DC19/NAMM/0037

The memorial is located within a garden of remembrance dedicated to memorializing those members of the Bethlehem community who gave their lives in armed conflict. This memorial is specifically dedicated to those that lost their lives as part of the South African Border War within the operation area of South West Africa.
The South African Border War, also known as the Namibian War of Independence, and sometimes denoted in South Africa as the Angolan Bush War, was a largely asymmetric conflict that occurred in Namibia (then South West Africa), Zambia, and Angola from 26 August 1966 to 21 March 1990. It was fought between the South African Defence Force (SADF) and the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), an armed wing of the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO). The South African Border War resulted in some of the largest battles on the African continent since World War II and was closely intertwined with the Angolan Civil War.
Namibia was governed as German South West Africa, a colony of the German Empire, until World War I, when it was invaded and occupied by Allied forces under General Louis Botha. Following the Armistice of 11 November 1918, a mandate system was imposed by the League of Nations to govern African and Asian territories held by Germany and the Ottoman Empire prior to the war.[43] The mandate system was formed as a compromise between those who advocated an Allied annexation of former German and Turkish territories, and another proposition put forward by those who wished to grant them to an international trusteeship until they could govern themselves.[43]
All former German and Turkish territories were classified into three types of mandates – Class "A" mandates, predominantly in the Middle East, Class "B" mandates, which encompassed central Africa, and Class "C" mandates, which were reserved for the most sparsely populated or least developed German colonies: South West Africa, German New Guinea, and the Pacific islands.[43]
Owing to their small size, geographic remoteness, low population densities, or physical contiguity to the mandatory itself, Class "C" mandates could be administered as integral provinces of the countries to which they were entrusted. Nevertheless, the bestowal of a mandate by the League of Nations did not confer full sovereignty, only the responsibility of administering it.[43] In principle mandating countries were only supposed to hold these former colonies "in trust" for their inhabitants, until they were sufficiently prepared for their own self-determination. Under these terms, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand were granted the German Pacific islands, and the Union of South Africa received South West Africa.[44]
It soon became apparent the South African government had interpreted the mandate as a veiled annexation.[44] In September 1922, South African prime minister Jan Smuts testified before the League of Nations Mandate Commission that South West Africa was being fully incorporated into the Union and should be regarded, for all practical purposes, as a fifth province of South Africa.[44] According to Smuts, this constituted "annexation in all but in name".[44]
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the League of Nations complained that of all the mandatory powers South Africa was the most delinquent with regards to observing the terms of its mandate.[45] The Mandate Commission vetoed a number of ambitious South African policy decisions, such as proposals to nationalise South West African railways or alter the preexisting borders.[45] Sharp criticism was also leveled at South Africa's disproportionate spending on the local white population, which the former defended as obligatory since white South West Africans were taxed the heaviest.[45] The League adopted the argument that no one segment of any mandate's population was entitled to favourable treatment over another, and the terms under which the mandate had been granted made no provision for special obligation towards whites.[45] It pointed out that there was little evidence of progress being made towards political self-determination; just prior to World War II South Africa and the League remained at an impasse over this dispute