Cape Town to Windhoek: 'Hottentots' or Khoekhoen?

[Werner Presber]

(…)„The two nations of South Africa and Namibia evoke many  
conflicting emotions when their past is considered. One is the  
Imperial German colonial rule in South West Africa of the late  
nineteenth – early twentieth century. These nations’ shared past has,  
since the 1960s, been of developing academic interest, not least at  
the Linden-Museum Stuttgart, and the present exhibition focuses on  
the Khoekhoen - once colloquially known as Hottentots – people of the  
region.

The exhibition discusses and displays their cultural achievements of  
the past 2000 years. This includes their experiences under both Dutch  
and German colonial administration, and in particular the Great Nama  
War of 1903-08 in southern Namibia, when the Nama people battled  
against German occupation of their territories. Part of this campaign  
to crush Nama independence was the establishment of concentration  
camps by the German Defense Forces – the Schutztruppe. Families flung  
into these were decimated by starvation, forced labour, and the  
generally appalling conditions within these camps. Today this policy  
is categorized by the U.N. Convention of 1948 as genocide. By the  
time of the Nama defeat, more than half the population of 20,000 had  
perished.

The exhibition includes traditional dwellings, musical instruments,  
beautiful beadwork, and contemporary, colourful patchwork textiles.  
Of specific historical interest is a Nama language bible which was  
the personal property of the Nama leader, Hendrik Witbooi. This  
remarkable language – best known because of the click sounds it  
incorporates – was first given a written form by Protestant  
missionaries at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The bible  
was looted by troops when the German colonial forces stormed  
Witbooi’s capital in 1893, and, after a sojourn in the Imperial  
Colonial Department in Berlin it was donated to the Linden-Museum  
Stuttgart in 1902.“

Cape Town to Windhoek: 'Hottentots' or Khoekhoen?
		
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