Nama CultureThe six subgroups which comprised the pre-colonial Nama culture and social formation were Khoi-Khoi speaking groups of nomadic cattle and sheep keepers who migrated into Namibia from south Orange River during the 17th century. The Namas culture form one branch of the people known generally as the Hottentots, but from the very earliest days of the Dutch settlement at the Cape this branch of the Hottentot people has been called the Namaqua and Nama is the name by which they call themselves today. Two groups of the Nama are known, the Little Namaqua, inhabiting the Little Namaqualand and the Great Namaqua who inhabited the Great Namaqualand. Both this groups of people at times visited the Table Bay. The Great Namaqua later setlled in the country north of the Orange River, today known as, Namibia. The nomadic pastoral Nama originally owned great herds of large boned, long horned cattle and flocks of fat-tailed hairy sheep. Before the comimg of the missionaries, these people wandered about from fountain to fountain, seeking pasture for their stock. Large permanent fountains or pools in river beds were claimed as their property by the different groups, rather than areas enclosed by definite territorial boundaries. The Nama culture was organised under a system of hereditary chieftainship. The Nama hunting trips took them as far north as Lake Ngami and Tsumeb that was part of Ovamboland in the 18th century.
The immediate consequence of this was that from 1892 to 1907, our people were locked in a titanic but unequal armed struggle against the might of the German empire, whose superiority in weaponry partially accounted for the savage decimation of the Namas. However, deprived of their means of livelihood and politically with their backs to the wall, the Namas were left with no alternative but to persist in their heroic resistance. They threw up military geniuses and able political leaders who were capable of independently developing and applying the science of guerrilla welfare. Among such outstanding leaders were Hendrik Witbooi, Jacob Morenga, Abraham Morris and many others. All serious scholars of the century long anti colonialism resistance are unanimous on the point that it is due to the application of superb guerrilla strategy and tactics that the early Namibian anti-colonial combatants were able to pin down the German army of colonial conquest for more than two decades. Horst Dreschsler, an outstanding German Democratic Republic (GDR) historian has for example, commended Morenga’s guerrilla genius in the following words: "Morenga, unquestionably the ablest leader of the South West African, stood head and shoulders above the Germans in the art of guerrilla warfare, and even the Kaiser’s top brass had to acknowledge his tactical skill". Captain Bayer, who served on the General Staff, noted that: “Morenga through his mastery of evasive tactics, through his cleverly arranged raids and especially through the impact of his towering personality, made the war last longer, thereby inflicting incalculable damage on us. A major European power, with about 15 000 soldiers in the field, was locked for years in a struggle with what were initially only 1 000 to 2 000 and later on no more than some hundred Namas whose methods of warfare, proved answerable. The Namas, aware that they were badly outnumbered, had no intention of allowing the Germans to impose a showdown whose outcome would be inevitable. They opted for guerrilla warfare from the outset, a technique of fighting in which they excelled. They would suddenly appear, pick off German patrols and riding German supply convoys, and disappear as quickly as they had come. The German losses were rapidly increasing.” Two other GDR writers, Alfred Babing and Hans-Dieter Brauer, remarked as follows about the guerrilla methods employed by Witbooi in our people’s epic resistance against colonial domination: “Witbooi and his riders waged a pitiless guerrilla war against those who had mudered their brothers and sisters. The Namas were accustomed to a nomadic life. Everywhere they knew where to find water for themselves and their horses… Witbooi’s warriors could be laying in ambush on every pasture, in every ravine, at every waterhole”. Some records of the Historical Department of the German General Staff stated that: “The Nama culture warriors showed unbelievable stamina and mobility, decided skill in the use of terrain in guerrilla warfare, and last but not least great personal courage.”
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