I grappled with Marion Wallace’s A History of Namibia, but I kept feeling like I was getting lost. Natasha suggested that I try to focus on a more narrow topic than an nation’s complete history, and Jan-Bart Gewald‘s Herero Heroes seemed a great place to start. At first I tried reading a scanned PDF available on the net, but I quickly shifted to reading a print copy from my university library. One might guess from the title that it would be a laudatory paean to remarkable men and women among the Herero, but instead the title kept taunting me as I read about the profound challenges the Herero faced during the lifetime of Samuel Maherero (1856-1923). Who are the heroes Gewald wants to celebrate?
Introducing three populations of Namibia
A bit of orientation will help for those who have never visited Namibia. Gewald’s book centers upon the Herero people of central Namibia (the green box above labeled “Damara Pasture” from Windhoek northward) who speak dialects of Otjiherero, including the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu, and Ovahimba. The Herero also go under the name “Damara,” which is confusing because the Berg Damara are an entirely different population. The Herero were largely pastoralists, traveling with their herds among permanent and transitory water sources as heavy rains alternated with droughts.
The Ovambo, by contrast, customarily lived much further north in a region straddling what is now the Namibia / Angola border; this map notes that they live in the best agricultural land of the region (green crescent at map top). The Ovambo barely take part in Gewald’s book. In effect, Ovamboland functions as a separate country until a Portuguese attack combined with a drought sent refugees streaming south in 1912-1915. I believe the 1992 dissertation from PM Hayes would be informative for this group.
The Nama people of Greater Namaqualand, however, play a major role, particularly in the earliest part of the book. I would definitely recommend a look at Brigitte Lau’s 1982 UCT dissertation for the emergence of these groups at the start of the 19th century. The Nama people incorporated a fair number of groups named for major family heads, such as the Red Nation, the Bondelswarts, or the Swartboois. By contrast, the Oorlam people were migrants who had come north from the Cape Colony. Both Nama and Oorlam groups gave rise to two early candidates for Gewald’s “Heroes,” though neither came from the Herero population.
Leaders from the South
Jonker Afrikaner (1785-1861) is the emblematic Oorlam. His grandfather Klaas Afrikaner led the Oorlam’s invasion into the southern part of Greater Namaqualand during the first decades of the 19th century. Jonker Afrikaner established a strong relationship with the most senior Nama chief to dominate trade relationships with the Cape Colony to the south. Together, they built the system of “kommando politics” that provided Brigitte Lau the title for her dissertation. In many respects, the city of Windhoek owes its founding to his son, Jan Jonker Afrikaner. For all that he accomplished, though, Jonker Afrikaner was something of a warlord, and he was Oorlam rather than Herero. He is not the hero of Gewald’s book.
Hendrik Witbooi (1830-1905) has almost legendary status in Namibia; his statue stands before the Parliament building, and his resolute face looks back from its currency. This Nama leader was a committed Christian, and he believed he had divine instructions to move his people to the north. He was a devoted letter-writer and diarist, with almost the status of prophet for his writings against imperialism. His charisma drew together a powerful band of fighters who caused any amount of trouble for the Herero to the north as well as for the first German attempts to establish colonies. Given that he is not Herero, though, Witbooi cannot be the title character for Gewald.
The problematic Samuel Maherero
Samuel Maharero (1856-1923) would seem an obvious pick for Gewald’s “Hero,” given that the book is framed to the period of his lifetime. Becoming the first paramount chief of all Herero is quite an accomplishment, no? Is Samuel Maharero the equivalent of George Washington for central Namibians? For many reasons, I must give an emphatic “no!”
An empire seeking to establish a colony is always going to seek ways to divide the population of that area, and the 1890 death of Chief Maharero Tjamuaha (Samuel’s father) was the perfect crack in central Namibia for Germany to exploit. Although Chief Maharero held a prominent position among Herero at his capital of Okahandja, recent attacks by Hendrik Witbooi had destroyed much of the wealth of that city. The Herero used bidirectional inheritance, along patrilineal (Oruzuo) and matrilineal (Eanda) lines. Samuel Maharero was in competition with his cousin Nicodemus Kavikunua and his father’s half-brother Riarua for the chieftancy in the patrilineal inheritance. Over the four years of the succession dispute, however, Samuel Maharero “alone successfully solicited the support and power of Germany, the new player on the ballfield” [Gewald p. 41]. The moves he made to secure chieftancy and paramount chieftancy were divisive and destructive to groups of the Herero:
- Samuel Maherero sold large tracts of land that he didn’t actually control to the German colony (he was not alone in this).
- Although Samuel Maharero formed an alliance with Hendrik Witbooi against the German incursion in early 1893, he returned to beg for German military support against his father’s half-brother Riarua in 1894. Riarua was compelled to give Samuel tremendous wealth he had inherited from Samuel’s father. The Germans installed a garrison at Okahandja.
- When the Germans browbeat Manasse Tjisiseta into accepting a garrison at the wealthy settlement of Omaruru and losing its valuable lands during 1894, Samuel Maharero agreed to accompany the Germans to play the role of paramount chief over Manasse Tjisiseta.
- In 1895, Samuel Maharero and his allies forced removals of Herero from lands he had signed over to the Germans. He used the threat of war with Germany as a club to subjugate his cousins Nicodemus Kavikunua and Tjetjo Kandji to his own rule and take their wealth.
- Samuel Maharero captured and coerced people from the Berg Damara villages to sell into labor contracts in the German colony and in the Cape Colony (he was not alone in this).
I have less to say about Samuel Maharero’s conduct during the rinderpest plague and during the German-Herero conflict of 1904-1907 (it may be appropriate to call it an attempted genocide rather than a war). Whenever Samuel Maharero appears in those two chapters, he seems to be passenger rather than a driver of events. After the war, he remained in exile for the remainder of his life, though Gewald paints a remarkable picture of his burial at Okahandja. In brief, it seems unlikely that Samuel Maharero is intended as the hero of this book.
German antagonist
In a book focused on the experience of the Herero, one might expect a very one-dimensional view of the Germans. Instead, Theodor Leutwein comes across as something of a Henry Kissinger-type, someone who will always seek the lowest-cost route to get what he wants. Leutwein’s arrival at Windhoek in 1894 was closely followed by an accelerating erosion of Herero property throughout the region. Contrary to Imperial German stereotype, however, Leutwein always seems more content for Samuel Maharero to pound the table than to do it himself. Whenever Leutwein sent troops to a place, he almost always sought a comparable number from Samuel Maharero; certainly, Leutwein strongly preferred that his soldiers display their weapons rather than fire them. What Gewald paints in his book is a partnership between Leutwein and Maharero, not between an imperial martinet and a flunky.
Gewald’s depictions of Lothar von Trotha and Ralph Zürn leave less room for subtlety. Their willingness to warfare is nothing to celebrate.
The unlikely heroes
When I read between the lines written by Gewald, I see three groups of Herero who stand for him as heroes. All three come together in the moving passages about the funeral of Samuel Maherero. First, throughout the book, Herero are compelled to take to their feet to avoid the encroaching German colonial forces. We learn of a substantial Herero exile community, some passing north to the Ovambo, some passing east to Botswana, and others making their way to the Cape. When Hebrews were forced into exile after the loss of Jerusalem, they responded by recording the Pentateuch; how would the Herero keep their cultural center in exile? I believe Gewald sees Samuel Maharero’s posthumous return to his homeland as a message of hope. I believe that Gewald had intended another chapter about the exiles for this book, but some of that material appeared later.
When Gewald first introduced the Truppenspieler Movement in his book, I worried that he was having some fun at the expense of “weekend warriors.” As I read further, though, I came to understand that the Herero that had served as part of the German colonial armies numbered in the tens of thousands, and they felt a strong sense of dislocation when the South African army boiled into Namibia during World War I. (If that invasion interests you, I strongly suggest you read Louis Botha’s War, by Adam Cruise.) Why not reassemble the brigade? I can imagine the bewilderment when clothing stores asked whether uniform clothing could be sold to Herero. Why not practice marching and drill with your friends, if that is the world you know? The Truppenspielers developed welfare funds to support their communities, much like the asafos who built posubans throughout Ghana.
Thousands of Herero survived the concentration camps that were run by the Rhenish Mission. As I passed through the final chapter of the book, I realized that Gewald was portraying a religious evolution on the part of camp survivors. The missionaries who sought to shape these Christians were discovering that their parishioners had ideas of their own. Europeans may have come to southern Africa to bring Christianity to the heathen, but in the end many of their converts came to embody Christian principles better than the Europeans who invaded their country.
At base, Herero Heroes makes agency its central tenet, quite the opposite of Scramble for Africa. We learn about the motivations of leaders among the Herero as they moved to manage the incursion of Germans into their homeland. We sense Hendrik Witbooi’s frustration that the Nama and Herero are fighting each other instead of the real invaders. We learn of a complex Samuel Maharero who may have lost sight of the good of his people as he scrambled for power of his own. I am convinced that the best history books are not those that “tell a good story” but rather those that help us understand the people of another time. Herero Heroes should definitely be included in that list.
Picking Up The Tabb 
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