From the otherworldly dunes of the Namib Desert to the wildlife-rich plains of Etosha National Park, Namibia is one of Africa’s most enticing destinations. An understanding of its nuanced (and often brutal) history will make your visit even more fulfilling.

Before the white man came

Until recently, most books assumed that because Namibia’s precolonial history wasn’t written down, it didn’t happen. Big mistake! Painted plates discovered in the mountains on the banks of the lifegiving Orange River (more correctly known as the Kai !Arib) date back at least 28,000 years, making them some of the world’s oldest works of art. The hunter-gatherers and pastoralists collectively known as the bushmen (the term is back in fashion) are, writes Helmut Angula, “the most pristine inhabitants, not only of Namibia, but of the African continent.”

Much more recently (about 400 years ago), Bantu-speaking people moved into present-day Namibia from the north and the east. And in the 18th and 19th century, indigenous bushman groups who lived south of the Orange River were forced north by colonial expansion. Armed with modern weapons, these people – known as the Oorlams – quickly took control of the best grazing.

Missionaries and colonialism

The first white man to set foot on Namibian soil was the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão who erected a limestone cross on the treacherous Skeleton Coast in 1485. More than three centuries later, the Dutch East India Company (which had had a permanent presence in Cape Town in South Africa since 1652) took control of the deep-water harbor at Walvis Bay … but it didn’t venture much further than that. The first meaningful European settlement in Namibia was carried out by missionaries: the London Missionary Society built its first church in 1811, and Rhenish missionaries from Germany set up shop in the 1840s.

It was only in 1884, as Germany realized that it was lagging desperately behind Britain, France, Portugal, and Belgium in the scramble for Africa, that the German flag was first raised in German South-West Africa (Namibia). As colonizers go, they were fast learners: In 1886 the new colony adopted a legal system which had different rules for whites and blacks, and in 1888 the first cohort of Schutztruppen (colonial protectorate troops) arrived on Namibian soil.

In 1893, the Nama people – under their fearless and charismatic leader Hendrik Witbooi – responded to a German attack on one of their settlements by waging war against the colonial forces. The following year Witbooi signed a peace treaty with the Germans, and he even fought on their side for a while. But this would not last long…

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German Lieutenant Weiss, flanked by the Nama Captains Simon Kooper (left with striped jacket) and Hendrik Witbooi (right with rifle) before their insurrection against German colonial rule.

G is for Genocide

In the early 1900s, the growing German settler population got it into their heads that Governor Theodor Leutwein was too lenient in his treatment of indigenous Namibians (who had started objecting to having their land stolen and their women raped). Matters came to a head in 1904 when the Herero revolted, killing more than 100 Germans. Leutwein was duly replaced with Lothar von Trotha, who’d earned a reputation for treating “natives” brutally during his time as commander of German East Africa (now Tanzania).

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Central figure Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, the ‘Oberbefehlshaber’ (Supreme Commander) of the protection force in German South West Africa, in Keetmanshoop during the Herero uprising (1904).

Von Trotha had a simple solution for the so-called Herero uprising: “I believe that the nation as such should be annihilated,” he said. He ordered the Schutztruppe to do this both by occupying and/or poisoning all the waterholes in the area (anyone who’s visited will know that Namibia is one of the driest countries on earth), and through sheer force. An Afrikaner witness to the Battle of Waterberg remembered it thus:

After the battle all men, women, and children who fell into German hands, wounded or otherwise, were mercilessly put to death. Then the Germans set off in pursuit of the rest, and all those found by the wayside and in the sandveld were shot down and bayoneted to death.

The following year Von Trotha issued a warning to the Nama people, reminding them of what had happened to the Herero:

The Nama who chooses not to surrender and lets himself be seen in German territory will be shot, until all are exterminated. Those who, at the start of the rebellion, committed murder against whites or have commanded that whites be murdered have, by law, forfeited their lives. As for the few not defeated, it will fare with them as it fared with the Herero, who in their blindness also believed that they could make war successfully on the powerful German Emperor and the great German people. I ask you, where are the Herero today?

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Prisoners from the Herero and Nama tribes during the war against Germany (1904).

Not everyone was killed on sight. Thousands of Herero and Nama women and children were sent to concentration camps – but conditions in the camps were atrocious and the mortality rate was as high as 74%. When all was said and done, between 60,000 and 100,000 Herero had been killed – around 80% of the entire population. The Nama fared slightly better: about 50% of their population was killed during the Genocide.

Be careful what you wish for

After Germany was defeated in World War I, control of their colonies was divvied out at the League of Nations, the precursor to United Nations (UN). It was decided that German Southwest Africa should be administered by neighboring South Africa, which was tasked with promoting “the material and moral well-being and social progress of the people.”

In 1922, the South Africans showed exactly what kind of caretakers they would be by aerially bombing the Bondelswarts, a multi-ethnic group of freedom fighters who had given the Germans a hard time between 1904 and 1906. When the planes appeared, the women and children in the village and the male fighters in the hills turned to watch “a few small black objects fall from the sky. When the bombs burst with echoing crashes among the wagons and stock, a terrible confusion seized the village.”

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Jacob Morenga (center) and his officers of the Bondelswarts Tribe (1905).

Things went from bad to worse in 1948, when the apartheidgovernment came to power in South Africa. While the UN prevented South Africa from incorporating Namibia into its territory (the Bondelswarts affair was a major sticking point), Namibia became a de facto “fifth province” of South Africa that was governed according to apartheid rules: forced removals, separate education, and police brutality were the order of the day for black Namibians.

A bloody independence struggle

In 1960, the South-West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) was founded with the goal of achieving an independent Namibia. In 1966, realizing that they’d have no luck negotiating with the racist apartheid regime, guerrillas from SWAPO’s military wing attacked a unit of the South African police, kicking off what would become known in South Africa as the Border War. Over the next two decades, the apartheid government waged a war against SWAPO and their allies in Angola, The People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, also known as MPLA. The conflicts were wrapped up in the Cold War, with South Africa receiving tacit support from the United States and the United Kingdom, and SWAPO and the MPLA being backed by Cuba and the USSR. (From 1978 onwards, the same pattern would emerge in Mozambique.)

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the UN and other international groups campaigned for an internationally acceptable transition to Namibian independence. But South Africa dug its heels in. Things eventually came to a head in 1988 at the Ronald Reagan/Mikhail Gorbachev summit in Moscow where it was decided that “Cuban troops would be withdrawn from Angola, and Soviet military aid would cease, as soon as South Africa withdrew from Namibia.”

After a tense transition period, Namibia’s first democratic elections were held in 1989 with Sam Nujoma, leader of SWAPO, garnering 57% of the vote. He was sworn in by Nelson Mandela (who had just been released from prison) the following year.

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President of SWAPO, Sam Nujoma arrives in Berlin, Germany for a working visit, welcomed by Günter Sieber, member of the SED Central Committee and head of the International Relations Department (1989).

The conservation success story of independent Namibia

In the three decades since independence, Namibia has remained peaceful and relatively prosperous. Many have heralded it as an African success story, but monikers such as this are always overly simplistic – not to mention somewhat patronizing. The truth is more nuanced: Namibia, like most modern democracies, is not without its problems. Although Nujoma relinquished power after three terms, SWAPO is yet to lose an election and the country remains saddled by extreme inequality.

One area in which the news is almost all positive, however, is conservation. As Graham Hopwood writes:

Namibia’s Constitution is a remarkable achievement. It was put together by 72 elected members of the Constituent Assembly in just 80 days in late 1989 and early 1990. Many of these Assembly members had been sworn enemies up until the Namibian transition process got underway in April 1989 under the auspices of the United Nations. It is hard now to imagine how difficult it must have been for those on the different sides of the liberation struggle to sit down with former foes and respectfully debate Namibia’s supreme law. It took courage, open-mindedness and magnanimity.

During this process, Namibia became the first African nation (and one of the first globally) to enshrine environmental protection into its Constitution. Article 95 of Namibia’s Constitution mandates the “maintenance of ecosystems, essential ecological processes and biological diversity of Namibia and utilization of living natural resources on a sustainable basis for the benefit of the Namibians, both present and future.”

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Cheetah lying down near the education center of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, an organization dedicated to research and conservation of cheetahs and their ecosystems. (Photo: Alexander Klink, Namibia Otjiwarongo Cheetah Conservation Fund Cheetah Lying Down2, CC BY 4.0)

Namibia’s wildlife populations were severely dented during the independence war, but since 1990 they’ve been headed only one way: up. Today a whopping 40% of Namibia’s land is currently under conservation management (compared to 12% in the US) and wildlife populations are actually growing across the board (another African record).

Namibia has some of the best national parks in Africa, each with its own distinct character. Here are three of our favorites:

• Etosha National Park, named after the vast mineral pan at its heart (etosha means “great white place” in Ovambo), is the glittering jewel in the crown. The perennial springs along the edge of the pan attract incredible concentrations of wildlife and birds, including elephants, black and white rhino, lions, leopards and cheetahs, as well as large herds of antelope.

• The Namib Naukluft Park preserves two very different ecosystems – the surprisingly verdant Naukluft Mountains. and the uncompromisingly dry southern Namib Desert. In the Namib section of the park, visitors flock to the area surrounding the clay pan of Sossusvlei where 1,000-foot dunes lurch skywards. Nearby Deadvlei captivates visitors with its gnarled skeletons of ancient camel-thorn trees set against a ghostly backdrop of dried white clay.

• Bwabwata National Park, in the northeastern corner of Namibia, is a spectacularly green place that encompasses pristine riverine forests, wetlands, and savannas. While the game viewing’s pretty good (there are plenty of elephants), Bwabwata is known for its incredible birdwatching – and the unique opportunity for river-based safaris.

History in action

Modern Namibia, like all countries, is a product of its past. Whether you’re marveling at a pride of lions in Etosha, enjoying a traditional German dinner of eisbein and sauerkraut in Windhoek, or visiting the (bone chilling) Shark Island Concentration Camp, we hope that the information contained in this article will make your Namibian adventure more fulfilling and layered.