2018 (original) (raw)

While the guns famously went silent along the Western Front on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, ending the First World War in Europe, the war in Africa continued. It was only two weeks later, on the 25th of November 1918 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 Zambia. 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 on 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. On Wednesday the 21st of November 2018 the University of Botswana 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”. Original PPT document converted to PDF NB: Previous variations of Africa'sFirst World War had been presented on August 6, 2016, as part of a European Union delegations' event in Gaborone to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War and subsequently on April 29, 2015, as a Botswana Society lecture.