This past month, as we gathered at the Circle mountains of Sam !Khubis for its 111th commemoration, I found myself thinking not only of the bullets and artillery of 1915, but of the ink on a piece of paper signed 30 years before that. 

That paper, the so-called ‘protection treaty’ of 1885, is where the real wound was opened. 

The Battle of Sam !Khubis was merely the final, desperate chapter.

My views on these matters are not drawn from dusty archives alone. 

They are heavily influenced by the word-of-mouth stories I grew up with – tales told by my own grandparents; the late Alcock brothers; the late H. Kassen (he lived at Banhoff, where I grew up as a child), a fighter who was wounded at Sam Khubis and carried the scars (and the silence) of that day until his death; and by fiery, but now late Hermanus Beukes, the father of Oom Hans(living in Norway); Hewat, and my school friend Leon Beukes. 

Many of these men did not only read history; they lived it.

 Some of them passed it in the Baster vernacular to me over a kitchen table. 

The fateful ink of 1885

Everyone knows that the German colonialists were masters of paperwork. 

But the ‘Schutzvertrag’ (protection treaty), signed with Kaptein Hendrik Witbooi in 1885, is a masterclass in deception.  Witbooi was no fool – he was a brilliant military leader and a man of deep principle. 

Yet, the treaty he was pressured into accepting effectively placed his people under the “protection” of the German Empire while demanding their military obedience in return.

What did “protection” mean in practice? 

It meant that Witbooi’s Nama warriors were later used as auxiliaries against the Herero, their fellow Namibians, in the very genocide that Germany would unleash in 1904. 

It meant that indigenous leaders who signed these treaties – Maharero of the Herero, Simon Kooper of the Fransman Nama, Willem Christian of the Bondelswarts – all found themselves trapped in a system where “protection” was a one-way street. 

They bled for Germany, and Germany took their land.

From allies to targets

When the Herero and Nama finally rose up against their oppressors in 1904, the myth of the “protection treaty” was shattered forever. 

General Lothar von Trotha issued his infamous, hideous extermination order (Vernichtungsbefehl), driving the Herero into the Omaheke desert to die of thirst, and later herding survivors into concentration camps like Shark Island, where they were worked to death or died of disease.

The Nama, including Witbooi’s own people, were subjected to the same brutality. 

The man who had once signed a treaty with the Germans now led a desperate resistance.  He was killed in battle in 1905, but the Germans continued their campaign of annihilation. 

By 1908, over half the Nama population was gone. And the Basters? We watched all of this.  We had our own Military Treaty of 1895 with the Germans, hoping it would keep us safe. 

We were privileged – for a while. 

We kept our land, our cattle, and were spared the worst of the camps. 

But as George Alcock, my grandfather used to say, “When you lie down with a lion, you wake up with claw marks”.

Betrayal

The lion turned on us in 1915. 

When the South African forces invaded during World War I, the Germans conscripted a Baster company of about 176 men to guard South African prisoners of war at Uitdraai.

 The elders told me that the Baster guards refused to act as brutal sentries. 

They shared their food with the prisoners, and treated them like human beings. 

In their eyes, this was a “white man’s war” – not theirs.

The German command saw it as insubordination. 

As Mr H. Kassen, the Sam Khubis veteran, whispered to me (his eyes distant, as if still seeing the smoke): “They called us traitors. But we had only refused to be their henchmen.”

In April 1915, the Germans formally declared war on the Rehoboth Basters. 

They fled to the mountains of Sam !Khubis. 

On 8 May 1915, the Schutztruppe attacked with artillery and machine guns. 

Women, amongst them my grandmother Louisa Dentlinger, later married to George Alcock, were shot at when they tried to go fetch water for the thirsty children.  The men fought until their ammunition ran dry. 

And then, my grandparents said, the community prayed for a miracle.

The miracle came, as from heaven, in answer to their estate prayers. 

The Germans withdrew because they were needed elsewhere to fight the advancing South Africans. 

We survived, but barely. 

Mr H. Kassen carried a scar in his leg for the rest of his life – a constant, painful reminder of how close we came to total extermination.

President’s message

At this year’s commemoration, Vice President Lucia Witbooi read a message from President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah. 

Her words cut straight to the heart of why I write this today. She said: “In Namibia, these early acts of resistance against colonial oppression planted the seeds of a broader national consciousness that would later inspire the liberation struggle from the 1960s, and ultimately contribute to the independence we achieved in 1990.”

She urged us not to remain strangers to each other’s histories. 

She called Sam !Khubis “a living guide that challenges us to rise above division, to strengthen our national identity, and to work collectively towards a Namibia where the promise of a new tomorrow is realised for every citizen.”

I thought of the late Hermanus Beukes as I heard those words. 

He was a fiery speaker. 

 But he told me once, pointing to the people walking past his Coblers shop: “I want these boys to know that we Basters, we Herero, we Nama – we all drank from the same bitter cup. Only together do we have a future.”

Echoes

So, let me end where I began: with the 1885 Schutzvertrag with Hendrik Witbooi. 

That treaty was a weapon disguised as a friendship. 

It divided us, used us against each other, and nearly destroyed us. 

But here is the irony the Germans never understood: the very brutality that was meant to erase us became the forge of our shared Namibian identity.

The Herero, the Nama, the Basters, the Damara, the San, the Ovambo – we all have our own stories of suffering under that same colonial boot. 

And today, when I remember the stories of my grandparents, the Alcock brothers, the wounded Mr H. Kassen, and the wise Mr Hermanus Beukes, I know one thing for certain:

Sam Khubis is not just a Baster story. 

It is a Namibian story. 

And as long as we tell it, the ghosts of 1885 will never win.

– dentlingerng@gmail.com

*Norman Dentlinger is an elderly Rehoboth resident and a grandson of survivors of the German colonial period. He writes in his personal capacity.