On the dawn of 12 April 1893, the bokmakieries [a bird native to modern-day Namibia] were singing as 200 German soldiers, newly arrived from Europe, took up their positions around the small settlement of Hornkranz. The village was the home of an African tribe, the Witbooi, and, although barely 100 kilometres from Windhoek, the fledgling capital of German South West Africa, Hornkranz’s occupants had successfully resisted the encroaching imperial power. However on that April morning their village was at peace. Most of its residents were sleeping. Their chief, Hendrik Witbooi, the man who had inspired a bold defiance of the Germans, was quietly seated outside his home, enjoying coffee with his family.
Taking advantage of the tranquility, the Germans surrounded the settlement and waited for their orders. Only the officers had been told in advance the purpose of the exercise. Now the commanding officer repeated his message to his troops, ‘Their intention that calm, song-awakened morning was ‘to destroy the tribe of the Witboois’.
The German soldiers, part of one of the largest and most powerful land armies in the world, started firing from three directions, and within thirty minutes 16,000 rounds had been expended by 200 rifles. By the time this torrent of bullets had ceased it had wrought a dreadful carnage. Blood-stained bodies and the remains of slaughtered animals were strewn around the settlement. Surveying the aftermath, one eye-witness noted random fragments of the shambles, like the seven Witbooi corpses pressed tightly together in the hollow beneath an overhanging rock, or the shattering reports of ammunition, abandoned in their huts by fleeing Witbooi men, and now exploding as the huts were torched by the Germans. And amidst this deafening noise he recalled the silent, incongruous tableau of two children playing in the dust by the corpse of their mother.
In front of the entire panorama of death the European troops methodically assembled the spoils of their victory, a collection they recorded with all the fastidious attention of a clerk to a column of figures. The list included 212 stirrups, 74 horseshoes, 25 tin cups, 12 coffee-grinders, 12 coffee pots, 9 tin plates, 44 sets of dentures, 3 violins, one barmonium, a pair of opera glasses.
The German captain’s official report immediately following the massacre suggested that the Witbooi were neutralized as a fighting force. One cable to Berlin more than a month after the raid suggested that fifty Witbooi soldiers had been killed. Gradually, however, it began to emerge that the attack had not been as effective militarily as had been claimed. In particular, it transpired that able-bodied men constituted only a small portion of the approximately ninety dead. One German participant in the slaughter became particularly incensed by the ‘hateful and lying manner’ in which some British newspapers ‘alleged that our soldiers spared neither wife nor child’. However, as one subsequent English commentator noted, had women and children not been targets why had the Germans attacked a sleeping village without warning, when both were bound to be present?
When it did eventually emerge that many of the victims were, in fact, women and children – seventy-eight according to the Witbooi themselves – and German officialdom was forced to make what it termed ‘an undesirable revision’, it struck upon a brilliantly inventive reply to the accusation. There had been heavy casualties amongst non-combatants, conceded the Director of the German Colonial Department, but this was owing to the cowardice of the Witbooi men, who took cover behind their womenfolk when fired upon.
Note:
A bit more on the chief who was present, and the massacre itself, courtesy of Wikipedia:
In the early morning of 12 April 1893, the ǀKhowesin were attacked by the Germans at Hornkranz. Many were killed, although Hendrik managed to escape with most of his fighting men. He campaigned against the Germans for two years, until the treaty of Gurus on 15 September 1894 where he agreed to a conditional surrender. Witbooi also decided to render military support for the Germans against other smaller tribes, such as the eastern Mbanderu Herero, Afrikaners, and Swartbooi.
After serving as a branch of the German army fighting against the Herero for the previous three years, Witbooi and the Nama again revolted against German rule in Namibia on 3 October 1904. During the ensuing war with the Germans in 1904–1905, Witbooi rallied his people with the conviction God had guided them to fight for their freedom from the imperialists. Witbooi was killed in action on 29 October 1905, near Vaalgras, near Koichas. His dying request was: "It is enough. The children should now have rest." He was replaced by Fransman Nama until the Nama surrendered in 1908.
Source:
Cocker, Mark. “All Christendom will here have Refreshment and Gain.” Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe's Conquest of Indigenous Peoples. Grove Press, 2001. 3, 4. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, p. 70, 71.
Gorges, Report on the Natives of South-West Africa, pp. 26-7.
Further Reading:
Hendrik Witbooi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Witbooi_(Namaqua_chief)
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