January 5 1906

The Chancellor announced that as the the Zulu threat is past, the Government is considering to move tha capital from Kaapstad to the East of the country, inland, and closer to the major industrial region. No decisions were made yet on the exact location.

January 22

The Kronjé family announced that the work on the Augustus Kronjé Research Institute for Tropical Diseases is in an advanced stage. The institut will work together with the future University of Windhoek, which will specialize in medicine and life sciences. The university is scheduled to open next February, at the start of the educational year.

January 25

The keel of the battleship ORS Whitwatersrand was laid down in Kaapstad on the slipways of Timar&Roth shipbuilding. Equipped with new turbine propulsion, the ship will be three knots faster than her predecessor, while maintaining its powerful six-gun artillery and outstanding protection level.

February 2
The Army announced that it is looking for purchasing airships, from either domestic or foreign source. The army thinks that airships will be perfect for scouting troubled areas and for supplying distant outposts. Works to build a support facility are already underway.

February 17
Sources at the Naval Ministry informed us that the Navy is studying the feasibility of using airships for patrolling the 5000nm-long coastline of the nation, and is planning to purchase airships of its own.

Might be a bit premature on the airships. The leader on airships currently has one ship, plus three civilian ones. And only one other nation (CSA) currently operates an airship.

The Army does not thinks it is premature and it had already reached a preliminary agreement with an airship manufacturer. Besides, every other nation has advanced/cutting edge technology without operating a single airship so apparently it is a quite proliferated technology, although militaries haven't yet invested in it.

The CSA regrets to say that the C.S.S. Stone Mountain has been damaged beyond repair. She was severely damaged by an early-season hurricane that had the poor fortune to strike her hanger. She was broken up, and her flight crew taken to an undisclosed location to found a flight school to train new air crews.  [Translation: I didn't know I HAD an airship *lousy, incomplete documentation... mumble, grumble* and didn't allot anything in the budget for maintenance. So since it wasn't maintained, it was abandoned, I guess.]


We are planning an expanded airship fleet to begin construction in the near future- as soon as July, in fact. A fleet of 5 airships is planned for construction in the latter half of 1906 (just in time for the high point hurricane season, YAY) and should be flying by mid-winter... or what passes for winter here. By the end of 1907, the CSA will have trebled that number, and by 1909, we hope to have no less than 30.

Quote from: Carthaginian on March 28, 2007, 10:32:07 PM
The CSA regrets to say that the C.S.S. Stone Mountain to be broken up. She was severely damaged by an early-season hurricane that had the poor fortune to strike her hanger. She was broken up, and her flight crew taken to an undisclosed location to found a flight school to train new air crews.  [Translation: I didn't know I HAD an airship *lousy, incomplete documentation... mumble, grumble* and didn't allot anything in the budget for maintenance. So since it wasn't maintained, it was abandoned, I guess.]


We are planning an expanded airship fleet to begin construction in the near future- as soon as July, in fact. A fleet of 5 airships is planned for construction in the latter half of 1906 (just in time for the high point hurricane season, YAY) and should be flying by mid-winter... or what passes for winter here. By the end of 1907, the CSA will have trebled that number, and by 1909, we hope to have no less than 30.

You must have some infrastructure for that too - one hangar which costs much more than a single zeppelin.

Quote from: P³D on March 28, 2007, 10:48:10 PM

Quote from: Carthaginian on March 28, 2007, 10:32:07 PM
The CSA regrets to say that the C.S.S. Stone Mountain to be broken up. She was severely damaged by an early-season hurricane that had the poor fortune to strike her hanger. She was broken up, and her flight crew taken to an undisclosed location to found a flight school to train new air crews.  [Translation: I didn't know I HAD an airship *lousy, incomplete documentation... mumble, grumble* and didn't allot anything in the budget for maintenance. So since it wasn't maintained, it was abandoned, I guess.]


We are planning an expanded airship fleet to begin construction in the near future- as soon as July, in fact. A fleet of 5 airships is planned for construction in the latter half of 1906 (just in time for the high point hurricane season, YAY) and should be flying by mid-winter... or what passes for winter here. By the end of 1907, the CSA will have trebled that number, and by 1909, we hope to have no less than 30.

You must have some infrastructure for that too - one hangar which costs much more than a single zeppelin.

I've looked at hanger costs. They are steep, that's for certain... but the money for a hanger is only a one-time fee. That's not a horrible thing. Since airships only cost money and not BP's, they are not too terribly expensive. After all, the hard thing to come across with isn't money, it's BP.

February 1906
Orange, Masvingo (former Zulu territories)

The French Naval attaché met the defiant stares of the once proud Zulu warrior, who was a shade of himself fifteen months ago. Emaciated by the plague and by not enough food, but standing straight. Then the Capitaine de Vaisseau Godfroy realized that the Zulu was holding the spade as if it were an assegai.
"...are actually not the real Zulus, but from the other minor tribes associated with them." the thousandscaptain who was accompanying him continued."The Zulus were a warrior tribe, and it takes a long starvation that they throw their stubborn pride ad get to work. They are as good workers as warriors they were...as soldiers they were not spectacular."
One of the supervisors - another kaffir, but in army uniform, shouted something in a tribal language, and the worker continued digging the soil into a wheelbarrow, that was pushed by a women. Similarly emaciated, shrunken breasts covered with dirt...
"Their women..."
"Actually the women work harder and are more pliable. Their race is extremely suited for  such a work, they have a great endurance, and can go on and on if properly fed."
"Why don't they revolt?"
"They are fed here. We can find ten othes who would gladly take their places. Those eat less than they do now. And they were told what happened at the last revolt attempt."
Captain Godfroy decided he does not really need details on the last part.
"Can't they fend for themselves?"
"They were herders, not farmers. Their crops were grown by their subjugated tribes but they cannot take that away now. They did not want to toil in the dirt. But their herds were taken away, they do not know how to plant..." the Oranje officer shrugged.
The railway connecting the Orange network to the East Coast lines was advancing at a leisurely speed. The breakneck speed of the last two years' rail expansion was of the  past, as existing rail stocks were used up, but the meter-gauge line was nevertheless creeping towards its destination. The line where the track would go was highlighted by the hundreds of black workers and the occasional lighter spots in the green landscape.
"And you say there are enough eager ones to undertake a one-way voyage?"
"Definitely."

(The Reich expresses its usual concerns regarding Orange treatment of the natives.)

2 march 1906


Diplomatic dispatch.

Quote"Agreement on the workers and payment therefor.  Men and woman to be send on seperate ships
UK merchants chartered, will start transfer 3 July."

May 1906

The kraal functioned as a refugee camp to those villages that were dispaced by the new overlords. Hovels were set up in the central area that held the cattle of its inhabitants previously. The cattle was taken by the victors, and the extent of the maize fields would have been only barely sufficient to support the population without the milk and meat of the cattle. The village was not on the best lands - in a hilly region, with a not too abundant water supply of the small creek and a few wells - the chief of the village considered it fortunate, as all the population of the more prosperous kraals were forced to abandon the work of their ancestors, as the Orange Provisional Military Administration appropriated those lands for white settlers - but rumors were those settlers were not arriving in a year.
The kraal had to cope with the influx of was increased by refugees from two kraals, both larger than itself, forced upon them by the Administartion. As half of its adult males was lost in the war, it meant the population roughly tripled. There was starvation after the food stocks were depleted, as the newcomers could bring only what they could bear. Meanwhile the other side of the valley lay fallow, and no natives were allowed to cross it. A camp in three day's distance revolted against it, attacking a partrol, seizing its weapons, and digging out the assegais buried before.
A dozen people from each nearby kraal was taken to bear witness to it, as Orange cavalry forced them back to their camp, and started systemathically to destroy the settlement. Two weeks later that rebellious kraal was a smoking ruin, the bodies of the former inhabitants providing food for the hyenas, lions and vultures flocking there from all around.
The young widow, barely twenty, but with the sign of a year of suffering on her face, was looking at the colored woman and her attendant. The representative of the white daemons, a colored woman in her forties, was doing his monthly visit to this kraal-turned-refugee camp. Offering some help what she could, bringing food when it was the most needed, although never enough. She was uncomplaining despite the open hostility she welcoming her every time she arrived - not for herself, but for what she represented.
The widow had asked her five months ago, when the food was the scarcest, if she could have got a job and a ticket out of here. Other women already left with her. But the only available work was at brothels, and the widow had declined that first, for the memory of the man she had loved, for whom she bore a son and a daughter. By now she was willing to debase herself, daughter and wife of warriors, to became a whore for the white daemons, not willing to expose her only surviving child to the coming starvation. Clutching her daughter to herself, she approached the colored woman, as she finished a conversation with one of the elders.
"How can I help you?"
"NI am asking again for the...work you mentioned, before the rainy season. I am willing to do...anything, if only for my daughter."
Those eyes saw many things. Unknown to the locals, the woman worked wenty-five years as a nurse in the military, and held a warrant officer rank on her own right. Initially, she was employed by an Orange NGO which could not bear the indifference and cruelty displayed by the military towards the vanquished foe. They started a campaign to help the, and were operating from donations at first, but the Provisional Authiroity grudgingly accepted their utility - mainly for intelligence reasons, and they were officially government agency by now.
"What's your name, girl?"
"Lindiwe, madam."
"Lindiwe...you might not have waited in vain. If you were not willing to accept what I could offer then, you might prefer what I have now."
"Really."
"The French are looking for workers for digging their canal. Looking for working hands, they were impressed what womenfolk around here can do, and decided to recruit women as workforce."
"What work it is?"
"Digging dirt and hauling it around. We were doing that for centuries and that made us strong. It is dangerous and unpleasant but it is a way out from starvation."
"Is there a difference between white daemons?"
"They have their own motives, but they are offering to settle the workers in Haiti. After the work is done. But there's a catch too."
She looked at the small girl. The mother instinctively draw her closer.
"What?"
"Where you have to work, is no place for a child. They are offering to foster the children - but you'll have leave her to them."
"Never..."
"It's your - and your daughter's ticket out of this hell."
By this time some other people gathered around them to listed. The colored women looked up at them.
"I am coming back in four weeks, you have till then to decide."

Quote from: MaddoxYes minister.  It's funny but it seems that the New Swiss made a serious mistake there. So did we.
His killers were not zulu's, but we traced at last 1 of the killers to capetown, a local tug. He swears after a torough interogation he was payed in Krugerrand gold coins. Now, our sources indicate that only the New Swiss had a free source of krugerrand coins. I believe our friends in Capetown will be glad with this information.
Now, as this was originaly a Palpaté Project I suggest we just confine the known associates of Rimauld, and feed them information that is real enough, untill needed otherwise.

Reaction.

"The Swiss? What the hell..."
"We were assuming all the way long they were French agents who hired the thugs. We identified this 'Karl'  in a few weeks after, as the one who did the execution and the cleanup, interrogated him, but let him go due to the professional courtesy he displayed."
"And we did not press the investigation much, as Rimauld's demise was not a quite undesirable outcome for us. And we assumed all along it was ordered by the Deuxieme Bureau or whomever, but the French themselves to silence him before he decided to reveal some juicy information to us - and it was like their own modus operandi."
"Exactly. We also got to the figure who was the paymaster but could trace him back only to the liner by which he arrived the week before, from Italy. The person to whom the seized documents were delivered was a different guy too. But 'Karl' disappeared last December - and apparently disposed of by the French. No one else of his crew met their contact."
"Send the Frenchies our thanks, and inform them that we had evidence to suspect that it was not a domestic French operation."
"The money could still come from France even if it as not the Deuxieme bureau."
"Exactly. But with this info about the Swiss in light, we have to reconsider the whole affair."


The assassination:
http://www.navalism.org/index.php?topic=543.0

May 24, 1906

The Oranje Army announced the formation of the Army Air Corps, tasked with the maintenance and operation of all flying crafts, lighter than heavier than air. The OAAC HQ was established in the town of Upington. After negotiations with the Confederate States of America agreed to supply Orange with a disassembled airship and personnel for re-assembly.
Meanwhile, the Navy, who apparently felt as if caught with the pants down, not wishing to allow air operations to be the monopoly of the Army, started looking for its own supplier for airship somewhat belatedly. Eventually they found the New Swiss, who agreed to supply the Navy with one airship of their manufacture.
Apparently interservice rivalry sometimes has advantageous side effects, if technological advancement is concerned...

Kaapstat, May 1906

Note from Austro-Hungarian Embassy

"How many Zulus does the Oranje Republic have in it's camps in the North?"
Ambassadeur Plenipotentaire et Extraordinnaire et Nocturnal
Gróf Bela Lugosi

OOC Hmm the Swiss had nothing to do with the assasination, I wonder who is framing me again.

OOC, even secret services can be paranoïd, and draw wrong conclusions.