Black Power And The Fall Of The Kaiserreich

Correspondent | Monday November 19, 2018 13:23

 

It was only two weeks later, on November 24, 1918 that the last German army in the field, the undefeated East African forces of General Lettow-Vorbeck finally surrendered to the British at Mbala in modern-day Zambia.

On Wednesday, the University of Botswana (UB) and the Botswana Society will mark the centenary of the end of the conflict by hosting an illustrated power-point presentation by Dr Jeff Ramsay on ‘Black Power and the fall of the Kaiserreich’.

The presentation will take place at the UB Conference Centre at 6pm. No armed conflict had a greater impact on Africa as a whole than the First World War, which was accompanied by fighting across every corner of the continent, including Botswana.

While some half a million Africans served in the battlefields of Europe and the Middle East between 1914 and 1918, millions more were ultimately involved in military action on the continent.  Up to three quarter million African combatants perished, about half of whom were from what is now the SADC region.

While there is no reliable aggregate count for civilian deaths, population declines of up to 10% were recorded in some areas. Yet, a century later the popular image of the war in Europe does not include the large scale presence of African troops on the Western Front, while the mass horror of the war in Africa still tends to be dismissed as a mere sideshow.

Quite beyond the body count, there can be little doubt, however, that the nature and course of the entire war would have been different without the participation of millions of Africans, with the final victory of the Anglo-French Alliance open to doubt.

Africans were in fact central players in a conflict whose global legacy is still being felt. The war in turn transformed Africa in ways that are currently being played out on this continent and beyond.