Digging up the past 107 years later

More than a thousand rusty WWI rifles were unearthed last week at Tsumeb when Telecom was laying a new cable.
On 9 July 1915 the Treaty of Khorab was signed by General Louis Botha, Governor Seitz and Major Victor Franke at Kilometre 500 - north of Otavi - when the German Imperial forces officially surrendered to the Union of South Africa troops. More than three thousand German soldiers handed in their weapons in Tsumeb before being interned near Aus. An old photograph shows the heaps of rifles and ammunition that lay on the ground before they were buried. Before surrendering, the Schutztruppe disposed of some of their other weapons, ammunition and field cannons by throwing them into Lake Otjikoto. These were retrieved and restored in the early 1980s and are now on display in the Khorab Room at the Tsumeb Museum, which commemorates the signing of the peace treaty.