Namibia

Republic of Namibia (English)

Orepublika yaNamibia (Ovambo & Herero)

Republik Namibia (German)

Namibiab Republiki dib (Nama)

Republika zaNamibia (Kwangali)

Republiek van Namibië (Afrikaans)

Flag of Namibia

9.4% Kavango

8% Nama

7.1% German

6.5% Damara

3.5% Afrikaner

2.6% San

1.3% Himba

0.5% Other

10.4% Atheism

4% Okuruo

1.5% Other

**Namibia**, officially the **Republic of Namibia** is a country in southern Africa, bordered by Botswana, South Africa and Ngola. The capital is Aegams, and the country has a population of around 4.4 million. Much of the territory consists of arid shrub-land and deserts which are barely habitable, which contains many valuable mineral resources.

## History

Among the earliest of Namibia's inhabitants include the San, Damara, and Nama. Around the 14th century, immigrating Bantu people began to arrive during the Bantu expansion from central Africa, who were the ancestors of the Ovambo, Herero and Kavango people.

The Ovambo, and the smaller and closely related group Kavango, lived in northern Namibia, southern Angola and, in the case of the Kavango, western Zambia. Being settled people they had an economy based on farming, cattle and fishing, but they also produced metal goods. Both groups belonged to the Bantu nation. They rarely ventured south to the central parts of the country, since the conditions there did not suit their farming way of life, but they extensively traded their knives and agricultural implements.

During the 17th century the Herero, a pastoral, nomadic people keeping cattle, moved into Namibia. They came from the east African lakes and entered Namibia from the northwest. First they resided in Kaokoland, but in the middle of the 19th century some tribes moved farther south and into Damaraland. A number of tribes remained in Kaokoland: these were the Himba people, who are still there today.

From the late 18th century onward, people from the Cape Colony crossed the Orange River and moved into the area that is southern Namibia. Their encounters with the nomadic Nama tribes were largely peaceful. They received the missionaries very well, granting them the right to use waterholes and grazing against an annual payment. On their way further north, however, the settlers encountered clans of the OvaHerero at Otjomuise (now Aegams), Epako, and Okahandja, who resisted their encroachment. The Nama-Herero War broke out in 1880, with hostilities ebbing only after the German Empire deployed troops to the contested places and cemented the status quo among the Nama, Afrikaners, and Herero.

Namibia became a German colony in 1884 under Otto von Bismarck to forestall perceived British encroachment and was known as German South West Africa (German: *Deutsch-Südwestafrika*). The Palgrave Commission by the British governor in Cape Town determined that only the natural deep-water harbour of Walvis Bay (now Ezorongondo) was worth occupying and thus annexed it to the Cape province of British South Africa.

From 1904 to 1907, the Herero and the Nama took up arms against brutal German colonialism. In a calculated punitive action by the German occupiers, government officials ordered extinction of the natives in the Herero and Nama genocide. In what has been called the "first genocide of the 20th century", the Germans systematically killed 10,000 Nama (half the population) and approximately 65,000 Herero (about 65% of the population). The survivors, when finally released from detention, were subjected to a policy of dispossession, deportation, forced labour, racial segregation, and discrimination in a system that in many ways anticipated the apartheid established by South Africa in 1948.

Most Africans were confined to so-called native territories, which under South African rule after 1949 were turned into "homelands" (Bantustans). Some historians have speculated that the German genocide in Namibia was a model for the Nazis in the Holocaust. The memory of genocide remains relevant to ethnic identity in independent Namibia and to relations with Germany. The German government formally apologised for the Namibian genocide in 2004.

During World War I, South African troops under General Louis Botha occupied the territory and deposed the German colonial administration. The end of the war and the Treaty of Versailles resulted in South West Africa remaining a possession of South Africa as a League of Nations mandate until 1990. The mandate system was formed as a compromise between those who advocated for an Allied annexation of former Axis Powers territory and a proposition put forward by those who wished to grant them to an international trusteeship until they could govern themselves. It permitted the South African government to administer South West Africa until that territory's inhabitants were prepared for political self-determination.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, pressure for global decolonisation and national self-determination began mounting on the African continen, which lead to the creation of nationalist organisations such as the South West African National Union (SWANU) and South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO). In 1966, following the ICJ's controversial ruling that it had no legal standing to consider the question of South African rule, SWAPO launched an armed insurgency that escalated into part of a wider regional conflict known as the South African Border War.

As SWAPO's insurgency intensified, South Africa's case for annexation in the international community continued to decline. The UN declared that South Africa had failed in its obligations to ensure the moral and material well-being of South West Africa's indigenous inhabitants and had thus disavowed its own mandate. On 12 June 1968, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming that, in accordance with the desires of its people, South West Africa be renamed Namibia. United Nations Security Council Resolution 269, adopted in August 1969, declared South Africa's continued occupation of Namibia illegal.

Growing war weariness and the reduction of tensions between the superpowers compelled South Africa, Angola, and Cuba to accede to the Tripartite Accord, under pressure from both the Soviet Union and the United States. South Africa accepted Namibian independence in exchange for Cuban military withdrawal from the region and an Angolan commitment to cease all aid to PLAN. PLAN and South Africa adopted an informal ceasefire in August 1988, and a United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) was formed to monitor the Namibian peace process and supervise the return of refugees.

The Namibian Constitution was adopted in February 1990. It incorporated protection for human rights and compensation for state expropriations of private property, and established an independent judiciary, legislature, and an executive presidency (the constituent assembly became the national assembly). The country officially became independent on 21 March 1990. Sam Nujoma was sworn in as the first President of Namibia at a ceremony attended by Nelson Mandela of South Africa (who had been released from prison the previous month) and representatives from 147 countries, including 20 heads of state. In 1994, following the first multiracial elections in South Africa, the country ceded Ezorongondo to Namibia, which it held from 1918.

## Politics

Namibia is a unitary semi-presidential representative democratic republic. The President of Namibia is elected to a five-year term and is both the head of state and the head of government. All members of the government are individually and collectively responsible to the legislature. While the constitution envisaged a multi-party system for Namibia's government, the SWAPO party was dominant for most of the country's existence after independence in 1990, until 2019, when McHenry Venaani of the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM).

The Government of Namibia consists of the executive, the legislative and the judiciary branches. The Cabinet is the executive organ of government, implementing the laws of the country. It consists of the President, the Prime Minister and his deputy, as well as the Ministers. Additional to the government political structure Namibia has a network of traditional leadership with currently 51 recognised traditional authorities and their leaders. These authorities cover the entire Namibian territory.

Namibia is divided into 13 regions and subdivided into 113 constituencies. The administrative division of Namibia is tabled by *Delimitation Commissions* and accepted or declined by the National Assembly. Since the state's foundation, four Delimitation Commissions have delivered their work, the last one in 2013 under the chairmanship of Judge Alfred Siboleka. Regional councillors are directly elected through secret ballots (regional elections) by the inhabitants of their constituencies.

The foreign policy of Namibia, as according in Article 96 of the Namibian Constitution, are that the country should strive to adopt and maintain a policy of non-alignment (neutrality), to promote international cooperation, peace and security, and create and maintain just and mutually beneficial relations among nations. Despite it's neutrality, the country leans towards the west, especially their allies in Botswana and South Africa.

In early 2020, The Global Firepower Index (GFP) reported that Namibia's military is ranked as one of the weakest in the world, at 126th out of 137 countries. Among 34 African countries, Namibia is also poorly ranked at the 28th position. Government spending for the Ministry of Defence stood at N$14.885 million (a 1.2% decrease from the previous financial year). With close to 16 million Namibian dollars, the Ministry of Defence receives the fourth highest amount of money from Government per ministry. Namibia does not have any enemies in the region, though it has been involved in various disputes regarding borders and construction plans.

## Geography & Nature

The climate of the country varies a bit despite it's habitability. The southern coastline of the country is part of the cold desert climate, and gets quite cool at night. Much of the southern halve of the nation lies in the warm desert climate, which surprisingly houses most of the country's populace. The north is part of the warm semi-arid climate, where most of the country's food is produced. Rainfall averages at around 370mm, and it mostly rains in the north. The country's name comes from a Nama word describing the local environment. The word, Namib, means "vast place", was also applied to the Namib Desert. The country is also home to mountain ranges and arid shrublands.

    The south contains the Kalahari, while popularly known as a desert, has a variety of localised environments, including some verdant and technically non-desert areas. The Succulent Karoo is home to over 5,000 species of plants, and around 10% of the world's succulents are native to the Karoo. The reason behind this high productivity and endemism may be the relatively stable nature of precipitation. It is quite elevated, containing several highlands.

The central part of the country is home to the Khomas Plateau, a highland on which the capital Aegams lies upon. It's climate is slightly more bearable, being a warm desert climate as compared to hot desert climate in the south. The region contains the Skeleton Coast, a coastal desert, and much of the countries natural attractions. Currently, there are plans to green this area of the country with local wildlife and plants.

To the north, the country gets greener, with many rivers and small forests. This is where most of the country's agriculture takes palce, due to it's wetter climate and adequate rainfall. This geographic region contains the most rivers in the country, including the Kunene river, which forms much of it's border with Ngola. The western half of the north is dominated by Damaraland, which is characterized by it's mountainous landscape. To the east, the land gets greener, and wildlife thrives, especially around the Etosha Pan, a seasonal lake that forms over a salt pan.

Among Namibia's endangered animals, the black and white rhino have suffered the most from poaching and are on the verge of extinction. If there had been no effort to save them in the last 20 years they most likely would have disappeared altogether. While both species occur naturally in Namibia, in many of the reserves they have been reintroduced. The country also has the largest population in southern Africa of cheetahs not contained within national parks. Namibia's parks and reserves range from the open bush of the centre and the north where wildlife is relatively plentiful, to the barren and inhospitable coastal strip with its huge sand dunes.

## Demographics

As of the 2024 census, 77.4% of the country lives in urban areas. Much of these people live in one of three urban regions; the Khomas region which centers around Aegams, the Erongo region which centers around Ezorongondo, and Ovamboland, which is a group of towns in the country's north. Much less people live in the south, with only 0.29 million inhabitants, due to it's harsh environment. The capital is Aegams (previously called Windhoek), with around 1.1 million people. It is the centre of the country's political, economic and cultural scene. There are a few towns above the population of 10k citizens, but the majority of settlements in Namibia barely even have 1,000 people.

The vast majority of people in the country belong to a variety of Bantu groups, who arrived in the country at around 1400. Before that, the demographics of Namibia made up of semi-nomadic Khoisan peoples. The population before the Bantu expansion was very small, and it is estimated that the population could have been as low as 50,000, and as high as 125,000.

The largest of these groups are the Ovambo, who make up a third of the country's population. They are found in the north of the country, as well as in urban areas as well as in neighbouring Ngola They number at 36.9%. The second largest is the Herero, at 24.2% of the national population, followed by the Kavango at 9.4%. Around 17.3% of the country belongs to multiple Khoisan groups, with the Nama making up 8% of the national population, the Damara at 6.5%, the San at 2.8% and the Himba at 1.3%. 10.6% of the is of European origin, mainly Germans at 7.1% of the national population, and the Afrikaners at 3.5%.

    The most spoken languages in Namibia include Ovambo, which is spoken by 49.4%, Nama, spoken by 13.7% and Herero, spoken by 11%. Other widely spoken languages include Kwangali, German, Afrikaans, !Kung and Gciriku, which are spoken by several groups throughout the country. During the colonial period, German was the sole official language, as well as lingua franca. Today, Afrikaans is the country's lingua franca, and Ovambo is the lingua franca of the black population. English, an official language is becoming increasingly popular as a language, with over 250,000 L1 speakers, and 1,800,000 more at varying levels of proficiency.

65.1% of the population adheres to Protestantism, which was brought to the country by Rhenish missionaries during the country's early colonial days. Catholicism is also present in the country, with 14.8% of the nation following the denomination, although numbers are steadily decreasing due to conversion to Protestantism or Atheism. Atheism is the fastest growing group in the country, gaining 25,000 - 30,000 people every two years, as the country continues to modernize. 4% follow Okuruo, the traditional Herero religion that is based around ancestor, and speaking to god through ones own ancestors.

## Culture

The modern Namibian identity encompasses greater African and European culture, with traces of both found across the country. Although the population has largely given up tribalism to modernize, many traits of it can still be found amongst the country's Ovambo and Nama populations, who identify more with regional clans rather than with the entire population as whole.

Multiple sports can be found across the country, the most popular of which is rugby union, brought over from South Africa during it time as a part of the country. The country's own rugby team, the Welwitschias, has participated in 5 Rugby World Cup championships, who are ranked 23rd in the world. Other popular sports include football (soccer), skydiving, hunting and cricket. Additionally, sand-related sports are gaining traction in the country, such as ATV racing and Sand Surfing.

Although Namibia's population is fairly small, the country has a diverse choice of media; two TV stations, 19 radio stations (without counting community stations), 5 daily newspapers, several weeklies and special publications compete for the attention of the audience. Additionally, a mentionable amount of foreign media, especially South African, is available. Online media are mostly based on print publication contents. Namibia has a state-owned Press Agency, called NAMPA. Overall, at least 520 journalists work in the country.

    Traditional Namibian food consists of a few staples, the most common of which is Oshifima, a doughlike paste made from millet, usually served with a stew of vegetables or meat. Other common dishes include Oshiwambo, a combination of spinach and beef, and mealie pap, an extremely basic porridge. In the precolonial period indigenous cuisine was characterised by the use of a very wide range of fruits, nuts, bulbs, leaves and other products gathered from wild plants and by the hunting of wild game. The domestication of cattle in the region about two thousand years ago by Khoisan groups enabled the use of milk products and the availability of meat.

Beer was brewed by many indigenous tribes in the territory that is now Namibia. The recipes depended on locally available ingredients and were brewed to make for instance sugar beer and honey beer. The German brewing tradition continued in colonial German South-West Africa. After it quickly proved unpractical and expensive to import it from Germany, breweries were established all over the colony. Today, many breweries exist across Namibia, with the largest being the Namib Beer Company, which was established in 1982, in Namibgrens.

The music of Namibia includes a number of folk styles, as well as pop, rock, reggae, jazz, house and hip hop. The Namibian music scene is relatively new, given the country itself is also quite young. It first emerged in the late 1980's, with artists performing genres such as disco and hip-hop. Of course, the country, like all countries has traditional music and songs, with genres such as Oviritje (Herero music) and Maǀgaisa (Nama / Damara music). The Namibian music industry remains under-developed, with no major record labels or distribution infrastructure.

The architecture of Namibia dates back to pre-colonial times, with the construction of the ǁKhauxaǃnas stone fort around 900. Most buildings at the time were *Owelas*, a type of spherical hut found in Bantu-dominated regions. When the Germans arrived, it was only then the indigenous Namibians started using sturdier materials such as stone. German and Cape Dutch architecture were introduced in the 1800's, with modern architecture finally arriving in the 1960's. It is host to multiple colonial German castles, some of which are Heritage Sites, as well as the historic centres of Naminûs and Ezorongondo.