Van Deventer replaces Hoskins

The British chronology of the war records under 30 May 1917 that General Jacob van Deventer replaced General Reginald Hoskins as commander of the British forces in East Africa. According to the South African historian Ross Anderson, van Deventer arrived in East Africa on 29 May, and the decision to recall Hoskins had been taken in London as early as 23 April. Hoskins, who had taken over the army from Smuts in January, commanded it for just over four months, falling almost entirely in the rainy season. He left for Mesopotamia, where he took command of the 3rd (Lahore) Division.

Hoskins’s recall

Hoskins had found the army exhausted by the march to the Rufiji, and in London, after Jan Smuts had stated that the campaign was essentially over, he was expected to finish off the remnants of the enemy quickly. He himself was convinced that a hard campaign still lay ahead, and through the rainy season he rebuilt the army. Brigadier-General C. P. Fendall, who served on his staff, described how in mid-May the situation began to improve: new porters were coming in from British East Africa and more were sailing from West Africa, motor vehicles were arriving from England, America, India and the Union of South Africa, a light railway was being built inland from Kilwa, fresh troops were arriving from India along with new battalions of the King’s African Rifles, and the rains were coming to an end. It was just then, Fendall wrote, that Hoskins lost the chance to use the instrument he himself had prepared.

According to Anderson, Hoskins quickly lost the confidence of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, William Robertson, and then of the War Cabinet. Smuts, then in London, had a hand at least in proposing van Deventer as his successor. Fendall considered the reasons for the change obscure and believed it was a decision of the politicians rather than the soldiers. Many British officers thought the same and did not take kindly to the choice of a South African.

The new commander

Van Deventer, born in 1874 in Ficksburg in the Orange Free State, began in 1896 as an artilleryman in the Transvaal army and in the last year of the Boer War fought under Smuts. In 1914 he returned to service, defended Upington against the rebels and then commanded a column in the campaign in German South West Africa. In East Africa he first led a mounted brigade and from April 1916 the 2nd Division, with which he took Kondoa Irangi and reached Iringa. In early 1917 he returned home with the South African troops and spent barely a month there. Fendall remembered him as a very capable commander in the field but less attentive to administrative matters. On arrival he was reluctant to speak English and communicated with his English-speaking staff through an interpreter.

The instructions he received differed from those given to his predecessors. Robertson told him that, in view of the needs of other fronts and the need to release the ships engaged in supplying his army, the government attached great importance to bringing the campaign to a speedy end. Van Deventer could if necessary enter Portuguese East Africa and was to prevent the Germans from slipping away to the south. Before deciding anything he toured the units in the Kilwa and Lindi areas.

On the other side, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck kept his main force south of Kilwa, in fertile country that allowed him to feed his troops. The German civil administration had its seat at Liwale, and Captain Tafel’s detachment defended the Mahenge plateau. In May Captain von Liebermann’s companies repulsed an attack by eight African and Indian companies at Ngaula, a day’s march from Kilwa. Lettow-Vorbeck wrote that supplies seemed to him more dangerous than the enemy: the wheat brought in 1916 by a ship that had run the blockade was running out, and a shortage of boots loomed. Far to the north a detachment that had broken away from the main force in February under Major Max Wintgens was still on the move. In the second half of May the sick Wintgens gave himself up to the Belgians, and command passed to Captain Naumann, who was to lead his pursuers around the colony until the autumn. As early as June van Deventer launched a concentric advance from Kilwa and Lindi, which in October led to the bloody Battle of Mahiwa.