Herero

[Terrance]

The Herero conversions after the war were different than
those prior to the war, and the missionaries were aware of
this discrepancy, but shifted it aside in the struggle for
souls, and the belief that at least this was a major
difference. The converts prior to 1903 had accepted and
internalized the ideas of morality, marriage, etc., with the
missionary concept of Northern European Lutheranism in the
late nineteenth century. The Herero converts of the periods
1904-14, though they were true believers, maintained their
paradigm of kinship structures existing prior to the war.
These structures were not destroyed. 
Thus Herero maintained their identity; one way of doing this
was by substituting the long and arduous physical and mental
conversion into Christianity (with its name giving, etc.)
for the initiation that had existed prior to the war. That
is, the long-drawn-out process for becoming Christian, with
its concomitant taboos, etc., came to replace initiation
into Herero adulthood with its concomitant taboos. Herero
saw this transformation as being one which was very real,
and refused to take on police-or-settler ascribed names when
being baptized. At birth, Herero were given name by their
Mukuru, that is, their father as the representative of their
ancestors. This name was bound to one's soul; it was one's
true name, by which one was known to one's siblings and
Mukuru. Herero who were baptized after the war took on names
that bound them to their fellow converts and to God. It was
a name, and an identity, that could not be destroyed by mere
mortals. Given that Christian conversion came to replace
initiation, conflict arose between the Herero Christian
converts and those whom, in their eyes, were the uninitiated
youth. However, these uninitiated youth were very powerful,
for they served in the army and the police. This is not to
say that the bambusen who became soldiers were not
initiated; all recruits are initiated into the army. It was,
however, a form of initiation that was not acceptable to
mainstream Herero society. Another factor that was
unacceptable was the granting of power to Ovatjimba. 

>From Herero Heroes by Jan-Bart Gewald


Haug, the German Consul_General in South Africa, reporting
the crushing of the Bondelswarts uprising, wrote, "The
lavish use of bombs, planes, modern warfare, has speeded up
the process of wiping out the bands." 

Why were the women aborting their children? 

>From Let Us Die Fighting by Horst Drechsler, Preface by Sam
Nujomo