Herero

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A group of Herero women.

The Herero are a people belonging to the Bantu group, with about 120,000 members alive today. The majority of the Herero live in Namibia, with the remainder living in Botswana and Angola. Most are employed as workers on large farms or earn their living as merchants or tradesmen in the cities. The Ovaherero comprise several subgroups, including the Ovahimba, the Ovatjimba, the Ovambanderu and the vaKwandu. During the colonial period, Europeans attempted to define these as separate ethnic groups, but the people consider themselves all to be Ovaherero. They speak Herero and nations' official languages Portuguese in Angola, English in both Botswana and Namibia, and Afrikaans in Namibia.

1 History
2 Hereros in fiction
3 See also
4 Publications
5 External links
- 5.1 Photographs

[edit] History

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Herero migrated to what is today Namibia from the east and established themselves as herdsmen. In the beginning of the 19th century, the Nama from South Africa, who already possessed some firearms, entered the land and were followed, in turn, by white merchants and German missionaries. At first, the Nama began displacing the Herero, but later both peoples entered into a period of cultural exchange.

During the late 19th century, the first Europeans began entering to permanently settle the land. Primarily in Damaraland, German settlers acquired land from the Herero in order to establish farms. In 1883, the merchant Franz Adolf Eduard Lüderitz entered into a contract with the native elders. The exchange later became the basis of German colonial rule. The territory became a German colony under the name of German South-West Africa.

Soon after, conflicts between the German colonists and the Herero herdsmen began. Controversies frequently arose because of disputes about access to land and water, but also the legal discrimination of the native population by the white immigrants.

In 1904, those conflicts resulted in an uprising, known as the Herero Wars, by the Herero and Nama. (Interestingly, the uprising was planned in an exchange of letters among tribal leaders and some of these documents have been preserved). After a period of success for the well-equipped insurgents, the German Empire sent a military expedition corps of about 15,000 men under the command of Lothar von Trotha. The war and the subsequent genocide ordered by von Trotha resulted in the death of between 25,000 and 100,000 (possibly 65,000) Hereros, about 10,000 Nama and 1,749 Germans. Since the insurgents had been ordered not to harm priests, clerics were falsely accused of collaboration and sometimes taken into custody.

At the 100th anniversary of the massacre, German Minister for Economic Development and Cooperation Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul commemorated the dead on site and apologized for the crimes on behalf of all Germans.

[edit] Hereros in fiction

A group of Hereros living in Germany who were inducted into the German military during the Second World War appear in a major part in Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow. The genocide under von Trotha plays a major role in another novel by the same author; V.