ABSTRACT
During the South African military occupation of German South West Africa (GSWA) between 1915 and 1918 there were a number of spectacular trials of German farmers accused of murdering Bushmen, later known as San. Scholarship has conceptualised the colonial state that was GSWA as ‘weak’, ‘improvisational’ or ‘ceremonial’. Genocide, the organised, unilateral, intentional mass killing of a social group, can also be practised by collections of people beyond the formal sanction and policies of the state. Swearing and flogging served as visual displays of settler masculinity and dominance, not only to indigenes, but to fellow settlers as well. Settler politicisation was largely stimulated by the destructive policies of Lothar von Trotha, the former governor and military commander during the 1904–1908 wars. The war had decimated the workforce and the labour shortage was aggravated by the expansion of farming, railway construction and, most importantly, the discovery of diamonds in 1908.
