Forgotten no more: The Black South Africans who died in WWI Africa | The World Wars

Cape Town, South Africa – On January 23, 1915, two boatmen named Dolly Jenniker and Zulu Madhliwa drowned in the Orange River in South Africa. They were ferrying supplies to Union of South Africa forces which had invaded German South West Africa (GSWA, now Namibia) as part of the Allied campaign against Germany in World War I. When the Allies declared war on Germany, both sides’ colonies had been automatically included: South Africa was part of the British Commonwealth and Germany had colonies in GSWA and German East Africa (now Tanzania).

The river was flooded, and the heavily laden…