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Paul Von Lettow-Vorbeck 1873-1964 - Two Questions

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by Mikestone8 (U13249270) on Sunday, 19th October 2008

  There are a couple of stories I recall hearing about General von Lettow-Vorbeck and the East African campaign, but I can't give chapter and verse for either of them. I'd like to know if anyone can confirm their truth.
  
  1) During the campaign, Lettow routed a South African force conisting largely of Afrikaners (the local "master race" by their own reckoning), and the only British unit which stood its ground was a detachment of the King's African Rifles - all black as the ace of spades, of course.
  
  
  2) This one is much later. When Tanganyika, as it now was, became independent in 1961, von Lettow was invited to the independence ceremony - and found two of his old Askaris in Julius Nyerere's first cabinet.
  
  Can anyone confirm either or both?

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by JB (U11805502) on Monday, 20th October 2008

  No idea about the second point, but such men would have been in their seventies and in African culture it is very difficult to see how they could work as subordinates to younger men like Nyerye.
  
  On the first, some confusion. The Imperial Force sent to occupy German East Africa was South African, but the Afrikaaner Boers who formed part of the military at this time would have been followers of people like Smuts and the more moderate hensoppers, not the ideologically anglophobic bitterenders who would in 1918 form the National Party.
  

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• Message 3

  , in reply to message 2.

  Posted by Mikestone8 (U13249270) on Monday, 20th October 2008

  On the first, some confusion. The Imperial Force sent to occupy German East Africa was South African, but the Afrikaaner Boers who formed part of the military at this time would have been followers of people like Smuts and the more moderate hensoppers, not the ideologically anglophobic bitterenders who would in 1918 form the National Party.Β 
  
  
  I wasn't really thinking of the individual soldiers' political views, merely that, being who they were , they would have regarded themselves as "obviously" superior to Blacks. So admittedly, would most Anglophone whites at the time, but I had the impression that Afrikaners held the view more firmly than most. Even one as liberal as Smuts would, I suspect, have been left a bit red-faced by such an event.
  

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• Message 4

  , in reply to message 3.

  Posted by JB (U11805502) on Monday, 20th October 2008

  I shall do a bit of digging on this Mike, but even the term 'Afrikaaner' was barely in circulation at the time and its meaning was not yet fixed in the way we understand today. Many people Apartheid would eventually call 'coloured' would have been Afrikaas-speakers.
  
  Also, opinion in the two Anglophone provinces was diverse, with the notable example of Bishop Colenso of Natal as a forerunner of Trevor Huddlestone and Desmond Tutu, but with plenty of others holding classic high-imperial racist views at least as 'black & white' as any Boer farmer.
  

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