the boundary question, failed to secure unanimity. It was characteristically opened on the part of the German Governor with a threat of war, which could result "only in the extermination of one party thereto, and that party could only be the Hereros." It was followed by a summons to the dissatisfied Herero Chiefs and the Khamas to deliver up their arms. The summons meeting with a refusal, the Khamas were attacked by the Germans, aided by the Okahandja Hereros, and "practically exterminated." Nikodemus and another prominent Herero chief were seized and executed as "rebels." Large quantities of their peoples' cattle were confiscated.
The ensuing years witnessed a further whittling down of Herero grazing lands by settlers, and many cases of abuse, extortion, and cruelty on the part of individual settlers. There were no courts to which the aggrieved natives could have recourse. All they could do was to make representations to the nearest official who … sided with the settlers. Unable to obtain redress in any direction, incessantly harassed and defrauded of their property, it is little wonder that the Hereros were gradually goaded into that condition of desperation, which ib was the deliberate object, at any rate of the settlers, the land and mining syndicates and their backers at home, to provoke.
The last straw was the Credit Ordinance of 1903. The settlers and traders had long been in the habit of giving credit to natives for goods sold. The practice is a common one in many parts of Africa, and much is to be said for it where there are Civil Courts to see justice done between debtor and creditor. But in German South-West Africa no court -of any kind had been set up, the system had preceded the Administration, and the Administration had done nothing to regulate it. Governor Leutwein had drafted an Ordinance as far back as 1899, providing for their creation. His proposals had been strongly opposed—a sinister incident—by the settlers and by the syndicates in Germany, who had the ear of the incompetent Foreign Office officials who mismanaged the Dependency's affairs. The creditor preferred being a law unto himself. And still he grumbled. Then came the Credit Ordinance. Creditors were given a year within which to collect their outstanding debts: after that period the debts would not be recognised as valid. No measures whatever seem to
