Maltahöhe

Maltahöhe is a small, mostly Nama village in the Hardap Region that began in 1899 as a German police and post station, named by the district officer Henning von Burgsdorff after his wife Malta. Its past runs through the war of 1904, when Burgsdorff was shot and Nama fighters held the valley of the Hutup river, through the karakul boom and apartheid, to a village now trying to earn something from the tourists who drive through on the way to the dunes.

1. 1700s to 1800s

   Before colonial times the district was home to small bands of San (sometimes called Bushmen), who hunted and gathered. Nama, Orlam and Baster groups moving north from the Cape in the 18th and 19th centuries pushed them west to the edge of the Namib and persecuted them. Orlam are people of mixed Nama and Boer descent who spoke Afrikaans and Nama. In 1909 the German district chief put the San left in the Maltahöhe district at well under 400. source

2. 1895 to 1899

   After the Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi submitted to the Germans in 1894, Henning von Burgsdorff, the officer in charge at Gibeon, set up a makeshift police and post station where the Hutup river breaks through the plateau, on the farm Daweb. In 1899 he named it Maltahöhe ('Malta's heights') after his wife Martha, known as Malta. The first postmarks with the name date from October 1899, when there was probably just a tent. source

3. 1904

   On 3 October 1904 Hendrik Witbooi wrote to Burgsdorff ending the protection treaty and declaring war. Burgsdorff rode alone to Mariental the next day to talk him out of it and was shot dead in the camp. His friend Witbooi probably did not want the killing, but it ended any chance of peace. source

4. 1904 to 1905

   Witbooi's men destroyed every settler farm in the district. In December 1904 about 400 fighters under Cornelius Fredericks of Bethanie dug in along the Hutup and threatened the small German post. Maltahöhe became a German army base, with up to about 1,000 soldiers in the district at times, and fighting went on around it into 1905. source

5. 1904 to 1908

   The German war against the Herero and Nama is now recognised as genocide. About 80,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama died, roughly half of all Nama, many of them in concentration camps after they had surrendered. source

6. 1907 to 1919

   After the war the German state took the land of the communities that had fought, and many former soldiers set up farms along the Swartrand; by 1914 there were 54 farms in the district. South African forces ended German rule in 1915. Many German farmers were interned at Aus, about half the Germans were deported in 1919, and many of the empty farms went to settler families brought in from South Africa. source

7. 1919 to 1960s

   Under South African rule after 1919, owning land was reserved for white people, and under apartheid black and coloured people could not buy land of their own in Maltahöhe or anywhere else outside the homelands. They lived in the 'Werft' (the township, also called the location). In the 1960s it was renamed Andreville after Andres Berger, a Baster man who had been flogged under German rule. 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

Language

Khoekhoegowab (the Nama and Damara language, with its click sounds) and Afrikaans are what you will hear. There are no census language figures for the village alone, but across the Hardap Region in 2023 Khoekhoegowab was the main home language in 41.9% of households and Afrikaans in 39.4%. source

Who lives here

Blikkiesdorp (Afrikaans for tin town), the newer settlement of corrugated iron shacks, grew from two streams of people: about two thirds came from the surrounding farms, mostly Witbooi and other Nama, and about a third came from the north as contract workers, mainly Herero and Ovambo. source

Karakul farming

Karakul sheep made the district prosperous from the 1930s, and after the Second World War demand from Europe and the US for the lamb pelts was huge. Worldwide protests against fur coats in the 1970s brought a dramatic fall, and today most farmers in the district live from tourism. source

Churches

The Rhenish Mission sent the evangelist Eliphas Katuairua from Gibeon on 4 March 1913 to start a congregation and school for black residents; the first baptisms were that December. Their Lutheran church in the township was built in 1926 and doubled as the school. source

German congregation

A small German-speaking Lutheran congregation still exists in Maltahöhe, part of a southern parish with Mariental, Lüderitz and Helmeringhausen. A pastor comes from Windhoek or Swakopmund only every few months, so members often hold services themselves. source