Namibia Tourism Information: Pre-Colonial History

The earliest Namibians were San (often pejoratively called Bushmen), nomadic peoples with a survival-oriented culture based on hunting and gathering. Their clans were small and rarely federated, and their military technology was so weak that even before the arrival of the Europeans they had been pushed back to the desert margins. The first conquerors in southern Namibia were the Nama (of a people often though not in Namibia pejoratively called Hottentots). They had a larger clan system, with interclan alliances, and a pastoral economy. Closely linked (usually in a dependent role) were the Damara, a people from central Africa whose culture combined pastoralism, hunting, and copper smelting. In northeastern and central Namibia the Herero (a pastoral people from central Africa) built up interlocked clan systems eventually headed by a paramount chief. The unity of the Herero nation, however, was always subject to splintering. In the north the Ovambo people developed several kingdoms on both sides of the Kunene River. They were mixed farmers (largely because of a more hospitable environment for crops) and also smelted and worked copper. To the east the related Kavango peoples had a somewhat similar but weaker state system. On the margins of Namibia i.e., the Caprivi Strip in the far east and on the margins of the Kalahari the local peoples and groupings were spillovers from southern Zambia (Barotse) and Botswana (Tswana).

Until the 1860s, European contact and penetration were slight. Diogo C? and Bartolomeu Dias touched on the Namibian coast in 1486 and 1488 respectively, en route to and returning from the Cape of Good Hope, but there was virtually no contact until the 1670s. Afrikaner explorers after 1670 and Afrikaner traders and settlers about 1790 came to Namibia and eventually reached the southern boundaries of the Ovambo kingdoms, notably at the Etosha Pan. They-together with German missionaries, explorers of varied nationality, British traders, and Norwegian whalers did not play a dominant role before 1860. Instead, they created the first avenues for trade (ivory and later cattle) and introduced firearms.

The latter heightened the destructiveness of conflicts among the various clans and peoples. So did the arrival, after the first quarter of the 19th century, of the Oorlam-Nama from the Cape. Their military technology (which included horses, guns, and a small mobile commando organizational pattern) was modeled on that of the Afrikaners. They came to dominate the resident Nama (Red Nation) and Damara. In the middle of the 19th century, a kingdom ruled by the Oorlam but partly Herero and supported by the Red Nation and Damara was established near Windhoek by the Oorlam chief Jonker Afrikaner.

Central Namibia was then an area of conflict between the southward-moving Herero and the northward-migrating Nama. In 1870 a peace treaty was signed with the Germans on the border of Herero country. Meanwhile, largely as a result of war pressures, Maherero had emerged as the Herero paramount chief. At this time a South African Creole ("Coloured") community, the Rehoboth Basters, had immigrated to a territory south of Windhoek, where they served as a buffer between the Herero and the Germans. Like the Oorlam, they were Europeanized in military technology as well as civil society and state organization, which were copied from the Afrikaners.