Nama (in older sources also called Namaqua) are an African ethnic group who reside in South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. They traditionally speak the Nama language of the Khoe-Kwadi language family, although many Nama also speak Afrikaans. The Nama people (or Nama-Khoe people) were the largest group of the Khoekhoe people, much of which has disappeared as a group. Many of the Nama clans live in central Namibia and other smaller groups live in Namaqualand, which straddles the Namibian border with South Africa.
History
The Khoisan peoples of South Africa and southern Namibia maintained a nomadic life. The Khoekhoe were farmers and the San people lived as hunter-gatherers. The Nama originally inhabited the banks of the Orange River in southern Namibia and northern South Africa. The early colonialists referred to them as Hottentots. Their alternative historical name, "Namaqua", stems from the addition of the Khoekhoe language suffix "-qua/kwa", meaning "place of" (found in the names of other Southern African nations like the Griqua), to the tribe name.
Ancestry from the Khoekhoe People in the Cape Colony In April 1652, Jan van Riebeeck, an official of the Dutch East India Company, arrived at the Cape of Good Hope with 90 people to create a Dutch settlement. There they found the Khoekhoe people, who had settled in the Cape region at least a thousand years earlier. The Khoekhoe at the Cape practiced pastoral farming; they were the first pastoralists in southern Africa. They lived alongside the San people, who were hunter-gatherers. The Khoekhoe had several Nguni cattle and small livestock which they grazed around the Cape. The region was well suited to their lives as pastoralists because it provided enough water for them and their livestock.
Initially, when the Dutch made stops at the Cape of Good Hope, they were on their way to the Indonesian archipelago. While there, the Dutch sought fresh produce and water for themselves. Van Riebeeck initially attempted to obtain cattle, land, and labour from the Khoekhoe people through negotiation. However, when these negotiations failed, conflicts began to occur. The Dutch settlers waged wars against the Khoekhoe, seized their lands to construct farms for wheat and other produce, and forced many Khoekhoe people to work as labourers. Their livestock was also taken and they were denied access to grazing and water resources unless they worked for the Dutch settlers.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, as conflicts intensified and Dutch settlements were growing, taking up more space in the colony, the expansion of the colony frontier pushed the Khoekhoe eastwards into the Eastern Cape and then the "closed frontier" reserves, Transkei and Ciskei; and some including the Nama fled northwards, across the so-called "open frontier" into the Northern Cape and crossed the Orange River into German South West Africa, renamed Namibia in 1968.
In 1991, a part of Namaqualand (home of the Nama and one of the last true wilderness areas of South Africa) was named the Richtersveld National Park. In December 2002, ancestral lands, including the park, were returned to community ownership and the governments of South Africa and Namibia began creating a transfrontier park from the west coast of southern Africa to the desert interior, absorbing the Richtersveld National Park. Today, the Richtersveld National Park is one of the few places where the original Nama traditions survive. There, the Nama move with the seasons and speak their own language. The traditional Nama dwelling – the |haru oms, or portable rush-mat covered domed hut – protects against the blistering sun, and is easy to move when grazing becomes scarce.
Nama People in German South West Africa Some Khoekhoe groups including the Nama under the leadership of David Witbooi (Hendrik Witbooi's grandfather) had crossed the Orange River into German South West Africa. Jager Afrikaner was the Nama indigenous leader from Little Namaqualand to establish a permanent Nama settlement north of the !Garib in 1795 (after the murder of Petrus Pienaar, a Dutch burger) beginning in the late 18th cemtury. In 1823-24, his son |Haramûb |Hoa|arab (Jonker Afrikaner) eventually led a part of the |Hoa|ara ||aixa ||aes (Oorlam Afrikaner Nama community) to the area of |Ae||gams (modern day Windhoek) where they developed a communal society centered on cattle, trade and Christianity and Tsui-||goab and Heitsi-Eibib worship. After his death in 1861. His oldest son Christian Afrikaner assued Chieftancy but fell in battle during the war against Charles Andersson during the early 1860s. The famous and legendary Jan Jonker Afrikaner took over the gaosib (Chieftainship) until his death in battle against the |Khowese gaob (Chief) !Nanseb |Gâbemab (Hendrik Witbooi). Moses Witbooi (Hendrik Witbooi's father) assumed chieftaincy and remained in that position until 1883. Like his father, Hendrik followed Christian practices and worked closely with Johannes Olpp, a Protestant missionary affiliated with Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft (Rhenish Mission Society, RMG) who arrived in Gibeon in 1868. Moses, the predecessor of Hendrik Witbooi (his father) supported Olpp's efforts to build a church and mission station, and helped found an RMG school in the settlement.
Conflicts between Nama people and Herero people In June 1884 Hendrik Witbooi had taken over leadership from his father, and in that year he began the first of his several treks with his people, north into central Damaraland in search of new settlement. He had resigned from his position as a church elder a year before. He styled himself as a biblical prophet and gained the support of the most prominent families in Gibeon. Witbooi established a settlement in Hoornkrans, an important stronghold territory controlled by the Herero, led by Chief Maharero. Witbooi's decision to expand his influence into Hoornkrans sparked a protracted military conflict between the two tribes. However, a few months before the conflict began, Maharero had finalized a protection agreement with officials from the newly arrived German colonial administration. Although he knew about Maharero's treaty with Germany, Witbooi never waivered in his decision to confront the Herero people. Witbooi was campaigning for his tribe's supremacy in the colony and he continued to clash with other tribal communities that were under German protection. These rivalries between the Nama people and other tribes posed a significant problem for the imperial government because the Germans' mandate for the colony was gradually being weakened. German leaders therefore sought an end to the conflicts between the Herero and Witbooi Namaqua.
Nama–German conflicts In June 1886, Reichskomissar Heinrich Göring wrote Witbooi, encouraging him to end his hostile actions in the colony. He pleaded with the Nama Chief to return home to Gibeon to be with his father and tribe and live in peace there; he warned that the German government could not allow chieftains who have placed themselves under German protection to support his ambition of driving a protected chiefdom into war. Witbooi and his people ignored this warning and continued his campaign for dominance against the Herero. Later that year Louis Nels, a deputy officer to Göering wrote to Witbooi inviting him to participate in a conciliatory meeting between the various warring communities in Walvis Bay. With this meeting German authorities had hoped to facilitate a peace treaty, however the Nama chief did not comply with the request. Instead he wrote a letter in response telling Nels that he would not listen to him. He made it known to Nels that he (Witbooi) was a chief of his tribe, a free and autonomous man who answers only to God. The German officials did not respond to Witbooi's diplomatic reproach. With the limits of Germany on full display, imperial officials were at a loss about how to end the violence in GSWA.
In June 1888, Heinrich Göring wrote to Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck and described the overall situation as "not very encouraging". In April 1889 Göring went so far as to threaten open war against Witbooi and his tribe if he did not halt his attacks against groups allied with Germany. Witbooi's resistance prompted policy makers to seek immediate solutions to the instability in GSWA. The Nama resistance provoked the German authorities to act decisively, and from 1889 Germany's military presence in the colony began to grow significantly. In March 1893 Chancellor Von Caprivi proclaimed GSWA a German settlement colony. In November that year Kaiser Wilhelm II appointed Curt von François as Landeshauptmann. A fanatic, François looked at Witbooi with disdain and called him a mere "tribesman" whom he could defeat easily. He had a notion that his predecessors acted weakly in dealing with the Nama chief and that they made too many concessions. François strongly believed that nothing but relentless severity would end Witbooi's resistance decisively. Initially the German official tried to entice Witbooi with an annual payment of five thousand marks if he would submit, however the Nama chief maintained his stand.
François was pressured by the Colonial Society to take action against Witbooi. On April 12, 1893, he launched a surprise attack on Witbooi and his tribe at Hoornkrans. 214 soldiers had been sent with an ultimate objective to "destroy the Witbooi Nama tribe". Though Witbooi and majority of his male soldiers escaped the encirclement, German troops killed nearly one hundred Nama women and children in their sleep. The Nama were unprepared for the raid, believing François was still committed to neutrality. Previously Hendrik had scrupulously avoided harming Germans, but now was compelled to join the colonizers in war. In a series of running skirmishes that lasted for more than a year the Nama had great success, stealing horses and livestock from the German headquarters in Windhoek. At the end of 1893 Theodor Leutwein replaced Von François. He was appointed to the colony to investigate the reasons for the continuing failure to subdue the Nama people. In July 1894 Leutwein asked for 250 troops and with the enlarged army he was able to defeat the Nama people who had run out of ammunition; the English at the Cape and Walvis Bay had refused them assistance. Leiutwein successfully thus subdued the Nama and forced Hendrik to sign a protection treaty.
Nama–Herero genocide (1904–1908)
In June 1904 Kaiser Wilhelm replaced Leutwein with Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha; like his predecessor, von Trotha believed that violence would ultimately put an end to the wars in the colony. He employed a policy of extermination of all African tribes in the colony.
The Nama people were fighters in pre-colonial times, the Namas and the Herero people having fought for control of pastures in central Namibia. This battle continued for much of the 19th century.
From 1904 to 1908, the German Empire, which had colonized present-day Namibia, waged a war against the Nama and the Herero, leading to the Herero and Nama genocide and a large loss of life for both the Nama and Herero populations. This was motivated by the German desire to establish a prosperous colony which required displacing the indigenous people from their agricultural land. Large herds of cattle were confiscated and Nama and Herero people were driven into the desert and in some cases interned in concentration camps on the coast, for example at Shark Island. Additionally, the Nama and Herero were forced into slave labor to build railways and to dig for diamonds during the diamond rush.