NAMIBIA

	CLIMATE
	In the Namib Desert, summer temperatures can be as high as 110°F (43°C), but in winter it will plunge to below freezing. Fog is common on the coast. On the central plateau the climate is more moderate.

A Land of Conflict and Oppression

The earliest inhabitants of southern Africa were the San (SAHN), who were already hunting animals and gathering wild food about twenty thousand years ago. From about 300 B.C.E., Nama (NAH-mah), or Khoi-Khoi (KOY-koy), people moved in from the area of present-day Botswana, pushing the San toward the Namib Desert. The Nama too were hunter-gatherers, but they also kept domestic animals.

Bantu-speaking people from central Africa began moving into Namibia (nuh-MIH-bee-uh) during the 1400s C.E. In the coastal region and the northwestern Kaokoveld (KAW-koe-felt), the Herero (heh-REH-roe), a Bantu-speaking people, settled with their herds of cattle. By the eighteenth century they were in central Namibia, where the grazing was good. Ovambo (oe-VAHM-boe) farmers from present-day Zambia settled in the fertile lands of the north, while the Damara (duh-MAH-rah) people colonized the central highlands. During the 1800s the Nama and the Herero battled frequently over control of the grazing lands of the central highlands. The Oorlams (OOR-lahms), a mixed-race people of mostly Khoi-Khoi with some European ancestry, also moved into the area from the south.

The Nama-Herero wars alarmed British traders and German missionaries, who had arrived in the region during the 1830s and 1840s. Both groups asked their homelands for protection. Great Britain took over Walvis Bay in 1878, and in 1884 Germany declared a protectorate over the region between the Orange and the Cunene (koo-NAE-nuh) Rivers. The Nama and Herero peoples resisted German rule for ten years.

Settlers from Germany began to arrive in what they called South-West Africa. Many established farms on Nama and Herero land. The Nama and Herero survived by working on their former lands for the German colonists. In 1903 the Germans announced that the Nama and Herero peoples should live in reserves, special areas that formed a very small part of the land these Africans had once owned.

In 1904 the Herero and the Nama rose in rebellions. The Germans forced the Herero into the Waterberg Mountains, killing thousands. Many Herero fled into the Kalahari (ka-luh-HAHR-ee) Desert, where they were left to die of thirst and hunger. About a thousand escaped to British-ruled Bechuanaland (see BOTSWANA). In 1905 only sixteen thousand Herero remained out of the previous population of eighty thousand. Nama resistance continued until 1907. Thousands of Nama died, many in concentration camps.

In 1915, during World War I, South African forces invaded South-West Africa and defeated the Germans. After the war ended, the League of Nations (an organization like the United Nations today) gave control of South-West Africa to neighboring British-ruled South Africa.

Many Germans remained in South-West Africa. The South African government encouraged thousands of Afrikaner (white, Afrikaans-speaking) farmers to move in to establish sheep and cattle ranches. The Africans were made to live in remote reserves where the land was poor. Mining companies exploited the copper mines in the north and the diamond mines on the coast. In the 1920s, groups of Nama and Rehobother (reh-BOE-ther), whose ancestors were a mix of Afrikaner and Khoi-Khoi living around the town of Rehoboth, attempted to resist South African rule; both were harshly suppressed and many people were killed. In the 1930s a series of rebellions by the Ovambo people provided the main resistance to South Africa.

After World War II (1939–1945), the United Nations asked South Africa to prepare South-West Africa for independence. The South African government refused and treated South-West Africa as a part of its own country. It imposed racist policies, with harsh laws controlling where and how the Africans should live and work (see SOUTH AFRICA).

In 1960 the South-West African Peoples Organization (SWAPO) was launched and began guerrilla warfare against South African forces. South African rule came to an end only because of South African involvement in a civil war in Angola. In exchange for being allowed to rescue South African troops trapped in Angola while attacking SWAPO and African National Congress (ANC) guerrillas and refugee camps there, the South African government agreed to end its rule of Namibia. The country became independent in 1990 under President Sam Nujoma and the SWAPO party. Sam Nujoma and SWAPO were reelected by large majorities in 1994 and 1999. Hifikepunye Pohamba, also of SWAPO, was elected president in November 2004.

The Angolan civil war sent many refugees fleeing to Namibia. In 2001, there were more than 30,000 in the country. However, the 2002 cease-fire made it possible for most of them to return home. In the late 1990s a violent independence campaign in the Caprivi Strip, in northeastern Namibia, prompted thousands to flee to Botswana, but by 2002 the government had put down the rebellion.

The government has begun tackling land reform. The transfer of white-owned farms to the many thousands of landless black citizens started in 2005.