The Bondelswarts Rebellion of 1922 (also known as the Bondelswarts Uprising, Bondelswarts Affair, or Bondelswarts Punitive Expedition) was a controversial violent incident in South Africa's League of Nations Mandate of South West Africa, now Namibia.
In 1917, the South African mandatory administration had created a tax on dogs, and they increased it in 1921. The tax was rejected by the Bondelswarts, a group of Khoikhoi, who were opposed to various policies of the new administration. They were also protecting five men for whom arrest warrants had been issued.
There is disagreement over the details of the dispute, but according to historian Neta Crawford, "most agree that in May 1922 the Bondelswarts prepared to fight, or at least to defend themselves, and the mandatory administration moved to crush what they called a rebellion of 500 to 600 people, of which 200 were said to be armed (although only about 40 weapons were captured after the Bondelswarts were crushed)".
Gysbert Reitz Hofmeyr, the Mandatory Administrator of South West Africa, organised in 400 armed men, and sent in aircraft to bomb the Bondelswarts. Casualties included 100 Bondelswart deaths, including a few women and children. A further 468 men were either wounded or taken prisoner.
South Africa's international reputation was tarnished. Ruth First, a South African anti-apartheid activist and scholar, describes the Bondelswarts shooting as "the Sharpeville of the 1920s". It was one of the first uprisings to be examined by the Permanent Mandates Commission under the new League of Nations mandate system introduced after the First World War. 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.
Background
First contact with European settlers
The Bondelswarts (now the ǃGamiǂnun, a clan of the Nama people) initially inhabited a territory to the north and south of the Orange River, but as the Dutch administration at the Cape extended its sovereignty the Bondelswarts moved to the lands north of the Orange River to avoid interaction with the government of the Cape. European traders came to Namibia in the early nineteenth century but they were few in number and their activities were relatively low key, although they did facilitate access to European guns and some European made goods.
In the early 1820s, at the time of the first contact with missionaries, the Bondelswarts inhabited the territory stretching 200 miles to the north of the Orange River in current day Namibia. The Bondelswarts were curious about Christianity – in 1827 Abraham Christian, the leader of the Bondelswarts, visited Leliefontein, the headquarters of the Wesleyan Missionary Society in Little Namaqualand in South Africa, and asked for a missionary to be sent to him. However, it was not until 1834 that the Wesleyan missionary Reverend Edward Cook arrived with his wife to found the mission at Warmbad within the Bondelswarts territory. Within nine years Reverend Cook reported a Christian congregation of over a thousand Bondelswarts converts. However, Goldblatt comments that whilst Reverend Cook endeavoured to interest the Bondelswarts in Christianity, and could report baptisms and attendances at services, in fact little impact was made upon the people and none at all on their leader Abraham Christian.
At first, contact with the Cape government was relatively remote. In 1830, Abraham Christian, as leader of the Bondelswarts, received a subsidy from the Cape government in return for not becoming involved in the disputes among the tribes further north, and for undertaking to suppress disturbances and to co-operate with the Cape government generally in preserving peace and order along the Orange River. This arrangement was renewed in 1870 by Abraham Christian's grandson, Willem Christian, the new leader of the Bondelswarts, although the allowance was much reduced, being a mere £50 annually.
By the mid-nineteenth century the number of traders had increased and their network extended as far north as Etosha.
Land losses
In the third quarter of the nineteenth century the area occupied by the Bondelswarts extended from the Orange River northwards to beyond the Great Karas Mountains and westwards to the Fish River, an area of 40,000 square kilometres (4 million hectares). By the time of the 1922 Bondelswarts rebellion, over 95% of this land had been lost, some by way of confiscation but also by way of sale.
In April 1890, Germany had signed a protection treaty with the Bondelswarts and the German flag had been hoisted in Warmbad. In June 1890, Britain and Germany signed a treaty on their respective "spheres of influence" in Africa which included a detailed demarcation of the boundaries of the German Protectorate of South West Africa, and from this time the German annexation of the whole territory of South West Africa was recognised by the British and internationally.
For the Bondelswarts, one of their largest land losses came shortly thereafter, when the Bondelswarts and other indigenous groups "sold" 60,000 square kilometres of land to the English company Karas Khoma Exploration and Prospecting Syndicate. This sale led to strong feeling among the Bondelswarts against their leader, Willem Christian, once the consequences of the sale became apparent. When Theodor Leutwein, the German colonial administrator, visited the Bondelswarts in 1895, he was surprised at the contents of the agreement, and could only attribute Willem's action to the fact that he was under the influence of alcohol at the time of signing. Leutwein resolved to remedy the inequitable results of the agreement at a later date, 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. This obligation was not fulfilled and the concession was reduced by the German administration to 12,800 sq km of land to be selected by the company. The Syndicate’s selection of the best farmland, and the acquisition of the best watering places, was considered later to be one of the deepest causes of the Bondelswarts rebellion.
Further land losses followed the first rising against German rule in 1898 when the Bondelswarts were discontent at being required to stamp their guns and possess gun licences in line with a newly promulgated law. Leutwein hurried down south from Windhoek in September 1898 with an armed force to compel them to comply. Willem Christian, still the Bondelswart leader, travelled to Keetmanshoop where Leutwein had gathered his forces. There was an enquiry, ending in a court martial finding Willem Christian and others guilty of a breach of the protection treaty. The Bondelswarts were condemned to pay the expenses of Leutwein's expedition and as they had no money had to cede to the German government the whole of Keetmanshoop and the grazing ground attached to it.
1903-1906 Bondelswarts rebellion
In October 1903 a further Bondelswarts rebellion broke out. Foreshadowing the 1922 Rebellion, the 1903 revolt was tied up with the encroachment of white settlers on Bondelswarts territory and the heavy-handed intervention of the local police.
Crawford's view is that one of the main contributing factors was the publication by the Germans shortly before the outbreak of regulations compelling that "(1) every coloured person must regard a white person as a superior being, and (2) in court the evidence of one white man can only be outweighed by the statements of seven coloured persons".
The trigger event was a dispute between the Bondelswarts chief and the local German lieutenant over the sale of a goat. The lieutenant went with two or three others to arrest the chief, and in the ensuing fracas both the chief and the lieutenant were shot dead. At that time the Bondelswarts were a small but very effective fighting force. They had around 400-500 fighting men armed with up-to-date breech-loading rifles, knew their territory very well, and were able to conduct very effective guerrilla warfare. Leutwein decided to concentrate almost all his available forces against the Bondelswarts and personally went south to deal with the situation. With Leutwein away, the chiefs and headmen of the Herero people met and decided to stake all on open war. They were a significantly larger force than the Bondelswarts – the Hereros had 7,000-8,000 fighting men, although not all had rifles.
In January 1904, around 150 German settlers and traders had been killed by the Herero forces, many in Okahandja. Realising the seriousness of the Herero situation, Leutwein hastily concluded a truce with the Bondelswarts, requiring them to give up their arms and ammunition. As compensation for the costs of the expedition the Bondelswarts were required to give up to the German administration a further portion of the tribal lands, fostering further discontent among the Bondelswarts.
The Herero uprising resulted in the end of Leutwein's colonial leadership and he was replaced by the notorious General Lothar von Trotha, who even at the time of his appointment had a reputation for utterly ruthless methods with native rebels, and was largely responsible for the Herero and Namaqua genocide between 1904 and 1906. Von Trotha's approach was unforgiving. He told Leutwein in 1904: "I know enough tribes in Africa. They all have the same mentality insofar as they yield only to force. It was and remains my policy to apply this force by unmitigated terrorism and even cruelty. I shall destroy the rebellious tribes by shedding rivers of blood and money". This contrasted strongly with the measured approach of the Herero chiefs, who at their meeting before the outbreak had specifically resolved to limit their attack to German men of military age, and that no women or children were to be harmed.
Von Trotha followed this with his infamous proclamation of 2 October 1904 which stated: "The Herero people must now leave the country… every Herero, with or without a rifle, will be shot. I will not take over any more women and children, but I will either drive them back to their people or have them fired on". Many Germans objected to the policy of exterminating the Herero, including the chancellor, Prince Bernhard von Bülow, who argued to Kaiser Wilhelm II that the order was "contradictory to all Christian and humane principles". However, von Bülow did argue rather pragmatically that extermination was unwise since the native population was an essential source of labour for farming and mining. In December 1904 von Trotha's extermination order was countermanded, though much of the damage had already been done. Von Trotha was withdrawn from South West Africa in November 1905. According to Crawford, about 50% of the Nama and 75% to 80% of the Herero population had been killed by German forces by the end of 1905.
Notwithstanding the 1904 treaty, the Bondelswarts, including Jacob Morenga, continued the rebellion later that year and attacked the German garrison at Warmbad in November 1904, inflicting severe losses. Thereafter Morenga established himself with 500 – 800 riflemen in the Great Karas Mountains from where he was able to plunder the lowlands and harry the German posts and garrison for many months, until his defeat at Van Rooi's Vlei in May 1906. Thereafter, the Bondelswarts chief Johannes Christian held out against the German forces until October 1906 when he made overtures for peace.