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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

885/26

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

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(Secret.) Minute 152.

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Enclosure in No. 16.

Prime Minister's Office, Cape Town, 1st February 1918. Ministers have the honour to enclose for the information of His Excellency the Governor-General, and for transmission to the Right Hon. the Secretary of State for the Colonies, a petition and a translation thereof which has been received from the Captain and Raad of the Rehoboth Bastards through the Administrator of the South-West Africa Protectorate.

This community resides in an area, known locally as the Bastards Gebiet, situated inside the administrative district of Rehoboth, the Gebiet consisting of a portion of the district kept aside by the German Government (by arrangement) for Occupation by the Bastard people and administered by them subject to such restrictions as that Government imposed upon them. In the Gebiet itself are also certain farms occupied by Germans who acquired them either by marriage with the daughters of Bastard owners, or by purchase with the consent of the Bastard Raad.

The original Bastard community consisted of a number of families who migrated from the Cape Colony between the years 1863 and 1868. They were the descendants of European farmers by native women. As grazing became circumscribed and gratification of their nomadic habits became more difficult owing to the settlement of a permanent population upon the farms in the Cape Colony, these people were constantly pushed north.

Harmanus van Wijk, father of the present Captain, Cornelius van Wijk, was Chief of these people. After wandering for several years amongst the various Hottentot tribes occupying the southern portion of this territory, these Bastard families, numbering about 2,000 souls, settled down in the district of Rehoboth with the permission of the Hottentot Chief, Abram Zwartbooi, and here they main- tained themselves as an independent race. They were accompanied by their missionary, the Rev. F. Heidman.

A constitution for the government of the people and a simple code of laws were drawn up in 1872, presumably with the help of the missionary. The constitution consisted of 30 articles dealing with the election of the Chief or Captain and his two councillors, the election of three volksraad members as representing the people, rights of citizenship and franchise and the mode in which laws may be made and promulgated. Other laws dealt with criminal and civil jurisdiction, liquor traffic, the collection of debts, marriage, &c. It is remarkable that since the year 1874 no necessity has apparently arisen for the promulgation of any new laws beyond a law in 1913 relating to divorce.

In

Up to the year 1884 the Bastards led an independent existence, but in that year the Germans arrived and immediately set about obtaining the signature of the various native chiefs in the territory to Treaties of Protection and Friendship. 1885 the Rev. C. G. Buttner, a missionary, was deputed by the German Government to enter also into negotiations with the Bastards. As a preliminary step he proposed that the Bastards should grant the German Government a piece of land for a police post; but the proposal was declined, and Buttner was informed that they did not wish to have living amongst them policemen, who they feared might be men of doubtful morals. However, on the 15th September 1885, a Treaty of Friendship and Protection was concluded and a copy of this interesting document* is attached. Up to the 22nd April 1915, this Treaty was still in force, though, characteristically, various inroads upon the privileges conferred upon the Bastards in that document had been made from time to time by the German Government. On that date. owing to the hostile attitude of the Bastards towards the Germans and the suspicions that they were about to take up arms with the Union Forces, the Treaty was terminated. During the years when the Germans were involved in numerous wars with the natives when at times their hold on the country was very precarious, the Bastards never wavered in their support of, and loyalty to, the Government. So highly did the German Government value the help of the Bastards that in the various monuments erected at Windhuk and elsewhere to the memory of fallen soldiers, the Bastards were always included. Frequent references also to the valuable assistance given in the campaigns are recorded in the German records in the Protectorate.' The Germans prior to 1914 treated the Bastards with every respect and consideration, and cultivated friendly relations with them with studious care. There is, however, ample evidence to show that the Government was only biding its time for a fitting

• Not printed.

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opportunity to cast aside the Treaty and rid itself of the incubus of this semi- independent State at Rehoboth. It showed itself in the choice of a successor to the Chieftainship at the decease of Hermanus van Wijk. On the election of Cornelius van Wijk the German Government refused to acknowledge him as Captain in terms of the Treaty, but approved of his appointment as Headman for one year. subsequently appointed Headman for periods of one year at a time. In various other directions the authority of the Raad was attacked, and van Wijk and his people eventually felt that their days as a separate people under the German Government were numbered.

He was

While General Botha was at Swakopmund in the early part of 1915 with the Union Forces, van Wijk secretly went there to confer with him, and on van Wijk's return to Rehoboth relations with the German troops became very strained owing to their fear that he contemplated action against them. definite refusal of the Bastards to furnish them with men to guard the captured At length, owing to the Union prisoners in the hands of the Germans, he was attacked by the German troops, who seized the cattle wagons and other property of the Bastards and wilfully destroyed them.

Those of the Bastards who were armed immediately mobilised, and there was considerable fighting and bloodshed before the Germans evacuated the district in their retirement north before the advance of the Union troops.

After the establishment of an administration in the Protectorate, a Resident Magistrate was appointed at Rehoboth, whose business it is to superintend generally the preservation of law and order in the district, and to act as intermediary between the Raad and the Administration. This appointment and the functions of the officer filling it accord in every respect with the pre-war administrative practice of the German Government. One of the members of the Raad is styled " Magistrate," but his duties are largely nominal. The Bastards are rustics, and live solely from the increase of their flocks and herds. They are almost entirely uneducated, and, as a class, are described by those who are well acquainted with them as lazy and thriftless, and much given to the consumption of strong drink when such can be obtained. The European strain in them is becoming more and more attenuated owing to marriage with pure-blooded natives of the Hottentot and Damara tribes in the Protectorate, and the product is not a desirable one. Were they left uncontrolled a most unsatisfactory state of affairs would assuredly arise both within and beyond the borders of the Gebiet, as that area would speedily become a sanctuary for stock thieves and other depredators.

For the last two years the inhabitants have lived in apparently complete accord with the Protectorate Administration, which has endeavoured scrupulously to main- tain the position between the Bastards and the other elements of the Protectorate population as it existed up till 1914, and a very large measure of independence has been allowed these people within their own boundaries.

With the advent, however, of certain well-meaning but indiscreet advisers, a change has recently come over the attitude of the Captain and the Raad, and the petition referred to in the opening paragraph of this Minute can, in the opinion of the Administrator of the Protectorate, who has local knowledge, be directly traceable to the influence of Senator Schreiner and Mr. Dewdney Drew, members of the Union Parliament, who were given permission to visit the Gebiet in July last. The views of these gentlemen on native questions do not wholly coincide with the policy of Ministers, and there is no doubt that they have been preaching to the Bastards distrust of the Union Government in its future treatment of that community in the event of the incorporation of the Protectorate in the Union.

Although the conduct of affairs in the Protectorate has been placed by His Majesty's Government entirely in the hands of the Union Government, and although the Bastards are not British subjects, Ministers think it is but proper that His Excellency and Mr. Long should be placed in possession of the petition and of these facts connected with the people who have presented it.

Ministers would further suggest that, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State, they should cause a reply to be sent to the Captain and Raad through the Administrator to the effect that it is not possible during the continuance of the war to decide any question relating to the future government of the Protectorate, or of the Gebiet which forms part thereof, but that the Bastards may rest assured that their interests will be fully considered when the time arrives for a final settlement of these matters.

U 4879-1 ke

F. S. MALAN.

C

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