The 1896 Redline – A brief history

Job Shipululo Amupanda After the 1884 Berlin Conference that self-awarded territory of present-day Namibia to Germany, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's approach was that German companies with private capital must take up the bountiful opportunities in the colonies. The German government only moved in when conflict arose between German settlers and the natives. In 1890, Germany built its first military fort in Windhoek. In the same year, the German and British signed the Zanzibar Treaty in which the track of land measuring more than 400 kilometres in length became part of German South West Africa. Once acquired, the German named this land after Chancellor Graf Leo von Caprivi – calling it the Caprivi Strip, present day Zambesi region. The nucleus of the colonial state started morphing from 1890 onwards. Capitalism underpinned the German colonial strategy. They sought to extract and protect the gains made. In the 1880s, the Rinderpest disease was discovered in east Africa. In early 1896, it was recorded south of the Zambesi River causing panic amongst settlers who had acquired cattle from the natives through violence and other trickeries. In August 1896 Germans and British held a two-day conference in Vryburg, part of British Bechuanaland, to strategise on the Rinderpest threat. This conference took five key resolutions. First, they resolved to prohibit the movement of all animals across the borders of the colonies. Second, to institute strict control measures on the movements of the Africans. It was resolved, thirdly, that two barbed wire fences be erected on the borders of the colonies. Fourth, this fence must be constantly guarded and all animals seen near the fence be killed. Fifth, all Africans crossing the fence be thoroughly disinfected.The Germans didn’t have the resources and capacity to implement the Vryburg resolutions – particularly fencing and monitoring the whole expanse of South West Africa. Instead, they erected a cordon to the north and east of areas inhabited by the settlers. Theodor Leutwein, German South West Africa Governor, saw the rinderpest and Vryburg resolutions as an opportunity to bring the north-central part of the territory under his control. He sent his deputy, Friedrich von Lindequist, to ensure that a cordon is erected at the chosen area. The work on this cordon started in November 1896 and was overseen by Lindequist himself, consisting of 16 military outposts. This cordon failed to achieve its objective of keeping rinderpest in the north as it was later discovered in Epukiro, Grootfontein and Windhoek. Giorgio Miescher, a historian at the University of Basel who wrote insightfully on the Redline, writes that it seems that Rinderpest entered the territory through present day Botswana. The disease decimated cattle north of the cordon. It was recorded in Uukwambi between July and August 1897. Miescher again finds that it may have come from the south, through the cordon, into Uukwambi.In 1904, war broke out between the Germans and various native communities. In December 1905, the German Reichstag (Parliament) passed a resolution confining police protection in this colony to the smallest area. Two years later, on the 15th March 1907, a decree arrived from Berlin to Windhoek with a map depicting this area, marked in blue, which would enjoy police protection. This blue line drawn in Berlin subsequently became known as the Police Sone border. In the north, this border followed the cordon erected in 1896 that failed to control Rinderpest.On the 22nd March 1907, Lindequist issued a decree creating three restricted areas named game reserves. Game reserve number 2 measuring more than 90 000 square kilometres included the area of Etosha pan, northern Kaoko to the ocean. It was part of the spatial regime to achieve geopolitical exclusionary and discriminatory objectives. The police sone also served as the veterinary border for the duration of German control of South West Africa. In 1915, Germany lost control of the territory, to South Africa, during the First World War.Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia broke out in 1916. South Africa imposed an embargo on South West Africa to the dismay of the settlers who depended on the South African market for cattle export. The settlers protested and petitioned the government resulting in the deployment of Alexander Goodall, head of the veterinary service, to hear them. To uplift the embargo, the settlers presented a proposal to Goodall in which they drew a Redline on the map, on the very borders of the police sone, which separated what they called the ‘dark areas’- native territories and South West Africa proper. Like with the rinderpest in 1896, northerners and their cattle were left to suffer. The South African government eventually adopted this Redline and maintained the colonial exclusionary and discriminatory practices.After independence the black government kept the Redline. Nigeria comes to mind. During the British rule of Nigeria, a military general asked soldiers of one battalion to start producing concrete slabs. The monkeys nearer the production site kept destroying the wet slabs. On 24-hour shifts, soldiers were ordered to ward off the monkeys. Towards independence, this production stopped. After independence, the new Nigerian army unknowingly continued deploying soldiers to guard this site. This continued for several years until a young military officer questioned this deployment. The files embarrassed the new leaders. From the 1896 Vryburg resolutions, we know that the Redline was created to protect the settler’s cattle and to disinfect “infected” Africans. The “disinfection” of northerners at Oshivelo in 2022 is exactly what was resolved at Vryburg in 1896. Apart from colonial offspring, apologists and stooges there is no basis for maintaining the 1896 Redline. I provide this history recalling the words of Benjamin Cardoso that “history, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.” In coming weeks we will deal with the profound case in the High Court that will remove the 1896 Redline.* Job Shipululo Amupanda is the activist-in-chief of the Affirmative Repositioning movement and former mayor of Windhoek. He holds a PhD in Political Studies from the University of Namibia.

The 1896 Redline – A brief history

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Namibian Sun 2025-07-17

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The 1896 Redline – A brief history

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Namibian Sun 2025-07-17

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