Palgrave Commission
In the early 1870s, South West Africa was torn by internecine warfare and threatened with impending invasion and colonisation by Portugal, Germany and the Boers.
After decades of war with the Damara, Nama and Herero people, they established a powerful semi-nomadic state in the area of modern Windhoek, under their dynamic leader Jan Jonker Afrikaner.
From the 1870s however, increasing numbers of white Trekboers began to enter South West Africa from the east, causing even worse internecine warfare.
Motivated by the combined severity of the situation, from 1874 Maharero began sending diplomatic missions southwards, to the Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope.
It implemented a multi-racial franchise, laws prohibiting racial discrimination and legal protection of African traditional land from white appropriation.
The Cape Prime Minister John Molteno concluded that the final decision would depend on the views and wishes of the various nations of South West Africa, and that a delegation must immediately depart to consult them and report back.
To head the commission, Molteno chose William Palgrave, a gentle and learned man who had spent many years living with the Herero and knew many of the traditional leaders personally.
So finally, in 1876, Palgrave entered the arid vastness of South West Africa as "Special Commissioner to Hereroland and Namaland", with a multi-ethnic assemblage of personnel and a long train of ox-wagons.
Initially, before leaving Cape Town, Palgrave's opinion had been that a simple bilateral treaty and the posting of a magistrate for each nation would suffice to protect and ensure peace in the region.
[4] In his 1st commission, Palgrave visited Maharero and his government, as well as the local leaders of Omaruru and Ameib, the Basters, the Nama, Damaras, Bondelswarts and the powerful and expansionist Oorlam people of Jonker Afrikaner.
His report back to the Cape Parliament was that Maharero formally requested full incorporation, with a magistrate specifically to be based in his own town of Okahandja.
It correctly predicted the invasion of this area by an imperialist European power (in this case, Imperial Germany), and it wished to protect the flank of the new Kimberley diamond fields.
However, Bartle Frere used his ability to obstruct the implementation of Palgrave's work as a tactical tool, to pressurise the Cape government to agree to confederation.
Failing to persuade the Cape government, Bartle Frere dissolved it, and assumed direct control of the country to enforce the Confederation system.
In a peculiar step, the incorporation of Walvis Bay and the offshore islands was then authorised by the British in 1878, while the rest of the country remained in legal limbo until the Germans arrived.
Maharero, no longer relying directly on Palgrave, sent his son Willem on a diplomatic mission to Cape Town to negotiate with the new pro-imperialist Prime Minister, John Gordon Sprigg.
The hypothetical enlarged state would have included the entire (predominantly mixed-race and Afrikaans-speaking) western half of southern Africa, corresponding largely to the dry, winter-rainfall climatic area, and holding abundant mineral resources.
