Bethanie

Bethanie is a Nama village of about 2,400 people in the ǁKaras Region, and one of the oldest settlements in Namibia. A missionary's stone cottage, begun in 1814 and rebuilt on its foundations after 1842, still stands here, and in 1883 the captain of the local ǃAman people sold the coast at Lüderitz (ǃNamiǂNûs) in a deal that opened the way for German colonial rule. In 2017 a grandson of Cornelius Fredericks, a later captain who died in a German concentration camp, took Germany to court in New York over the genocide.

1. early 1800s

   The first people to settle at Bethanie were the ǃAman, Oorlam who had moved north across the Orange River from the south, and they were living in and around the place as early as 1804. source

2. 1814

   Heinrich Schmelen, a German missionary sent by the London Missionary Society, travelled here with a group of Nama and Oorlam, named the place Bethanie and built a small stone cottage. It did not go well. The Oorlam at the station began raiding Herero cattle and turned on him, many of his followers drifted away, and after a drought and a plague of locusts, which people blamed on his anger, he closed the station in 1822 and went back to the Orange River. source

3. 1883 to 1884

   In May 1883 the ǃAman captain Joseph Frederiks II sold the bay of Angra Pequena (today's Lüderitz) to the German trader Adolf Lüderitz for £100 in gold and 200 rifles, and in August a strip of coast from the Orange River to Angra Pequena, '20 geographical miles' wide, for £500 and 60 rifles. He took these to be ordinary miles of about 1.6 km; a German geographical mile is about 7.4 km. On 28 October 1884 he signed a protection treaty with the German Empire. source

4. 1904 to 1907

   Cornelius Fredericks, ǃAman captain from 1893, was one of the leaders who fought a guerrilla war against the German Schutztruppe (colonial army) in the war of 1904 to 1907, often on the side of the Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi. His group surrendered on 3 March 1906, and on 9 September 1906 he was sent with 1,795 Nama to the Shark Island concentration camp at Lüderitz, where most prisoners died of hunger, cold and neglect. He died there on 16 February 1907. source

5. 1904 to 1908

   The German Empire's war against the Herero and Nama from 1904 to 1908 is now recognised as genocide. Up to 80,000 Herero and about 10,000 Nama died, the Nama losing half their people. Around half of those held in the concentration camps, Shark Island among them, did not survive. source

6. 1915

   In the First World War South African troops landed at Lüderitz and took Keetmanshoop on 20 May 1915, and the German forces in the territory gave up that July. South Africa then governed it under a League of Nations mandate from 1919. source

7. 1960s to 1980s

   Under the Odendaal Plan, South Africa's scheme to carry apartheid into the territory, the Soromas reserve near Bethanie became part of Namaland, a homeland (Bantustan) where all of the roughly 35,000 southern Nama were supposed to live. source

8. 1966 to 1990

   SWAPO (the South West Africa People's Organisation) began an armed struggle against South African rule in 1966, and the UN recognised it as the representative of the Namibian people in 1973. Namibia became independent on 21 March 1990. source

People

Most people in Bethanie today are Nama, many of them descendants of the Frederiks captains and headmen, as well as of the families of Simon Boois and Jan Samuel Herero, who came in the later 1800s. One neighbourhood, Schmelendorp, is named after the missionary. source

Traditional authority

Bethanie is the seat of the ǃAman Traditional Authority. Its leader carries the old title Kaptein (Afrikaans for captain); the current chief, Johannes Frederick, succeeded David Frederick, chief from 1977 to 2018. source

Language

Khoekhoegowab (the Nama language) and Afrikaans are the languages you hear most in the south. In the 2023 census Afrikaans was the main home language in about 32% of ǁKaras households, Khoekhoegowab in about 18% and Oshikwanyama in about 14%. source

Mission architecture

The Schmelen House shows how the early mission houses were built: flat stones piled halfway up, clay bricks above, the inside plastered with cow dung and clay, and a roof of camelthorn beams, reeds and bulrush mats sealed with clay. The old mission church first had two towers, built to recall the church at Unterbarmen in Germany. source

The Nama Bible

Zara Schmelen, Heinrich's wife, born at Steinkopf in the Cape around 1793, did most of the work of translating the New Testament into Khoekhoe. The translation went out under his name, though he conceded his own grasp of the language was limited. source