Violence, race and the law in German South West AFrica, 1884-1914

Abstract

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The decisions of colonial courts and actions of colonial administrators helped set an acceptable level of violence against Africans. The state's relation to violence went beyond monopolizing legitimate and disciplining illicit violence. The state also set a limit to the level of violence that would elicit official sanction. Thus, for example, judging settlers' physical abuse of African workers to be "paternal discipline, " colonial courts and administrators defined a whole range of violence as non-violent and legitimate. Such administrative practices effectively negated the equality accorded to all victims under modern criminal law, complementing Africans' exclusion from German civil law and laws of criminal and civil process

The colonial administration's responses to settler violence against Africans cannot be seen simply as an effective means to realize colonialism's "rational" economic or political ends. Rather, in many respects, "native policy" contributed to social dysfunction. Therefore it is best seen as shaped by racial imperatives that governed the behavior of many settlers, who, especially after the uprisings, stood to the far right of colonial administrators. The treatment of the issues of "mixed marriages" and "half-breeds" (Mischlinge) provides a strong example of "native policy's" fundamental irrationality