SOUTH AFRICA.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 September 1918, Page 5

SOUTH AFRICA.

4ERMAN COLONIAL METHODS. • /■ A DAMNING INDICTMENT. London, Sept. 11. Colonel Gorges, Administrator of -South-West Africa, has presented one of ti» most sensational reports issued in eohneetioa With German colonial methods. It constitutes a damning indictment of German fitness to rule black native races. It is brimful of wellauthenticated instances of rapine, murder, lust, chicanery, and knavery, and - of the despoliation of the simple and harmless natives of South-West Africa. The evidence upon which the report is based is drawn from official German document* at Windhoek, from the sworn statements of native chiefs and Europeans who are familiar with the country, from the writings of General Leutwein, wbo was Governor from 1894 to 1905, . Or. Paul Bohrbach, Professor Dr. Karl Drove, and other unimpeachable German soureea. Altogether the report constitutes a telljaf reply to Dr. Self's recent claim that Germany's pre-war humane treatment of natives races had iron for her the moral right to be a great colonial Power.j. In view of this claim, the , statement by Colonel Gorges is interesting. "Native opinion here," he says, "is unanimously against any idea of their eter being handed back to the tender mercies of Germany. Any suggestion of the possibility of an act of this kind on the part of Britain produces the utmost consternation." The report shows that the first 25 years of German rule in South West Africa were an unbroken record of official bad faith, private oppression, cruelty, barbarities and robberies, culminating in the Herrero and Hottentot rettfftu. . During the first 17 years there was no ' aw for the natives, and such protection it the law etentnally provided indicated m aonsideration of humanity. $| Itder to exploit the natives as laXJMti when the Germans firrst arrived, they entered into agreements with the latfve chiefs, but these became "scraps »f paper." Tne natives were fraudulently deprived of the best land, and traders and settler* robbed them of mtfle, and the law subsequently prevented the natives possessing large number* of stock. The natives were thug Jriven to work for ridiculously inadequate wages, often never paid, and treated like slaves. The womenfolk »ere habitually maltreated by the Germans, Who tow them into forced coneuoinage. These, and similar things, goad- . :d tie natives into the rebellion, which was suppressed by ruthless cruelty, reratting in the practical extermination of the time tribe* involved.—Aus. N.Z. i Cable Assoc, and Renter.