The 1915 campaign in German South West Africa: whose war was it?
In September 1914 Union of South Africa troops entered German South West Africa, after Britain asked Botha's government to seize the German radio stations and ports. The campaign stalled at Sandfontein, then resumed in 1915 under Botha with a force eventually numbering tens of thousands against a German Schutztruppe and reservists numbering only a few thousand. German forces surrendered at Khorab on 9 July 1915. South African casualties from disease were far higher than from combat. Some Afrikaners rebelled in 1914 against fighting for Britain; many Black South Africans and Namibians were drawn in as labourers, drivers and guards, and their war experiences are poorly documented. After the war South Africa governed the territory under a League of Nations mandate. A learner must judge whether the campaign is best described as a European war extended into Africa, an imperial land-grab, or part of South African state-building, and must justify the choice with evidence from the campaign itself.
1. Is the 1915 campaign best described as an imperial war, a South African war, or both? Justify your answer.
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For 'imperial'. The campaign began because Britain asked, in the context of a European war; its targets included German radio stations and ports that mattered to the Admiralty; and the peace settlement gave South Africa the territory as a League mandate, an imperial instrument.
For 'South African'. The commander was Botha, the forces were the Union Defence Force, the political stakes were domestic - the 1914 Maritz rebellion showed that fighting for Britain split Afrikaner politics - and the strategic goal was control of the territory and its ports, which South African politicians had wanted since 1910. The mandate confirmed South African administration rather than British.
The judgement. 'Both' is not fence-sitting. The war is best understood as an imperial war fought for national purposes: British needs supplied the occasion, South African ambitions supplied the motive force and the manpower, and the outcome strengthened South Africa's position in the region. The useful analytical question is not which label is correct but which purposes the campaign served at each stage.
2. Why is it misleading to narrate the campaign as a white man's war?
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The combatants. The formed units on both sides were white, and the written records were produced by white officers, which is why the campaign is often remembered that way.
The infrastructure. Movement across the Namib and the interior depended on ox-wagons, drivers, guides, water arrangements and thousands of labourers, many of them Black South Africans and Namibians. Equipment and food were moved by people whose names rarely enter the record. Disease, which killed more than combat, spread through these labour forces as much as through the troops.
The historiographical point. 'Poorly documented' is a statement about archives, not about history. Records were kept by those who wrote; those who carried and dug were counted as units, if at all. Historians can recover some of this from transport returns, medical records and oral testimony, and should treat the gap as a research problem. To narrate the war as white is to mistake the archive's shape for the past's shape.
3. Disease killed more South African troops than combat did. What does that reveal about the campaign, and how should it be remembered?
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Operationally. The campaign was a war of movement and supply in an arid environment; water, sanitation, horses and draft animals were more decisive than rifles. Typhoid and other diseases spread through camps and columns. The campaign's real test was therefore logistical, which is why the advance was slow and why Botha's force was so large relative to the defenders.
For memory. Commemoration prefers battles and surrender ceremonies - Sandfontein, Khorab - because they have dates, places and officers. Disease has none of these, and its victims were often the labourers and transport workers already missing from the record. Remembering the war through combat alone narrows it twice: it centres combatants and it centres whites.
The judgement. A serious account treats death from disease as part of the war's cost and asks who bore it. That question leads straight back to logistics, labour and the colonial economy - which is where the history of this campaign in Africa actually lies.