‘Scattered’ Namas fight to preserve identity

People of Nama origins are scattered all over Africa and even in Australia, hence the need to redouble efforts to unite them and jealously safeguard their endangered identity.

This according to community leaders at the fourth edition of the annual Nama Cultural Festival, which took place in Keetmanshoop over the weekend.

Although many Nama people live in Namibia, a multitude of others are also found in northern South Africa and parts of Botswana. The global population of the Khoisan, the broader group of which the Nama are part, is predicted to be between four and five million people.

Leaders at the cultural festival, held at the Westdene sports stadium, reminded their people that dozens of Nama people forcefully found refuge in Togo and Cameroon, where they were deported by Germany between 1910 and 1911 to work on railways and other industries.

The three countries – Namibia, Cameroon and Togo – were part of the German empire in Africa, which came crushing down at the end of the First World War.

Traditional leaders at the cultural festival rang alarm bells about the danger of their tribe’s scatteredness and emphasised the need for cross-border cohesion in order to preserve its cultural and linguistic identities.

Powerful lineage

Concerned about high levels of poverty within the Nama tribe, leaders added that the cultural festival was an opportunity to fight against both poverty and loss of identity.

“We are concerned about the high levels of poverty and this platform is to help us reclaim our rightful place. We have oil, minerals and fish, yet the Khoisan are poor,” Dawid ǂEigub, the chairperson of the festival’s organising committee, said.

“We came from a lineage that is extremely powerful, but we must strengthen our civilisation. We need an international Khoisan festival to plan together about how to help our people. We have to stop fighting amongst ourselves if our ambitions are to be attained,” he said at the opening ceremony.

In his keynote address, Gaob Johannes Isaack, the Nama chief and chairman of the Nama Traditional Leaders Association, used to opportunity to take aim at the Namibian and German governments for ‘excluding’ the Nama and Ovaherero communities from genocide reparation negotiations.

“Together with our partners [Ovaherero Traditional Authority], we are fighting for our inalienable right to self-representation because of our legal status as Nama and Ovaherero people. National and international legal instruments demand our direct engagement as necessary partners in all aspects of genocide negotiations with Germany,” he said.

Our pride

Originally pastoral farmers, the Nama people displayed and sold traditional delicacies of their tribe, such as cow, goat and sheep meat, roosterbrood, goat and sheep intestines, goat and sheep head, ash bread, bread baked in black pots and butter made from cow milk.

The Nama traditional wear was also marketed and sold at the event, which kicked off on Thursday and concluded yesterday in the //Karas regional capital.

With the region currently under the leadership of the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) at local authority and constituency levels, the event was not attended or addressed by prominent leaders from Swapo or central government.

Notable political representatives at the occasion came from LPM, the Namibia Economic Freedom Fighters (NEFF) and the Independent Patriots for Change (IPC), whose president Dr Panduleni Itula was in attendance. There were also representatives of the Nama communities in South Africa and Botswana.