Although human beings have lived in Namibia for untold ages – witness the many rock paintings and engravings – the oldest existing narrative records are oral, and concern the migrations and settlements of the Owambo and Herero people. However, here we focus on events from the early 19th century onwards, because these shaped the contours of modern Namibia most directly.

At this point, it is useful to note that the name ‘Namibia’ first came into use when the United Nations General Assembly recognised it during the 1960s. ‘Namibia’ became the official name of the country with independence in 1990. Before that, under both the German and South African administrations, the country was known as ‘South West Africa’. During the mid- to late 1800s, before the Germans established their control, the central areas were usually called ‘Damaraland’ – a reference that should not be confused with the ‘ethnic homeland’ or ‘Bantustan’ of that name that was established under apartheid by the South Africans. It is a name that is still applied to north-western parts of Namibia.

During the mid-19th century, the most influential groups in what is modern-day Namibia were:

1. In the north, the seven Owambo kingdoms, of which Kwanyama - straddling the contemporary border with Angola - was by far the largest. Ndonga, which adjoins the Etosha Pan, was also influential, in part because it commanded the access routes between the south and the other kingdoms. The Owambo people were primarily agriculturalists, but also had significant numbers of cattle and small stock, which were moved over large distances annually according to seasonal grazing patterns.

2. In the central areas there were various Herero groups, who were semi-nomadic pastoralists and therefore tended to have loose political alliances rather than to acknowledge centralised authority. The Herero people had migrated from the north relatively recently; in fact, the Himba people of the Kaokoveld are a Herero group that settled there during the migration, instead of continuing further southwards with the main groups. In the central areas, the Herero were grouped into both the 'Herero proper' and the Mbanderu in the east. The most important Herero centre was Okahandja, where Maherero was the leading chief during the mid-19th century.

3. In the central-south and southern regions, the dominant groups were Oorlams, who were of mixed Khoi and Cape Dutch ('Boer') origin. The main Oorlam groups migrated into Namibia from south of the Orange River during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They had adopted European habits and technology, and valued Dutch for educational and religious purposes. As they moved northwards, they subjugated and absorbed the indigenous Nama groups, with whom they had cultural and linguistic affinities through their Khoi background. Many Oorlams were Christians and welcomed the services of missionaries. This was in sharp distinction to the practices of the neighbouring Hereros, who adhered to their traditional religion, discouraged the attentions of missionaries, and did not convert to Christianity in large numbers until they were reduced to despair, first by the Rinderpest in the late 19th century and then by their suffering after they were defeated in the 1904-95 war.

During the mid-19th century, the leading Oorlam was Jonker Afrikaner, who ruled most of Namibia from modern Windhoek southwards and was based at Aigams in what is today the suburb of Klein Windhoek. Later, the Witboois, particularly under Hendrik Witbooi (whose face appears on Namibian bank-notes), became the dominant Oorlam group. From the 1840s until the end of the century, relations between the Oorlams and the central Hereros were invariably strained, as the Oorlams demanded tribute and commonly raided their neighbours’ cattle herds, while the two groups competed fiercely for water and grazing land.

To do business with both the Oorlam/Namas and the Hereros, a number of traders (mainly British) used Otjimbingwe as their base for goods that they brought in from Cape Town via Walvis Bay. Because they commanded scarce resources, these traders exercised political influence out of proportion to their numbers. For instance, during one remarkable period during the 1860s, some of the traders, after importing cannons and employing disbanded British colonial soldiers from the Cape, joined with Herero forces in a war against the Afrikaner Oorlams. Later in the 19th century, the trading centre moved northwards to Omaruru, which was more convenient for trade with Owamboland, as well as for excursions eastwards to hunt for ivory and ostrich feathers. Even at this comparatively early date, natural resources, including game, were being denuded and destroyed in unsustainable ways.

Another group of people who exercised influence out of proportion to their numbers were the German Lutheran missionaries, who established their work from the 1840s onwards. The Oorlams in particular respected the missionaries not only for their spiritual authority and knowledge, but also because they opened schools and brought in valuable technology such as carpentry and blacksmithing. In Owamboland, from the 1870s onwards, Finnish Lutheran missionaries began to lay the foundations of what became an extensive and influential work.

During the later 19th century, as the 'Scramble for Africa' intensified, Germany began to increase its military presence in Namibia, until full-blown colonial control was established and extended during the 1890s. Initially, the German authorities, who were based in Windhoek, concentrated on assisting German settlers to buy more and more land from the Hereros, while at the same time they worked to undermine other Herero chiefs and fortify the 'paramount' position of the chieftanship in Okahandja. In fact, the institution of the Herero paramount chieftanship – still in force today - was introduced and cultivated by the Germans, who wanted to deal with only one authority instead of with many.

By the end of the 19th century, relations between Germans and Hereros were becoming strained. The main reason was that more and more prime land was being allocated to German settlers, who then denied Herero pastoralists access to resources on which they had depended for a long time. The fact that the land was being acquired ‘legally’ in terms of agreements between the German administration and the new ‘paramount chief’ did not, of course, alleviate the growing dissatisfaction amongst the ordinary Hereros, who felt that they were being marginalised and impoverished.

 

19th century photograph of a group of Witboois (left) (photo: National Archives of Namibia) and the image of Hendrik Witbooi on modern Namibian bank notes (right)

Amongst the many other matters that are of interest in 19th century Namibian history, at least two are worthy of special attention: the ‘mystery of the Damara’, and the Dorsland Trekkers. The first refers to the fact that, in spite of numerous investigations and never-ending speculation, the history and origin of the Damara people of Namibia have never been ascertained. The ‘mystery’ arises from the fact that although most Damara people are generally ‘Black African’ in appearance, with looks that are similar to their Owambo and Herero neighbours, they have a Khoe language as their mother tongue. They share this language with the Nama people, whose classical features are unique to the Khoisan groups. In a nutshell, many of the Damara people look as if they should have – and should always have had – a Bantu language as their mother tongue, but in fact throughout recorded history they have spoken a Khoe language. The ‘mystery’ became a controversy during the early 20th century, when Vedder, a German missionary-author, suggested that the Damara people had switched home languages when they were enslaved by the Oorlam/Namas. However, linguistic research suggests that the Damara variety of ‘Khoekhoegowab’ (the modern name of the language that was formerly called ‘Nama/Damara’) is probably as old or even older than the ‘Nama’ variety, thus suggesting that it is not a recent acquisition, as the ‘slavery’ hypothesis states.

The Dorsland (‘Thirstland’) Trekkers were ‘Boers’ from the South African Republic – the Boer republic of the Transvaal in northern South Africa – who during the 1880s decided to move on so that they would escape from the hated influence and interference of the British authorities in Natal. These were the same people, or their immediate descendants, who had participated in the Great Trek of the 1830s, when thousands of ‘Boers’ left the Cape Colony to escape from British authority. Now, less than fifty years later, they were on the move again.

This time, the trekkers set out westwards to traverse the Kalahari Desert across the modern-day country of Botswana and so into Namibia. For many of them, the trek was a disaster. They suffered grievously from shortages of food, water, and grazing, and whole families perished along the way. True to Boer principles of fierce independence, a group of trekkers who reached the vicinity of modern-day Grootfontein in north-central Namibia founded a republic. However, they were so reduced in circumstances and so much hoped for assistance that they named their republic ‘Upingtonia’, thus honouring the British governor of the Cape Colony –an ironic and desperate move for people who had suffered so much to be rid of British influence! However, they received no assistance, and many of the surviving trekkers moved onwards, through the Kaokoveld and across the Kunene River into Portuguese-controlled Angola. There they established themselves, until the early 1930s when their descendants accepted an offer from the South African authorities to return to Namibia, where they were given farms. Today, a significant number of Afrikaans-speaking Namibians are descendants of these ‘Angola Boers’, who themselves were descendants of people who survived the harrowing ‘Thirstland Trek

Click here for an account of migrants and settlers in Namibia.

Further useful information about the history of Namibia can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Namibia’