21st November 1936
Okahandja, S.W.A.

Okahandja, S.W.A.

Okahandja is a city of 45,159 inhabitants in Otjozondjupa Region, central Namibia, and the district capital of the Okahandja electoral constituency. It is known as the Garden Town of Namibia. It is located 70 km north of Windhoek on the B1 road. It was founded around 1800, by two local groups, the Herero and the Nama.

A German pastor, Heinrich Schmelen, became the first European to visit the town in 1827. In 1844, two missionaries were permanently assigned to the town, Heinrich Kleinschmidt and Hugo Hahn. A church dates from this period. A military post was established at the initiative of Theodor Leutwein in 1894, and it is this date that is officially recognized as the town's founding.

The Herero and Nama genocide (formerly, also 'Herero and Namaqua genocide') was a campaign of ethnic extermination and collective punishment which was waged against the Herero (Ovaherero) and the Nama in German South West Africa (now Namibia) by the German Empire. It was the first genocide to begin in the 20th century, occurring between 1904 and 1908.

In 1903, the Hereros saw an opportunity to revolt. At that time, there was a distant Khoisan tribe in the south called the Bondelzwarts, who resisted German demands to register their guns. The Bondelzwarts engaged in a firefight with the German authorities which led to three Germans killed and a fourth wounded. The situation deteriorated further, and the governor of the Herero colony, Major Theodor Leutwein, went south to take personal command, leaving almost no troops in the north.

In January 1904, the Herero people, who were led by Samuel Maharero, and the Nama people, who were led by Captain Hendrik Witbooi, rebelled against German colonial rule. On 12th January, they killed more than 100 German settlers in the area of Okahandja (led by Chief Samuel Maharero, the Herero surrounded Okahandja and cut railroad and telegraph links to Windhoek, the colonial capital. Maharero then issued a manifesto in which he forbade his troops to kill any Englishmen, Boers, uninvolved peoples, women and children in general, or German missionaries.  The Herero revolts catalysed a separate revolt and attack on Fort Namutoni in the north of the country a few weeks later by the Ondonga).

Notes regarding native prisoners/labourers: Absolute Destruction: Military, Culture And the Practices of War in Imperial Germany, 2006, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, pp. 81–82:'Sterblichkeit in den Kriegsgefangenlargern', Nr. KA II.1181, copy of undated report compiled by the Schutztruppe Command, read in Col. Dept. 24 Mar. 1908, BA-Berlin, R 1001. Nr. 2040, pp. 161–62. The other annual average death rates (for the period Oct. 1904 to Mar. 1907) were as follows: Okahandja, 37.2%; Windhuk, 50.4%; Swakopmund, 74%; Shark Island in Lüderitzbucht, 121.2% for Nama, 30% for Herero. Traugott Tjienda, headsman of the Herero at Tsumbe and foreman of a large group of prisoners at the Otavi lines for two years, testified years later to a death rate of 28% (148 dead of 528 labourers) in his unit, Union of South Africa, 'Report on the Natives', 101.'

FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE SUBSEQUENT GENOCIDE

CAN BE FOUND HERE (WIKIPEDIA)

The Herero genocide has commanded the attention of historians who study complex issues of continuity between the Herero genocide and The Holocaust. It is argued that the Herero genocide set a precedent in Imperial Germany that would later be followed by Nazi Germany's establishment of death camps.

According to Benjamin Madley, the German experience in South West Africa was a crucial precursor to Nazi colonialism and genocide. He argues that personal connections, literature, and public debates served as conduits for communicating colonialist and genocidal ideas and methods from the colony to Germany. Tony Barta, an honorary research associate at La Trobe University, argues that the Herero genocide was an inspiration for Hitler in his war against the Jews, Slavs, Romani, and others who he described as 'non-Aryans'.

Robert Gerwarth and Stephan Malinowski have questioned the supposed link with the Holocaust, finding it to be lacking in empirical evidence, and argue that Nazi policy represented a distinct turn away from typical European colonial practice. Additionally, they write that studies supporting the link completely ignore the influences of World War I, the German Revolution, and the activities of the Friekorps in the inurement of extreme violence as a method in the German political consciousness.

Patrick Bernhard writes that the Nazis, including Heinrich Himmler, explicitly rejected the colonial experience of the German Empire as an 'appallingly outdated' model; when they did draw inspiration from colonialism for Generalplan Ost, it was from the contemporary work of Italian fascists such as Giuseppe Tassinari in Libya, which they viewed as a shining example of fascist modernity.

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