South West Africa Stamps on AfricaStamps.co.uk

South West Africa is one of the most sparsley populated countries of the world, with much of the country being taken up by desert. The low population makes the stamps and the postal history scarce. South West Africa was originally a German colony, the first German overprinted stamps for use within the colony were issued in 1897; later issues feature the well known ‘Kaiser’s yacht’ design. The forces of South Africa occupied the country from July 19th 1915 and in 1919 South Africa was given a mandate over the territory.

An interesting feature of the SWA philately is the use of the German style cancellers that were modified for use in this period by partly or fully removing the German inscriptions. On the 1st January 1923 South African stamps overprinted in bilingual pairs were issued – these are highly collectable and especially difficult to find in used condition in their original pairs. South African stamps continued to be overprinted until 1952; however a very fine looking pictorial definitive set inscribed ‘South West Africa’ in bilingual pairs (similar to the South Africa bilingual pairs of the same period) was issued in 1931.

The collector of South West Africa postal history will find much of interest, such as South Africa stamps used on cover pre 1923 - often with additional censor markings or censor tape from the WWI period. The number of different Post Office names to be found in SWA is not overwhelming, but the low volume of mail due to the sparse population can make some of the postmarks very rare indeed. For more information see AfricaStamps.co.uk