Herero Heroes

[Terrance]

Between 1905 and 1908 the majority of the Herero survivors
were incarcerated in concentration camps and allocated as
forced laborers to civilian, administrative and military
enterprises alike. The majority of the camp inhabitants were
women. In the aftermath of the war, Imperial Germany sought
to transform the Herero and the survivors of the Nama-German
war into a single amorphous black working class. The bulk of
the Herero society came to be organized around Herero
mission evangelists, who were effectively the only Herero
who were permitted to travel and read and write. A large
number of Herero orphans were taken as servants into the
German army. Here they found employment and social
structure. 

In 1915 the German occupation of Nambia was replaced by
South African occupation. On account of the South African
invasion, the young Herero who had become German soldiers
were left leaderless and without the social structure that
had given them status and identity. Left in limbo these
young men created a new social structure, based on that
which they knew best, the German army. 

*Herero Heroes* by Jan-Bart Gewald