[3] The journal carried adverts for banks, food suppliers, hotels, furniture shops, auctioneers, schools (with St. Andrew's College, Grahamstown trumpeting its exclusive annual Rhodes Scholarship), wagons, carriages (no cars), ploughs and other farm machinery, and lastly for "Dr Williams' Pink Pills" (which were advertised as an antidote for almost all known ailments).

[31] The British Liberal ministers brought no pressure to bear to ensure that the dominant Europeans should treat the vast non-European majority better than most of them had done hitherto, though they might have been forgiven had they done so, seeing that the very sessions of the Convention were punctuated by demands for Bantu lands from white men from all the colonies, especially from Natal.

Hofmeyr felt emboldened to do so as "there is the extenuating circumstance that, as I had made a somewhat exhaustive study of the history of Closer Union movements in other countries with the view of assisting in the collection of information that might be useful to the Convention, I had taken perhaps a keener interest in the efforts of that body in their endeavours to arrive at a practical solution ... than my ordinary duties as one of the secretaries would have demanded, and for that reason perhaps the proceedings of that great gathering of South African statesmen have left on my mind a deeper and more lasting impression than would probably otherwise have been the case."

"[42] In the event, Botha and General Jan Smuts (de la Rey's old comrades and fellow members of the Transvaal delegation to the National Convention) commanded forces loyal to the Government which greatly outnumbered the rebels and were able to swiftly put down the rebellion.

While the rebellion was crushed, its legacy of bitterness provided part of the political capital which put the National Party under Hertzog into office after the first world war[9] and contributed to Hofmeyr's defeat as the candidate for Riversdale in the 1929 general election.

[51] "The Natives live in their various tribal organisations under chiefs and councils who are competent to consult and speak for their tribes and members and thus to represent their wishes and interests... the general principle of national self-determination is therefore as applicable in their case as those of occupied European territories".

Notwithstanding Lloyd George's grand promise of self-determination, the Great Powers heading the thirty-two countries forming the League of Nations were not ready to permit the Natives of South West Africa (or other former German possessions) to decide how they should be governed.

"[67] Elsewhere in the Cape Times on 3 August 1920 it was reported that "No one can doubt that the appointment, from a public point of view, is a wise one... [Hofmeyr] possesses a charm of manner and a kindness of heart which are bound to win the confidence and esteem of those with whom he will have official dealings in the South-West Protectorate... Courteous to all, he has been ever ready to help anyone over a difficulty when occasion demanded".

[7] Ruth First recounts how in 1924 a sharp shock reverberated through the session of the Mandates Commission at Geneva when it was noted that Hofmeyr's 1923 Report recorded that religious missions operating in Ovamboland were required to furnish a written undertaking to assist and support the policy of the Administration and to "encourage all Natives under their influence to seek employment in the Police Zone".

[7] However, he goes on to say that "the fact that Hofmeyr's Administration accepted this reluctance as a favourable factor in the problem of labour supply for white colonists and did as little as possible to overcome the Native inertia may be judged by the impartial observer as an essential betrayal of the Mandatory principle".

In his Advisory Council Hofmeyr appointed, as one of his advisors, a councillor who had acquaintance with Native conditions in the territory and this might be, and in fact was, a government official who, unless he was prepared to risk dismissal, could scarcely do more than give a discreet opinion on a contentious matter.

[101] Leutwein agreed to remedy the inequitable results of the agreement at a later date,[101] 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.

[110] 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.

[103] The majority, Senator AW Roberts and Dr CT Loram, who had deep roots in the Cape's tradition of tolerance, expressed views critical of Hofmeyr and the Administration, but General Lemmer, a comrade of Botha and Smuts in the Anglo-Boer war and since then a faithful follower of theirs in politics[115] dissented in many important respects.

[113] The Manchester Guardian also disparaged the SA Commission Report when it came out, and Sir Sydney Olivier 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".

"[119] Hofmeyr cites General Lemmer's rebuttal of this, and without 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.

[11] 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.

"[127] Without citing any evidence, 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".

Not only so, but they have had, unfortunately for themselves, some 20 or 30 years of German rule, and that has tended, to put it mildly, to demoralise them... in addition... what makes it still more complicated and more difficult is that, though it is an integral part of the Union, under the Treaty of Versailles [South West Africa] is a Mandated Territory, and therefore the League of Nations are perfectly entitled to keep under observation what is done there and to criticise, if necessary, any action that may have been taken.

In 1928 Hofmeyr presented himself as a strong supporter of the ideals of the League of Nations and published a political thought piece in The Cape Times: "A definite turn for good was taken after the Great War, which has proved to be the most hideous expression the world has ever known of its old-world doctrine of force.

[6] "That spirit, sympathetic observers prayerfully hope, will ultimately permeate the civilised world including our South Africa, where, in spite of enormous potential wealth, our natural, normal, rational growth is impeded by the presence of a tenacious lingering racial atmosphere among the main elements of our European population which God has ordained shall become one united people.

"Our destiny, as part of the British Commonwealth of Nations, is now no longer seriously in dispute and we may regard it as settled..."[6] "This inter-Dominion relationship which enables us to operate with complete freedom as an independent unit ... within a group seems to me to be much the same the status conferred on man and wife by holy matrimony.

[13] "I feel convinced that the statements coming from such a responsible man as [Badenhorst] contributed materially to my defeat at the polls"[143] "I desire to press for damages in the full amount of my claim, for the reason that my reputation is of the most vital importance to me, in view of the fact of my activities in the political arena in this country".

The Mandates Commission found that Hofmeyr should have personally visited the Bondelswarts leaders to resolve the situation and that the repression of the 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".

[77] A German member of the 1933 commission, Dr Hirsekorn, submitted a minority report criticising the Union's policy of bringing into the territory a very large number of South African nationals with undue haste and settling them on the land without proper regard to sound economic principles.

[52] For Wellington, the crux of the matter is that the Mandatory, having been directed to make the welfare of the Natives its chief concern, seized the best land for its own white subjects, relegating its wards who were "not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world" to areas too small for their sustenance.

[164] Buxton approved the rapid introduction of white settlers from South Africa, and was pleased that the non-German element (4,000 British subjects, nearly all Dutch-speaking Africanders) was in 1919 already about half as large as the German community, and that before long there would certainly be a considerable influx from the Union.

[173] It had expunged Harris' account of wiping out Arabs and Kurds and omitted any mention of one British staff officer's denunciation of the Royal Air Force's bomb-induced deaths of nearly two dozen women and children in a crowded bazaar as "the nearest thing to wanton slaughter".

One wonders to what extent the disastrous first steps in the South West Africa Administration may be attributable to this fixed opinion about the worth and potential capacity of the indigenous African, and, perhaps, to a disappointment and resentment with regard to the League's non-annexation policy.

[97] In his Report of 1922 Hofmeyr complains that the utmost difficulty was experienced in making the Herero realise that "vested interests" (of German and Union settlers) made it utterly impossible "at this late stage" to consider their request to restore their land.