South-West Africa

by William Eveleigh

The Native Races

The native races represented in South-West Africa are the Bushmen, Hottentots, and Bantu people, and they vary not only in physical appearance and language, but also in character and habits.

The Bushmen, so-called because of their preference for places abounding in bushes, were probably the earliest inhabitants of the land, since members of this race roamed the entire country south of the Zambesi at a time of remote antiquity. These people were nomads of a most primitive type, and lived on wild animals, wild plants and fruits, the roots of plants, locusts, and even the larvæ of ants. Small in stature, yellowish brown in colour, with queer, fox-like face, slender limbs, and a language abounding in strange clicks and deep guttural sounds, the Bushman did not seem far removed from the animals upon whom he preyed. The people lived in small societies after a most primitive fashion, with no religion, and no fixed abode. Though incapable of protracted labour, they possessed marvellous keenness of vision and fleetness of foot, and could travel immense distances in pursuit of game without taking rest. Savages though they were, they had artistic gifts of no mean order: on the walls of caves and the sheltered sides of great rocks in various parts of the country there are found to-day rude but spirited and clever pictures in profile of wild animals, in red, and yellow and black. But they have been so ruthlessly hunted down and destroyed by successive intruding races, that these keen-eyed children of the wilds have almost entirely disappeared from the vast territory which at one time was their exclusive hunting-ground. Some of them linger yet on the Kalahari border, and some thousands of half-breeds are found in the districts of Grootfontein, Outjo, and Gobabis.

How and whence the Hottentots came no one can say with certainty. Some affirm that their origin is to be sought in the intermarriage of men of light brown or yellow colour with women of Bushmen blood, while others incline to the view that they came from North Africa somewhere about the end of the fourteenth century. Compared to the Bushmen they are but recent dwellers in the land. They called themselves the Khoi-Khoin, or men of men, and they probably travelled slowly southward and westward, dispossessing the Bushmen of their lands here and there, until they covered considerable areas of the country. They were small men, but greatly superior to the Bushmen both in physique and intellect. They lived in tribes under hereditary chiefs, but the chief’s authority was very limited. On the whole they were a good-natured sort of people, merry, thoughtless, and indolent. Various tribes of Namaqua Hottentots roamed over the southern portion of South-West Africa for many years prior to the German occupation. They had an abundance of horned cattle, sheep, and goats, and most of their rather frequent tribal conflicts were about flocks and herds. Their descendants have shown themselves capable of adopting civilised habits of life, and they have learned to cultivate the soil, and even to act as rough handicraftsmen. More pure Hottentots are found in Great Namaqualand to-day than in any other part of South Africa. When the last census was taken a year or two ago they numbered some 15,000. Until brought under German rule, after the various unsuccessful conflicts which they waged against the Germans, they enjoyed a life of independence.

To the great Bantu family, or Kaffir races, belong the Ovahereros, or Damaras—better known as Hereros—and the Ovambo people, but there are well marked distinctions between these two neighbours. The name Herero, it is said, is an attempt to reproduce the whirring sound of the broad-bladed assagai used by these people in its flight through the air. “The meaning of the name Ovaherero,” says G. W. Stow, “is the men of the whirring assagais.” The Hereros migrated from the north or north-east, and for some time they occupied the territory north of the Namaquas, living in communities under the government of chiefs. Their riches consisted of cattle, and they have always shown a great reluctance to part with any of their animals. Among early travellers they won an unenviable notoriety on account of their cruelty, filthy habits, and degenerate tastes. In their conflicts with the German forces they revealed remarkable and unexpected powers of resistance. About 15,000 to 20,000 of these people are found in the country at present.

The Ovambo people in the far north were practically unknown until the ’fifties of the last century, when travellers discovered them to be a rich, industrious, and hospitable tribe, skilled in the working of metals, and possessed of a real love for agriculture. They live under a fairly strict tribal government in large communities, and for some time have carried on trade with the Portuguese; they have even supplied such articles as knives and iron pearls to their southern neighbours, the Hereros. It is estimated that there are at least 80,000 of these people in the northern territory, while the total population of Ovamboland and the Caprivizipfel may be anything between 150,000 and 200,000.

The Bergdamaras, who for many years inhabited the mountainous district of Western Damaraland, constitute a fascinating ethnological problem. They are Bantu by blood, Hottentot by language, and Bushmen by habit. Whence these strange affinities?

It is probable that the Bergdamaras were at one time connected with the main stream of Bantu people that spread southward over the country, but who by an eddy in the tide were left stranded in what is now Damaraland. Enslaved there by the more powerful Hottentots, they adopted the enemy’s language, and at length escaped from bondage to make their home in the fastnesses of the mountains, where no other means of subsistence remained for them but that of the Bushmen. They number about 18,000 to-day.

South-West Africa presents then a deeply interesting microcosm of native life, and affords glimpses of the migratory movements of the native people in far-off days. There are the Bushmen, the descendants of the aboriginal hunters who dwelt in the land unknown ages ago; the Hottentots, who are the sons of the yellow-skinned people that intruded into the hunting-grounds of the pigmy Bushmen; the Bergdamaras, who probably represent the pioneer tribes of the virile black-skinned races that early followed upon the trail of the yellow-skins; while in the Ovambos are exhibited some of the best traits of the most advanced native tribes in the whole country.

The number of natives actually counted when the census was taken in 1913 was 69,003, but the total estimated native population, excluding Ovamboland and the Caprivizipfel, was 78,810. A few thousands of the Ovambos have been attracted to the mines, but the Hottentots, Bergdamaras, and Hereros find employment on the farms and as domestic servants. About 2,500 natives from the Cape work as labourers at the diamond fields.