the Administration continued to insist on the importance of these "demonstrations" and permission was finally granted in 1925.