Khorixas

Khorixas is a Damara town in southern Kunene that apartheid South Africa made the capital of its Damaraland homeland. Around it lie rock engravings thousands of years old, a Nama settlement with a German mission past, and the families sent here from South Africa in the 1970s, so the town tells a fair part of Namibia's twentieth century in one place.

1. Thousands of years ago

   Some 2,500 engravings were cut into the rocks at Twyfelfontein, west of today's town. The Namibia Tourism Board puts most of them at more than 6,000 years old and says they are believed to be the work of San people. source

2. 1880 to 1891

   People settled at the spring of Fransfontein, just north of Khorixas, in 1880. It is named after Frans Fredrick of the ǁKhauǀgoan (Swartbooi Nama), who found it while looking for land, and the German Rhenish Mission opened a station there in 1891. source

3. 1904 to 1908

   In German South West Africa the German Empire waged a war of extermination against the Herero (Ovaherero) and Nama. Between 40,000 and 80,000 Herero and about 10,000 Nama died, many in concentration camps. In 2015 Germany acknowledged that this was genocide. source

4. 1915

   German rule had begun in 1884. During the First World War South Africa invaded and occupied the German colony, and afterwards ran it as South West Africa under a League of Nations mandate. source

5. 1970

   Under the Odendaal Plan, South Africa's scheme to carve the territory into apartheid style ethnic homelands, Damaraland was set up as a homeland for the Damara, covering 47,990 square km. Its capital was Khorixas, which the plans still called Welwitschia. source

6. Early 1970s

   Apartheid South Africa cleared the community of Riemvasmaak near the Orange River in the Northern Cape to make way for a military range. Its Damara families were sent to Khorixas, where the Damara chief Justus ǁGaroëb gave them land. Some went back after land restitution in South Africa, while others stayed and set up their own traditional authority. source

7. 1980 to 1989

   From 1980 the homeland gave way to a Representative Authority of the Damaras, an ethnic tier of government with its own legislative assembly, whose executive was chaired by Justus ǁGaroëb. Like the other homelands it was abolished in May 1989 at the start of the move to independence. source

8. 1990

   Namibia became independent on 21 March 1990. The UN had ended South Africa's mandate in 1966, and that same year SWAPO's armed wing, the People's Liberation Army of Namibia, began its guerrilla war. source

Language

Khorixas constituency, which takes in the town and Fransfontein, is the most Khoekhoegowab speaking part of Kunene. In the 2023 census 71.7% of its 4,321 households spoke Khoekhoegowab (the Damara and Nama language, full of click sounds) at home, 10.6% Otjiherero and 5.5% Afrikaans. source

The Damara

The Damara call themselves ǂNūkhoen and make up 8.5% of Namibia's people. They speak Khoekhoegowab, the same language as the Nama, although genetic studies find them closely related to their Herero and Himba neighbours. source

Clans of the area

Several Damara clans are named after the land they lived on. The ǁHuruben of the Twyfelfontein area, between the Huab and Ugab rivers, are named for their dialect of Khoekhoegowab instead, which is said to sound like grumbling or mumbling. source

Politics

Khorixas has long been a stronghold of the Damara based United Democratic Front (UDF), and SWAPO first won here only in 2015. The UDF took the town council back in 2020, winning four of its seven seats. source

Swartbooi Nama

Fransfontein is still the main settlement of the Swartbooi Nama, and their Swartbooi Traditional Authority is based there. source