‘Stolen’ Blue Book was just misplaced

A REPORT written 91 years ago on atrocities committed by the German colonial government against Namibians, which was reported as stolen by the National Archives seven years ago, has resurfaced – it was just misplaced.

The book by British military magistrate Major O’Reilly of Tsumeb was published in 1918 with a blue cover – the colour used for British and South African official records at that time – hence the name Blue Book.The typed original manuscript of this book was reported as stolen by the National Archives in 2002.’Just recently that manuscript resurfaced and was found among a pile of unsorted documents of the previous Kavango Administration, which existed before 1990 under South Africa,’ Education Minister Nangolo Mbumba told a specially convened news conference yesterday. ‘We are very relieved and delighted that the valuable historic document has resurfaced,’ he added.The Blue Book is a detailed record of physical torture, hangings and cruelties against Namibians who resisted German colonisation and it contains a lot of photos as proof of these heinous acts. Copies of the Blue Book were withdrawn and destroyed in 1926 following a decision by the then Legislative Assembly, which felt that the Blue Book had been used to portray Germany in a bad light at the Versailles Conference in France after World War I and to seize its colonies, including Namibia.According to the Head of Archives, Werner Hillebrecht, the National Archives has three copies of the printed Blue Book, as not all copies were destroyed in the 1926 exercise. The resurfaced original manuscript will be scanned and made electronically available on CD-ROM by July, and members of the public can then buy the CDs. The CDs will also contain the official response of the German government, the so-called White Book, Hillebrecht said.